The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich

by William Shirer

  According to one of his woman secretaries, Hitler rushed from the signing into his office, embraced all the women present and exclaimed, “Children! This is the greatest day of my life! I shall go down in history as the greatest German!”

  It did not occur to him—how could it?—that the end of Czechoslovakia might be the beginning of the end of Germany. From this dawn of March 15, 1939—the Ides of March—the road to war, to defeat, to disaster, as we now know, stretched just ahead. It would be a short road and as straight as a line could be. And once on it, and hurtling down it, Hitler, like Alexander and Napoleon before him, could not stop.28

  At 6 A.M. on March 15 German troops poured into Bohemia and Moravia. They met no resistance, and by evening Hitler was able to make the triumphant entry into Prague which he felt Chamberlain had cheated him of at Munich. Before leaving Berlin he had issued a grandiose proclamation to the German people, repeating the tiresome lies about the “wild excesses” and “terror” of the Czechs which he had been forced to bring an end to, and proudly proclaiming, “Czechoslovakia has ceased to exist!”

  That night he slept in Hradschin Castle, the ancient seat of the kings of Bohemia high above the River Moldau where more recently the despised Masaryk and Beneš had lived and worked for the first democracy Central Europe had ever known. The Fuehrer’s revenge was complete, and that it was sweet he showed in the series of proclamations which he issued. He had paid off all the burning resentments against the Czechs which had obsessed him as an Austrian in his vagabond days in Vienna three decades before and which had flamed anew when Beneš dared to oppose him, the all-powerful German dictator, over the past year.

  The next day, from Hradschin Castle, he proclaimed the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia, which though it professed to provide “autonomy and self-government” for the Czechs brought them, by its very language, completely under the German heel. All power was given to the “Reich Protector” and to his Secretary of State and his Head of the Civil Administration, who were to be appointed by the Fuehrer. To placate outraged public opinion in Britain and France, Hitler brought the “moderate” Neurath out of cold storage and named him Protector.* The two top Sudeten leaders, Konrad Henlein and the gangster Karl Hermann Frank, were given an opportunity to get revenge on the Czechs by being appointed Head of the Civil Administration and Secretary of State respectively. It was not long before Himmler, as boss of the German police, got a stranglehold on the protectorate. To do his work, he made the notorious Frank chief of police of the protectorate and ranking S.S. officer.*

  For a thousand years [Hitler said in his proclamation of the protectorate] the provinces of Bohemia and Moravia formed part of the Lebensraum of the German people … Czechoslovakia showed its inherent inability to survive and has therefore now fallen a victim to actual dissolution. The German Reich cannot tolerate continuous disturbances in these areas … Therefore the German Reich, in keeping with the law of self-preservation, is now resolved to intervene decisively to rebuild the foundations of a reasonable order in Central Europe. For in the thousand years of its history it has already proved that, thanks to the greatness and the qualities of the German people, it alone is called upon to undertake this task.

  A long night of German savagery now settled over Prague and the Czech lands.

  On March 16, Hitler took Slovakia too under his benevolent protection in response to a “telegram,” actually composed in Berlin, as we have seen, from Premier Tiso. German troops quickly entered Slovakia to do the “protecting.” On March 18, Hitler was in Vienna to approve the “Treaty of Protection,” which, as signed on March 23 in Berlin by Ribbentrop and Dr. Tuka, contained a secret protocol giving Germany exclusive rights to exploit the Slovak economy.30

  As for Ruthenia, which had formed the eastern tip of Czechoslovakia, its independence as the “Republic of Carpatho-Ukraine,” proclaimed on March 14, lasted just twenty-four hours. Its appeal to Hitler for “protection” was in vain. Hitler had already awarded this territory to Hungary. In the captured Foreign Office archives there is an interesting letter in the handwriting of Miklós Horthy, Regent of Hungary, addressed to Adolf Hitler on March 13.

