by Ian Kershaw
Göring, on holiday on the Riviera enjoying the luxury comforts of San Remo, was sent a message telling him not to leave before German troops entered Czecho-Slovakia in order not to stir suspicions abroad.80 On 12 March orders were given to the army and Luftwaffe to be ready to enter Czecho-Slovakia at 6a.m. on the 15th, but before then not to approach within ten kilometres of the border.81 German mobilization was by that stage so obvious that it seemed impossible that the Czechs were unaware of what was happening.82 The propaganda campaign against the Czechs had meanwhile been sharply stepped up.83 Ribbentrop, Goebbels, and Hitler discussed foreign-policy issues until deep into the night. Ribbentrop argued that conflict with England in due course was inevitable. Hitler, according to Goebbels, was preparing for it, but did not regard it as unavoidable. Goebbels criticized Ribbentrop’s inflexibility. ‘But the Führer corrects him, for sure.’84
That evening, 12 March, Tiso had been visited by German officials and invited to Berlin. The next day he met Hitler. He was told the historic hour of the Slovaks had arrived. If they did nothing, they would be swallowed up by Hungary.85 Tiso got the message. By the following noon, 14 March, back in Bratislava, he had the Slovak Assembly proclaim independence. The desired request for ‘protection’ was, however, only forthcoming a day later, after German warships on the Danube had trained their sights on the Slovakian government offices.86
Goebbels listened again to Hitler unfolding his plans. The entire ‘action’ would be over within eight days. The Germans would already be in Prague within a day, their planes within two hours. No bloodshed was expected. ‘Then the Führer wants to fit in (einlegen) a lengthy period of political calm,’ wrote Goebbels, adding that he did not believe it, however enticing the prospect. A period of calm, he thought, was necessary. ‘Gradually, the nerves aren’t coping.’87
On the morning of 14 March, the anticipated request came from Prague, seeking an audience of the Czech State President Dr Emil Hácha with Hitler. Hacha, a small, shy, somewhat unworldly, and also rather sickly man, in office since the previous November, was unable to fly because of a heart complaint.88 He arrived in Berlin during the course of the evening, after a five-hour train journey, accompanied only by Foreign Minister Chvalkov-sky, his secretary, and his daughter. Hitler kept him nervously waiting in the Adlon Hotel until midnight to increase the pressure upon him – ‘the old tested methods of political tactics’, as Goebbels put it.89 While Hácha fretted, Hitler amused himself watching a film called Ein hoffnungsloser Fall (A Hopeless Case).90
The fiction of normal courtesies to a visiting head of state was retained. When he arrived at the New Reich Chancellery at midnight, Hácha was first put through the grotesque ceremonial of inspecting the guard of honour. It was around 1a.m. when, his face red from nervousness and anxiety, the Czech President was eventually ushered into the intimidating surrounds of Hitler’s grandiose ‘study’ in the New Reich Chancellery.91 A sizeable gathering, including Ribbentrop, the head of his personal staff Walther Hewel, Keitel, Weizsäcker, State Secretary Otto Meissner, Press Chief Otto Dietrich, and interpreter Paul Schmidt, were present. Göring, summoned back from holiday, was also there. Hácha’s only support was the presence of Chvalkovsky and Dr Voytech Mastny, the Czech Ambassador in Berlin.92
Hitler was at his most intimidating. He launched into a violent tirade against the Czechs and the ‘spirit of Benes’ that, he claimed, still lived on. It was necessary in order to safeguard the Reich, he continued, to impose a protectorate over the remainder of Czecho-Slovakia. Hácha and Chvalkovsky sat stony-faced and motionless. The entry of German troops was ‘irreversible’, ranted Hitler. Keitel would confirm that they were already marching towards the Czech border, and would cross it at 6a.m.93 His Czech ‘guests’ knew that some had in fact already crossed the border in one place.94 Hácha should phone Prague at once and give orders that there was to be no resistance, if bloodshed were to be avoided. Hácha said he wanted no bloodshed, and asked Hitler to halt the military build-up. Hitler refused: it was impossible; the troops were already mobilized.95 Göring intervened to add that his Luftwaffe would be over Prague by dawn, and it was in Hácha’s hands whether bombs fell on the beautiful city. In fact, the 7th Airborne Division detailed for the operation was grounded by snow.96 But at the threat, the Czech President fainted. If anything happened to Hácha, thought Paul Schmidt, the entire world would think he had been murdered in the Reich Chancellery.97 But Hácha recovered, revived by an injection from Hitler’s personal physician, Dr Morell.
