Chamberlain was surely right to doubt that his country, with its undermanned army, could prevent the Nazis from conquering their southern neighbor if they so attempted. He failed to address whether such an assault might be deterred had Hitler cause to fear that a general war would result. The evidence suggests that delay, at least, was possible. Indeed, the führer assured his generals that he would attack Czechoslovakia only if French and British intervention seemed unlikely.
In 1938, diplomats could still believe one thing and say another without having their inconstancy exposed via the leaking of electronic communications. The British, having decided to leave Czechoslovakia to its fate, nevertheless tried to persuade the world that they had yet to make up their minds. Admitting the truth would have embarrassed the French and been interpreted as an invitation for Hitler to invade. In public, therefore, the Foreign Office bobbed and weaved, ruling the use of force neither out nor in.
When, in May, tensions reached a high point, London warned Berlin that if it attacked Czechoslovakia and the French were embroiled as well, “His Majesty’s Government could not guarantee that they would not be forced by circumstances to become involved also.” At this same time, English officials were telling their counterparts in Paris that they were “not disinterested” in Czechoslovakia’s fate. I learned in the course of my own career that British diplomats are trained to write with precision; so when a double negative is employed, the intent, usually, is not to clarify an issue but to surround it with fog. The Germans, unfortunately, were not deceived—Chamberlain’s yearning for tranquillity was too obvious. Hitler bragged to acolytes that he had only to mention the word “war” to cause the prime minister to leap out of his skin.
London felt it could best avoid conflict by obtaining from Germany a clear statement of the improvements it wanted to see in Prague’s treatment of the Sudeten minority. The British hoped then to be able to press Beneš to accept such a list and thereby leave, in Lord Halifax’s phrase, “the German Government with no reasonable cause for complaint.” Hitler kept one step ahead by making demands that were so amorphous that they could not be pinned down. He insisted on a halt to persecution of the Sudetens but reserved to himself the right to define the term. Nothing Beneš did could comply fully with his requests, because Hitler didn’t care about the rights of the Sudeten minority; he cared about using the alleged sins of Czechoslovakia to take the next step toward the conquest of Europe. The Chamberlain government was slow to realize that the führer was determined to remain indignant. Denied a reasonable ground of complaint, he would quickly invent an unreasonable one.
Compared with the English, the French were as easy to intimidate but less so to fool. In London for a meeting on April 29, their premier, Édouard Daladier, argued that Henlein was out to destroy Czechoslovakia and that Hitler was more ambitious than Napoleon. He added that if Beneš was pushed to make further concessions, the Allies should at least pledge their support in the event Germany was unwilling to take yes for an answer. Daladier, who thought the military situation less dire than did the British, insisted that further capitulation was more likely to produce war than a show of resolve. Chamberlain and Halifax were unconvinced, in part because they thought Daladier’s words showed more spine than France actually possessed.
The British also ignored pleas filtering in from Hitler’s own countrymen. The shrunken core of antifascists within Germany’s military, diplomatic, and industrial elite beseeched England to adopt a sturdier line. They claimed that Hitler was not as powerful as he longed to appear and that the German majority had no wish to follow the “Nazi gangsters” into war. Chamberlain was too timid to take that advice, but he was not entirely blind to the deepening danger. “Is it not positively horrible,” he wrote, “to think that the fate of hundreds of millions depends on one man, and he is half mad? I keep racking my brains to try and devise some means of averting a catastrophe.”
One option was peace through strength. British rearmament efforts were finally moving ahead, but the country still felt unready for a sustained conflict. The army in 1938 had 180,000 men complemented by a reserve of 130,000 weekend soldiers. The Germans had an army of half a million with an equal number in reserve. The Royal Air Force (RAF) possessed 1,600 planes, the Luftwaffe more than twice that. Only the British navy was in fighting shape, but it had global responsibilities and could not compensate for the military’s shortcomings on land.
