Prague Winter

by Madeleine Albright

  BY MIDSUMMER 1940, most of Europe was either neutral or under occupation. Hitler felt he could be magnanimous. At home, he gave medals to his favorite generals and announced that public dancing would again be allowed on Wednesdays and Saturdays. Abroad, he resumed his quest for just the right kind of peace. The author of Mein Kampf was a man of many hatreds, but Great Britain was not among them. He had long believed that the English and Germans had important interests in common. Both nations were economically ambitious, racially “advantaged,” anti-Bolshevik, and concerned about “the unbounded French drive for hegemony.” There was no reason, in Hitler’s view, why the two empires could not coexist.

  In June, Hitler told Göring that “the war is over, Hermann. I’m going to reach an agreement with England.” The führer had already begun sending messages to London that, although arrogant, also held out the promise of a permanent settlement. He must have thought he was being generous because he felt invincible. The British had failed to defend Czechoslovakia, shown themselves impotent in Poland, and been routed in Norway and France. The mighty Soviets were preoccupied with their own conquests. Surely Chamberlain and his advisers would choose the safety of renewed appeasement over the risks of invasion and bombardment. Potential peace terms were not hard to formulate: Germany would control Europe and parts of Africa; the British would be allowed to survive and retain their overseas holdings; the Americans would be expected to mind their own business.

  By mid-July, however, the Germans were becoming frustrated. Back-channel contacts showed that many Britons were desperate for peace at any cost, but Churchill had no interest in such a bargain. Not only did he talk defiantly, he seemed to welcome the prospect of fighting. Hitler found that illogical. The prime minister, he concluded, was not quite civilized. On the sixteenth, Hitler told his military, “Since, despite its desperate military situation, Great Britain shows no sign of good will, I have decided that a plan of invasion will be prepared for and, if necessary, carried out.”

  Three days later, in a speech to the Reichstag, he made one last public appeal:

  I feel it is my duty to ask once more, in good faith, for reason and wise counsel on the part of Great Britain. . . . My position allows me to make this request, since I do not speak as a defeated man begging favors but as the victor speaking in the name of reason. I can really see no cause why this war should continue. Mr. Churchill ought, for once, to believe me when I say that a great empire will be destroyed—an empire which it was never my intention to destroy or harm. It gives me pain when I realize that I am the man who has been picked out by destiny to deliver the final blow.*

  German propagandists assured their listeners that the mighty and fearless Reich craved peace above all else. Increasingly that summer, this seductive message assailed English ears. Many families were frustrated by the lack of war news on the security-conscious BBC and so tuned each night to a broadcast that began “Germany calling, Germany calling, Germany calling!” Then would come the voice of William Joyce, alias Lord Haw-Haw, an ultraconservative Irish-American politician who, though a British citizen, had sought refuge in Berlin just before the war. When Churchill and Halifax responded dismissively to Hitler’s Reichstag address, Joyce shed crocodile tears: “It is a pity! It is a thousand pities! This is the tragedy that the führer went out of his way to avoid. But if those who rule England . . . care less for their country than the führer has cared, force . . . must arbitrate.”

  Joyce claimed to speak for the common man and drew a contrast between himself and England’s haughty upper class. Although he had been born in Brooklyn, he professed to love “the sceptered isle” so much that he had to betray it in order to reawaken its true spirit. A skilled writer, he composed his own scripts and also prepared propaganda for the New British Broadcasting Station, based in Germany but purporting to represent the views of English working families. More subtle than most Nazi offerings, the programs portrayed Churchill as a warmonger eager to repress the Irish, Welsh, and Scots and to promote the interests of London banks. The station also did its best to engender fear. One summer morning announcers spread an alarm that during the night “German parachutists wearing civilian clothes were dropped in the vicinity of Birmingham, Manchester and Glasgow. They carry capsules to produce fog and so avoid capture. Some are equipped with an electromagnetic death ray.” Many listeners, having been warned for so long about the terrors of war, were quick to believe the worst.

