Henderson was a recurring source of deep annoyance to anti-appeasement figures. During discussions over German colonies, Eden became infuriated by Henderson’s propensity to over-enthusiastically yield concessions and signal Britain’s openness to German desires. ‘I wish he would not go on like this to everybody he meets,’ the Foreign Secretary snapped.419
Voigt watched from London as British politicians kept their lines of communication open with Hitler. Following the furore over Halifax’s visit caused by the Evening Standard’s article, he wrote a perceptive letter to Crozier, his editor, about the state of the press in Britain:
The incident is over – but the forces that are trying to change our foreign policy remain. They are sure to renew their attempts. I wish the Labour Party were more on the alert in the House [of Commons]. But it never seems to have any inkling of what goes on anywhere. It is a calamity that there are only two free papers left in the country – the Manchester Guardian and the Yorkshire Post. The Times and The Observer are in with Lothian and the Astors. The Daily Telegraph is stodgy and accepts dictation from the Government. The others don’t count except for stunts.420
Other figures were also watching in dismay as some of the most influential names in the press supported the government’s shift to wholehearted appeasement. After reading the day’s newspapers, the Labour politician Hugh Dalton noted in diaries on 28 November: ‘There is a great barrage in favour of concessions to Germany… [The Observer] carries the usual Garvin slobber, including proposals for a wholesale return of colonies.’421
The momentum was building in favour of those who wanted to take a softer line towards Germany. At the start of 1938, the pro-appeasement faction claimed its biggest scalp to date. On the first day of the year, Lord Vansittart was replaced as Permanent Under-Secretary at the Foreign Office by Alexander Cadogan. Vansittart was handed the role of Chief Diplomatic Adviser to the Government. It sounds a grand title, but in reality he was sidelined. The Foreign Office had lost its most ardent critic of British policy towards Germany, the man who had taken up the early warnings sounded by Sir Horace Rumbold in Berlin. It was a crushing blow for Eden.
Friends of Vansittart thought he should have spoken out publicly. But that was not how loyal civil servants were trained. ‘He ought to have resigned with the greatest noise and fury possible, instead of allowing himself to be kicked upstairs,’ recorded Colin Coote of The Times later. ‘We often discussed this in later years, and I think he did regret his observances of the traditional code of the civil servant.’422
Later in January came the fifth anniversary of Hitler’s rise to power. In a leader on 29 January the Guardian focused on the Nazi regime’s brutal persecution of the Jews. Many other newspapers overlooked this and instead focused on the Nazis’ economic achievements, particularly in unemployment. Persecution ‘has not abated for one moment,’ the Guardian said. It attacked Hitler for a range of other reasons:
Constant maladministration of justice, the secret and terroristic trials, the torture of prisoners, the concentration camps, the lowering of ethical and aesthetic standards, the habits of servility that have grown up amongst the ruled under the arrogance of the rulers, the incessant propaganda that is killing truthfulness in the German people, who used to be, above all, truth-seekers, the militarisation of old and young, and the new educational ideals that threaten to produce a new generation animated by a barbarous and militant nationalism.423
As February progressed, Anthony Eden’s position as Foreign Secretary became less and less secure. On one of the main foreign policy issues of the day, relations with Germany, his great office of state was being left behind as Chamberlain and his supporters in the press pursued their own policy. As his departure became inevitable, the Prime Minister moved to protect his own position by ensuring Eden’s resignation was not reported to be the result of a great fracture in foreign affairs policy.
Eden resigned in February 1938. The scale of his disagreement with Chamberlain and Halifax over the Government’s stance on Germany had widened from a crevice to a canyon. His resignation speech was pointed. ‘I do not believe we can make progress in European appeasement … if we allow the impression to gain currency abroad that we yield to constant pressure.’424 But newspapers were briefed and even the Daily Telegraph, whose reporting of foreign policy had put other papers to shame, was persuaded by Chamberlain’s efforts. Victor Gordon-Lennox, its diplomatic correspondent and a friend of Eden, cried when he read his paper’s criticism of the outgoing Foreign Secretary.425
Eden was replaced by Lord Halifax. Though he had already been serving as Chamberlain’s Foreign Secretary in all but name, his formal appointment greatly encouraged the appeasement lobby. Vansittart and Eden joined Churchill on the sidelines. There was no formal government policy describing it as such, but appeasement of Germany was now the key element within British foreign policy. Hitler would be trusted and German claims given a hearing.
