Goering

by Roger Manvell

  Chamberlain returned to Germany and met Hitler at Godesberg on September 22, in the hotel from which Hitler had planned the final stages of his campaign against Roehm. The Prime Minister was appalled to find that Hitler was now no longer satisfied with the Czech capitulation; he demanded immediate military occupation of the Sudetenland by his forces. Hitler did not want capitulation, he wanted the destruction of Czechoslovakia. A military occupation of the Sudetenland would humiliate Beneš and demonstrate his own strength in Europe. Chamberlain, angry, worried and grieved, but still ready to act as mediator, retired to his hotel on the opposite bank of the Rhine. Notes were exchanged across the river between the two hotels, while the world’s press grew hungry for hard news. Finally Chamberlain and Hitler met with their advisers in the middle of the night, over the memorandum which Hitler had produced in response to Chamberlain’s request, and which the latter felt was an ultimatum to Czechoslovakia. No, said Hitler, not an ultimatum, a memorandum, and, as a simulated concession to Chamberlain, he altered the date of the occupation from September 26 to October 1, the date he had always had in mind. Ribbentrop, but not Goering, was present at this meeting. While Chamberlain flew back to London, Henderson in deep depression knelt in the vast emptiness of Cologne Cathedral and prayed for peace.

  In the matter of Czechoslovakia, Goering, along with the generals whom Hitler despised, was on the side of moderation. In taking this position he sacrificed to some extent the warmth of his relationship with the Führer to his rival Ribbentrop, who, new to the experience of power, took every cue from Hitler in order to retain his master’s favor. In the current situation, it was a matter of who dared to bluff longest, and Hitler had most to gain by bluffing and the right temperament to play the game. When he learned that the Godesberg ultimatum was rejected not only by Prague but also by the cabinets of France and Britain, he delivered a wild, violent, uncontrolled speech against Beneš at the Sportpalast on September 26, claiming he would have the Sudetenland at any cost by October 1. He went to the limit in challenging the timidity of Britain and France, but, in doing so, brought protests on his head from other quarters, including the remote and isolated United States. Prague now claimed to have a million men under arms, and France was mobilizing. The German public were utterly unresponsive to the idea of a noble war. Hitler, according to Schmidt, who translated his urgent letter to Chamberlain on the night of September 27, seemed to be shrinking from the “extreme step,” but Goering had told Henderson during the day that if the Czech government did not accept the terms of the Godesberg memorandum by two o’clock the following day, mobilization and action would follow. He was “neither nervous nor excited, but absolutely confident,” wrote Henderson to Halifax. On September 28 Hitler kept in touch with Goering, the generals and Ribbentrop. Goering, according to Jodl, was saying, “A great war can hardly be avoided any longer. It may last seven years, and we will win it.” Even the British fleet was mobilized. During the morning the British, French and Italian ambassadors all intervened under instruction; François-Poncet had to seek Henderson’s help to secure an interview with Hitler. Henderson telephoned Goering and told him that it was a matter of fresh proposals, and that peace or war would result. Goering did not wait to hear what the proposals were. “You need not say a word more,” he said to Henderson. “I am going immediately to see the Führer.”

  Goering saw Hitler and again urged a peaceful solution by negotiation. He was supported by Schwerin von Krosigk and Neurath. According to Henderson, who regarded Goering at this supreme moment in the light of a friend and an ally for the British and French ambassadors, he most vehemently accused Ribbentrop of inciting war. It was even said that he “shouted that he knew what war was, and he did not want to go through it again,” though of course, if the Führer ordered it, “he would go himself in the first and leading plane,” and that “Ribbentrop should be in the seat next to him.” How much of this Goering roared in the presence of Hitler and how much to the men congregated in the anterooms of the Chancellery cannot now be determined, but Henderson maintained that Goering called Ribbentrop a “criminal fool” in front of Hitler. How far Goering was influential in diverting Hitler from war also cannot be known, for it was at this juncture that Mussolini himself intervened with a plea for the postponement of hostilities and an offer to join personally in mediation with the Czechs. Arrangements were made for Mussolini, Chamberlain, French Premier Daladier and Hitler to meet in Munich the following day. When Chamberlain announced this in the House of Commons the hysterical outburst of relief created a wild and disturbing scene. Jan Masaryk, the Czech ambassador to Britain, was there and looked on appalled by this shameful display. No representative of Czechoslovakia had been invited to Munich. Simultaneously, the German generals canceled their plot to remove Hitler from power, and forever after they used Chamberlain’s and Daladier’s assent to Munich as their excuse for inaction.

