In Europe: Travels Through the Twentieth Century

by Geert Mak

  ‘Doesn't this ever end, with you people?’ I ask.

  ‘ETA has stopped for the time being,’ the writer says. ‘It's not a stunt, it took endless discussions to get to there. But the road of violence wasn't leading anywhere.’ We talk about how the IRA has now taken a political tack, and about how ETA is trying to do the same, but with much less discipline. ETA's political grass roots consist largely of young people between eighteen and twenty-five; the issue of self-rule does not play a central role in the lives of most Basques over thirty. My companions feel that ETA has pretty much stopped thinking strategically, and is gradually using its attacks only to save its own, isolated little world. ‘Take the execution of Miguel ángel Blanco, that city councillor, in July 1997,’ the writer says. ‘He was just a normal guy, like everyone else. It shows you how morally poisoned the movement has become. It goes further with every attack. The one on the Guggenheim Museum, a Basque institution, killing a Basque policeman. That we could ever have come this far …’

  The writer could say a great deal more, that is clear, but at Café Arrien there is a point at which one stops talking.

  Six months later the attacks began again. A new generation had come on the scene.

  Chapter TWENTY-FOUR

  Munich

  EVER SINCE 29 SEPTEMBER, 1938, DISCUSSIONS ABOUT WAR AND peace in Europe have revolved around the same, fearful question: will this be a Sarajevo or a Munich? In other words: can a great deal of diplomacy achieve a shaky balance, or must evil be crushed by force? We know that, in both cases, a war was the result, we know that everything went wrong afterwards, but each time we come back to those two cities, those contrapuntal reference points for the twentieth century.

  In an out-of-the-way display case in London's Imperial War Museum lies airline ticket number 18249, the British European Airlines ticket with which the British prime minister, Neville Chamberlain, left for Munich on the morning of 29 September, 1938. Hitler had been waving the banner of war on behalf of the ‘oppressed’ Sudeten Germans, Mussolini had organised a conference, Great Britain and France wanted Hitler to guarantee fixed borders, and the Czechoslovakian delegation sat in an ante-room waiting to hear what happened. Under pressure from the Allies, the Czech president, Edvard Benežs, finally offered up part of his country to keep the peace. The rest would soon follow. In that same display case lies the famous documents Chamberlain waved when he arrived home: ‘Peace in our time!’ Here, for the first time, I read the weak-kneed phrases of the agreement: ‘the wish never to wage war against each other again’, ‘this method of consultation will be the manner in which we deal with problems from this day on’.

  Germany annexed the Sudetenland, no guarantee whatsoever was given by Germany for the independence of the rest of Czechoslovakia, but Western Europe was applauding the peace. The French prime minister, Édouard Daladier, thought the crowd waiting for him at the airport upon his return had come to heckle him. He was stunned when he heard the cheering. ‘These people are mad,’ he told his adjutant. But that was not the case. They were merely gullible, like so many Europeans.

  Munich was a classic case of winning a war that had already been fought. Almost everyone sincerely believed that a new Sarajevo had been pre-empted. In the House of Commons, Harold Nicolson was one of the very few to condemn Chamberlain openly. Chamberlain and Daladier knew their constituency to a tee. In September 1938 nothing would have driven the British or the French to war for the sake of some insignificant piece of the Sudetenland. Their fathers had all fought in the First World War, and they knew enough.

  Besides, both countries were unprepared, both economically and militarily, for a new war. Chamberlain knew that too, all too well. In September 1938, therefore, he had little choice but to reach an accord with Hitler.

  Munich was the greatest triumph of the ‘appeasers’, as Chamberlain's supporters were called. And at the same time it signalled their demise. The agreement allowed Hitler to think that the West, under the guise of peace, would do nothing to arrest his aggression. In fact, the exact opposite was true: after the fiasco of Munich, the West had no more faith in negotiations. A new tone was established. Great Britain had, in the words of Winston Churchill, been presented with the choice between ‘shame or war … This is only the first sip, the first foretaste of a bitter cup which will be proffered to us year by year … We chose shame, and we will reap war.’