The second alternative was diplomacy. The British hoped to avoid war by persuading the potential combatants to take a step back and consider soberly where their best interests might reside. For centuries, British imperialists had been refereeing disputes among fractious groups; why not mediate now among the tribes of Central Europe? Alexander Cadogan, the undersecretary of the British Foreign Office and author of a candid diary, queried:
What I wonder is, is it even now too late to treat the Germans as human beings? Perhaps they wouldn’t respond to such treatment. What I have always in mind these last two years (and urged) is that we should ask them whether they won’t let us try our hand at helping to remedy the grievances which they make so much of but which they don’t make very clear.
Thus, in the summer of 1938, Chamberlain sent a special emissary to Czechoslovakia with a mandate to mediate. “We cannot but feel,” opined Halifax, “that a public man of the British race and steeped in British experience and thought may have it in his power . . . to make a contribution of quite particular value.” The public man in question, Walter Runciman, Lord of Doxford, was able enough but no expert on the region. After being systematically lied to by Sudeten representatives, he concluded that a solution could be found only by satisfying Berlin. This was going in circles. For a year, the British had been trying to determine what Berlin really wanted, only to find that however much was on offer, it would be—by agreement between Hitler and Henlein—never enough.
Earlier in the year, Beneš had granted amnesty to Sudeten Germans who had been judged guilty of treason. Henlein had barely acknowledged the gesture and instead demanded full self-government, reparations for past damages, and a pro-German foreign policy. Shedding his earlier restraint, he adopted the Nazi salute, proclaimed the right to promote Nazism openly, and accepted for himself the title of führer. The Henleinists had come to differ from the Nazis only in the color of their shirts (white, not brown) and the design of their banners (scarlet with a white shield, no swastika).
Throughout the long days of that unlovely summer, Beneš sought both to retain his confidence and to parry the arrows and insults that came his way. In response to pressure from the British and French, he strove to pacify the Sudeten Germans, avoided public statements that might provoke Hitler, and granted permission for Runciman to spend August traveling about Czechoslovakia in quest of the magic formula for peace. He even expressed a willingness to participate in an international conference or to accept binding arbitration. To friends, he emphasized his belief that war could still be avoided through a combination of Allied solidarity and the fact that his government had given Hitler no excuse for war. His ultimate life raft was the honor of France.
That country’s policy reflected the ambivalence of its authors. Daladier repeatedly promised Beneš that France would live up to treaty obligations that he described as “solemn,” “indisputable,” and “sacred.” At the same time, the French, burdened by labor unrest and high unemployment, had little interest in a quarrel with Germany. Their armed forces had yet to recover from the Great War, which had wiped out a third of France’s male population of prime military age. This catastrophe led to a low birth rate and consequently, in the 1930s, to a shortage of new recruits. In addition to size, the French army lacked mobility while the air force suffered from too-few bombers and a reliance on obsolete technology. The country’s allies, particularly Poland and the Soviet Union, were at odds with each other and could not be relied on, in a crisis, to close ranks. In the north, Belgium was pursuing a policy of ne
utrality, effectively barring France from using its territory as a base for military operations. The high command’s once bold strategic doctrine had grown defensive, relying on a buildup of supposedly impregnable border fortifications: the Maginot Line. The French hoped that they could protect themselves but had no desire to send the flower of their youth eastward to face German guns on behalf of Czechoslovakia. Their fears deepened considerably after the Anschluss, when it became clear that to preserve their good name, they might actually have to make such a sacrifice.
It was during this period that the U.S. ambassador to Paris, William Bullitt, reported attending dinners at which French officials began by expressing a determination to avoid war at all costs and ended—several brandies later—vowing to uphold the nation’s treaty obligations no matter the price. Striving to rescue France from a decision it did not wish to make, Bullitt urged President Franklin Roosevelt to convene a high-level conference that would bring all the parties together and, he hoped, devise a face-saving exit from the crisis. When the president eventually did propose such a gathering, he was congratulated by everyone involved and otherwise ignored. U.S. leaders simply lacked the leverage to shape events in Europe because the public they represented did not want to get involved. As a result, while the hopes of Beneš rested with France’s promise, the hopes of France were invested in Great Britain’s ability to push Beneš into appeasing Hitler.
