1938: Hitler's Gamble

by MacDonogh, Giles

  Hitler, who had been wandering around the Chancellery ranting, agreed to Chamberlain’s suggestion shortly before noon. The Italian leader had managed to sugar the pill. It temporarily dampened Hitler’s ambitions. ‘We’ll carry on fortifying ourselves for a future opportunity,’ wrote Goebbels.78 Hitler decided that the conference should take place in Munich. Only the French and the British would be invited; the Soviet Union and Czechoslovakia would learn of the decisions later. Neither was a great power in Hitler’s eyes. The information was carried back to London, where Chamberlain was addressing a House of Commons expecting to hear a declaration of war. The news was greeted with ‘indescribable enthusiasm’.79

  The Opposition was still hoping to strike on the 29th. On the morning of the 28th Kordt gave the text of Chamberlain’s letter to Hitler to Oster. It was circulated to Witzleben and Halder. They interpreted it to mean that Hitler was bent on war. Halder went to Brauchitsch, who was finally convinced to act. Kordt wanted it to happen at once, not even waiting for the morrow. It was then that the Opposition learned of the Italian démarche, which would preserve Hitler at the expense of Czechoslovakia. ‘Colombo’x Brücklmeier, who was on duty in the Chancellery, took the news to Kordt. Hitler postponed mobilization for twenty-four hours.

  MUNICH

  On 28 September European war still seemed unavoidable. Hitler met Mussolini off his train on the platform at Kufstein on the old Austrian border and they travelled together to Munich. Hitler thought he was briefing the Italian leader, but Mussolini was keener to calm Hitler down and prevent him from dragging Europe into war, all the time reassuring him that, if the conference did break down, Italy would be behind him. Mussolini was in two minds. Half of him was saying that there was a chance of eliminating France and Britain for ever. On the way to Munich, Hitler told him of his long-term plans: he had to knock out Czechoslovakia to leave his hands free to fight Britain and France. They needed to go to war soon, while they were ‘young and full of vigour’.80 Mussolini was to be the focus of the conference, largely because, unlike Hitler, he could speak the languages of the other attendees.81 Ciano accompanied his father-in-law.

  Chamberlain was met by Ribbentrop and Bavarian State Councillor Christian Weber at the airport in Oberwiesenfeld. The RAM was still shouting for war,82 behaving ‘like a petulant child’ and wanting to wreck the conference.83 He was particularly furious at the presence of his predecessor, Neurath.84 Chamberlain was lodged in the Hotel Regina on the Maximiliansplatz in Munich together with the Czech ‘observers’ Mastny and Masaryk, who were present to receive whatever scraps were handed down from the top table. The French delegation stopped at the Vier Jahreszeiten. Outside in the streets of Munich people were on tenterhooks, hoping that peace would be preserved. Even Winifred Wagner thought that was what her ‘Wolf’ really wanted.85

  The talks began at 12.30 p.m. in Hitler’s study in the Führerbau. The seating had been managed so that Hitler had his back to the window and his face in shadow. Chamberlain was on his left. Daladier and Mussolini sat together on a sofa. The basis for the Munich Agreement was the document drawn up by Neurath and Weizsäcker together with Göring that stemmed from the British note. It had then been given to Attolico to send to Rome. Mussolini had passed it off as his, to mislead Ribbentrop.

  There was little opposition to Hitler’s diktat: a General Staff map was brought in and, although the talks lasted thirteen hours, the conference took the form of a ‘border commission’. The international treaties that guaranteed the Czech state had been effectively torn up. There was occasional rearguard action from Daladier, on the advice of Alexis Léger, the head of the Quai d’Orsay, who expressed concern for the future existence of Czechoslovakia.86 Hitler seemed to take this well, and later expressed his liking of the French premier,87 who impressed the Germans much more than the frigid, vulpine Chamberlain.88 The draft was signed at around 2.30 a.m. on 30 October. The Poles and Hungarians had to lodge their claims to territory within three months. Hitler could still march in on the first of the month, and appeared so pleased with the result that he ordered the guest book to be brought over from the Brown House so that the leaders could enter their signatures.