  In the anterooms of Munich, the fate of the Spanish Republic was also discussed. The great powers were sick and tired of the war there. Mussolini actually told Chamberlain that he had had enough of Spain, that he had lost tens of thousands of men there, and that Franco had wasted too many chances. Chamberlain wanted to apply his ‘Czechoslovakian solution’ to Spain as well. Stalin had fewer illusions. To him, the agreement at Munich meant nothing but the old democracies’ acquiescence to Hitler. And this new policy line had an immediate effect on the war in Spain. The Soviet arms deliveries dwindled, then finally stopped altogether. The International Brigades were withdrawn.

  The republic allowed the foreign volunteers to leave without much ado. They had served their propagandist function, the most hardened soldiers had either died or fled, in the end three quarters of even Milton Wolff's Abraham Lincoln Battalion were Spaniards. On 15 November, 1938, the foreign volunteers held a farewell parade in Barcelona. The crowds cheered, flowers were thrown, tears were shed. Dolores Ibárruri, known everywhere as ‘La Pasionaria’, spoke to the women of Barcelona:‘Mothers! Women! When the years pass by and the wounds of war are staunched; when the cloudy memory of the sorrowful, bloody days returns in a present of freedom, love and well-being; when the feelings of rancour are dying away and when pride in a free country is felt equally by all Spaniards – then speak to your children. Tell them of the International Brigades.’

  The years of war did not pass. By mid-January 1939, almost 5,000 volunteers from 29 countries had left Spain. The remaining 6,000 – Germans, Yugoslavians, Czechs, Hungarians – stayed. They could not return home, there was nowhere for them to go. They went down with Catalonia, and finally with the republic. Barcelona fell at the end of January, Valencia in late March. Then it was over.

  Czechoslovakia is the best-known victim of the ‘appeasers’, Spain the least known. The Spanish Civil War was decided from the moment the democratic countries withdrew and imposed their arms embargo. The war would not have been won either if the ‘Red’ revolution had succeeded, as the anarchists and Trotskyites claimed later. Franco soon had access to a professional army and the most modern weapons, and those cannot be compensated for by manifestos and nationalised factories. Germany's and Italy's support for Franco was practical and immediate, support from the democratic countries for the republic was ambivalent or altogether absent, that from the Soviet Union riddled with opportunism.

  In the same way that the Vietnam War would mould the mentality of young people in the 1960s, the Spanish Civil War served as a reference point for the politically aware young people of the 1930s. You could say whatever you liked about the Soviet Union, the saying went, but when it came down to it, the Soviets had fought on the right side in Spain. In hindsight, that too proved largely a matter of appearances. Stalin acted primarily out of considerations of power politics, aimed only at advancing the Soviet Union's influence in Europe. An intelligent czar, given the opportunity, would have done no different.

  When the Russian military archives were opened in the 1990s, a deluge of evidence was released concerning the hidden agenda of the communists in Moscow. None of the communist ‘aid’ was given. All of the Soviet weaponry had been paid for in hard currency, the prices ratcheted up to unheard-of heights, and in the end Stalin was able in this way to get his hands on a considerable share of the republic's gold reserves. A Maksim heavy machine gun cost the republic twice what it did on the open market, and a profit of more than fifty million dollars was actually made on two types of aircraft.

  In return for this aid, Stalin also increasingly forced the republic
to adopt the shape of a satellite state, of a sort of DDR avant la lettre. This sorely undermined republican morale in the long term. Even in the first reports, the anarchists were referred to as ‘the pawns of fascism’, ‘provocateurs’ to whom ‘revolutionary justice’ should be applied. After that, Comintern agents and commissars began popping up everywhere in the army, intimidating, arresting and liquidating those who did not toe the line.

