Alone, 1932-1940

by William Manchester

  But answer came there none—

  And this was scarcely odd, because

  They’d eaten every one.

  The German generals, who had been sweating blood, could scarcely believe their good luck. They were unanimously agreed that had the British and French stood up to Hitler, and had Hitler invaded Czechoslovakia, the Reich would have been swiftly defeated. All this came out at Nuremberg. Keitel, chief of the OKW, testified: “From a purely military point of view we lacked the means for an attack which involved the piercing of the [Czech] frontier fortifications.” Fritz Erich von Manstein, Germany’s most brilliant field commander (and not a defendant at Nuremberg), said that “had Czechoslovakia defended herself, we would have been held up by her fortifications, for we did not have the means to break through.” And Alfred Jodl, the key general at OKW, taking the witness stand in his own defense, told the International Military Tribunal: “It was out of the question with five fighting divisions and seven reserve divisions in the western fortification [Siegfried Line]… to hold out against 100 French divisions. That was militarily impossible.” Churchill later wrote that he had “always believed that Beneš was wrong to yield. He should have defended his fortress line. Once fighting had begun, in my opinion at that time, France would have moved to his aid in a surge of national passion, and Britain would have rallied to France almost immediately.” The chance had been tragically missed.274

  Nevertheless, Hitler, returning from Munich on his private train, was not rejoicing. To his SS honor guard he ranted that Chamberlain had “meinen Einzug in Prag verdorben” (“spoiled my entry into Prague”). In his grand strategy the seizures of Austria and Czechoslovakia were to be the opening moves in a tremendous campaign for lebensraum in the east, to be followed in the west by the conquest of the Low Countries and France. Only ten days earlier he had told the Hungarian prime minister that the wisest course was “die Tschechoslowakei zu zerschlagen” (“to destroy Czechoslovakia”). The sole danger was that the Czechs might buckle at the first threat. Now the British had done the buckling for them; Chamberlain had deprived the Kriegsherr of his first battlefield victory.275

  On his flight home Daladier was also out of sorts, desolate and despairing. He later told Amery that as they landed in Paris and taxied toward the terminal he turned up his coat collar, to protect his face from the rotten eggs he expected when he came within range of the crowd. To his astonishment there were no eggs, no offensive shouts of “Merde!” and “Nous sommes trahis!” He paused halfway down the steps, dumbfounded. They were actually cheering him—shouting “Vive Daladier!” “Vive la Paix!” “Vive la France!”—greeting him as though he had won a great victory. Daladier was a man completely without vanity. He turned to Léger and whispered, “Les cons!” (“Fools!”). There were a few grumblers; one man muttered, “Vive la France malgré tout.” Yet for the most part the gaiety was unqualified. It was also mindless. Because the Reich no longer need face the formidable Czech army in the east, Munich had been a catastrophe for France. Hitler’s empire had increased its strength, and could quickly field twice as many soldiers. Nevertheless, the Chamber of Deputies ratified the Munich Agreement 535 to 75. Bonnet told an interviewer: “Yes, we have a treaty with the Czechs, and France remains faithful to her sacred word. Czechoslovakia wasn’t invaded, was she?”276

  Nestling in Chamberlain’s pocket was the document he prized; today it lies in an obscure file at the Imperial War Museum, possibly the last place he would have had in mind. At the time that it was famous, Harold Nicolson denounced it in Parliament as “that bit of paper” which had betrayed the Reich’s neighbors and threatened the security of England. In reality the document was meaningless. That was why Hitler had signed it. The first paragraph declared that Anglo-German relations were “of the first importance for the two countries and for Europe”; the second that the Munich Agreement and the Anglo-German Naval Agreement of 1935 were “symbolic of the desire of our two peoples never to go to war with one another again”; and the third that both the prime minister of Great Britain and the Führer of the Third Reich intended to use the “method of consultation” in questions “that may concern our two countries,” because of their mutual determination “to continue our efforts to remove possible sources of difference, and thus to contribute to assure the peace of Europe.” That is all. It lacked even the ringing affirmation of nonaggression treaties; instead it expressed the desire of their peoples not to war on one another. But for a few days in the quirky autumn of 1938—the same season that Orson Welles’s radio drama of Martians landing in New Jersey sent thousands of Americans heading for the hills—people believed that Chamberlain had done rather a good thing. Britons, haunted by the dread that war might be declared at any hour, felt that they had been granted a reprieve. They cast about for ways to express their gratitude. Some became hysterical.277