  YOUR EXCELLENCY: Heartfelt thanks! 1 cannot express how happy I am, for this headwater region [Ruthenia] is for Hungary—I dislike using big words—a vital question.… We are tackling the matter with enthusiasm. The plans are already laid. On Thursday, the 16th, a frontier incident will take place, to be followed Saturday by the big thrust.31

  As things turned out, there was no need for an “incident.” Hungarian troops simply moved into Ruthenia at 6 A.M. on March 15, timing their entry with that of the Germans to the west, and on the following day the territory was formally annexed by Hungary.

  Thus by the end of the day of March 15, which had started in Berlin at 1:15 A.M. when Hácha arrived at the Chancellery, Czechoslovakia, as Hitler said, had ceased to exist.

  Neither Britain nor France made the slightest move to save it, though at Munich they had solemnly guaranteed Czechoslovakia against aggression.

  Since that meeting not only Hitler but Mussolini had reached the conclusion that the British had become so weak and their Prime Minister, as a consequence, so accommodating that they need pay little further attention to London. On January 11, 1939, Chamberlain, accompanied by Lord Halifax, had journeyed to Rome to seek improvement in Anglo-Italian relations. This writer happened to be at the station in Rome when the two Englishmen arrived and noted in his diary the “fine smirk” on Mussolini’s face as he greeted his guests. “When Mussolini passed me,” I noted as the party left the station, “he was joking with his son-in-law [Ciano], passing wisecracks.”32 I could not, of course, catch what he was saying, but later Ciano, in his diary, revealed the gist of it.

  Arrival of Chamberlain. [Ciano wrote on January 11 and 12] … How far apart we are from these people! It is another world. We were talking about it after dinner with the Duce. “These men are not made of the same stuff,” he was saying, “as the Francis Drakes and the other magnificent adventurers who created the Empire. These, after all, are the tired sons of a long line of rich men, and they will lose their Empire.”

  The British do not want to fight. They try to draw back as slowly as possible, but they do not fight … Our conversations with the British have ended. Nothing was accomplished. I have telephoned Ribbentrop that the visit was “a big lemonade” [a farce]….

  I accompanied the Duce to the station on the departure of Chamberlain [Ciano wrote on January 14]…. Chamberlain’s eyes filled with tears when the train started moving and his countrymen began singing “For He’s a Jolly Good Fellow.” “What is this little song?” the Duce asked.33

  Though during the Sudeten crisis Hitler had been solicitous of Chamberlain’s views, there is not a word in the captured German papers to indicate that thereafter he cared a whit what the Prime Minister thought of his destroying the rest of Czechoslovakia despite the British guarantee—and, for that matter, despite the Munich Agreement. On March 14, as Hitler waited in Berlin to humble Hácha, and as angry questions were raised in the House of Commons in London about Germany’s engineering Slovakia’s “secession” and about its effect on Britain’s guarantee to Prague against aggression, Chamberlain replied heatedly, “No such aggression has taken place.”

  But the next day, March 15, after it had taken place, the Prime Minister used the proclamation of Slovakia’s “independence” as an excuse not to honor his country’s word. “The effect of this declaration,” he explained, “put an end by internal disruption to the State whose frontier we had proposed to guarantee. His Majesty’s Government cannot accordingly hold themselves any longer bound by this obligation.”

  Hitler’s strategy had thus worked to perfection. He had given Chamberlain his out and the Prime Minister had taken it.

  It is interesting that the Prime Minister did not even wish to accuse Hitler of breaking his word. “I have so often heard charges of breach of faith bandied about which did not
seem to me to be founded upon sufficient premises,” he said, “that I do not wish to associate myself today with any charges of that character.” He had not one word of reproach for the Fuehrer, not even for his treatment of Hácha and the shabby swindle which obviously—even if the details were still unknown—had been perpetrated at the Reich Chancellery on the early morning of this day, March 15.