  Ultimately, the Comintern devoured its own children. By the end of the civil war almost none of the important advisors and commissars sent by Moscow were still alive. But not one of them had died at the front. They had been called home one by one, condemned to death by kangaroo courts or murdered in the course of one of the countless political intrigues within the international communist community.

  Spain became a backwater once more. After the victory, the nationalists killed another 100,000 political opponents, and no one lifted a finger to stop them. The country is still littered with their unmarked graves. A slave army was formed of at least 400,000 forced labourers, who were put to work until far into the 1960s for the construction of roads, dams and luxurious residential areas. No fewer than 30,000 children disappeared. They were taken away from their ‘Red’ parents and placed in orphanages, then adopted by politically correct families. The girls usually went to a convent, were given another name and then transferred so often that they could never be found again. Europe turned its attention to other matters.

  The Spanish bourgeoisie and the old feudal authorities had overturned a democratically elected government. Then they had succeeded in crushing a popular uprising. In addition, a simultaneous revolution had been blown up by the anarchists and betrayed by the Bolsheviks. A free Spain would remain an illusion for two, three generations. These were the simple facts at the end of the civil war.

  The great thinkers and rhetoricians of the left and right had been killed or forced into exile: Andrés Nin, José Antonio Primo de Rivera, La Pasionaria, Gil Robles, José Calvo Sotelo. The war had cost almost half a million lives. About 200,000 Spaniards died on the battlefield, 30,000 died of starvation, the rest were murdered. Then came the long, dry years of statistics, prayers and silence.

  Chapter TWENTY-FIVE

  Fermont

  ‘I AM THE SON OF ERNST VON WEIZSÄCKER. MY FATHER WAS AN official at the ministry of foreign affairs, later a state secretary and ambassador. He was the driving force behind the Munich Agreement. When Hitler came to power, I was almost thirteen.

  ‘It's hard to draw the line between everything that was later said and written about that period, and the things you remember yourself. What I do remember clearly is my father's standpoint during those early years. The amendment of the Treaty of Versailles, by strictly peaceful means, was the political line of the entire German diplomatic corps in those years. Almost all the diplomats shuddered at the Nazis’ bellicose amateurism. That was the great problem faced by my father and his colleagues. They weren't yet particularly aware of the dangers and the depraved morals of the National Socialists in general. It was unimaginable to them, it didn't fit at all into their way of thinking.

  ‘I remember quite clearly those lovely, summery June days in 1934, that infamous weekend of “the Night of the Long Knives”. It was the first time that it became crystal clear that, if necessary, the new German regime would dispense with law and order. At that moment my father was working in Bern, I must have gone with him that weekend, because I still remember how he instructed me to listen to the radio: “Richard, I want you to report to me immediately on any news from Germany!” When I think back on those days, I can still feel the deep anxiety that overcame me.

  ‘I come from a solid, civilised German family. We were certainly not rich, at least not in those first years. Our household was sober and modest. Sunday was the only day we had butter on our bread. One time, when I broke my arm, our family could scarcely pay the doctor's bill.

  ‘My mother was a socially engaged and very practical woman. During the First World War she had worked as a nurse and surgical assistant in the field hospitals. She played a loving, central role in our family. The ties were strong. My idealistic brother Heinrich was particularly close to me. Our house was always full of music, and at one point we even formed a trio, with my sister on piano, Heinrich on cello and I on the violin. At Christmas my parents would put on plays with an old puppet theatre. We read classic dramas aloud on Sunday afternoons, and each of us was given a role. It took a long time before we started making friends of our own outside the family circle.

  ‘My mother began quite early on with protests against the persecution of certain clergymen, she was quite committed to that. She knew Martin Niemöller, a former submarine commander who had become a pastor and who was very outspoken in his convictions. He had written a book, From Submarine to Pulpit, but my father always said: “That book should be called With the Submarine in the Pulpit!” That's the kind of man Niemöller was. It wasn't long before he was arrested. Along with a few other people, my mother went to great lengths to obtain his release. During that period I didn't have much contact with Germany, I was usually abroad, at boarding school. Our family had a system of codes for our correspondence: a dash at the end of a sentence, for example, indicated that the opposite was meant of what had been written.