  The Agreement gave Hitler pretty well everything he had craved at Bad Godesberg, and the German armies went in on 1 October as planned. The new borders were drawn on strategic lines, thereby leaving a quarter of a million Germans in Czechoslovakia and bringing 800,000 Czechs into the Reich. The Czech version of the Maginot Line was absorbed into German territory. Czechs who did not wish to remain in the new German Zone (including ethnic Germans for whom Nazi rule would have been unpalatable, and some 30,000 Jews) were to leave before 10 October, in the clothes they were standing up in; everything else was to be left behind. The Germans would pay no compensation. Chamberlain’s attempts to win some sort of deal for the Czechs had caused the only disagreement between him and Hitler at the conference. In the end he had not even been able to save a few head of Czech cattle.89

  On 20 November, an ‘international commission’ allotted 11,000 square miles to the Germans. These contained 66 per cent of Czech coal, 80 per cent of lignite, 70 per cent of iron and steel, and the same amount of the nation’s electric power, as well as 40 per cent of its timber. Göring rubbed his thighs in glee and a humiliated Beneš went into bitter exile. On 10 October the Czechs conceded that the Teschen pocket belonged to the Poles and on 2 November Ribbentrop and Ciano redrew the Czech-Hungarian border. Czechoslovakia was now defenceless against Germany’s next blow, which would not be long in coming.

  Hitler could be said to have won hands down, but he was still cross. He cared little for the Sudeteners – he wanted Prague. He was especially angry when Chamberlain was cheered by the Munich crowd as he travelled in an open-topped car after his visit to his ‘modest apartment’90 on the Prinzregentenplatz. Without informing Daladier, Chamberlain had gone to seek a further assurance of Hitler’s peaceable intentions.91 The Anglo-German agreement was to create machinery for constant maintenance of peaceful relations. Hitler seemed sullen and distracted. Schmidt (who was present once again) believed he appended his signature only to placate the Englishman. That night the Munichois celebrated with double measures of beer.92 Even Die Stürmer congratulated Chamberlain on standing up to the (Jewish) mob and working for peace.93 Hitler did not join them: he thought the British Prime Minister had spoiled his triumphal entry into Prague.94

  Chamberlain must have felt relieved, but he went home and told the relevant bodies to rearm, quickly. He had bought some time, and he was right about one thing: Hitler wanted war, and that had only been delayed. There had never been any intention of going to Czechoslovakia’s aid anyhow. Back on 18 March, shortly after the Anschluss, Vansittart’s successor at the Foreign Office, Sir Alexander Cadogan, had written in his diary, ‘Foreign Policy Committee unanimous that Czechoslovakia is not worth the bones of a single Grenadier. And they’re quite right too!’95 Among the leading Nazis, Göring was also in the doghouse for spoiling Hitler’s fun. Ribbentrop now moved into the ascendant and the corpulent former air ace would never have Hitler’s ear again when it came to foreign policy. Hitler may have been obliged to shelve his plans to absorb Bohemia and Moravia, but only until the next opportunity arose.

  In Berlin, Klepper’s mind was put at rest that war had been avoided. There was, however, no mention of the fate of the Czechs. He noted that the feeling of happiness was universal; even voices on the telephone sounded different. Everyone was ‘exhausted and happy’; Hitler’s ‘magic was shattered’. In the church in Berlin-Mariendorf that Sunday, people cried as they sang the Leuthen Choralexi – ‘Nun danket alle Gott!’96Goebbels retired to bed ‘as happy as a child’. Germany’s prestige ‘had grown monstrously, now we are really a world power and that means arm! Arm! Arm!’97 The ‘old woman’ Göring was naturally as pleased as Punch at his success. He had got the resources he wanted and he had managed to avert a conflict: ‘he fought bravely for the sake of peace’.98 He woke Emmy
at the conclusion of the conference and told her, ‘We’ve pulled it off . . . it’s peace.’ He was delighted at all that he had acquired for his Four Year Plan. Taking Ciano to the station the next morning, he told the Italian: ‘Now, there’s going to be rearmament the likes of which the world has never seen.’99

  Far away in China, the German Rhodes Scholar Adam von Trott zu Solz, who was later to perish for his part in the 20th July Plot, wrote to his friend Shiela Grant Duff on 1 October. He felt the one advantage of what had taken place was that it had been a European decision, and not merely a Germano-Czech one, ‘but I agree with you in your present apprehensions’.

  He wrote again on the 6th.