  Goering used the intervention of Mussolini to edge Ribbentrop out of being a principal in formulating the Munich agreement. At Nuremberg he described how Attolico, the Italian ambassador to Germany, telephoned him at the orders of Mussolini before seven in the morning and insisted on seeing him personally and not Ribbentrop. Goering claimed that, accompanied by Attolico and Neurath (who was still influential with Hitler and held the artificial title of chairman of the Secret Cabinet Council, a body that did not exist), he went to see Hitler and persuaded him to accept Mussolini’s offer. When in the afternoon Goering learned from François-Poncet that Daladier would join the conference, he cried, “Gott sei Dank! Bravo!” Goering, Neurath and Baron von Weizsaecker, State Secretary of the Foreign Ministry, who was deeply distressed at what he regarded as Ribbentrop’s irresponsibility, together drafted a written proposal which should be presented the following day as Mussolini’s personal solution to the problem. When Hitler had approved also, Schmidt translated it into French at their request, and the translation was given to the Italian ambassador for presentation by Mussolini the following day, when it reappeared at the Munich conference in Italian and was duly retranslated into German by Schmidt. The proposals contained in this much translated document were designed to circumvent further trouble, and Mussolini’s authority was needed to forestall a plan that Ribbentrop was anxious to put forward himself. It was, in Henderson’s words, “a combination of Hitler’s and the Anglo-French proposals,” and Mussolini accepted the subterfuge in order to smooth the path to peace and avoid what everyone present, except perhaps Hitler himself and his shadow Ribbentrop, regarded as “a futile and senseless war.” Before Goering had left for Munich he had told Bodenschatz that he would do everything he could to avert hostilities.

  Hitler was in a bad mood throughout the negotiations. When the protocol was at last ready for signature at two in the morning both Goering and Mussolini were “jubilant” and the atmosphere grew relaxed, though Hitler was nervous and moody; he sat glaring, crossing and uncrossing his legs. When the time for signature came, the inkstand was found to contain no ink.

  When all was done, Goering emerged from the conference room and exclaimed to everyone, “This is peace.” On October 1 German troops crossed the frontier into the Sudeten territory. The same day Goering summoned Mastny to his office and told him Hitler would no longer tolerate Beneš as the Czech head of state. Unless he resigned, Germany would be completely ruthless. Beneš resigned on October 5, left Prague the following day and stayed on his estate in southern Bohemia until, on October 22, he finally left his country and went into exile in England. He was succeeded as President by Dr. Emil Hácha, an elderly and frail judge.

  For a few more months Czechoslovakia was kept in being, though both Poland and Hungary seized, on threat of force, a further 8,150 square miles of territory in which there were Polish and Hungarian minorities. The country was ruined, both militarily and economically.

  Czechoslovakia’s loss was Germany’s gain; for example, Germany acquired the Skoda works. Within a matter of days Hitler was planning the “liquidation
” of the remainder of the country and looking ahead to the occupation of Memel. At a staff conference Goering had held on October 14, he was blunt about the future exploitation of the Sudetenland and added that “Czechia and Slovakia would become German domains,” and that “everything possible must be taken out.” On October 17 Ferdinand Durcansky, the Slovak leader, and Franz Karmasin, a leader of the German minority in Slovakia, met Goering in Berlin to discuss the establishment of complete independence for Slovakia, following the autonomy she had secured after Munich. They wanted, they said, “very close political, economic and military ties with Germany.” Goering noted afterward, “A Czech State minus Slovakia is even more completely at our mercy. Air base in Slovakia for operation against the East is very important.” When he met Durcansky again on November 11, he said that he himself favored the creation of an independent Slovakian State and “an autonomous Ukraine oriented toward this independent Slovakia.”15

  During October, Hitler endeavored to create a diplomatic split between France and Britain. He took François-Poncet up to the high mountain retreat known as Eagle’s Nest and there tempted him by expressing his love for France and his hatred for Britain, in spite of the little certificate of peace he had signed at Chamberlain’s request to sweeten the Prime Minister’s return to Britain. Goering was quoted in the press as saying, “With a man like Monsieur Daladier it is possible to make politics.” A Franco-German agreement was proposed.

