Chamberlain was a practical, business-oriented man, supremely confident in his judgments and disdainful of critics. He did not believe that war was a solution to any problem and felt sure that all intelligent men would conclude the same. He had the ability, usually valuable but in this case treacherous, of being able to put himself into the shoes of another. He could readily understand Hitler’s resentment of the peace treaty and his accompanying desire to restore a measure of German might. Chamberlain could also be philosophical about the führer’s coarse rhetoric and bullying, which he ascribed to poor breeding. However, the prime minister could not imagine anyone intentionally causing a second world war. In Chamberlain’s universe, people might be flawed, but they worried about their souls and did not set out to do monstrous things.
6
Out from Behind the Mountains
Nineteen thirty-seven was the year Europe approached the cliff’s edge but could not quite see beyond. In Czechoslovakia, the economy was starting to recover. Exports were up, the budget was in surplus, unemployment had dropped by two-thirds, and a state-of-the-art subway system was planned for Prague. Concert halls and theaters were filled to capacity, and citizens of all ethnicities cheered the nation’s sports teams, which in ice hockey and soccer were among the world’s best.
Hitler was an inescapable presence, but the Nazis were still a novel phenomenon and, from a distance, vaguely preposterous. The notion that the summit of the human race was represented by the homely Austrian and his pear-shaped colleagues was laughable—and people did laugh.
At the Liberated Theater in Prague, audiences roared at the satiric sketches of the popular cabaret team of Voskovec* and Werich:
Before civilization dawned
Everything was fine
The brontosaurus swept the streets,
Cannibals devoured their eats;
They all slept in the shadow of the pine.
But then came the heel
Who invented the wheel
From the wheel came coins
From coins, inflation,
A Screaming Ass,
An angry nation.
And now civilization’s here,
Poverty’s in style.
The Ass is braying in the sun,
Everybody starts to run,
And all the other Asses shout: Sieg Heil!
The dream of a united and democratic Czechoslovakia still lived. Even in 1937 and 1938, many Czech families sent their children to the Sudetenland for summer vacation; Germans returned the favor by depositing their children in Czech towns. The structures that had maintained peace in Europe since the end of World War I were starting to crumble, but the conviction remained firm that disaster could be avoided. However, this did not stop the government in Prague from preparing for the worst.
Since the republic’s founding, its leaders had been mindful of the nation’s vulnerability. T. G. Masaryk had stressed the need not just to oppose evil but to campaign actively against it. He wanted Czechoslovakia’s soul to reflect “Jesus, not Caesar” but refused to go so far as to turn the other cheek. “I’d dedicate the combined power of my brain and my love of country and humanity to keep the peace,” he declared, “but also, if attacked, to fight a war.”
He and later Beneš backed this vow by asking French advisers to assist in military training and by devoting ample resources to national defense. To minimize dependence, they nurtured a robust armaments industry that became known as the arsenal of Central Europe. By 1938, the country had in hand thirty reasonably well equipped and professionally trained army divisions and an air force with skilled pilots and more than 1,200 modern aircraft. The soldiers were backed by armored units and plentiful supplies of munitions and oil. “Czech Hedgehogs,” massive steel barriers that were connected by giant spools of barbed wire, fortified the border with Germany. Hitler later commented that Germany and Czechoslovakia had been the only states to carry out their war preparations efficiently. The question remained: would those measures be enough?
With potential enemies on every side, the government gave priority to assembling a network of spies. The commander of the intelligence service, General František Moravec, was a former legionary who believed that his country was living on borrowed time. Espionage was a booming business in 1930s Europe, particularly in such cities as Vienna, Berlin, Geneva, and Prague. Spies operated within a real-life atmosphere of intrigue, enlivened by secret codes, invisible writing, elaborate disguises, and surveillance tricks. Thus Moravec was suitably suspicious when contacted by a man who described himself as a high-ranking German official who was willing to trade information for money. After an interval of hesitation and testing, Moravec arranged to meet the man, who turned out to be exactly what he claimed. Agent 54, as he was called, was a senior military officer who disliked Hitler as much as he liked cash. Beginning in April 1937 and until his arrest five years later, the agent provided a stream of documents and gossip that alerted Czech authorities to Nazi operations that they were nevertheless unable to stop. One such initiative was Berlin’s clandestine partnership with Konrad Henlein’s quasi-Nazi Sudeten German party.