  I confess that I failed to realize the intrinsic turning point which came about with the Anschluss and which opened up a path for a coercive settlement of the Central European problem – which I had never considered possible with the power, prestige and commitments of the Western Democracies in that area. Though I did realize there was in England a large body of opinion that favoured a negotiated settlement of the Sudeten question in Germany’s favour, I believed that France and Russia would remain intransigent on the matter and that your country would back [them] up . . .100

  Trott’s father’s death that month ended his Asian idyll. When he got home he learned of the opposition in the army and the Wilhelmstrasse. They would have to shelve their plans too. There was a furious reaction against Canaris and Kleist-Schmenzin and all those who had implied that Britain would fight. For generals like Gerd von Rundstedt, who had been initiated into the plot by his friend Kleist, the whole thing now felt like a hoax.

  Brauchitsch would hear no more talk of a revolt; the servile Keitel had been kept out of the picture from the start; Halder, who had been found slumped at his desk by Hitler’s adjutant, Engel, had despondently told General von Witzleben, the most eager of the rebels, that he could not be answerable for military action against Hitler if Mr Chamberlain found a peaceable solution to the Czechoslovak dispute. Kleist went back to his estates in Pomerania, utterly disillusioned.101

  There was not to be another coordinated attempt to remove the Führer until 20 July 1944.

  DOORS CLOSING

  On 7 September Italy slammed a door shut: Jews were now to be defined racially and not religiously. Up until then, Italy had still been on the escape route for many baptized Jews. Now, foreign Jews who had settled in Italy after 1919 were to be expelled. The measure affected as many as 40,000 people, including an estimated 6,000 Austrian and German Jews. There were around 70,000 Jews living in Italy, defined as full Jews, with two Jewish parents. From 3 September they were no longer permitted to enter Italian schools and universities.102 In Rome, Pius XI quietly made his views clear to a group of Belgian pilgrims on the 6th after delivering a reading about Abraham, ‘our father, our ancestor’. He said, ‘Antisemitism is not compatible with the sublime thought and reality which are expressed in this text. It is not possible for Christians to participate in antisemitism. Spiritually, we are Semites.’103

  Collard performed his last nineteen baptisms on 15 September before returning to Cologne. Following his departure there were developments in Britain. Appeasement was in the air. An initiative from Sir Wyndham Deedes led to the creation of a Christian Council to assist Jews from Germany and Austria. The new body joined the others in Bloomsbury House, which had campaigned for non-Aryan Christians, children and students, as well as the Quakers’ own operation. It would put pressure on the Dominions to accept the Jews.104 Collard’s departure came at a time when the first large-scale releases were being made from Dachau. Some were not so lucky: Bruno Heilig was transferred to Buchenwald on the 22nd, and if anything the camp was even grimmer,105 although one of the capos turned out to be a relatively sympathetic Prussian Junker whose grandmother was a Jew.

  On 17 September Fred Richter appeared before an examining magistrate at the Landgericht (state court) in Vienna and denied any involvement in espionage. He maintained he had only expressed an interest in Tucek’s invention.

  The Jews showed little sympathy for the Czechs. President Beneš created the problem for himself by his attempts to prevent a Habsburg restoration in 1934 and 1935: ‘Better Hitler than Habsburg,’ he is supposed to have said. Wiesl predicted that six million Jewish lives would now be lost between the Rhine and the Dniester.106

  Nazi methods in Austria were not always crowned with success. In Mistelbach, near the Czech border, the Jews were refusing to sell out. The Gestapo suggested they should be pushed across the frontier as their closeness to Czechoslovakia caused a danger of communist infiltration. The huge taxes levied on Jews leaving the country were also a disincentive. Eichmann was up against Göring. The latter wanted to fill the coffers of the state at the expense of the Jews, while Eichmann desired the fastest emigration possible.107 The number of Jews marooned in a hostile Central Europe was causing alarm in Jewish circles: there were 20,000 in the Sudetenland, which would soon be prey to Hitler’s racial policies; a further 385,000 were in rump Czechoslovakia, which was about to pass racial laws of its own; there were 410,000 in Hungary, which had already promulgated racial laws; and 78,000 in Jugoslavia, where the government had decreed measures against the Jews. Romania had 800,000 with 50,000 Christian converts. Poland had another 3.3 million. If you included 170,000 in Austria and 350,000 remaining in Germany, that made a European total of 4.1 million, not including Russia.108 Latvia was now the sole European country that remained open to Jews.109