Meanwhile, Prague could not be reached by telephone. Ribbentrop was beside himself with fury at the failings of the German Post Office (though it was established that any difficulty was at the Prague end). Eventually, contact with Prague was made. The browbeaten President went immediately to the telephone and, on a crackly line, passed on his orders that Czech troops were not to open fire on the invading Germans. Just before 4a.m., Hácha signed the declaration, placing the fate of his people in the hands of the Leader of the German Reich.98
Overjoyed, Hitler went in to see his two secretaries, Christa Schroeder and Gerda Daranowski, who had been on duty that night. ‘So, children,’ he burst out, pointing to his cheeks, ‘each of you give me a kiss there and there… This is the happiest day of my life. What has been striven for in vain for centuries, I have been fortunate enough to bring about. I have achieved the union of Czechia with the Reich. Hacha has signed the agreement. I will go down as the greatest German in history.’99
Two hours after Hacha had signed, the German army crossed the Czech borders and marched, on schedule, on Prague. By 9a.m. the forward units entered the Czech capital, making slow progress on ice-bound roads, through mist and snow, the wintry weather providing an appropriate back-cloth to the end of central Europe’s last, betrayed, democracy. The Czech troops, as ordered, remained in their barracks and handed over their weapons.100
Hitler left Berlin at midday, travelling in his special train as far as Leipa, some sixty miles north of Prague, where he arrived during the afternoon. A fleet of Mercedes was waiting to take him and his entourage the remainder of the journey to Prague. It was snowing heavily, but he stood for much of the way, his arm outstretched to salute the unending columns of German soldiers they overtook. Unlike his triumphal entries into Austria and the Sudetenland, only a thin smattering of the population watched sullenly and helplessly from the side of the road. A few dared to greet with clenched fists as Hitler’s car passed by. But the streets were almost deserted by the time he arrived in Prague in the early evening and drove up to the Hradschin Castle, the ancient residence of the Kings of Bohemia.101 Little was ready for his arrival. The great iron gates to the castle were locked. No food was on hand for the new occupiers as Hitler sat down with Reich Minister of the Interior Frick and his Secretary of State Stuckart to finalize the decree initiating the German Protectorate. The military escort were sent out in the early hours to find bread, ham, and Pilsner. Hitler, too, was given a glass of beer. He tasted it, pulled a face, and put it down. It was too bitter for him.102 He dictated the preamble to the decree. It stated that ‘the Bohemian and Moravian lands had belonged to the living space of the German people for 1,000 years’.103 The terminology, sounding alien to Prussian ears, hinted at his Austrian origins; the name of the Protectorate was derived from the designations of the old Habsburg imperial crown lands. He spent the night in the Hradschin. When the people of Prague awoke next morning, they saw Hitler’s standard fluttering on the castle. Twenty-four hours later he was gone.104 He showed little further interest in Prague, or the Protectorate. For the Czechs, six long years of subjugation had begun.