  For England, the land battles had not begun, but ports and shipping lanes were under attack and so were cargo vessels. This made maritime transportation dangerous and raw materials precious. Ration books were distributed to every head of household, but many common goods were rarely available or only in poor quality. Real butter was scarce, and margarine came in brittle patties that broke immediately when placed in contact with a cracker. Shop owners put signs in their windows with the wry message, based on a Broadway show tune, “Yes, we have no bananas.” Candy stores, to remain in business, had to diversify by selling such items as flashlights and electrical tape. Members of the public were asked to eat less cheese so that more would be available for coal miners and vegetarians. The new, cheaper matches were reluctant to ignite, and toilet tissue was sold in individual rolls.

  For some, the hardships of war became real only when the minister of food, Lord Woolton, announced that rationing would be extended to tea. One woman from a prosperous neighborhood found a note signed by her maid and pinned to the door of her flat: “Madam, there is no honey, no sultanas, currants or raisins, no mixed fruits, no saccharine at present, no spaghetti, no sage, no herrings, kippers or sprats (smoked or plain), no kindling wood, no fat or dripping, no tins of celery, tomato or salmon. I have bought three pounds of parsnips.”

  Eduard Beneš, Hana Benešová, and Queen Elizabeth

  CTK PHOTO

  A flood of volunteers signed up for the home guard, organized to defend against the anticipated German invasion. Members of Parliament dutifully took their turn on the nightly fire watch, cabinet members prepared for battle, and even Queen Elizabeth practiced her shooting. Overall, the number of recruits far outpaced the storehouse of weapons. Anthony Eden, a future foreign secretary and prime minister, joined a rifle corps that had no rifles and was forced to train in the aisles of a department store. Lacking hand grenades, some platoons made do by concealing razor blades in potatoes.

  Working feverishly, the navy laid minefields around the coasts. The army, with the help of civilian volunteers, covered the beaches with barbed wire, dug tank traps, and set up pillboxes and concrete walls. Coastal areas were ruled off limits to visitors. Road signs were removed to confuse the enemy. Families in the countryside were instructed to stay put in the event of an invasion so that roads would not be clogged, as had happened in France. Each day when radio transmissions ended, loyal subjects rose from their living room chairs and sang “God Save the King.”

  As the British girded for what was to come, the Czechoslovak government in exile achieved its first diplomatic milestone. On July 23, the United Kingdom formally recognized Beneš as head of a provisional government representing the Czech and Slovak peoples. Beneš was so pleased that he came to our apartment house in person to break the news to Drtina and my father. With Masaryk visiting the United States, Drtina would have the honor of reading the announcement over the BBC. The English decision was a victory but a limited one. The “provisional” label was demeaning, and the Allied war aims referred only to the liberation of the Czechs from German domination. There was no mention of restoring the country’s prewar borders or even its independence as a nation. Nevertheless, five days later, the Czech anthem was played by the BBC for the first time and the king and queen invited Dr. and Mrs. Beneš to lunch.

  13

  Fire in the Sky

  August 13, 1940: From Reichsmarshal Göring to all units of air fleets two, three and five: Operation Eagle. Within a short period you will wipe the British a
ir force from the sky. Heil Hitler.

  The Luftwaffe had gained experience supporting fascist forces in the Spanish Civil War and had effectively complemented German ground invasions in Poland, the Low Countries, and France. Emboldened by those adventures, the Nazis approached the Battle of Britain with celestial confidence. Their strategy was to batter their foe—which they saw as isolated and trembling—by destroying its planes, antiaircraft guns, and munitions plants and to do so quickly enough to open the way for invasion by mid-September 1940. Göring assured Hitler that, English weather permitting, it could be done.

  As soon as the Germans overran France, they began to build air bases along the northern coast, just a short trip across the Channel to England. On July 10, seventy-five Nazi bombers, escorted by forty-five fighters, attacked a convoy of ships in Dover harbor. In public Hitler was still talking peace, but his military was waging war.

