While these events were unfolding in the eastern provinces of the Czech state, the German press was ablaze with stories of alleged Czech atrocities against the German minority in Bohemia and Moravia. Such tales by now had a familiar ring, reprising the allegations being reported in Nazi newspapers from the previous August. Prague denied these charges, but it hardly mattered. Fearing that a German invasion was looming, Hacha and his foreign minister, Frantisek Chvalkovsky, decided, despite the unhappy experiences of Schuschnigg and Benes, to make a personal appeal to Hitler. On March 14 they traveled by train to Berlin, but the elderly Hacha, who was suffering from a serious heart condition, was kept waiting for hours before being admitted to Hitler’s study. Exhausted from an already trying day, he made an abject appeal to Hitler, in which he voiced his own doubts as to whether an independent Czechoslovakian state was viable, and asked whether a German invasion might be averted if the Czech army disarmed itself. Perhaps then the Führer might recognize the rights of Czechs to live an independent national life.
It was a pitiful performance. When Hacha had finished his remarks, Hitler launched into a tirade, ranting against the reign of Benes and Masaryk and announcing that he had no confidence in the present Czech government. In just a few short hours, the German army would descend on Czechoslovakia, and the Luftwaffe would begin bombing Czech targets. Hacha had two choices: if the invasion encountered armed resistance, Czech forces would be ruthlessly crushed. The alternative was that German troops be allowed to enter in a peaceable manner. If that was the case, then Hitler would be open to the possibility of some sort of autonomy for the Czechs, who would retain something of their national freedom. This part of his offer was altogether vague, but if the Czechs resisted, the Wehrmacht would mercilessly demolish the Czech army, and Göring’s Luftwaffe would destroy Prague. It was 2 a.m. German troops would begin their invasion in just four hours.
Overwrought and weary, Hacha fainted. A general panic ensued. The Nazis couldn’t afford to have the president of Czechoslovakia die in the Reich Chancellery in the middle of the night. Hitler’s personal physician was hastily summoned and administered an injection, and Hacha revived. He had barely come to when he was confronted by a written statement prepared by Ribbentrop, inviting the Reich to establish order in the beleaguered Czech state. At first Hacha refused to sign and was literally pursued around the table by Ribbentrop and Göring, who, cajoling and threatening, kept thrusting the agreement at him. After a second injection, a resigned and despondent Hacha signed the document, inviting German forces to enter Bohemia and Moravia and placing “the fate of the Czech people in the hands of the Führer.” It was the death certificate of Czechoslovakia. Beside himself with joy, Hitler bounded into his secretaries’ room and gushed: “Kiss me, children. This is the greatest day of my life! I shall go down in history as the greatest German.”
At 6 a.m. on March 15, German troops crossed the frontier. Obeying Hacha’s order, the formidable Czech army offered no resistance. Later that day Hitler began an automobile journey to Prague in a blinding snowstorm. His ten-car motorcade passed through columns of German soldiers trudging in the snow and ice, until at last they reached the city and Hitler installed himself in the Hradschin Castle, ancient residence of the kings of Bohemia. Next day he signed a decree announcing the creation of the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia and also placed the newly independent state of Slovakia under German protection. Himmler’s SS was already at work. For the Jews of Czechoslovakia, the nightmare was just beginning. Ruthenia, having served its purpose, Hitler left to the Hungarians, who eagerly gobbled it up. Three days later, Germany seized Memel, a thin slice of formerly German territory on the northeastern border of East Prussia, which had been ceded to Lithuania in the Versailles settlement. The move was unopposed.
The German occupation of Bohemia and Moravia came as a surprise to the German public and the international community and hence lacked the drama that had characterized Hitler’s absorption of the Sudetenland. But it was ominously clear that a decisive turning point in the foreign policy of the Third Reich had been reached. For the first time Hitler had seized a state that could in no way be justified by invoking the principle of national self-determination. Nor was it a matter of gaining equality for Germany in the international arena or protecting an oppressed German minority. The Nazi press, of course, continued to churn out Czech atrocity stories, but few outside Germany were paying attention. It was an act of naked aggression against a sovereign state and stripped away in one stroke Hitler’s mask of committed peacemaker and gallant defender of ethnic Germans stranded abroad by Versailles. No amount of high-minded rhetoric could hide what lay beneath.