  The notes made by Goering after a conversation he had with Lipski on October 21 survive. “Maintain contact; avoid misunderstandings,” he scribbled, and then he noted the principal worry expressed by Lipski, which was over Carpatho-Ukraine, a territory of Slovakia where Poland was afraid there might be a Communist uprising. Lipski wanted this particular area to be ceded to Hungary, but not the whole of Slovakia, which lay along her southern frontier. Poland by now, in fact, was beginning to play the part of a European power, and it pleased Germany for a while to flatter her; nevertheless, Ribbentrop now began to bargain for Danzig, using Carpatho-Ukraine as a lever. That these were not the first conversations on such matters with Poland is suggested by a report to Halifax by the British ambassador in Warsaw dated October 25 saying Goering had been bargaining along these lines with Lipski before that date.

  On November 2 Ciano met Goering in Vienna. He was, Ciano noted, wearing a flashy gray suit, an old-fashioned tie passed through a ruby ring, with more rubies in the rings on his fingers, and he had a large Nazi eagle set with diamonds in his buttonhole. Ciano thought he looked like Al Capone. Goering tried in vain to interest Ciano in his denunciations of the Hungarians, who, he claimed, were in league with the democracies. Then he attacked King Boris of Bulgaria for planning a union with Yugoslavia. Ciano remained bored and Goering returned to Berlin, where the November pogrom was about to take place, and gave his attention to the economic problems presented by the Jews.

  Robert Coulondre, the new French ambassador to Berlin, first met Goering toward the end of November and was most surprised when Goering deliberately suggested that he should circumvent any difficulties he might experience in dealing with Ribbentrop by coming directly to him. Goering took the ambassador aside and warned him of the gravity of the general strike which was due to take place in France the following day—the work, he warned, of the Communists.

  During January and February 1939, Goering’s health began to trouble him increasingly and interfered with his work. Ever since his attitude prior to the Munich Conference he had been out of favor with Hitler, and the range of the duties he had undertaken began to weigh down on him. He spent more time at Rominten and Carinhall, and the field of foreign affairs was left open to Ribbentrop. On February 18 Henderson reported to Halifax that Goering, whom he had seen that morning, had told him he was extremely tired; he “had taken off forty pounds in weight and wanted to remove sixty.” So he was going away soon for a holiday. “People can make what mistakes they like,” he said to Henderson. “I shall not care.” Goering went on to say how much he feared British rearmament if her comparatively unstable government fell and was replaced by one with Churchill as Prime Minister. Henderson tried to allay his fears and said that the threat lay rather in unremitting German rearmament, “just as if Munich had never been.” Goering then claimed that Germany was unable to afford her rearmament; both he and Hitler would far rather be spending the money on beautiful buildings and the improvement of social conditions. Henderson came away convinced of Goering’s sincerity. “I believe, in fact, that he would now like in his heart to return to the fold of comparative respectability,” wrote Henderson. “As the Field Marshal said to me this morning, tyrants who go against the will of their people always come to a bad end.”

  Goering was in need of a holiday. He was suffering from an inflammation of the jaw which resulted in an abscess that had to be treated for three weeks by one of his doctors, Professor von Eiken. Goering had been invited by Balbo in 1938 to visit Tripoli, and at the end of February, when he was convalescent, he decided to accept the invitation and combine it with a holiday in San Remo. He and Emmy went to Tripoli from Naples on the German ship Monserate. On the way back Goering wanted to put into Spain to meet Franco, but when the ship was in sight of Valencia the visit was suddenly cancelled, much to Goering’s annoyance, and the party landed at Genoa and then traveled by land to San Remo. Ribbentrop had heard of the projected visit and effected its cancellation. On March 12, when they were in San Remo, Hitler suddenly ordered Goering to return at once to Berlin.