  The P.M. had been “pleasantly tired” during the flight home, but once he saw the size of the crowd awaiting him at Heston Airport, he felt as though he had shed fifty years. To his entourage he seemed as excited and energetic as a youth returning from an adventure. They cheered. He read his three pitiful paragraphs, and they cheered louder, shouting, “Good old Neville!” and singing, “For he’s a jolly good fellow.” Then a courier wearing royal livery appeared and handed him a message from the King, asking him to come straight to Buckingham Palace, “so that I can express to you personally my most heartfelt congratulations…. In the meantime, this letter brings the warmest of welcomes to one who, by his patience and determination, has earned the lasting gratitude of his fellow-countrymen throughout the Empire.” Afterward, Neville wrote Ida: “Even the descriptions of the papers give no idea of the scenes in the streets as I drove from Heston to the Palace. They were lined from one end to the other with people of every class, shouting themselves hoarse, leaping on the running board, banging on the windows, and thrusting their hands into the car to be shaken.”278

  But it was in Downing Street that the adulation peaked, and there—though it was not immediately obvious to the crowd—Chamberlain over-reached himself. In the lore of every nation there are scenes, phrases, and deeds which live in the popular imagination. But an event, a speech, or a legend can never be repeated, for part of its appeal is that it is unique. That is why there cannot be another Arthur, another Joan of Arc, another Lincoln. It also explains why Chamberlain’s last public act on his day of glory was a blunder.

  Benjamin Disraeli’s supreme diplomatic triumph came in 1878, at the Congress of Berlin. Unlike Chamberlain’s Munich, Berlin was a genuine contribution to European peace. The states of eastern Europe were at each other’s throats; the Russian diplomats were bumbling from bad to worse; even Bismarck couldn’t broker a general settlement. Disraeli could and did. His mastery of divergent cultures permitted him to take the map apart and rebuild it, throttling several wars before they could break out and ending a full-fledged conflict between the Russians and the Turks. The memory of that feat sixty years earlier was on many minds that fall evening in 1938, including Chamberlain’s. He wrote his sister that he spoke to the great crowd below “from the same window, I believe, as that from which Dizzy announced peace with honour 60 years ago.” (He was wrong; Disraeli’s declaration was made in the House of Commons on July 16, 1878.) Now his wife said, “Neville, go up to the window and repeat history by saying peace in our time.” He replied icily, “No, I do not do that kind of thing.” Then he did it. Waving the piece of paper he and Hitler had signed, he called to the dense throng below: “My good friends, this is the second time in our history that there has come back from Germany to Downing Street peace with honor. I believe it is peace for our time.” On the whole, public men are wise to avoid extravagant predictions. Very soon Chamberlain would have reason to regret this one.279

  Meanwhile, however, the combers of admiration and praise continued to break at his feet. “No conqueror returning from a victory on the battlefield,” The Times trumpeted, “has been adorned with nobler lau
rels.” Paris-Soir offered him “a corner of French soil” where he could cast for trout, his favorite sport, than which “there could be no more fruitful image of peace.” Fifty Englishmen wrote to Printing House Square, calling for a national fund in Chamberlain’s honor. Those who had cheered his departure for Munich felt vindicated. Nicolson wrote of an exchange with Margot Asquith. She had said: “Now, Harold, you must agree that he is a great man.” He replied, “Not at all.” “You are as bad as Violet,” she snapped; “he is the greatest Englishman that ever lived.” Yet even Nicolson confessed in his diary that he momentarily felt “an immense sense of physical relief, in that I shall not be afraid tonight of the German bombs.”280