  In the autumn of 1938 there were an estimated 200 Austrian Jews stranded in Jugoslavia.110 At the beginning of October, however, the Jugoslav government finally ruled that it intended to expel all foreign Jews in three months.111 The Dutch too were showing frustration at the number of illegal immigrants, and on 20 September the Jewish Telegraphic Agency reported that forty-four Austrian Jews had been sent home from Rotterdam.112 The British were flexing their muscles again over Palestine. Cyprus, with its proximity to the Mandate territory, was an obvious magnet. The numbers of Jews landing was causing concern, with thirty to forty fresh refugees arriving every week.113 On 21 September it was reported that an 800-man transport from Vienna had been sent back. Wiesl had promises of £1,000 to grease palms, but he needed twice that. In the wake of Evian he noted that Nicaragua was prepared to take in 3,000 Jews, but they had to hand over $100 on landing.114

  The news from Vienna was not all doom and gloom: there was a small sprinkling of that frivolity for which the city is famous. While the leaders of the Western world met to assign Hitler the German-speaking parts of Czechoslovakia, a court convened in the former Austrian capital to decide who possessed the right to sell the ‘original’ Sachertorte (chocolate cake), Sacher’s Hotel or the café Demel. The court ruled in Sacher’s favour: the ‘original’ had to come from their kitchens.115

  10

  OCTOBER

  The German Army officially took control of the Czech borderlands on 1 October. The Poles wasted no time either in occupying Teschen and Freistadt, east of Mährisch Östrau. They went in the following day. In Germany’s new Gaue the Jews were now at great risk. There were 27,000 Jews and non-Aryan Christians in the Sudetenland. In the summer there had been antisemitic riots in Eger, Asch and Karlsbad, and Jewish shops had been ransacked. Famous spas like Carlsbad and Marienbad had been immensely popular with rich Jews. Der Stürmer reckoned that 80 per cent of Carlsbad’s customers were Jewish, noting maliciously that although Jews had lost the choice to regain their health at Carlsbad, they could keep fit by running.1 The doctors who treated them were also likely to be Jews. There were other powerful Jewish clans in the region: the hop merchants of Saaz, for example, were largely Jewish. The message was clear, and thousands fled.

  The Czech government was heartless towards its citizens, reneged on stipulations made at Munich that accorded a ‘choice of residence’ to the Sudetenländer, and forcibly returned as many as it could find to the German occupied areas.2 Although the Munich Agreement had laid down a provis
ion for citizens to ‘opt’ for Germany or Czechoslovakia, the Czechs refused protection to Jews who feared for their safety under the Nazis.3 Many eluded them. By May 1939 only a tenth of that number remained in the new German Gaue. It was not only the Jews the Czechs were reluctant to accept: there were thousands of ethnic German Social Democrats too. The Nazis said they had no right to opt for Czechoslovakia. There were also 5–6,000 Germans who had taken refuge in Prague and other parts of Czechoslovakia after Hitler’s assumption of power. There was discrimination against Sudeten Jews, who were denied access to the funds they had been able to bring out, and the others who had crossed the demarcation lines penniless. The British donated £10 million to help alleviate the situation. This failed to prevent the Czechs from putting pressure on a quarter of a million Jews in the country to emigrate.4 Sopade, the organization of German socialists in exile, also decided it was prudent to run. They set up their new home in Paris.

  The new Czech government under President Emil Hàcha sought a rapprochement with Germany and aligned its policies accordingly. The French were to wind up their alliance with the country – which had done the Czechs little good – and the Czechs themselves decided to abandon their flirtation with the Soviet Union. German-style restrictions on the movement and employment of Jews were also introduced. On 11 October Mastny assured Göring that the Czechs would ‘seriously tackle the Jewish problem’.5 To some extent the attitude of the new Czech Second Republic was dictated by weakness. Stripped of their fortifications, they now had no means of holding the Germans back. As it was, the settlement had been clumsy: 478,589 ethnic Germans remained in rump Czechoslovakia, while 676,478 Czechs were now living in Germany. Those half million Germans were hardly popular either.6 Hitler was still straining at the leash. As he told Goebbels on the evening of the 2nd, it was his unshakable decision to smash Czecho. ‘And he will make it happen too: this dead, amorphous, artificial state must go.’7