Hitler returned to Berlin, via Vienna, on 19 March, to the inevitable, and by now customary, triumphator’s reception. Despite the freezing temperatures, huge numbers turned out to welcome the hero. When Hitler descended from his train at the Görlitzer Bahnhof, Göring, tears in his eyes, greeted him with an address embarrassing even by the prevailing standards of sycophancy. Thousands
cheered wildly as Hitler was driven to the Reich Chancellery. The experienced hand of Dr Goebbels had organized another massive spectacular. Searchlights formed a ‘tunnel of light’ along Unter den Linden. A brilliant display of fireworks followed. Hitler then appeared on the balcony of the Reich Chancellery, waving to the ecstatic crowd of his adoring subjects below.105
The real response among the German people to the rape of Czechoslovakia was, however, more mixed – in any event less euphoric – than that of the cheering multitudes, many of them galvanized by Party activists, in Berlin. This time there had been no ‘home-coming’ of ethnic Germans into the Reich. The vague notion that Bohemia and Moravia had belonged to the ‘German living-space’ for a thousand years left most people cold – certainly most north Germans who had traditionally had little or no connection with the Czech lands.106 For many, as one report from a Nazi District Leader put it, whatever the joy in the Führer’s ‘great deeds’ and the trust placed in him, ‘the needs and cares of daily life are so great that the mood is very quickly gloomy again’.107 There was a good deal of indifference, scepticism, and criticism, together with worries that war was a big step closer. ‘Was that necessary?’ many people asked. They remembered Hitler’s precise words following the Munich Agreement, that the Sudetenland had been his ‘last territorial demand’.108 In the industrial belt of Rhineland-Westphalia, according to a report from the Social Democrat underground movement, there was a good deal of condemnation of the invasion while sympathy for the Czechs was openly expressed in coal-pits, workers’ washrooms, and on the streets. The Nazi regime was criticized; but there was also contempt for the way France and Britain had let Hitler do what he wanted.109 Similar sentiments were commonplace among those who detested the Nazis. ‘No shot fired. Nowhere a protest,’ noted one woman in her diary – adding to her comment the forecast of a friend: ‘I bet they now get Danzig and Poland still without war… and if they’re lucky, even the Ukraine.’110 ‘Can’t he get enough?’ murmured the mother of a fourteen-year-old girl in Paderborn. The young girl herself, who had been appalled the previous summer at the ‘outrages’ allegedly perpetrated against the German minority in the Sudetenland, now found herself sympathizing with the Czechs, and at the same time asking what Germany was doing in annexing the territory of ‘an entirely alien people’ who could under no circumstances be ‘germanized’. She consoled herself with the thought that no blood had been shed, that it could even be an advantage for a small country to be under the protection of a great power, and that the German people would be ‘much more generous, tolerant, and fair’ protectors than ‘some Slavic people’.111 It was a reflection of the widespread latent hostility towards Slavs, the impact of propaganda, and of the confused sentiments that continued to accompany Hitler’s expansionism. Even opponents of Hitler recognized that moral scruples carried little weight in the face of another major prestige success. ‘Internal opponents, too, are now declaring that he’s a great man,’ ran a report sent to the exiled Social Democrat leadership in Paris. It indicated the difficulty in challenging those lauding his ‘achievements’. Counterarguments, it was said, were pointless – not least ‘the argument that Czechoslovakia has been invaded and Hitler has done something wrong’.112
Hitler had been contemptuous of the western powers before the taking of Prague. He correctly judged that once more they would protest, but do nothing. However, everything points to the conclusion that he miscalculated the response of Britain and France after the invasion of Czecho-Slovakia. The initial reaction in London was one of shock and dismay at the cynical demolition of the Munich Agreement, despite the warnings the British government had received. Appeasement policy lay shattered in the ruins of the Czecho-Slovakian state. Hitler had broken his promise that he had no further territorial demands to make. And the conquest of Czecho-Slovakia had destroyed the fiction that Hitler’s policies were aimed at the uniting of German peoples in a single state. Hitler, it was now abundantly clear – a recognition at last and very late in the day – could not be trusted. He would stop at nothing. Chamberlain’s speech in Birmingham on 17 March hinted at a new policy. ‘Is this the last attack upon a small State, or is it to be followed by others?’ he asked. ‘Is this, in fact, a step in the direction of an attempt to dominate the world by force?’113 British public opinion was in no doubt. Hitler had united a country deeply divided over Munich. On all sides people were saying that war with Germany was both inevitable and necessary. Recruitment for the armed forces increased almost overnight.114 It was now clear both to the man in the street and to the government: Hitler had to be tackled.