THE FÜHRER, MEANWHILE, was growing impatient. He had boasted to advisers that he would smash Czechoslovakia by October 1, 1938. Three weeks before the deadline, he presided over a late-night meeting at which his senior military staff predicted a swift victory. German propaganda and Henlein’s mischief had brought the Sudeten population to the edge of rebellion. The British and French were dithering, the Soviets too far away. Hitler finally had the Czechoslovaks where he wanted them: all alone.
In early September, more than a million Germans swarmed into Nuremberg to celebrate the anniversary of the Nazi Party. On the evening of the twelfth, in a vast meeting hall, an expectant crowd barely listened while an orchestra of modest competence worked its way through the overture to Die Meistersinger. As the music reached its crescendo, so did the chanting: “Sieg heil! Sieg heil! Sieg heil!” Hitler marched to the podium and motioned for the audience to be still. He spoke then, as he habitually did, in machine-gun-like bursts. “This misery of the Sudeten Germans is indescribable. As human beings they are oppressed and scandalously treated . . . hunted and harried like helpless wildfowl for every expression of their national sentiment.” “I am in no way willing,” he shouted, “that here in the heart of Germany a second Palestine should be permitted to arise. The poor Arabs are defenseless and deserted. The Germans in Czechoslovakia are neither defenseless nor are they deserted and people should take notice of that fact.”
As Hitler’s oration concluded, German thugs in the Sudetenland began assaulting their neighbors and trashing government offices and police stations. A British military attaché who was on the scene described the crowds as “not in any way ill-natured, for I walked around the town for half an hour, except that all the Jewish shops had their windows shattered.” Coming upon a mob beating “a prosperous Jew,” the official cited his own prudence in turning away. The Czechoslovaks mustered a firmer response. Beneš imposed martial law, sent in reinforcements, and restored order. “Fight to the end,” Henlein had urged his followers; by dawn, he and his top advisers had fled across the border to Leipzig.
The Czechoslovaks had responded to Hitler’s jab with a vigorous counterpunch—and were ready for more. In a memo to his civilian superiors, the armed forces chief of staff, General Ludvík Krejčí, argued:
The morale of the German soldier is being artificially whipped up by the cult of the “superman” and intoxicated by the bloodless victories during the occupation of the Rhineland and Austria. The first failure of this soldier when he approaches our fortifications . . . will suffice to break his morale. . . . The artificially inflated power of the German armed forces will crumble and become a comparatively easy prey for our allies.
The military backed up those words by canceling leave, ordering a partial mobilization, and sending its best regiments to guard their country’s vulnerable border with Austria.
A MARTIAL SPIRIT could also be detected in London, provided one looked closely enough. Harold Nicolson, a pro-Churchill member of Parliament, declared, “We must warn Hitler that if he invades, we shall fight. If he says, ‘but surely you won’t fight for Czechoslovakia,’ we will answer, ‘Yes, we shall.’ ” Nicolson was one of a growing number of hawks who, fed up with Chamberlain, were demanding a more robust policy. The British majority, however, continued to believe that appeasement was the safer and more realistic approach. Such influential publications as the Economist and the Times remained foursquare behind concessions; their worry was that the government was not doing enough to mollify Berlin.
Hitler’s Nuremberg speech rattled the already frayed nerves of the French, who called London to warn that if nothing were done, conflict would soon break out. The British Secret Service agreed, circulating a confidential forecast that, within two weeks, Germany would invade Czechoslovakia. Sir Nevile Henderson, Great Britain’s ambassador to Berlin, insisted that the solution to the crisis could be found only in Prague: “None of us can even think of peace again until Beneš has satisfied Henlein. . . . Henlein wants peace and will agree with Beneš if the latter is made to go far enough.”