An emboldened Halifax continued to make his case to the press. Early in 1938 he met Esmond Harmsworth, who was now firmly in control at the Daily Mail, to try and influence the newspaper’s line.426 Several of his attempts at influencing the press proved successful. Later in the year Hugh Dalton took Douglas Jay, the city editor of the Daily Herald, to lunch. Jay told him that Halifax’s attempts to persuade Lord Southwood to bring the newspaper’s position into line had met with success. There had ‘been some reflection of this pressure to prevent too critical a line on foreign policy’ in the newspaper. Halifax’s entreaties to Southwood obviously made an impact.427
Jay had the sense that the Daily Herald ownership regarded journalists ‘as political extremists who were endangering the circulation and worse still the advertising revenue of the paper’.428 He despaired at the uncritical attitude some British newspapers took towards Hitler in the final years of the 1930s. ‘Almost the entire press poured forth news articles and twisted news stories designed to prove that Hitler meant little harm, and that warnings of danger were bad for business anyway.’429
- CHAPTER XIV -
ANSCHLUSS
On 12 February 1938 the Austrian Chancellor Kurt Schuschnigg left Vienna, ostensibly for a weekend of skiing. Instead he headed across the border to Germany, where Hitler had invited him to a secret meeting to discuss Austro-German relations at his Berchtesgaden home in the mountains. The two countries had endured fraught relations for much of the thirties, especially since the assassination of Chancellor Engelbert Dollfuss by Austrian Nazis in 1934. Dollfuss had drawn Nazi wrath by banning the party in Austria, but Schuschnigg had pursued a more amicable approach, despite continued agitation by Hitler’s supporters. Some felt Schuschnigg was himself running something akin to a fascist regime. But it was not enough for the Nazis who longed for Austria to one day become part of the German Reich. An Austrian by birth, Hitler felt this desire more keenly than any of his followers.
The secret meeting was a scarring experience for the Austrian Chancellor. Hitler bullied and hectored his guest, demanding that Nazis be given important posts in the Austrian Cabinet. News of the meeting was slow to emerge, but in the following days mixed reports started appearing in British newspapers. ‘From the very start of the interview Chancellor Schuschnigg found himself subjected to great pressure,’ the News Chronicle reported four days later.430 The Daily Telegraph’s correspondent in Vienna, Eric Gedye, was the British correspondent closest to the unfolding events. ‘The Führer went so far – and I can assert this positively, in the face of any subsequent denials – as to threaten that in the case of disorders in Austria, he would “march”,’ Gedye reported.431 It was clear – Austria was Hitler’s next target. In an editorial, the next day’s Telegraph likened any talk of a settlement with Germany to ‘the twittering of sparrows in a thunderstorm’.432
The Daily Express and Daily Mail were more sanguine about the meeting. The Express adhered to its isolationist line and pressed the case for non-interference, while the Mail said Hitler’s attitude towar
ds Schuschnigg at Berchtesgaden had been perfectly reasonable. But they were blinding themselves to the near-inevitability of events to come. Hitler had moved onto Austria and would not be content until he had achieved the joining of the two countries, or ‘Anschluss’, that he had craved since taking power.
Spectators take their seats in grandstands erected in front of the Stadtschloss, the City Palace of Berlin, ahead of a party rally. (PA-1456 Thomas Neumann, The National Archives of Norway)
In Berlin, the hapless ambassador Henderson continued to be ineffective in his dealings with Hitler. On 3 March he had an audience with the Führer in which he aimed to renew the British government’s attempt to reach an accommodation with Germany. ‘Nothing, [Hitler] said, could be done until the press campaign against him in England ceased,’ Henderson recorded. ‘He never failed to harp on this subject in every conversation I had with him.’433 In a singularly weak gesture at the end of the meeting he produced a drawing of Hitler, sent to him by an artist in New Zealand who had asked for it to be signed, and requested the Nazi leader’s autograph. British diplomacy did not leave Hitler quailing.
