Alone, 1932-1940

by William Manchester

  The prime minister, of course, saw matters differently. In his eyes the choice lay between peace and devastation, and he saw nothing shameful in buying peace by coercing a pretentious little state on the far side of Germany. Late in life R. A. Butler, who had watched him prepare for his historic trip, described his mood as “exalted.” Some Britons were worried by the loss of a strong ally—Czechoslovakia, whose army was described by the British military attaché in Prague as “probably the best in the smaller states of Europe,” could field thirty to forty divisions after manning her fortress line. Others were troubled by the moral implications, and by the sloughing off of British pride. Winston’s sixteen-year-old daughter, Mary, wrote him: “I have been following the Czechoslovakian problem with keen interest. I think we are making things more difficult by declaring such a feeble policy.”220

  Chamberlain, who distrusted public opinion, the press, and to some extent, the House of Commons and even the cabinet, had taken steps to free himself of unwanted advice while he practiced his personal diplomacy. Parliament was not sitting and would not convene in the immediate future. (They were “being treated more and more as a kind of Reichstag,” Harold Macmillan complained.) The cabinet’s Foreign Policy Committee had last met three months before; the next meeting was a month away.221

  Those familiar with later conferences between world leaders, particularly Churchill’s, may be surprised by the fact that apart from two typists and two bodyguards—who would travel in a separate plane—the prime minister took with him only three companions: the ubiquitous Sir Horace Wilson and two young FO diplomats. Like their leader, none in the party spoke a word of German. Henderson, who would join them in Munich, was fluent in German, but of course he also spoke in tongues. Chamberlain and Hitler would talk à deux, aided only by an interpreter. The prime minister had no strategy, no proposals, no conversational lines to fall back upon if confronted by an unexpected proposal requiring thought. As he said afterward, he regarded himself as a one-man mission of inquiry to determine “in personal conversation whether there was any hope of saving the peace.” Horace Wilson had made some notes on reciprocal suggestions, but the P.M., it seems, was prepared only to accept the Führer’s terms. This was his virgin flight, and he had been told to anticipate a bumpy three-hour trip to Munich. Understandably he was nervous, and he had therefore asked Geoffrey Dawson to ride with him to Heston airstrip. At such a time it was comforting to be accompanied by a friend who would console you with reasonable answers to unreasonable doubts, someone who understood you, someone you could trust.222

  Hitler was guilty of treason, incest, incitement to riot, and the murder of millions. In small matters, however, he was a prig: a vegetarian who scorned nicotine, and was offended by foul language. “Um Himmel willen!” (“For heaven’s sake!”) was about as strong as he got, and he fairly sputtered it when told that the prime minister of Great Britain, the leader of the greatest empire in history, was coming to him, like the English pilgrims in the early days of the Third Reich. Landing at Munich about noon on September 15, Chamberlain enjoyed reviewing an honor guard whose members, Wilson noted without comprehension, wore skulls and crossbones on their caps. Though none of the English visitors knew it, these were members of the Totenkopf (Death’s Head) SS, recruited from Dachau guards. It was not an auspicious greeting.

  Chamberlain wrote Ida that he “felt quite fresh” during the ride from the airport to the train station, and was “delighted with the enthusiastic welcome of the crowds… all the way to the station.” A three-hour train ride brought him to Berchtesgaden; then he and his entourage were driven up to the Berghof. There, Chamberlain later wrote, “Halfway down [the] steps stood the Führer, bareheaded and dressed in a khaki-coloured coat of broadcloth with a red armlet and a swastika on it, and the military cross on his breast.” Except for this costume, the prime minister thought, “he looks entirely undistinguished. You would never notice him in a crowd, and would take him for the house painter”—Chamberlain had swallowed this whopper—“he once was.”223