The following day, 18 March, amid rumours circulating that Germany was threatening Romania, the British cabinet endorsed the Prime Minister’s recommendation of a fundamental change in policy. No reliance could any longer be placed on the assurances of the Nazi leaders, Chamberlain stated. The old policy of trying to come to terms with the dictatorships on the assumption that they had limited aims was no longer possible. Chamberlain regarded his Birmingham speech, he told the cabinet, ‘as a challenge to Germany on the issue whether or not Germany intended to dominate Europe by force. It followed that if Germany took another step in the direction of dominating Europe, she would be accepting the challenge.’ Lord Halifax, the Foreign Secretary, underlined the view that ‘the real issue was Germany’s attempt to obtain world domination, which it was in the interest of all countries to resist’. Britain alone, he argued, could organize such resistance – though he admitted that it was hard to see how Britain could effectively attack Germany – if the Germans invaded Romania or whether they turned on Holland. ‘The attitude of the German government was either bluff, in which case it would be stopped by a public declaration on our part; or it was not bluff, in which case it was necessary that we should all unite to meet it, and the sooner we united the better. Otherwise we might see one country after another absorbed by Germany.’ The policy had shifted from trying to appease Hitler to attempting to deter him. In any new aggression, Germany would be faced at the outset with the choice of pulling back or going to war. As the Foreign Secretary’s comments made clear, the geographical thrust of any new move by Hitler was immaterial to this new strategy. But the Prime Minister had little doubt as to where trouble might next flare up. ‘He thought that Poland was very likely the key to the situation… The time had now come for those who were threatened by German aggression (whether immediately or ultimately) to get together. We should enquire how far Poland was prepared to go alone these lines.’115 The British Guarantee to Poland and the genesis of the summer crisis which, this time, would end in war were foreshadowed in Chamberlain’s remarks.
Similar reactions were registered in Paris. Daladier let Chamberlain know that the French would speed up rearmament and resist any further aggression. The Americans were told that Daladier was determined to go to war should the Germans act against Danzig or Poland. Even strong advocates of appeasement were now saying enough was enough: there would not be another Munich.116
IV
Before the Polish crisis unfolded, Hitler had one other triumph to register-though compared with what had gone before, it was a minor one. As we noted, Hitler had referred in his directive of 21 October 1938 to preparation for ‘the occupation of Memelland’.117 The incorporation of Memelland in the German Reich was now to prove the last annexation without bloodshed. After its removal from Germany in 1919, the Memel district, with a mainly German population but a sizeable Lithuanian minority, had been placed under French administration. The Lithuanians had marched in, forcing the withdrawal of the French occupying force there in January 1923. The following year, under international agreement, the Memel had gained a level of independence, but remained in effect a German enclave under Lithuanian tutelage. Trouble had flared briefly in 1935 when the Lithuanians put 128 Memelland National Socialists on trial, sentencing four of them to death. But other than launch a fierce verbal onslaught on the Lithuanians, Hitler had at the time done nothing. The matter died down
as quickly as it had arisen. The Memel question was not raised again for another four years. But in March 1938, the German army had prepared plans to occupy the Memel in the event of war between Poland and Lithuania. Then in October Hitler had included the recovery of the Memel in the directive for taking over Czecho-Slovakia. By the end of the year, interested in agreement with Poland, Hitler had insisted that there should be no agitation from the restless Nazis in the Memel. Early in 1939, anxious to avoid any action which might provoke German intervention, the Lithuanians had yielded to all the wishes of the now largely nazified Memel population.118
Politically, the return of the territory to Germany was of no great significance. Even symbolically, it was of relatively little importance. Few ordinary Germans took more than a passing interest in the incorporation of such a remote fleck of territory into the Reich. But the acquisition of a port on the Baltic, with the possibility that Lithuania, too, might be turned into a German satellite, had strategic relevance. Alongside the subordination to German influence of Slovakia on the southern borders of Poland, it gave a further edge to German pressure on the Poles.119
On 20 March, Ribbentrop subjected the Lithuanian Foreign Minister, Joseph Urbsys, to the usual bullying tactics. Kowno would be bombed, he threatened, if Germany’s demand for the immediate return of the Memel were not met.120 Urbsys returned the next day, 21 March, to Kowno. The Lithuanians were in no mood for a fight. They sent in a draft communiqué. It did not suffice and had to be redrafted in Berlin. By then the Lithuanian ministers had gone to bed and had to be awakened by the German ambassador, who had been told, figuratively, to put a pistol to their chest. ‘Either-or,’ remarked Goebbels.121 At 3a.m. everything was finally accepted. The revised communiqué arrived about three hours later. A Lithuanian delegation was sent to Berlin to arrange the details. ‘If you apply a bit of pressure, things happen,’ noted Goebbels, with satisfaction.122