  Throughout the winter the Czechs had been subjected to merciless bullying by Hitler and Ribbentrop which reduced their government to a state of vassalage, and the promised guarantee to their frontiers was not ratified by either France or Britain. Only once did the Czech government rebel against this endless provocation. This was early in March, when Hácha dissolved the troublesome autonomous governments of Slovakia and Ruthenia, arrested their leaders and, on March 10, proclaimed martial law. It was a fatal decision; it gave Hitler the excuse he wanted to use force and at the same time Chamberlain and Daladier an opportunity to turn their faces away from the dismembered country whose frontiers they were supposed to protect. On March 13 he forced the Slovak leaders to declare their independence, and on the same night the pathetic scene took place in Berlin when Hácha, old and abject, his face flushed with agitation, pleaded for what was left of his country before the contemptuous eyes of Hitler and Ribbentrop.

  Hitler realized instinctively the values of melodrama and the effectiveness of conducting one-sided negotiations in the small hours of the night, when the world outside is dark and empty and both courage and the capability to resist are at their lowest. The lights were shaded in Hitler’s study. Hácha was alone at the Chancellery except for his Foreign Minister, Chvalkovsky, and they had been kept waiting in an anteroom until after one o‘clock. Hitler listened to the President’s broken voice and then coldly informed him invasion would begin at six o’clock. It rested with him, said Hitler, whether the German entry would be accepted peaceably by the Czechs or made the occasion for armed resistance and immediate bloody defeat.

  Hácha had sat motionless while Hitler talked; only his eyes, said Schmidt afterward, showed he was alive. He suffered from a weakened heart. Helplessly he asked Hitler what he could possibly do in the time left to him. Hitler told him to telephone Prague at once and make the best arrangements he could; then he was dismissed and conducted from Hitler’s presence by Goering and Ribbentrop, who began at once to urge him to make an immediate decision. Schmidt, meanwhile, was attempting to reach Prague by telephone, only to find that the line was out of order. While Ribbentrop raged at the telephone exchange, Goering bullied Hácha. At Nuremberg he admitted threatening to bomb Prague in order, as he put it, “to accelerate the whole matter.”16 The line to Prague was cleared, but when Hácha began to speak it failed once more. Ribbentrop was beside himself with anger, but all he could do was threaten the dismissal of the telephone supervisor and the operating staff
. Suddenly Goering’s voice could be heard shouting for Dr. Morell, Hitler’s physician, who was in attendance, it seemed by some thoughtful prearrangement. “Hácha has fainted!” cried Goering, in great agitation. “I hope nothing happens to him. It has been a very strenuous day for such an old man.” The one thing no one wanted was for Hácha to die in Hitler’s Chancellery. Using a hypodermic needle provided by Goering,17 Morell revived the President by administering injections, and he recovered sufficiently to speak to Prague when a line was hastily improvised. By four o’clock in the morning of March 15 Czechoslovakia’s independence was signed away, and by evening Hitler stood triumphant in Prague. He had at last overcome the frustrations of Munich, but in doing so he had finally destroyed the mood of appeasement in both Britain and France.

  On March 16, while Hitler was still away, Lipski, the Polish ambassador, called on Goering and complained bitterly that for five days he had been trying vainly to see either Ribbentrop or Weizsaecker. He protested that such treatment was intolerable when Germany was taking an action in Slovakia that vitally affected Poland. Goering passed the matter off as innocently as he could, saying he had only just come back from his holiday in Italy. Poland was in fact alarmed at this sudden extension of her frontiers with Germany, and she was even more discomfited when, less than a week later, on March 22, Lithuania ceded Memel to Germany. It provided only too likely a precedent for Danzig, over which there was a growing dispute between Ribbentrop and Józef Beck. By the end of the month the rift between Poland and Germany over Danzig and the Corridor was public knowledge, and on March 30 Chamberlain so abandoned his policy of appeasement as to give Beck assurances of British and French support in the event of any threat to Polish independence. On March 31 Chamberlain repeated these assurances in the House of Commons. On April 3 Hitler, after fulminating in public over Britain and Poland, issued his top-secret orders (the famous Operation White) requiring the German forces to be ready by September 1, 1939, to make a surprise attack on Poland. On April 6 Britain signed a pact of mutual assistance with Poland, in spite of the latter’s obsolete Army and Air Force and the foolhardiness of her militaristic leaders. Meanwhile, a visit by the president of the British Board of Trade to Germany was canceled, and Goering expressed, according to Henderson, “the utmost indignation that it should be cancelled for such a trifle!”