  No wonder that the British protest that day, if it could be called that,* was so tepid, and that the Germans treated it—and subsequent Anglo–French complaints—with so much arrogance and contempt.

  His Majesty’s Government have no desire to interfere unnecessarily in a matter with which other Governments may be more directly concerned…. They are, however, as the German Government will surely appreciate, deeply concerned for the success of all efforts to restore confidence and a relaxation of tension in Europe. They would deplore any action in Central Europe which would cause a setback to the growth of this general confidence … 34

  There was not a word in this note, which was delivered on March 15 by Ambassador Henderson to Ribbentrop as an official message from Lord Halifax, about the specific events of the day.

  The French were at least specific. Robert Coulondre, the new ambassador of France in Berlin, shared neither his British colleague’s illusions about Nazism nor Henderson’s disdain of the Czechs. On the morning of the fifteenth he demanded an interview with Ribbentrop, but the vain and vindictive German Foreign Minister was already on his way to Prague, intending to share in Hitler’s humiliation of a beaten people. State Secretary von Weizsaecker received Coulondre, instead, at noon. The ambassador lost no time in saying what Chamberlain and Henderson were not yet ready to say: that by its military intervention in Bohemia and Moravia, Germany had violated both the Munich Agreement and the Franco–German declaration of December 6. Baron von Weizsaecker, who later was to insist that he had been stoutly anti-Nazi all along, was in an arrogant mood that would have done credit to Ribbentrop. According to his own memorandum of the meeting,

  I spoke rather sharply to the Ambassador and told him not to mention the Munich Agreement, which he alleged had been violated, and not to give us any lectures … I told him that in view of the agreement reached last night with the Czech government I could see no reason for any démarche by the French ambassador … and that I was sure he would find fresh instructions when he returned to his Embassy, and these would set his mind at rest.35

  Three days later, on March 18, when the British and French governments, in deference to outraged public opinion at home, finally got around to making formal protests to the Reich, Weizsaecker fairly outdid his master, Ribbentrop, in his insolence—again on his own evidence. In a memorandum found in the German Foreign Office files, he tells with evident glee how he refused even to accept the formal French note of protest.

  I immediately replaced the Note in its envelope and thrust it back at the Ambassador with the remark that I categorically refused to accept from him any protest regarding the Czecho-Slovak affair. Nor would I take note of the communication, and I would advise M. Coulondre to urge his government to revise the draft … 36

  Coulondre, unlike Henderson at this period, was not an envoy who could be browbeaten by the Germans. He retorted that his government’s note had been written after due consideration and that he had no intention of asking for it to be revised. When the State Secretary continued to refuse to accept the document, the ambassador reminded him of common diplomatic practice and insisted that France had a perfect right to make known its views to the German government. Finally Weizsaecker, according to his own account, left the note lying on his desk, explaining that he “would regard it as transmitted to us through the post.” But before he arrived at this impudent gesture, he got the following off his mind:

  From the legal point of view there existed a Declaration which had come about between the Fuehrer and the President of the Czecho-Slovak State. The Czech President, at his own request, had come to Berlin and had then immediately declared that he wished to place the fate of his country in the Fuehrer’s hands. 1 could not imagine that the French Government were more Catholic than the Pope and intended meddling in things which had been duly settled between Berlin and Prague.*

  Weizsaecker behaved quite differently to the accommodating British ambassador, who transmitted his government’s protest late on the afternoon of March 18. Great Britain now held that it could not “but regard the events of the past few days as a complete repudiation of the Munich Agreement” and that the “German military actions” were “devoid of any basis of legality.” Weizsaecker, in recording it, noted that the British note did not go as far in this respect as the French protest, which said that France “would not recognize the legality of the German occupation.”