  IN 1935, AN engineering team headed by a researcher with the quintessential British name of Professor Robert Watson-Watt discovered that radio waves were deflected by passing aircraft. To capitalize on the revelation, the Air Ministry established a chain of twenty coastal stations, each including a pair of massive towers, one to send signals, the other to receive. The engineers referred to their new technology as “radio direction finding,” known now as radar. With this tool, the Britons could detect aircraft at a distance of a hundred miles, and, because their own planes were equipped with transmitting devices, technicians could differentiate between friend and foe.

  When the Battle of Britain began, the radio towers were among the first targets the Luftwaffe sought out. By mid-August, Nazi pilots thought they had eliminated all or most. They were wrong. The towers had been built with backup generators and could withstand enormous damage; that mattered because although radar gave only several minutes’ warning, it was enough—when response decisions were quick—for pilots to scramble in time to intercept incoming planes.

  To protect their bombers, the Nazis deployed escorts of Messerschmitt fighters, in single- and double-engine versions; both were highly capable, but each had a flaw. The fuel gauge on the single-engine plane would begin blinking after a mere hour in the air, thus forcing the pilots to turn back even as a bombing run was under way. The twin-engine version was not as fast or maneuverable as the British fighters—the quick-climbing Spitfire and the sturdy Hurricane. The British Air Ministry endeavored to assist its fighters through the use of blimp-size barrage balloons that forced enemy pilots to fly so high that they could not properly identify targets on the ground. Londoners soon learned to equate “when the balloon goes up” with an impending attack. In addition, some air stations were equipped with five-hundred-foot-long rocket-launched steel cables that, once extended, descended only slowly, supported by a parachute. If sent skyward at the proper moment, the devices created a lethal, hard-to-avoid obstacle for fast-approaching aircraft.

  Despite these preparations, the outlook for the British was grim. The bombers of the day had an advantage over even the best air-defense systems, especially if the attackers arrived in sufficient numbers. British manufacturers were turning out 450 fighters a month, but the Luftwaffe began the battle with a substantial edge. Because the outcome would hinge on the rate of attrition, the English had to inflict a disproportionate amount of damage. Unfortunately, the RAF was many pilots short of its required minimum strength; squadrons that were supposed to have twenty-six pilots had to get by with sixteen. To make up the difference, training courses were shortened to less than two weeks and novice pilots were forced to practice in World War I biplanes.

  HISTORIES OF THE U.S. Civil War typically begin with an account of Washingtonians carrying picnic baskets to the Virginia battlefields to observe the fighting. For a time, there were comparable scenes in Great Britain as families that were safely inland gathered on high spots to watch the Spitfires and Hurricanes duel with the Messerschmitts, cheering each success and oohing and aahing at the spectacle. It was a breathtaking show. The enemy planes began as specks on the horizon, rapidly growing larger; within seconds the kah-chunk, kah-chink of engines could be heard merging into a hum and soon a roar. The planes approached in lines before breaking into groups, then individual arcs as they were challenged. The bombers ducked and swooped, their pilots eager to discharge their deadly cargo and head home. The fighters on both sides buzzed frantically, seeking the cover of clouds or the advantageous glare of sunlight at their rear. As the combatants darted, puffs of smoke from their guns were etched against the blue or black sky, and on the ground, blasts of fire marked the spots where five-hundred-pound bombs punched holes in the earth. Villagers and farmers were startled when, from time to time, an injured plane landed in their fields or a parachutist descended in a web of tangled nylon. It was not uncommon for an RAF pilot to be surrounded or even shot at by suspicious townsfolk before making his identity clear.

  For those working in or near one of the preferred German targets—a dock, an airfield, a gun battery, a munitions plant—the view of the fighting was less enthralling. There, the siren’s banshee wail carried an especially ominous meaning, followed as it was by a hail of bullets kicking the ground, ugly cylinders falling, and explosions that, for many, would be the last thing felt or heard.