  But, he added “my moral anxieties are in no way diminished.” After the cheering, a few thoughtful men, in the quietude of reflection, read the terms of Munich and were troubled. Halifax had sensed what was coming; in the triumphant ride from Heston he had astounded the prime minister by suggesting that he form a national government, bringing Churchill and Eden back and inviting Labour to join. Chamberlain replied that he would “think it over,” but there is no evidence that he did. Lord Lloyd, who had been in the roaring throng outside No. 10, remembered feeling “elated” until Chamberlain said “peace with honor.” Then “my heart sank; it was the worst possible choice of words, for I realized that he had sold honor to buy peace.”281

  The most sensational defection from Chamberlain’s entrenched majority was that of his first lord of the Admiralty, Alfred Duff Cooper, “the pioneer,” Conservative backbencher Vyvyan Adams called him, “along the nation’s way back from hysteria to reason.” Revolted by Chamberlain’s fawning over Hitler, his sellout of the Czechs, and his smug pride in the piece of trumpery he and Hitler had signed, on Saturday, October 1, the day after the prime minister’s return, Cooper resigned. Chamberlain, Duff Cooper wrote, was “as glad to be rid of me as I was determined to go.” Lady Diana Cooper recalled that she “telephoned the news to Winston. His voice was broken with emotion. I could hear him cry.” Churchill exulted that “one minister alone stood forth…. At the moment of Mr. Chamberlain’s overwhelming mastery of public opinion, he thrust his way through the exulting throng to declare his total disagreement with its leader.”282

  The first doubts were struggling to the surface, but it was too soon for them to coalesce. Although some MPs were already wrestling with their consciences, they would have to put themselves on record in just five days, the evening of October 5, at the close of a three-day debate, when the issue before them would be: “That this House approves the policy of His Majesty’s Government by which war was averted in the recent crisis and supports their efforts to secure a lasting peace.” The vote was never in doubt, with the huge Conservative margin Baldwin had won three years earlier. But even those Conservatives who had remained doggedly faithful to their leader were becoming troubled. After the vote, Sir Alan Herbert, an independent member, wrote: “My soul revolted at the thought of another, and, I was convinced by many expert opinions, a much worse war…. But, ‘wishful thinker,’ ‘anxious hoper,’ ‘old soldier,’ or ‘Christian believer’—what you will—I wanted Mr. Chamberlain to be right, and keep the peace successfully…. I voted sadly for Munich; and the whole thing made me ill.”

  FOUR

  VORTEX

  ON the Saturday before Parliament’s Munich debate, Winston was at Chartwell, vigorously slapping bricks into place and awaiting a visitor, a twenty-six-year-old BBC producer, unknown then but destined to become infamous in the early 1950s. He was Guy Burgess, who with Kim Philby and Donald Maclean—all three upper class, all Cambridge men—would be cleared to review the U.S. government’s most sensitive documents, including the Central Intelligence Agency’s daily traffic and dispatches from Korea. In fact they would be Soviet intelligence agents. Burgess’s notoriety lay far in the future that sunbright morning, however, when Churchill, in a blue boilersuit (a forerunner of his wartime “siren suit”), left his bricks to greet his visitor, a trowel still in one hand. The meeting was purposeless; Winston had been scheduled to give BBC listeners a half-hour talk on the Mediterranean, but when the Czech crisis erupted he had asked that the program be canceled. Burgess was keen to meet him anyhow, however, and Churchill, feeling that was the least he could do, had agreed.