  ‘My father kept on working for the German government. Meanwhile he had become an important negotiator. Hitler, in the same way he later showed the generals how far one could get in war by simply tossing conventional mores overboard, also based his foreign policy on a game of bluff with the diplomats. The occupation of the Rhineland and the annexation of the Sudetenland were typical political successes made possible only by Hitler's extraordinary cheek and aggression.

  ‘Munich is always seen as the best example of that, but Hitler later stated that Munich was one of his biggest mistakes. He should have eschewed all compromises in autumn 1938, he felt afterwards, and gone to war immediately. At that point the other world powers were not nearly prepared, and he would have obtained an overwhelming head start.

  ‘Behind the scenes in Munich, my father did everything in his power to help draft a treaty which would preserve the peace. He maintained very close contacts with the British and Italian ambassadors. In the end they were able to slip Mussolini a proposed compromise, which formed the basis for the Munich Agreement later, during the summit with Hitler, Daladier and Chamberlain. Joachim von Ribbentrop, the former champagne dealer who became minister of foreign affairs and my father's boss, was furious. It had all been done behind his back. In my father's eyes, Chamberlain's ‘Peace in our time!’ was a perfectly legitimate claim. Later he said: ‘Munich was the last happy day in my life.’

  ‘Then, despite the promises made in Munich, Germany invaded Czechoslovakia. That was followed by the very last series of extensive negotiations to prevent a war over Poland, but my father had the feeling he had failed even before they began. During those days he took all kinds of steps which, had they been made public, would probably have resulted in his being tried for treason. On any number of occasions he told diplomat friends of his: “You people need to act now. You have to rob Hitler of the illusion that he can go on without the rest of the world intervening. You need to send a general to Germany, and let him pound on the table to show that this has to end.” As it was, when Britain declared war on Germany in early September 1939 it came as a complete surprise to Hitler and Ribbentrop.

  ‘That's why, when they accused my father later in Nuremberg of having helped prepare a war of aggression, nothing could have been further from the truth. He and a few of his colleagues had actually done everything they could to prevent a war.

  ‘So why did he go on working for years for the Nazi regime? Well … you know, one never stops widening one's awareness. So much has been written about that since. My father was a top official, and he must have been privy to a great deal. Even though his own information and his imagination could not fathom a thing like the Holocaust, when you read the docum
ents he saw and signed back then you can only conclude that he must have known enough to draw conclusions for himself. He saved – and this has been proven – a great many people, and he must have known about the crimes against the Jews. But when the whole, terrible truth about Auschwitz became known in 1945, he was just as horrified by it as I was, as a young soldier. He wasn't really aware of the full scope of the Holocaust, I am convinced of that.

  ‘The only reason why he stayed put, I believe, was the hope that at a certain point he could exert a positive influence on Germany's foreign policies. At first he believed he might be able to prevent the outbreak of war, later he thought he could stop the attack on the Soviet Union. Most historians agreed about that later on: one of them even wrote that my father tried ‘with appropriate determination and cunning’ to prevent the war.

  ‘I've read a great deal about that period, but one never finds out everything. There is one thing, however, of which I am sure: I knew my father well, the way he really was. And I also know that an injustice was done to the essence of that man, there in Nuremberg.

  ‘I myself went to Potsdam in 1938 to enter military service. I was eighteen at the time. Things there were run – I was assigned to a machine-gunners’ company in the 9th Infantry Regiment – according to the old-fashioned Prussian model, not according to the National Socialist one. The Nazis were a very different brand of people. Just as in the diplomatic corps, great tensions arose between the Wehrmacht and the Nazis. Most of the officers were pleased that a strong Germany army was being created again, but they thought the Nazis were pathological parvenus.