1938: Hitler's Gamble

by MacDonogh, Giles

  In Berlin the Opposition was gritting its teeth. Something of Germany’s desperate economic problems became clear from a meeting between Ulrich von Hassell and Schacht on the day of Chamberlain’s talks with Hitler. Schacht was bitter about the Führer and referred to him as a ‘swindler’. He did not think that the talks with Chamberlain would do anything to prevent war. Schacht made it clear that Hitler needed more than just the border areas if he were to stave off economic disaster: all his secret funds and all Austria’s stolen reserves had been used up. He thought Germany was already in the red. When Hassell cautiously alluded to Schacht’s own responsibility in this, Schacht denied it: even as a cabinet minister he was informed of nothing. He did not know how they could get out of the mess unless they started printing money, and when that happened he would resign.37

  On the same day the Sudeten Freikorps seized the towns of Eger and Asch. More and more Sudeten Germans were crossing the border into Germany to avoid the conflict they imagined would break out any day now. A camp was built for them in Hirschberg in the Riesengebirge.38 Klemperer saw members of the Freikorps in Dresden on the 20th, poised to strike. He had no doubt as to the outcome: the Reich would win in the long run, either by force or by bluff. Nor did Hitler have any doubts, for the time being.39

  The raiding party that was to attack the Chancellery had been supplied with weapons by the Abwehr and lodged in safe houses and flats all over Berlin. The chief fear was that the putsch would be thwarted by the SS.40 In Munich, General Hoepner’s armoured division was ready to move against the SS, should there be an attempt to intervene. The Opposition had reason to believe that Hitler’s end was approaching. When Schulenburg saw streams of military vehicles heading towards Berlin from Mecklenburg on the 17th, he said, ‘Look, in a few days these troops will liberate us from the nightmare of Hitler.’ On 22 September he hurriedly despatched his growing family to the country estate of a friend to get them out of the way in the event of an uprising.41

  BAD GODESBERG

  At 8.50 on the night of the 20th, Masaryk reported to Beneš that ‘the Old Man will soon be on his travels again’.42 At 11 p.m. on 21 September, Hitler, Goebbels and Ribbentrop flew from Bavaria to Bad Godesberg near Bonn on the Rhine to meet Chamberlain. Hitler told the others that he wanted the Poles and Hungarians to attack so that he could push all the way to Prague. He was going to grant autonomy to Slovakia, but not to Bohemia or Moravia. The generals had plied him with memos, but he refused to be shaken from his path.43 A few hours later, Chamberlain took to the skies for the third time in his life. Hitler lodged at one of his favourite haunts, the Hotel Dreesen, which had been refurbished for the occasion, and Chamberlain was put up with his party in the Hotel Petersberg on the other side of the river. The British Prime Minister had been able to win round the French, and, after refusing at first, the Czechs had also given in. There was to be no plebiscite; a commission would settle the areas of mixed population and decree where transfers of population were to take place. Czechoslovakia’s current alliances would be dissolved. Instead Britain would form part of an international body to guarantee Czech independence and neutrality.

  Chamberlain had been receiving reassurances from Henderson, who had been speaking to a Göring anxious to minimize the risk of war. Sadly it was not Göring who was tugging at Hitler’s sleeve now but Ribbentrop. Göring had been lured away by the stags of Rominten, taking his old Richthofen Squadron cronies and Tsar Boris of Bulgaria with him, and was excelling himself at ridding the forests of East Prussia of horned beasts. Chamberlain was having no such luck. First, he was faced by a map, on which the Germans had carved out a very large slice of the Czech cake for themselves;v then, to his astonishment and dismay, Hitler said it was too late anyway. Events of the past few days had made his offer unacceptable.

  He mentioned the Poles and the Hungarians, and the grievances of the Sudetenländer, and said the matter needed to be settled by 1 October. The Czechs had to withdraw from the areas he had marked on a map, and allow these to be occupied by German armies. The immediate German occupation of the Sudetenland was the essential condition. It may have been that Hitler had received word that Beneš had no more intention of honouring his word than Hitler, although this was vigorously denied by Masaryk on the 28th.44 Göring’s Research Bureau had intercepted some revealing conversations between him, Mastny and Osusky, the Czech ambassador in Paris, spiced up with rude references to members of the British and French governments. Göring had presented the file to Henderson with obvious delight. They were not calculated to make the Czech case any more sympathetic.45 After three hours’ discussion Hitler took his guest out on the terrace. ‘Oh, Mr Prime Minister, I am so sorry: I had looked forward to showing you this beautiful view of the Rhine . . . but now it is hidden by the mist.’46