  In the beginning he was gruff. He complained, Burgess recollected afterward, that he had been “very badly treated in the matter of political broadcasts and that he was always muzzled by the BBC…. He went on to say that he would be even more muzzled in the future, since the BBC seemed to have passed under the control of the Government.” According to Burgess, Winston said he had just received a message from Beneš—he always called him “Herr Beans”—asking for his “advice and assistance.” But, he asked, “what answer shall I give?—for answer I shall and must…. Here am I, an old man without power and without party. What advice can I give, what assistance can I proffer?” Burgess stammered that he could offer his eloquence. Pleased, Winston said: “My eloquence! Ah, yes… that Herr Beans can rely on in full and indeed”—he paused and winked—“some would say in overbounding measure. That I can offer him. But what else, Mr. Burgess, what else can I offer him?” Burgess, usually garrulous, was tongue-tied. Moment succeeded moment, but he could think of nothing to say. He saw a great man, the scourge of fascism, caged by frustration. Then Churchill spoke. “You are silent, Mr. Burgess. You are rightly silent. What else can I offer Herr Beans? Only one thing: my only son, Randolph, who is already training to be an officer.”1

  Throughout 1938 Churchill’s warnings had grown more and more persistent, and less and less effective. His mots were seldom passed along now because his targets, the “Men of Munich,” as Fleet Street called them, were believed to have prevented a general European war. In almost any gathering, it would have been indiscreet to remark: “Have you heard what Winston says about Neville? ‘In the depths of that dusty soul there is nothing but abject surrender.’ ” Or: “Churchill says the Government had to choose between war and shame. They chose shame. They will get war, too.” Yet some hit home. Malcolm MacDonald, son of Ramsay and minister for the colonies and Dominions under Chamberlain, recalls with discomfort but also amusement how, during a speech on the future of Palestine, he was moved to say that “I cannot remember a time when I was not told stories of Jerusalem and Bethlehem, the birthplace of the Prince of Peace.” And as he paused for breath Churchill muttered: “I always thought he was born in Birmingham.”2

  At 3:34 P.M. on Monday, October 3, 1938, Parliament opened its debate on the Munich Agreement. In the observance of custom, Duff Cooper, as a resigning minister, spoke first. “The Prime Minister,” he said, “has believed in addressing Herr Hitler through the language of sweet reasonableness. I have believed that he was more open to the language of the mailed fist…. We have taken away the defences of Czechoslovakia in the same breath as we have guaranteed them, as though you were to deal a man a mortal blow and at the same time insure his life.”

  Chamberlain, he noted, attached “considerable importance” to the document he and Hitler had signed at Munich. “But,” he asked, “what do those words mean? Do they mean that Herr Hitler will take ‘no’ for an answer? He has never taken it yet. Or do they mean that he believes that he will get away with this, as he has got away with everything else, without fighting, by well-timed bluff, bluster and blackmail? Otherwise it means very little.” Duff Cooper ended: “I have ruined, perhaps, my political career. But that is a little matter. I have retained something which is to me of great value. I can still walk about the world with my head erect.”3

  The House was deeply moved by Cooper’s resignation speech. Antony Winn, the Times lobby correspondent, reported that it had been well received. Dawson, who hadn’t been there, tore up Winn’s piece and wrote an account of his own, dismissing the speech as “a damp squib,” and headed the story “From our lobby correspondent.” Winn resigned.4

  The prime minister, following Duff Cooper, paid ri
tualistic tribute to him and ignored his arguments. Chamberlain had already set forth his own views to the cabinet earlier in the day, and the kindest interpretation of his position is that he had forgotten he was prime minister and thought himself once more watchdog of the Treasury. Ever since his stewardship as chancellor of the Exchequer, he had told the cabinet, he had been haunted by the possibility that “the burden of armaments might break our backs.” Therefore he had sought “to resolve the causes… responsible for the armaments race.” Now, after his agreement with the German führer, England was in “a more hopeful position.” The next steps would be further agreements “which would stop the arms race.” The effort to strengthen the country’s defenses should proceed, but that was “not the same thing as to say that as a thank offering for the present détente we should at once embark on a great increase in our armaments programme.” His goal, he now told the House, had been “to work for the pacification of Europe, for the removal of those suspicions and those animosities which have so long poisoned the air. The path which leads to appeasement is long and bristles with obstacles.” Czechoslovakia had been “the latest and perhaps the most dangerous” of these obstacles, but “now that we have got past it, I feel that it may be possible to make further progress along the road to sanity.”5