Even as he denied any connection to Hitler, Henlein was receiving regular subsidies from Berlin. He was aware that his prestige among the Sudeten Germans hinged on his ability to show support from the chancellor. Thus he was steadfast in his obedience to Hitler’s guidance and unrestrained in his flattery. He desired nothing more ardently, he declared in a confidential message, than to see the Sudetenland—in fact, all the historic Czech lands—become part of the Reich. Acting on instructions from Nazi headquarters, he began a propaganda campaign to illustrate the supposed plight of his people. German children from Czechoslovakia were sent across the border to recite tales of suffering at the hands of their alleged persecutors. As agitation intensified, so did British and French pressure on Beneš. The maintenance of peace, they said, was his responsibility.
Beneš was perturbed but not panicked. He thought Hitler an obviously flawed leader whose popularity would wither as the German economy continued to sag. He also felt that most Sudetens were too sophisticated to embrace fascism. Early in his presidency, Beneš toured the region in an effort to reduce the political temperature. He told audiences in their own language that a certain amount of friction between ethnic groups was to be expected but could be resolved through democratic means based on “respect of the human person and complete civic equality.” He admitted that Prague had made mistakes in the letting of contracts and in hiring for positions within the federal government. Before closing with a plea for nonviolence, he referred, as he often did, to the nobility of German character as reflected in such great moral teachers as Gotthold Lessing, Friedrich Schiller, and Goethe.
In time Beneš gave in to virtually every demand by Henlein. Even the German ambassador reported, on November 11, 1937, that the president “really wishes to improve the position of the German minority,” and, on December 21, that he “has made the internal appeasement of the country the aim of his presidency.”
The Czechoslovak leader was always prone to see the glass as half full. When Moravec, his intelligence chief, warned that Hitler and Henlein were determined to spark a war, Beneš told him not to be alarmed. If Hitler, he said, “resorts to force we can rely on our treaty system. Don’t forget that our allies, taken together, are still stronger than Germany.”
The British journalist and novelist Compton Mackenzie wrote in his biography of Beneš:
I once saw the president’s famous optimism at work. . . . I found him in the garden. To me it looked like rain, and I said so. The president, spectacles in hand, cocked his head at the sky: “I do not think so.” So I put my first question. The president held forth. Heavy slow rain-drops, the obvious heralds of a downpour, began to fall. The president frowned. Then he affected to ignore these Henleinist raindrops and continued to talk. Presently he could not i
gnore them completely and made one of his typical concessions to bring about a compromise. He pulled his chair back under a beech tree. . . . For a minute or two the compromise seemed to be working. The extravagance of the Sudeten rain was being held in check. . . . [Then] an extra heavy drop hit the president’s forehead. Another landed on his spectacles. Another fell on my nose. We moved further under the beech tree; but at last the president had to yield. He shook his head over the unreasonableness of the rain and led the way indoors.
Beneš was a prisoner both of his own past diplomatic success and of his rigidly logical mind. My father called him the “mathematician of politics,” a man devoted to reason who expected others to be guided by the same star. The world would not wait long to disappoint him.
