Churchill, Hitler, and The Unnecessary War

by Patrick J. Buchanan

  Hitler called his generals to Berlin and ordered all troops anywhere near Austria to proceed to the border and be prepared to invade on March 12. Leaving Göring in command in Berlin, Hitler departed to lead his army into the land of his birth.

  RETURN OF THE NATIVE

  HITLER KNEW FROM THE Dollfuss affair that Mussolini might react violently. Through Prince Philip of Hesse, who flew by special plane to Rome, Hitler sent a letter to Il Duce explaining the confrontation with Schuschnigg and proffering a naked bribe. Said Hitler, “I have drawn a definite boundary…between Italy and us. It is the Brenner.”46

  Hitler was telling Mussolini that if given a free hand in Austria, South Tyrol was Italy’s forever. To corral seven million Austrians, Hitler was prepared to sell out two hundred thousand Tyrolese who had been his countrymen.

  On March 11, Germany closed its border with Austria and, on Göring’s orders, the pro-Nazis in Schuschnigg’s government demanded the March 13 plebiscite be canceled. Schuschnigg phoned Mussolini. Il Duce did not take his call. Nor did Paris respond. The Radical government of Camille Chautemps, in power for only a year and in financial straits, had just resigned. Former premier Léon Blum, at the instigation of the president, was trying to form a new government to deal with the Austrian crisis when the Anschluss was proclaimed. When Göring sought out the Czechs for their reaction to any German move into Austria, the Czechs assured Göring they would not mobilize. The British ambassador in Berlin, Henderson, agreed with Göring that “Dr. Schuschnigg had acted with precipitate folly.”47

  For Prime Minister Chamberlain, news of the imminent invasion came at an awkward moment. He and Halifax were hosting a farewell lunch at 10 Downing Street for Ambassador Ribbentrop, who had just been named by Hitler to replace Neurath as foreign minister. Ribbentrop had been assuring his British hosts the Austrian situation was calm, when a telegram arrived from Schuschnigg informing Chamberlain that the German army was at his border and asking “for immediate advice of his Majesty’s Government as to what he should do.”48

  Shaken, Chamberlain suggested that he, Ribbentrop, and Halifax repair to his study “for a private word.”49 Halifax was incensed. But Ribbentrop soothed the British leaders, assuring them he knew nothing of an invasion and perhaps this was a false report. Yet, if true, Ribbentrop added, might it not be the best way to resolve the matter?

  Chamberlain instructed Halifax to wire Schuschnigg: “His Majesty’s Government cannot take responsibility of advising the Chancellor to take any course of action which might expose his country to dangers against which His Majesty’s Government are unable to guarantee protection.”50 The Austrians were on their own.

  Abandoned and alone, Schuschnigg canceled the plebiscite. But this was no longer sufficient. Göring, who was managing the crisis by telephone, demanded that Austria replace Schuschnigg with Seyss-Inquart. President Miklas refused. Göring told Seyss-Inquart to declare himself chancellor and invite the German army in to restore law and order. But before Seyss-Inquart’s telegram arrived in Berlin calling on Germany to intervene, Hitler’s army was in Austria. On the morning of March 12, Seyss-Inquart wired Berlin to say that, as he was in charge in Vienna, the invasion should be halted. Göring told him this was now impossible.

  As Hitler’s army pushed into Austria, Prince Philip phoned from Rome: “I have just returned from the Palazzo Venezia. Il Duce took the news very well indeed. He sends his very best regards to you.”51 Hitler was ecstatic. On and on he burbled to the prince:

  [P]lease tell Mussolini that I shall never forget this…. Never, never, never! Come what may!…And listen—sign any agreement he would like…. You can tell him again. It hank him most heartily. I will never forget him!…Whenever he should be in need or in danger, he can be sure that I will stick with him, rain or shine—come what may—even if the whole world would rise against him—I will, I shall—”52

  This commitment Hitler would keep. His faithfulness to Mussolini would be a principal cause of Germany’s defeat and his own downfall.