Domestically the response was relief and admiration for the Führer, who had once again managed a great foreign policy coup without shedding German blood. He had created the Greater German Reich about which he had so often preached, and he had done so by audacity and daring. Despite the intense anti-Czech propaganda campaign that Goebbels had unleashed in February, the news caught the German public by surprise. Most felt that it provided yet another boost to Hitler’s stature, but the level of excitement did not match the public response to the dramatic resolution of the Sudeten crisis. And there was an undercurrent of uneasiness. Some found the move at odds with Hitler’s professed desire to purge Germany of all foreign elements; still others were convinced that this was not the last strike the Nazis would make. “The next would follow soon, one just doesn’t know where. When would this madness end?” Another Sopade report claimed that “a great anxiety prevails among the people. Almost everyone believes that war is inevitable.”
International opinion had already been shocked by the Nazi brutality of Kristallnacht, and Chamberlain’s policy of appeasement, long under assault from Conservative leader Winston Churchill and others in the Parliament, crashed virtually overnight. In a speech in Birmingham brimming with rueful indignation, Chamberlain excoriated Hitler’s brazen breach of faith. What was the world to make of Hitler’s promises now? he exclaimed.
No one believed that Hitler would long be satisfied with these triumphs. The occupation of Czechoslovakia had significantly strengthened Germany’s military. Large stocks of Czech military equipment fell into German hands as did the gigantic Skoda arms complex, the second largest in Europe, and Germany’s eastern frontier was greatly strengthened. Seizure of Prague’s foreign currency and gold reserves also reduced pressure on the German economy and eased the import for crucial raw materials. All across Europe observers now anticipated another move, and that move, it was widely assumed, would come against Poland. Germany’s relations with Poland had been strained since the Versailles settlement. Not only did the new Polish state receive the German provinces of West Prussia and Posen, but in order to give it access to the sea, it had been granted a corridor along the Vistula to the Baltic that separated Germany proper from East Prussia. Danzig, for centuries a German city, was detached from the Reich and declared a free city to be administered by the League of Nations. It was to be in effect Poland’s port on the Baltic. Despite these deeply resented territorial arrangements, Hitler had maintained surprisingly good relations with the conservative, anti-Marxist, anti-Russian, and notoriously anti-Semitic government of Poland during the first years of the Third Reich. In 1934 he had signed a nonaggression treaty with Warsaw, good for ten years, and at Munich had supported Polish claims to Czech territory.
Almost immediately after the fall of Prague, Ribbentrop approached the Polish ambassador, Jozef Lipski, with a proposal. The Reich desired the return of Danzig to Germany and wished to build an extraterritorial road or railway connecting East Prussia to the Reich. In return, Germany would allow Poland’s use of Danzig as a free port, assure Polish economic interests in the city, and guarantee Poland’s current borders. Hitler would also extend the German-Polish nonaggression treaty of 1934, even floating the idea of a mutual defense agreement aimed at the Soviet Union. Ribbentrop also suggested that the two countries might cooperate on t
he emigration of Jews from Poland.
The Poles flatly refused the German gambit. They had no desire to become a satellite of the Third Reich, and the Nazi liquidation of Czechoslovakia was not reassuring. Instead, on the last day of March, they reached an agreement with Britain, in which London pledged to defend Polish sovereignty and its frontiers. France quickly joined in the guarantee, and a week later that agreement was formalized in a treaty. A similar guarantee was issued by Britain and France to Greece and Romania. Announcing the pact, Chamberlain’s message was unambiguous: “In the event of any action which clearly threatens Polish independence and which the Polish Government accordingly consider it vital to resist with their national forces, H.M. Government would feel themselves bound at once to lend the Polish Government all support in their power.”