  Henderson had gone to see Weizsaecker on March 17 to inform him of his recall to London for “consultations” and, according to the State Secretary, had sounded him out “for arguments which he could give Chamberlain for use against the latter’s political opposition … Henderson explained that there was no direct British interest in the Czechoslovak territory. His—Henderson’s—anxieties were more for the future.”37

  Even Hitler’s destruction of Czechoslovakia apparently had not awakened the British ambassador to the nature of the government he was accredited to, nor did he seem aware of what was happening that day to the government which he represented.

  For, suddenly and unexpectedly, Neville Chamberlain, on March 17, two days after Hitler extinguished Czechoslovakia, had experienced a great awakening. It had not come without some prodding. Greatly to his surprise, most of the British press (even the Times, but not the Daily Mail) and the House of Commons had reacted violently to Hitler’s latest aggression. More serious, many of his own backers in Parliament and half of the cabinet had revolted against any further appeasement of Hitler. Lord Halifax, especially, as the German ambassador informed Berlin, had insisted that the Prime Minister recognize what had happened and abruptly change his course.38 It dawned on Chamberlain that his own position as head of government and leader of the Conservative Party was in jeopardy.

  His radical change of mind came abruptly. As late as the evening of March 16, Sir John Simon, on behalf of the government, had made a speech in the Commons which was so cynical in regard to the Czechs, and so much in the “Munich spirit,” that according to press accounts it aroused the House to “a pitch of anger rarely seen.” The next day, on the eve of his seventieth birthday, Chamberlain was scheduled to make a speech in his home city of Birmingham. He had drafted an address on domestic matters with special emphasis on the social services. On the afternoon train going up to Birmingham, according to an account given this writer by French diplomatic sources, Chamberlain finally made his decision. He jettisoned his prepared speech and quickly jotted down notes for one of quite a different kind.

  To all of Britain and indeed to large parts of the world, for the speech was broadcast, Chamberlain apologized for “the very restrained and cautious … somewhat cool and objective statement” which he had felt obliged to make in the Commons two days before. “I hope to correct that statement tonight,” he said.

  The Prime Minister at last saw that Adolf Hitler had deceived him. He recapitulated the Fuehrer’s various assurances that the Sudetenland had been his last territorial demand in Europe and that he “wanted no Czechs.” Now Hitler had gone back on them—“he has taken the law into his own hands.”

  Now we are told that this seizure of territory has been necessitated by disturbances in Czechoslovakia…. If there were disorders, were they not fomented from without? … Is this the end of an old adventure or is it the beginning of a new? Is this the last attack upon a small State or is it to be followed by others? Is this, in effect, a step in the direction of an attempt to dominate the world by force? … While I am not prepared to engage this country by new and unspecified commitments operating under conditions which cannot now be foreseen, yet no greater mistake could be made than to suppose that be
cause it believes war to be a senseless and cruel thing, this nation has so lost its fiber that it will not take part to the utmost of its power in resisting such a challenge if it ever were made.

  This was an abrupt and fateful turning point for Chamberlain and for Britain, and Hitler was so warned the very next day by the astute German ambassador in London. “It would be wrong,” Herbert von Dirksen notified the German Foreign Office in a lengthy report on March 18, “to cherish any illusions that a fundamental change has not taken place in Britain’s attitude to Germany.”39

  It was obvious to anyone who had read Mein Kampf, who glanced at a map and saw the new positions of the German Army in Slovakia, who had wind of certain German diplomatic moves since Munich, or who had pondered the dynamics of Hitler’s bloodless conquests of Austria and Czechoslovakia in the past twelve months, just which of the “small states” would be next on the Fuehrer’s list. Chamberlain, like almost everyone else, knew perfectly well.

  On March 31, sixteen days after Hitler entered Prague, the Prime Minister told the House of Commons:

  In the event of any action which clearly threatened Polish independence and which the Polish Government accordingly considered it vital to resist with their national forces, His Majesty’s Government would feel themselves bound at once to lend the Polish Government all support in their power. They have given the Polish Government an assurance to this effect. I may add that the French Government have authorized me to make it plain that they stand in the same position in this matter.