  On March 13, the day of Schuschnigg’s plebiscite to decide if Austria should remain an independent nation, Hitler arrived in the hometown of his boyhood. As Gen. Heinz Guderian, who stood beside him in Linz, relates, tears ran down Hitler’s cheeks; “this was certainly not play-acting.”53

  In Vienna, Hitler recalled for one reporter a day years before when, following a blizzard, he and five down-and-outers hired themselves out to shovel snow. By chance, they were assigned to sweep the sidewalk and street in front of the Imperial Hotel on a night when the Habsburgs were entertaining inside. Said Hitler, bitterness and resentment pouring out:

  I saw Karl and Zita step out of their imperial coach and grandly walk into this hotel over the red carpet. We poor devils shoveled the snow away on all sides and took our hats off every time the aristocrats arrived. They didn’t even look at us, although I still smell the perfume that came at our noses. We were about as important to them, or for that matter to Vienna, as the snow that kept coming down all night, and this hotel did not even have the decency to send a cup of hot coffee to us…. I resolved that night that someday I would come back to the Imperial Hotel and walk over the red carpet in that glittering interior where the Hapsburgs danced. I didn’t know how or when, but I have waited for this day and tonight I am here.54

  “I can only describe him as being in a state of ecstasy,” von Papen wrote.55 And it was while in that state, in an utterly unexpected decision, that Hitler declared the annexation of Austria.

  Göring, who had brilliantly and brutally managed the crisis, may have been the instigator of Anschluss. Seeing the Wehrmacht welcomed without a shot being fired, and how wildly the crowds received Hitler, he sent a courier by plane to the Fuehrer: “If the enthusiasm is so great, why don’t we go the whole hog?”56

  Hitler did. Seyss-Inquart was instructed to resign, as Austria was now a province of Germany. His twenty-four hours as chancellor were up. For seven years, Austria ceased to exist and became the Ost-mark, the East Mark, the ancient bulwark of Europe against the hordes of Asia.

  Mussolini had not expected Hitler to annex Austria. “Floored” by the news, he railed about “that damned German,” but then recognized reality.57 After forty-eight hours of silence, he sent a congratulatory message. Again Hitler replied, “Mussolini, I shall never forget this.”58

  A fortnight before the Anschluss, Göring was a guest in Warsaw of Col. Jozef Beck, the foreign minister who had taken over on the death of Pilsudski. As the two walked into dinner, “they passed an engraving of John Sobieski, the Polish king coming to the rescue of the besieged city of Vienna in 1683. Beck drew Göring’s attention to the title: ‘Don’t worry,’ he remarked, ‘that incident will not recur.’”59

  In a year, Beck’s turn would come.

  It bears repeating. In 1934, an Austrian chancellor, Dollfuss, died a hero’s death resisting Nazism, the only European leader to give up his life fighting Hitlerism from 1933 to 1939. In 1938, his successor, Schuschnigg, took a desperate gamble to break Austria forever free of the Reich. He failed, and spent the next seven years in a Nazi prison for defying Hitler. Austria capitulated because she was facing a Germany ten times her size and had been abandoned by all who could have helped her stay free—Poland, Czechoslovakia, Italy, France, and Great Britain.

  As the German army entered Vienna, the world awakened to two realities. First, the vaunted Wehrmacht, 70 percent of whose tanks and armored vehicles broke down on the roads, was in no condition to fight a major war. Second, the cheering crowds showed that Hitler was wildly popular in his home country:

  The scenes of enthusiasm according to a Swiss reporter who witnessed them “defied all description.” An English observer of the scene commented, “To say that the crowds which greeted [Hitler] along the Ringstrasse were delirious with joy is an understatement.” Hitler had to appear repeatedly on the balcony of the Hotel Imperial in response to continued shouts of “We want to see our Fuhrer.”60

  O
n April 10, the Anschluss was submitted to a vote of the Austrian people. Fully 99 percent voted in favor. Some historians consider this a fair reflection of Austrian sentiment by then, but, if that was true, why had Hitler been so fearful of Schuschnigg’s plebiscite?