Hitler was furious but undaunted. He still could not bring himself to believe that if push came to shove, the British would actually intervene. Three days after Chamberlain’s announcement, Hitler directed his military to begin preparations for an invasion of Poland any time after September 1. Orders for an attack on Poland, code-named Case White, were formally issued on April 11, explaining that the mission of the Wehrmacht was the swift destruction of Polish military strength while the task of the political leadership was to isolate Poland diplomatically. A few days later, in a conversation with Romania’s foreign minister at the Reich Chancellery, Hitler vented his disdain for the British and his frustration at his inability to reach some sort of understanding with them. He had tried again and again to reach an agreement with London, he complained, only to be rebuffed. Well, if the British were determined to have a war, they could have it. “And it will be a war of unimaginable destructiveness,” he warned. “How can the English picture a modern war when they can’t even put two fully equipped divisions in the field!”
Despite these developments, Hitler still hoped to arrange a deal with Poland, recruiting Warsaw into an anti-Soviet alliance. But should Warsaw remain obdurate, plans for an invasion of Poland moved ahead. On April 15, with anxiety mounting over Hitler’s next move, President Roosevelt intervened. He had recalled America’s ambassador to Germany in the aftermath of Kristallnacht, and American newspapers had led the way in condemning the Nazi pogrom. Nearly a thousand editorials had been published in the American press in the weeks after Kristallnacht, Goebbels grumbled. “It is an open secret,” he continued, that the American president had “gathered around him a great number of Jewish advisers. One can just imagine what they are blaring into his ear.” Washington had joined London and Paris in fomenting the current “war psychosis” and was widely viewed as already allied with Great Britain.
It was perhaps then only mildly surprising when on April 15 Roosevelt addressed himself directly to the deteriorating situation in Europe. He sent what amounted to an open letter to Hitler, appealing for “assurances against further aggression.” Hitler had repeatedly asserted that neither he nor the German people wanted war, but it was clear in Roosevelt’s eyes—and, he implied, the world’s—that Germany was the source of the pervasive international tension. If it was true that neither Hitler nor the German people wanted war, as the Nazi leader maintained, then, the president stated, “there need be no war.” He went on to ask Hitler in the most straightforward terms whether he was prepared to give assurances that Germany harbored no aggressive intentions against an extensive list of countries in Europe and beyond. It was, according to Goebbels, “a shameless, hypocritical” document, composed by the “charlatan from Washington.”
Hitler responded in a much anticipated speech on April 28. It was to be an address of such importance that Britain and France returned their ambassadors, withdrawn in protest of the occupation of Bohemia and Moravia, to Berlin to hear it. Speaking before a packed Reichstag in the Kroll Opera House, he began with a vigorous defense of his foreign policy, justifying German action in a crumbling Czechoslovakia as an act to preserve peace and stability in Central Europe. He valued friendship with Britain, but the British had obviously come to view war with Germany as inevitable and had acted in a manner inconsistent with the Anglo-German Naval Agreement of 1935. “Now that journalists and officials in England publicly advocate opposition to Germany in any case, and this is confirmed by the well known policy of encirclement, then the foundations on which the Anglo-German Naval Agreement rested have been destroyed.” He resolved, therefore, to withdraw from the Naval Agreement. At this the Reichstag erupted in thunderous applause. As for the Poles, their new alliance with England and their refusal to enter discussions with Germany were inconsistent with the German-Polish Friendship Treaty of 1934, and he renounced that as well.
Finally, toward the close of his remarks, Hitler addressed himself directly to Roosevelt’s letter. It was a masterpiece of sarcasm, a combination of faux humility and mockery that left his audience roaring with appreciative laughter. Mr. Roosevelt had lectured him on the evils of war, he said, but who should know better than the German people who for twenty years had been victimized by an unjust treaty? The president seemed to believe that all problems could be solved at the conference table, but the United States had failed to ratify the Versailles Treaty that its own president, Woodrow Wilson, had inspired and helped draft. Roosevelt had expressed hopes for disarmament, as if that might be a solution to international tension, but, Hitler reminded the president, the German people had trusted another American president only to find that they alone were forced to disarm. Germany, he declared, had had enough of unilateral disarmament.