  The prime minister had been traveling since dawn, and it was nearly 5:30 P.M. when, after tea, he and the Führer, accompanied by Schmidt, Hitler’s interpreter, climbed the stairs to the Berghof’s study, where Schuschnigg had been browbeaten seven months before. Hitler dominated the conversation, running on and on about how he had vowed to solve the Czech issue “one way or another.” The Sudetenland’s three million Germans must “return” (“zurückkehren”) to the Reich. He was “prepared to risk a world war rather than allow this to drag on.” Chamberlain had tried again and again to comment; now he succeeded in interrupting Hitler—something one did not do—and said that if the Führer had decided to resolve the issue by force, “why did you let me come? I have wasted my time.” Hitler calmed down and suggested they examine “the question of whether a peaceful settlement is not possible after all.” Would Britain agree to a “Loslösung” (“liberation”) of the Sudetenland, one based on the right of “Selbstimmungsrechts der Volker” (“self-determination”)? That was the trap. Chamberlain went for it. He was pleased, he said, that they “had now got down to the crux of the matter.” Of course, he would have to sound out his cabinet and confer with the French, he said, adding, according to Schmidt’s shorthand notes, that “he could personally state that he recognized the principle of the detachment of the Sudeten area…. He wished to return to England to report to the Government and secure their approval of his personal attitude.” That, so to speak, was the ball game. The prospect had been hooked.224

  At Chartwell, Winston was writing A. H. Richards, general secretary of the Anti-Nazi Council, “If, as I fear, the Government is going to let Czechoslovakia be cut to pieces, it seems to me that a period of very hard work lies before us all.” Hard work lay ahead for Chamberlain, too. The betrayal of a nation requires just as much paperwork, conferring, and arguing over obscure points as its salvation. But the prime minister believed that he was the savior. He asked for, and was given, Hitler’s promise that Germany would launch no attack until they had held a second summit sometime in the next few days. Departing Berchtesgaden, Chamberlain later wrote Ida, he felt he had “established a certain confidence, which was my aim, and, on my side, in spite of the hardness and ruthlessness I thought I saw in his face, I got the impression that here was a man who could be relied upon when he had given his word.”225

  In London on September 17 Chamberlain described Hitler to the cabinet as “the commonest little dog,” and a “most extraordinary creature,” but repeated his conviction that he would be “rather better than his word,” adding that he had been told (presumably by Henderson) that the Führer had been “most favourably impressed.” This, he said, was “of the utmost importance, since the future conduct of these negotiations depends mainly upon personal contacts.” Hitler had assured him, he emphasized, that he wanted “no Czechs in the Reich”; he would be satisfied once he had included the Sudeten Germans. “The impression left on me was that Herr Hitler meant what he had said…. My view is that Herr Hitler is telling the truth.”226

  Having given this testimonial to the Führer, the P.M. assumed that his ministers would approve of ceding the Sudetenland to the Reich. To his surprise and dismay, several declined endorsing the German claim pending further discussion. In Paris there was also what Phipps described as “considerable heart-burning.” Léon Blum wrote in Le Populaire that war would probably be avoided, but “under such circumstances that I, who for many years dedicated my life to [the struggle for peace], cannot feel joy. I feel myself torn between a sense of cowardly relief and shame.”227

  Churchill’s feelings were unmixed; he was outraged. He sent his agent, Revesz, a statement for distribution to the European press. “The personal intervention of Mr Chamberlain and his flight to see Herr Hitler,” he wrote, “does not at all alter the gravity of the issue at stake. We must hope that it does not foreshadow another complete failure of the Western Democracies to withstand the threats and violence of Nazi
Germany.” Phipps reported to Halifax that Churchill had telephoned the Quai d’Orsay, noting caustically that Winston “presumably… breathed fire and thunder in order to binge Bonnet up.”228

  But France was already committed to the Chamberlain solution. A delegation headed by Daladier and Bonnet reached Whitehall on September 18. The French premier’s chief concern was to avoid the proposal of a plebiscite, “a weapon with which the German Government could keep Central Europe in a constant state of alarm and suspense.” Chamberlain assured him that he had discarded that possibility—he knew Hitler would reject it since if the polling was supervised, he might lose. Yet the French were still uneasy; they could not walk away from their treaty with the Czechs. They wanted the British to join them in guaranteeing the borders of the mangled Czechoslovakia that the cession would leave. Chamberlain and Halifax tried to avoid that, but after nearly three hours of discussion they yielded, the P.M. taking consolation in Hitler’s Berghof assurance that he was solely interested in the Sudeten Germans. The issue was absurd. If England had been unwilling to fight for a defensible Czechoslovakia, why should she agree to rush to the aid of the indefensible remnant? Beneš saw that; when the Anglo-French proposal was presented to him by Basil Newton, he rejected it, on the ground, reported Newton, that “guarantees which he already possessed had proved valueless.”229