EARLY IN 1938, Hitler kicked the hornet’s nest, neither anticipating nor receiving much of a reaction. He knew by then that Great Britain wouldn’t object to a “peaceful readjustment” of Europe’s internal borders; Lord Halifax, now the foreign secretary, had admitted as much the previous November. In the führer’s speeches, which were listened to around the globe, he claimed that millions of Germans were being forced to live outside the boundaries of their motherland and that other countries—including Great Britain—had never hesitated to defend their own interests. He accused Austria, as he would soon accuse Czechoslovakia, of systematically persecuting its German population. Before long, pro-Nazi demonstrations toppled Austria’s governing coalition and opened the way for German soldiers to cross the border, which they did early on the morning of March 12. When it became clear that no resistance would be encountered, the army was instructed to invade “not in a warlike but in a festive manner.”
That afternoon, Hitler traveled to Linz, the city of his boyhood, where he visited his parents’ graves before proceeding to the capital. Along the way, he was met by cheering crowds. In Vienna, the führer’s homecoming was accompanied by widespread public violence against Jews—the most shame-filled moment in Austria’s long history. The land where Schubert had been born, Mozart had lived, and Beethoven had composed the Pastoral symphony was handed over to barbarians.
The Anschluss—the merging of Austria and the German Reich—was for Hitler the latest in a series of planned provocations. In 1935, he had begun rebuilding his armed forces. In 1936, he reoccupied the Rhineland, thus strengthening his capacity to invade France. In 1938, the conquest of Austria achieved the threefold purpose of uniting Germans, encircling the Czechs, and opening an invasion route to the Balkans. Hitler was on the march, and no one, as yet, dared stand in his path.
On the day of the Austrian invasion, the Luftwaffe sent a small unmarked plane over the Czechoslovak border, dumping leaflets with a greeting: “Sagen Sie in Prag, Hitler lasst Sie grüssen.”* In London that same morning, Halifax told Jan Masaryk not to worry, the Nazis would never do to his country what they had just done to Austria; on that the Germans had given their word. Masaryk observed that “even a boa constrictor needs a few weeks of rest after it has filled its belly.” Halifax asked what the Czechoslovaks would do if attacked. Masaryk replied, “We’ll shoot.”
Notwithstanding the reservations of some senior officers, the German military had already prepared a strategy (Plan Green) for the conquest of Czechoslovakia. Hitler fully intended to press ahead; he did, however, desire a pretext. Czechoslovakia was neither the Rhineland nor a nation of German speakers such as Austria. He told Henlein to demand justice for the Sudeten population and to insist on changes “that are unacceptable to the government.” Henlein replied that he understood: “We must always demand so much that we can never be satisfied.” Of course, the Wehrmacht’s plan was not confined to liberating a discontented minority; the intent was to subjugate the entire country, seize control of its industry, and “solve the German problem of living space.” The timing would depend on Henlein’s success in creating a casus belli and on the level of resistance anticipated from the British and French. On May 30, 1938, the führer signed a directive underlining his desire to smash his neighbor by no later than October 1.
The millions who listened to Hitler’s speeches and Nazi radio broadcasts were told that the Czechs were conducting “a passionate fight for extermination” against the Sudetens. German-owned businesses were being forced into bankruptcy, children were starving, the level of oppression was incredible. This propaganda was carefully disguised as independent reporting to deceive international audiences. Goebbels subsequently admitted, “It was of utmost importance during the whole period of the crisis that the so-called situation reports . . . should not allow foreign circles [to see] through the tactics of [Berlin].” As the climax neared, sycophantic broadcasters grew hysterical, raving about the “bestial Jewish Hussite Bolshevik monsters” who were preying upon the brave but helpless Germans of Czechoslovakia.
Beneš still had confidence in his alliance with France and felt that if the French were involved in a scrap, the British would join as well. He also had his agreement with the Soviet Union. Zdenĕk Fierlinger was the country’s ambassador in Moscow. In late April, he reported that Stalin had agreed to act on Czechoslovakia’s behalf, provided the French did the same. All well and good, but Fierlinger was stumped when asked precisely what it was the Soviets were prepared to do.