It was almost as if Henderson viewed politics and negotiations as distasteful – he was more comfortable discussing the latest fashions or his sporting prowess. On one occasion he participated in a stag-shooting weekend at Göring’s estate in the country. ‘When I got there the stag was kindly standing broadside on, and I shot it through the heart. From that moment my reputation as a sportsman was secure,’ he wrote.434 Henderson’s priorities were skewed. Though he may have thought otherwise, skill with a shotgun did not equate to talent as a diplomat.
The pressure on Austria increased. Schuschnigg relented by installing some Nazis in his government but simultaneously made plans for a referendum that would offer Austrians a choice on whether the country became part of Germany. There was a real possibility Austria’s electorate would vote against the proposal. He announced the referendum on Wednesday 9 March. Hitler reacted with predictable rage and his response was swift. Three days later, purportedly at the request of Nazis in Schuschnigg’s Cabinet, Hitler ordered the German army into Austria. The Anschluss had begun. Again, Price of the Daily Mail had a ringside seat for the action. In the following days he tracked Hitler down in Linz, a large north Austrian city on the Danube. He was on his way to Vienna. Price talked his way onto the balcony from which Hitler was addressing a large crowd gathered in the town square. The Nazis received a generally favourable response from the invaded country’s population. Price recounted how crowds looking towards Hitler chanted the slogan of the Nazi Party: ‘Ein Reich! Ein Volk! Ein Führer! (One State! One Nation! One Leader!)’
‘Hitler’s face took on a look of ecstasy as he heard this manifestation of devotion to himself and his regime,’ Price wrote. ‘His mood was certainly one of triumph when I had a conversation with him in the small hotel where he spent the night.’ Price asked him how he expected to be received in Vienna the next day. ‘I will show you tomorrow,’ Hitler replied. ‘You can join the motor-cavalcade that will bring me to Vienna, and you will be able to see for yourself what the people of Austria feel about me.’
Price travelled the 150 miles to Vienna in the third car of a convoy transporting the Nazi leadership. He wrote that it produced ‘the most excited demonstration of enthusiasm that I have ever witnessed. All the way crowds of Austrians were waiting to greet Hitler with what was obviously genuine joy.’435 Price saw Hitler being ‘bombarded’ with flowers in every town they passed through.
The reaction in Britain to Hitler’s latest act of aggression was less breathless. The Times called it the ‘Rape of Austria’ in an editorial. ‘Never, indeed, has the mailed fist been wielded with such dramatic effect as by Germany,’ asserted the Telegraph.436 ‘Remember that what has happened in Austria over the weekend is largely our own fault,’ opined the News Chronicle. ‘Our hesitation has encouraged cumulative acts of aggression and treaty breaking across the world. Manchuria, Abyssinia, the Rhineland, Spain, China, Austria. Who next?’437 It added that the western democracies should pledge to fight for Czechoslovakia if Hitler moved against her next. Part of the country was now virtually encircled by German-controlled territory after the Anschluss.