By late in the day on September 13, Chamberlain had concluded that long-range diplomacy was not working. For weeks, he had been contemplating what he called “Plan Z,” a direct approach by him to his counterpart in Berlin. He saw no better option than to gamble on his powers of persuasion, which he deemed formidable. A message was sent: would Herr Hitler receive him? The führer replied that he was “entirely at the prime minister’s disposal.” A meeting was set for two days hence.
When Hitler learned that Chamberlain wished to see him, he anticipated a lecture on the dangers of rash action. He need not have been concerned. The prime minister had no desire for confrontation; he hoped only for peace, a goal he still expected his host to share. All that was needed was a just settlement of the Sudeten question. Chamberlain planned to suggest an internationally supervised plebiscite that would allow the Sudeten Germans to choose for themselves whether or not to remain in Czechoslovakia.
Venturing onto an airplane for the first time, the British leader crossed the Channel early on September 15. From rainy Munich, he went by train to Berchtesgaden and then by car to the führer’s residence, where Hitler was waiting to greet him. The two paused in a hallway for tea before climbing the stairs to the same cramped study in which Halifax had been hosted a year earlier. At Chamberlain’s suggestion the meeting was restricted to the two leaders, plus an interpreter. Following a brief exchange of courtesies, Hitler launched into his familiar tirade about the cruelties being inflicted on the poor Sudetens. Three and a half million ethnic Germans in Czechoslovakia must be free to join the Reich, the chancellor said, adding that he planned to act on this imperative.
Chamberlain did not attempt to deny Hitler’s right to seize the Sudetenland. Instead he sought an assurance that such a concession would guarantee peace. Hitler was evasive, saying that the Hungarians, Poles, Ukrainians, and Slovaks also nursed grievances against Prague that would have to be addressed. Chamberlain pointed out that the means of implementing a territorial transfer might be complicated and proposed a period of peaceful discussion between the Beneš government and the Sudeten Germans. Hitler shook his head, insisting on immediate action. The two agreed that the prime minister should be given a few days to confer in London and Paris before returning to Germany. No mention was made of consulting Prague. A communiqué was issued, stating only that the leaders had met and would do so again.
Returning home, Chamberlain briefed his cabinet, stressing the urgency of the matter and the lack of any viable a
lternative to ceding the Sudetenland. Though he referred to Hitler as “cruel, overbearing [and] . . . ruthless,” he also described him as an impressive figure whose word could be relied on with confidence. He believed that Czechoslovakia could survive losing the Sudetenland and that the führer, having won that point, would be reasonable with respect to issues of timing and process. Hitler did not, he had been assured, have any interest in adding racially inferior Czechs to the Reich; thus peace was readily obtainable if Prague would agree to let its Germans go. The cabinet invited the French premier to come to London for a chat.
Jan Masaryk, meanwhile, was trying frantically to discover what had happened during the Berchtesgaden meeting. No one in the Foreign Office would speak to him. On the phone with Beneš, he lamented that the Allies were “talking about us without us.”* That was good news in Berlin, which was listening in on every conversation between the ambassador and his boss. The Germans enjoyed the intercepts so much that they decided to share them with the British, including Masaryk’s candid, unflattering descriptions of Chamberlain and Halifax. The revelations would detract further from whatever merit the Czechoslovak cause might have had in the eyes of the prime minister.
In London on September 18 the British and French agreed that the Czechoslovaks should give up all areas that were more than 50 percent German. The next afternoon, their ambassadors appeared at the castle in Prague to inform Beneš that he had a choice: accept the loss of one-third of his country or instigate a war that his people would surely lose and for which he would personally be blamed. The president asked for time to consider the question; he was told that a response was needed within the day.
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