  There is surely truth in the sharp note Churchill wrote to Hitler idolater Unity Valkyrie Mitford, who had compared sitting next to Hitler like “sitting beside the sun” and who told Churchill that 80 percent of all Austrians were pro-Hitler. “It was because Herr Hitler feared the free expression of opinion that we are compelled to witness the present dastardly outrage.”61

  Yet, as Taylor writes, Schuschnigg, not Hitler, precipitated the crisis with his call for a plebiscite in four days to dramatize Austria’s separation from Germany.

  The belief soon became established that Hitler’s seizure of Austria was a deliberate plot, devised long in advance, and the first step toward the domination of Europe. This belief was a myth. The crisis of March 1938 was provoked by Schuschnigg, not by Hitler. There had been no German preparations, military or diplomatic. Everything was improvised in a couple of days—policy, promises, armed force.62

  Taylor and Henderson are correct that Hitler had responded to Schuschnigg’s initiative. Yet it must not be forgotten that absorption of Austria into the Reich he now ruled conformed to Hitler’s vision from the time of Mein Kampf. Unlike the British Empire, which Lord Palmerston famously said had been “acquired in a fit of absentmindedness,” a Germanic empire existed in the mind of Hitler before it ever came to be. True, he was an opportunist, but he also knew where he wished to go. As of 1938, Hitler had taken what he wanted in the south, Austria, and let go of what he had always been willing to trade away: South Tyrol.

  For his Anschluss with Austria, however, Hitler would pay a price. His use of raw military power to overrun and annex a small neighbor stunned Europe. The Germans were no longer walking into their own back garden. Many who had been prepared to work with Hitler for redress of grievances dating to Versailles now began to think of standing up to him. Hitler had Austria, but Germany had lost any moral high ground it had held as the victim of Versailles. Moreover, the abominable public mistreatment of the Jews of Vienna by Austrian Nazis was reported across Europe and America. CBS’s William Shirer called it an “orgy of sadism.”63 The Anschluss was not an unmitigated triumph for the Third Reich.

  Why did Britain and France sit paralyzed? Why did they not act to stop the Anschluss? Consider the situation they confronted.

  Though naked aggression, invading Austria was not a premeditated act Hitler had been carefully plotting for months, or even weeks. After reoccupying the Rhineland in March 1936, Hitler had not made a move on the European chessboard for two years. There had been no confrontations with the Allies.

  Moreover, Austria was not an ally of Britain or France. She shared no common border with them. She had offered no resistance. From start to finish, the invasion did not last seventy-two hours. In town after town, thousands had cheered Hitler’s arrival in his native land. Mussolini shared a border with Austria and, in the 1934 crisis, had marched four divisions to the Brenner. But due to the British, French, and League of Nations sanctions of 1935, Italy was no longer a Stresa Front partner but Hitler’s ally in the Rome-Berlin axis.

  The Anschluss was a clear violation of Versailles, but the British had negotiated an Anglo-German naval treaty in 1935, which also violated the terms of Versailles. And if Britain and France had failed to resist German rearmament or German remilitarization of the Rhineland, a direct threat to France, why fight over a German Anschluss with an Austria of seven million Germans, who had no border with France?

  And how would the Allies resist the Anschluss? Had Britain sent an ultimatum to Hitler to get out of Austria and Hitler rejected it, how would Britain and France fight a war for Austrian independence? Britain had no draft and no army to send to France. The French army was dug deep inside the Maginot Line. How would they wage war on Germany? By a bombing campaign that would cause German bombs to rain down in retaliation on London and Paris?

  And if Austria and Germany wished to unite—99 percent of each nation would vote in favor of unification in April—on what moral and political ground could Britain and France stand to deny Austrians the right of self-determination that they had preached to the world at Versailles? Should they declare war and, after countless dead, defeat Germany, what would they do with Austria—if the Austrians had fought beside the Germans? Separate the nations again? A war to oppose Anschluss would mean a war to reimpose Versailles. But Chamberlain and Halifax believed Versailles had been a blunder, because Germans and Austrians had been denied the right of self-determination granted to Poles and Czechs. Faced with Anschluss, the Allies were militarily hamstrung and morally paralyzed.