Twenty years later, I wrote my college thesis about Fierlinger, a devious and unsavory man who was skilled at manipulating Beneš but whose principal loyalty was to communism. The son of a teacher, Fierlinger was a mediocre student but gifted at languages; he was also among the many young men who had spent World War I in the Czechoslovak Legion. Toward the conflict’s end, he had joined a military delegation to France, where he met and befriended Beneš, his elder by seven years. This connection led Fierlinger into the diplomatic service and to a series of appointments, including, in 1937, minister to the Soviet Union. He was a member of the Social Democratic Party, which occupied a position just to the right of the Communists on the political spectrum. The party was among the more popular despite the fact that some members had joined because they strongly opposed communism and others because they were almost Communists. This tension between the democratic Left and people whom my father referred to as “fellow travelers” was to play a pivotal role in the country’s future undoing.
In August, Beneš met with Fierlinger in Sezimovo Ústí, a picturesque country town where they had neighboring summerhouses. The president asked his envoy what the Soviets would do should the Germans attack Czechoslovakia. Both knew that Stalin had spent much of the previous year conducting show trials of civilian and military leaders—a paranoid action that had resulted in the execution of thousands of Communist loyalists and left the Red Army ill prepared for war. Yet Fierlinger insisted that the Czechs could rely on Moscow to render all possible aid. When the president asked what that meant, Fierlinger said it would depend on the course of events. When Beneš probed for a concrete guarantee, the minister had none to give. After several minutes, the usually upbeat president showed signs of depression. To lift his spirits, Fierlinger produced a phonograph album of Russian marching songs, which, he reported in his memoir, “impressed us deeply, because we felt the strength of a great country and her people, ready to defend her freedom and independence to the end.” All of which was fine, but it was not the Soviet Union’s independence that was in jeopardy.
I REGRET THAT I am unable, at this point in the historical narrative, to offer an eyewitness account of the proceedings; barely one year old, my world was a small one. I can say that while conducting research for this book, I was struck by the sense of helplessness that my parents and many of their countrymen must have felt. This impression was strengthened when, for Christmas 2010, I received a Kindle on which I proceeded to reread War and Peace. As fans of Tolstoy will recall, the author makes much of his belief that history is determined far more by the mysterious hand of Providence than by the actions of international leaders. Thus the outcome of the Napoleonic Wars, and the ability of czarist for
ces to repel the French, depended less on Napoleon and the czar than on the apparently random choices of individuals who together served as the involuntary instruments of some higher purpose. Tolstoy argued that scholars routinely exaggerate the ability of the great and powerful to control events.
There is obviously some truth in that thesis, but the role of leadership cannot be downplayed in the events immediately preceding World War II. If we were to subtract Hitler from the scene, replace the British and French with stronger actors, or bring back T. G. Masaryk for a starring role, the events I am about to describe would not have taken place or would have unfolded far differently, possibly to the extent that World War I would still be called the Great War. As it was, the citizens of the Czechoslovak Republic and many of their brothers and sisters throughout Europe had relatively little say in their own fate, and could only watch as the leading men strutted their hour on the stage.
7
“We Must Go On Being Cowards”
The German invasion of Austria was achieved overnight and to the evident gratification of many who lived in the violated country. There had been no question of intervention by England or France. The danger to Czechoslovakia raised more complicated issues because of the treaties Beneš had negotiated with Paris and Moscow. The Britons were under no legal obligation to Prague, but neither did they wish to see the French ensnared in a losing fight. In the spring of 1938, Neville Chamberlain privately summed up the situation:
You have only to look at the map to see that nothing that France or we could do could possibly save Czechoslovakia from being overrun by the Germans. . . . The Austrian frontier is practically open; the great Škoda munitions works are within easy bombing distance . . . the railways all pass through German territory, Russia is 100 miles away. Therefore we could not help Czechoslovakia—she would simply be a pretext for going to war with Germany. That we could not think of unless we have a reasonable chance of being able to beat her to her knees in a reasonable time, and of that I see no sign. I have therefore abandoned any idea of giving guarantees to Czechoslovakia or the French in connection with her obligations to that country.
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