  After a successful strike, the German pilots returned to their bases to report on the damage done. Yet even before the dust had begun to dissipate, British ground crews were at work tending to the wounded, clearing debris, activating generators, getting power stations back up to speed. Men and women, including switchboard operators and other civilian personnel, carefully inspected airstrips, marking unexploded ordnance with red flags; then came the disposal units and after that the shovel brigades mixing concrete to fill craters left by the bombs. More quickly than the enemy thought possible, guns were made ready to fire once more and airstrips patched well enough for fighters to land and take off. Docks were rebuilt. Crippled planes and injured pilots returned to the air. One bombed-out factory functioned for months without a roof, its tools sheltered from the elements by a huge tarpaulin. The unending stress exhausted the maintenance and repair technicians, many of whom remained on round-the-clock duty for months without a break, dozing on cots or floors or, in clement weather, grass.

  For all the blood and strain, the Britons could be satisfied that Germans, too, were experiencing an acute sense of tribulation. The attackers felt that after a month of heavy bombing, victory should have been theirs. Yet the enemy radars had not been destroyed, the supply of RAF planes and pilots seemed bottomless, and the path to a risk-free invasion was still blocked. The Germans retained a superiority in numbers, but their losses in planes and personnel were far higher than had been anticipated. The Stuka dive-bombers that had commanded the air in France were too slow to evade the fire of machine guns mounted on British fighters. A Luftwaffe pilot, describing the balloons and antiaircraft guns as “pretty hot,” complained to the journalist William Shirer that he and his comrades had expected to find London a city afire but instead had been impressed by how much was still untouched. Fliers were in the air every night, and scores were dying; yet the British wouldn’t yield. The unpleasant surprises would continue: by mid-August, the Germans believed that the enemy’s fighter fleet had been reduced to 450; in fact, the RAF had almost twice that number. Hitler’s anticipated cakewalk had turned into an uphill climb.

  The Luftwaffe’s target list did not include London, but on August 24 a pair of pilots, looking for a petroleum depot further up the Thames, misread their charts and dropped several bombs on the city’s East End; the explosives damaged the Church of Saint Giles and blew up a statue of John Milton. Churchill was unaware that the strike had been a mistake or that the offending pilots had been reprimanded and reassigned. Considering the attack an intentional provocation, he ordered reprisal raids on industrial facilities in Berlin. Owing to clouds and enemy guns, the British pilots also missed their targets, hitting instead a residential area, k
illing ten civilians and injuring twenty-nine. Now it was the turn of German opinion to be outraged; Göring had promised that their capital would be kept safe. Hitler was both furious and opportunistic, seeing a chance to smash London under the cover of self-defense. On September 4, he went before a raucous audience in Berlin. “Since they attack our cities,” he thundered, “we shall extirpate theirs!” Amid hoots and applause, he added, “The British have been asking, ‘Why doesn’t he come? Why doesn’t he come?’ We reply: ‘Calm yourselves. Calm yourselves. He is coming!’ ”

  Three days later, on the afternoon of September 7, 1940, the Blitz of London began. The German shift in strategy was prompted by more than a desire for retribution. As autumn approached, and with it the expectation of high winds and stormy seas, the opening for invasion narrowed. Hitler needed to land a decisive blow, and for that he had to find a way to force Churchill to put more of his fighters into one place. What better way than to fill the heavens above Saint Paul’s and Buckingham Palace with German bombers? It wasn’t too late—if the attackers were relentless enough—to destroy the adversary’s capacity to resist.

  With Göring watching expectantly from the French coast, an armada of more than three hundred bombers and six hundred fighters ascended to 17,000 feet and soared toward England in two massive waves. British radar operators could scarcely believe what they were seeing. Every squadron in the area received an order to scramble, their pilots anticipating, as usual, the need to defend airfields and gun batteries. Instead, the bombers and their escorts veered abruptly toward London. The city’s airborne protectors were outnumbered by more than ten to one.