The denouement of his response came when he turned to Roosevelt’s demand for a promise that Germany would attack none of the states the president proceeded to list. Hitler rattled off the countries one by one that the president believed in danger—Latvia, Estonia, Lithuania, Poland, Belgium, Holland, France, Liechtenstein, Russia, Arabia, Iran, Turkey, Palestine, on and on, with the laughter building ever louder as the list grew longer. Hitler could barely contain himself, so delighted was he with his performance and his witty humiliation of Roosevelt. He claimed to have sounded out these countries to inquire whether they felt threatened by Germany or if they had requested the president to voice their anxieties. He had not done so, but no matter. The answer was in all cases no—except, he added with relish, that some countries—Syria, Arabia, Iran, and Palestine—were unable to respond due to their occupation by troops of the democratic nations. Nonetheless, he assured the American president that he fully understood that the “vastness of your nation and the immense wealth of your country allow you to feel responsible for the history of the whole world and the history of all nations. I, sir, am placed in a much smaller and modest sphere.” He could not feel himself responsible for the fate of the world, as this world took no interest in the pitiful fate of the German people. “I have regarded myself as called upon by Providence to serve my own people alone. I have lived day and night for the single task of awakening the powers of my people, in view of our desertion by the rest of the world. . . . Conditions prevailing in your country are on such a large scale that you can find time and leisure to give your attention to universal problems.” It was a bravura performance—many thought it the best speech he had ever delivered—and what it lacked in veracity or accuracy, it made up for in political theater. Goebbels, of course, exulted. Hitler had given Roosevelt “a public flogging. . . . The Führer is a genius of political tactics and strategy. No one is his equal. Compared to him, what a dwarf is a man like Roosevelt.”
Hitler’s speech settled no one’s nerves, either in Germany or abroad. It wasn’t intended to. Less than a month later, Ribbentrop pressed the Italians into signing the “Pact of Steel.” It was in many ways redundant, since a treaty between the two Axis dictators also existed, but this was a more sweeping and frankly aggressive document. The two regimes, bound together by the “inner affinity of their ideologies and the comprehensive solidarity of their interests,” pledged to give full political and diplomatic support to each other if their interests were threatened, an
d in the event of hostilities, would “act side by side and with united forces to secure their Lebensraum and to maintain peace.” The Pact of Steel, touted by the German press as “the mightiest alliance in world history,” did not cause an international stir, and it did not impress either the German public or military. Its purpose was to intimidate the West.
Shortly after this speech, Hitler summoned his top military commanders to a briefing on the Polish situation. After the Great War, Hitler began, a closed circle of victorious powers had established a balance of power without German participation. Germany’s revival under National Socialism had disturbed that balance, so that every effort by Germany to claim its legitimate rights was viewed as “breaking in.” Germany’s economic life demanded living space, and that could not be attained “without ‘breaking in’ to other countries or attacking other people’s possessions.” Acquiring Lebensraum was essential to the nation’s survival, and would have to be faced either now or in ten, twenty years’ time. The moment for expansion was now. “With regard to the present situation in Poland, it is not Danzig that is at stake. For us it is a matter of expanding our living space in the East and making food supplies secure. . . . Therefore there is no question of sparing Poland and we are left with the decision: To attack Poland at the first suitable opportunity.” Germany could “not expect a repetition of Czechoslovakia,” he declared bluntly. “There will be war,” and the key to victory was the isolation of Poland, a political task that was his responsibility. “It must not come to a simultaneous showdown with the West. An attack on Poland will only be successful if the West keeps out of the ring.” England “is our enemy and the showdown with England is a matter of life and death.” There was no question of “getting out cheaply. . . . We must then burn our boats, and it will no longer be a question of right or wrong but of to be or not to be for 80,000,000 people.”
The Third Reich Page 54