  The Times, on September 20, in massive understatement, observed that the Anglo-French proposal, giving Hitler what he would otherwise have found very expensive, “could not, in the nature of things, be expected to make a strong prima facie appeal to the Czech Government, and least of all to President Beneš.” It didn’t, and at 8:00 P.M. on the twentieth the Czech government refused to agree to the annexation of its sovereign territory, explaining that as leaders of a democracy they could not make such an enormous decision without the approval of their parliament. Furthermore, they declared, submission to the Führer’s demands would not solve the “question of peace” because they would face minority unrest elsewhere in their country. Lastly, Europe’s “balance of power would be destroyed.”230

  This was one of those mysterious historical moments in which events acquire a momentum all their own and begin to exert an irresistible pressure. There was no reason to hurry; Ribbentrop told Paris, London, and Prague that the Führer could wait, and at his suggestion the next Hitler-Chamberlain meeting was postponed from Wednesday, September 21, to Thursday. Nevertheless, Phipps suggested to Bonnet that they tell Beneš that unless his reply constituted a complete, immediate acceptance of what amounted to an Allied ultimatum, England and France would “wash their hands of Czechoslovakia in the event of a German attack.”231

  In Prague the British minister, Newton, advised Whitehall that if he could deliver an “ultimatum to President Beneš,” then “he and his Government will feel able to bow to a force majeure.” That, more or less, is what happened. At 2:00 A.M. on the twenty-first Newton and his French counterpart, Victor de Lacroix, delivered a demarche informing Beneš that surrender of the Sudetenland to the Reich was “the only means of averting war and the invasion of Czechoslovakia,” and that if he persisted in refusing it he would “bear the responsibility for the war,” which would divide France and England, because the English would declare themselves neutral. British neutrality meant further that when “war starts, France will not take part, i.e. she will not fulfill her treaty obligations.” They argued with the old man for an hour and a half; then he threw in his hand. Jan Masaryk sent the text of the Anglo-French ultimatum to Hugh Dalton, a Labour MP and a Churchill ally. When Dalton read it in the House of Commons, Sir Samuel Hoare solemnly replied that it was “in almost every respect a totally inaccurate description of the representations that we made to the Czechoslovak Government.” Among the signs of moral disintegration in Chamberlain’s clique was the adoption, by Hitler’s British admirers, of the Big Lie.232

  Roosevelt, summoning the British ambassador in Washington, told him that the Anglo-French proposal was “the most terrible remorseless sacrifice that has ever been demanded of a State” and predicted that it would “provoke a highly unfavorable reaction in America.” The president again suggested a conference of world leaders—not in Europe, but in the Azores or some other Atlantic island—which he would attend. Roosevelt’s proposal was swept from the prime minister’s desk into his wastebasket.233

  The P.M. was equally unresponsive to FDR’s humanitarian appeal for the Czechs who would be dispossessed and were already well into the early stages of panic. The Sudetenland’s anti-Nazis were hopelessly trapped. Wednesday evening Wenzel Jaksch, the leader of Czechoslovakia’s 400,000 German Social Democrats, told John Troutbeck, the first secretary of the British embassy in Prague, that his followers had nowhere to go; the Czechs, overwhelmed by the mass of Sudeten refugees of their own race, were turning Sudeten Germans away. Therefore, Jaksch told Troutbeck, they “must lay their lives in the hands of the British and French Governments and ask for advice as to what was to be done for them.” But the Allied embassies were mute. It was Vienna all over again. Jaksch’s followers applied for British and French visas and were rejected. They returned to their homes to await the Gestapo, which would not keep them waiting long.234