The Daily Mail maintained its strong message of rearmament. ‘Arm, arm, arm! That has been the lesson of the past few years. That is the lesson which is underlined and emphasised by Austria today,’ Rothermere’s paper said, while emphasising a message of isolationism. ‘Today the resolve of the British people will be to have nothing to do with the situation in Europe. Not one British soldier, not one penny of British money must be involved in this quarrel which is no concern of ours.’438
There was no question of western democracies stepping in to save Austria. Hitler’s latest move had started on a Saturday but been less of a surprise than his other weekend strikes. Many saw the Anschluss as a natural and by no means undesirable development. The two countries shared much in terms of language, history and culture. The aggressive manner in which Hitler had acted, rather than the act itself, was the chief source of anger abroad. Hitler brushed off the criticism, though he had taken notice of it. In Austria he stood before the crowds and turned to Price. ‘Is that a rape?’ he asked, gesturing to the cheering crowds below, in reference to the recent Times headline.439
Monitoring events from The Times headquarters in London, Geoffrey Dawson was left in no doubt about the speed and power of the Nazi invasion by a letter from his correspondent in Vienna, Douglas Reed. ‘In my wildest nightmares, I had not foreseen anything so perfectly organised, so brutal, so ruthless, so strong. When this machine goes into action, it will blight everything it encounters like a swarm of locusts,’ Reed wrote to Dawson four days after the commencement of the Anschluss.
Reed thought the scale of the destruction of a new world war would make the Great War look like the Boer War. He added that Britain was unprepared and did not realise that Hitler’s ultimate aim was Britain’s destruction. ‘This is a thing which nobody can understand, apparently, who has not lived with the Germans. Their real hatred is for England.’440
Ugly scenes followed in Austria in the weeks after Anschluss. Jews in the country were visciously targeted in a wave of anti-Semitism far more brutal and organised than anything seen in Germany so far. The Telegraph’s Gedye led reporting on the surge of violence against Austria’s Jews. The German authorities brought their existing press tactics to bear in Austria and expelled him. Gedye was ordered to be ‘over the frontiers of Germany, including Austria,’ by noon on 28 March.441
John Segrue, a long-serving correspondent in Europe for the News Chronicle and Catholic friend to Reynolds, was working in Vienna when the Nazis marched in. A small Liverpudlian who adored his pair of pet Dachshunds, Segrue was a distinguished foreign correspondent who had been the first British journalist in Germany after the First World War. The Nazis had hated the candid manner in which he reported their treatment of Jews in Germany. He offered financial assistance to many repressed people and employed in his office a Jewish girl who would have struggled to find a job elsewhere.
Segrue was one of the many correspondents expelled from Berlin by the Nazis during the 1930s. He had then moved to Austria, predicting that Hitler would soon turn his eye towards his homeland. Segrue maintained his defiant attitude towards the Nazis after Anschluss. One story in particular was remembered proudly by his News Chronicle colleagues. Wandering around Vienna in the days after the German invasion, he came across a crowd in the Jewish quarter. Himmler’s SS were aggressively forcing a large group of Jews of all ages to wash their cars. An unsympathetic mob watched the crowd of Jews as they were bullied and manhandled by the uniformed officers.
Suddenly a member of the SS stepped forward and ordered Segrue to help. ‘There, you damned Jew; get to work and help your fellow swine,’ he yelled. Segrue obeyed and helped an elderly woman with the car she had been assigned. Afterwards he walked back to the SS officer, presented his passport
and declared: ‘I am not a Jew, but a subject of His Majesty the King of England.’ He then turned to an SS commander. ‘I could not believe that the stories about your brutality were true. I wanted to see for myself. I have seen. Good day.’442 Segrue’s fearless attitude meant he did not last long in Austria. The Nazis soon expelled him for a second time.
It did not take long after Anschluss for the focus to shift to Czechoslovakia, and in particular its Sudeten region peopled by German speakers. It was the obvious next target for Hitler. The British government’s response to Anschluss was defensive and offered scant support to other countries bordering Germany. Chamberlain’s view of Czechoslovakia chimed with many on the right-wing of politics in Britain – that it was a recently formed country, created hastily in the wake of the First World War, and not worth going to war over.
But Czechoslovakia had been a beacon for democracy in the post-war years, in contrast to countries such as Poland and indeed Austria, where fascist elements had risen to power. It was France that pushed the most positive and supportive case for Czechoslovakia. The two countries were bound by a military alliance struck in 1925, but also by a conviction that Czechoslovakia had been a success in its pursuit of democracy since its formation after the war. The country ‘had done more for the minorities than any other European state’ in the opinion of French Prime Minister Édouard Daladier.443
Reporting on Hitler Page 20