  Halifax had supported Versailles, but he and Chamberlain had come to believe that Germany had been wronged and peace required the righting of those wrongs. They believed that Germans under Czech and Polish rule in 1938 should be granted the same right of self-determination extended to Poles and Czechs under German and Austro-Hungarian rule in 1919. They believed that addressing Germany’s valid grievances and escorting her back into Europe as a Great Power with equality of rights was the path to the peace they wished to build. Their problem was this: If they assisted Hitler in gathering into the Reich all Germans who wished to be part of the Reich, they would be helping to remake Germany into what she had been in 1914, the dominant power in Europe. But the ruler of Germany was now Adolf Hitler, and should he turn aggressor, as his words in Mein Kampf portended, he would be a graver threat than the Kaiser, who had almost conquered Europe. For Italy, Japan, and Russia, Britain’s allies in the Great War, were all now potential enemies. And America was gone from Europe.

  Through the 1930s, British principles clashed with British interests. Chamberlain, Halifax, the Cabinet, and Parliament believed that rectifying the wrongs of Versailles and granting Germans the right of self-determination was essential for any lasting peace. However, self-determination for Germans meant an Anschluss with Austria, and the amputation of German peoples and their ancestral lands from France’s allies Poland and Czechoslovakia. Some Britons, including Churchill, believed Britain should go to war, if necessary, to prevent the restoration of a Bismarckian Reich in Central Europe that encompassed Austria. European security, they believed, trumped any German claim to severed lands or lost peoples.

  Chamberlain and Halifax had to ask: If they fed this tiger, would it turn on them and devour them? Perhaps Britain should have killed the cub. But that issue was now academic, for the opportunity had passed in the time of MacDonald and Baldwin. “The watershed between the two world wars extended over precisely two years,” writes Taylor. “Post-war ended when Germany reoccupied the Rhineland on March 7, 1936; prewar began when she annexed Austria on March 13, 1938.”64

  After the Anschluss, Chamberlain wrote his sister to tell her that he planned to say to Hitler “it is no use crying over spilt milk and what we have to do now is consider how we can restore the confidence which you have shattered.”65 Chamberlain now mulled over an offer to Hitler of the return of some of the former German colonies in Africa.

  The Prime Minister still saw the return of colonies as a powerful gesture which it was hoped would calm down Germany’s expansionist ambitions in central and south-eastern Europe. Halifax seemingly placed even more emphasis on this point, having articulated the belief that colonial concessions were the only vital question between Britain and Germany.66

  It is a mark of the distance British leaders had traveled from reality that the prime minister and foreign minister entertained the idea, in March 1938, that Hitler might be diverted from his vision of restoring German lands and peoples in the east of Europe by the return of the Cameroons or Togoland.

  Where was Churchill at the time of Anschluss?

  In the Commons debate of March 14, Churchill called for a warning to be sent to Hitler that if he invaded any other country, Britain w
ould intervene to stop him.67 On March 24, he rose in Parliament and in a speech full of foreboding—“a kind of terror,” Robert Payne writes—spoke of the retreat of British power since the rise of Hitler:

  I have watched this famous island descending incontinently, fecklessly, the stairway which leads to a dark gulf. It is a fine, broad stairway at the beginning, but after a bit the carpet ends. A little farther on there are only flagstones, and a little farther on still these break beneath your feet…. Now the victors are vanquished, and those who threw down their arms in the field and sued for an armistice are striding on to world mastery.68

  CHAPTER 8

  Munich

  YOU HAVE ONLY to look at the map to see that nothing we or France could do could possibly save Czechoslovakia from being overrun by the Germans if they wanted to do it.1

  —NEVILLE CHAMBERLAIN

  March 1938

  If you have sacrificed my nation to preserve the peace of the world, I shall be the first to applaud you. But, if not, gentlemen, God help your souls.2

  —JAN MASARYK, CZECH AMBASSADOR,

  to Chamberlain and Halifax, 1938

  ON SEPTEMBER 30, 1938, after a private meeting at Hitler’s apartment, the prime minister flew home from Munich to Heston aerodrome. Emerging from his plane smiling, Neville Chamberlain waved aloft the declaration he and Hitler had signed that morning.