  Churchill had been active from the beginning of the crisis, using every weapon he could lay hands on to subvert Chamberlain. He tried to work behind the scenes, but in a nation with a free press, that was impossible; on Tuesday September 6, to his chagrin, the Daily Express had reported that Heinrich Brüning, the former Weimar chancellor, had visited Chartwell, asking his host to urge His Majesty’s Government to “speak plainly to Hitler.” After The Times ran its disastrous editorial of September 7 proposing a partition of Czechoslovakia, Winston had repeatedly called on Halifax, trying to find out what was happening and then to influence policy. On Thursday, September 15, when Chamberlain departed for Berchtesgaden, Winston devoted his Daily Telegraph column to the Czechs.235

  He bitterly rued his resignation, on a matter of principle, from the Conservative party’s hierarchy in 1931. Like his father, who had surrendered his seals as chancellor of the Exchequer fifty years earlier on another issue, he had been ostracized ever since. Now he was alarmed by news that two strong members of Daladier’s cabinet, Paul Reynaud and Georges Mandel, planned to quit their offices unless France honored her pledges to the Czechs. Churchill had immediately flown over on September 20 to point out that if they quit they would forfeit their roles as shapers of another, more rational foreign policy. Either the force of his argument, his powerful presence, or his position as Hitler’s greatest enemy in Europe—or perhaps all three—brought them round. They agreed to stick it out.236

  His plane brought him back on September 21. Upon returning to Morpeth Mansions he issued a statement denouncing plans to balkanize Czechoslovakia. Partition, he said, would amount “to the complete surrender of the Western democracies to the Nazi threat of force,” putting England and France in an “ever weaker and more dangerous situation.” A neutral Czechoslovakia would free at least twenty-five German divisions to threaten France and the Low Countries while opening up “for the triumphant Nazis the road to the Black Sea.” It was “not Czechoslovakia alone which is menaced,” he said, “but also the freedom and the democracy of all nations.” The conviction that security could be bought “by throwing a small State to the wolves” was “a fatal delusion.”237

  On the twenty-second Chamberlain was on his way to his second airplane trip, with Dawson again alongside to see him off. At Heston Airport the prime minister was irritated by the presence of a small group which had gathered there, not to wish him well, but to boo. The German crowds were friendlier. The second summit was to be held in the small town of Godesberg, on the Rhine, and at the Petersberg Hotel elegant suites overlooking the river had been reserved for die Engländer—the P.M. and his small entourage, which included two British diplomats who had met his plane: Ambassador Henderson and Ivone Kirkpatrick. All that the German people knew of Chamberlain
was that he was trying to preserve the peace, but it was enough; they had brought a band, and standing beneath his windows they serenaded him with the rollicking London hit:

  Kommt ihr je nach Lambeth-Stadt

  Nicht nur abends, auch im Tag,

  Findet ihr uns dabei,

  Beim tanzen des “Lambeth Walks,”

  Hei!

  Even as the P.M., Kirkpatrick, and Henderson crossed the Rhine for talks with Hitler in the Hotel Dreesen, Churchill, having left Downing Street, was hailing a cab for 11 Morpeth Mansions. He had called at No. 10 to ask precisely what Chamberlain would propose at Godesberg, and five peers along with three MPs—Bracken, Sinclair, and Nicolson—were gathering in his flat to hear what he had learned. Nicolson, the last to arrive, was waiting for the lift when Winston paid the cabbie and hurried in. As they ascended together, Nicolson said: “This is hell.” Churchill muttered: “It is the end of the British Empire.” According to Nicolson’s diary, Churchill told the group that the cabinet had demanded “a firm stand” on Chamberlain’s part, insisting on German demobilization, supervision of the Sudetenland transfer by an international commission, a refusal to discuss Polish or Hungarian claims on Czech territory, and a German guarantee of the new Czech borders. Almost in chorus, his guests said: “But Hitler will never accept such terms!” Winston replied, “In that case, Chamberlain will return tonight and we shall have war.” In that event, one peer pointed out, “It will be inconvenient having our Prime Minister in German territory.” Winston shook his massive head and growled, “Even the Germans would not be so stupid as to deprive us of our beloved Prime Minister.”238