  Both parties withdrew to their hotels. All night a motorboat plied the Rhine taking messages from one to the other. Chamberlain had failed to understand that Hitler intended to destroy the Czech state and was simply using the German minority as a pretext. Hitler for his part had realized that he could safely ask for more, as Chamberlain was bound to concede. When Hitler refused to budge the following morning, Chamberlain sent word that there was nothing more for him to do, and he would return to London. Hitler entrusted his reply to Schmidt. It was in German, and his interpreter was to read it to Chamberlain, translating it as he went along. It took about an hour; then Schmidt, fortified with ‘the right stuff’, fled through the lines of journalists back to the ferry and the Rhine.47

  There was a final discussion between the heads of state at 10.30 p.m. on the 23rd. The British Prime Minister insisted that Sudeten Germans control the evacuation of the Czechs, rather than German troops. The Nazis thought this was another of Beneš’ tricks. In response Hitler insisted that the Czechs start to vacate the border areas on the 26th and complete them in forty-eight hours. Chamberlain threw up his arms in outrage, while Henderson, who liked to toss in a word or two of German, called it ‘Ein Diktat’.vi At this moment of deadlock, the door opened and an official brought Hitler a note. He read it and asked Schmidt to translate it for the British. It was Beneš’ order to mobilize. There was some question as to whether the Czechs had intended to wreck the talks by summoning their men to the colours; alternatively it might have been an Anglo-French ploy to force Hitler to compromise.48

  Hitler made his final ‘concession’: he took a pencil and changed the date for the Czech withdrawal to 1 October, the date set down long before for the attack on Czechoslovakia. Chamberlain brightened and Hitler told him that this would be the last territorial demand he would make in Europe. Chamberlain was to relay this pledge to the House of Commons. Before Chamberlain returned to Britain, Hitler’s official photographer, the drunkard Hoffmann,vii was able to snap the two leaders standing beside the ‘palm of peace’ in the hotel lobby.

  Halifax thought things had gone far enough. To Chamberlain’s dismay, the British Cabinet, which met on Sunday, 25 September, refused to accept Hitler’s demands and pledged support to France should they wish to launch military action. By all reports, however, the French were woefully unprepared for war.49 On behalf of the Czechs, Jan Masaryk handed over a memorandum rejecting the Bad Godesberg proposals. Daladier and Bonnet arrived in London to see Chamberlain and Halifax. As Goebbels had noted, Beneš was tougher than Schuschnigg and he thought the Czech ambassador to London superior to Dirksen, who was ‘shitting himself’.50

  Britain began to lumber into war. The French got tough, manned the Maginot Line and mobilized 500,000 men; the Russians voiced their readiness to move too. Hitler was now convinced that Beneš would brazen it out. He was worried about the Poles, and wondered whether they would give him the backing he craved. In fact they made a small move and partially mobilized their armies while the Italians called up three years of reserves. Hitler’s other ally, Hungary, did nothing whatsoever, much to his fury. Göring had been sent on a special mission to Horthy, but returned empty-handed.

  Chamb
erlain had another card: he sent his closest advisor, Sir Horace Wilson, to Berlin with a letter asking Hitler to negotiate with the Czech government directly, with the British present as a third party. He was also to warn Hitler that France would honour its commitments to the Czechs, and Britain its to France. When Hitler heard from Wilson that the Czechs had rejected his demands, he became over-excited, jumped out of his seat and began to shout: ‘The Germans are being treated like niggers; one would not dare treat even the Turks like that.’viii Hitler stopped short of biting the carpet. He was pleased with his performance, a sign that these tantrums were a sham. He told Goebbels all about it.51

  Jochen Klepper was in Krummhübel, a resort near the Czech border in the Riesengebirge. He could hear shooting in the distance; a Czech frontier post had been attacked with grenades. ‘Now we have arrived at the last consequence of the “Peace” of Versailles. Eight million Czechs against three million Sudeten Germans; seventy-five million Germans against eight million Czechs! Twenty years ago the seed of all this was planted.’52

  The reckless Silesian noblewoman Gräfin Maria von Maltzan was in the Sudetenland that summer undergoing a cure. She noted that many of the nurses were Jewish, and they were frightened about what would happen to them when the Nazis walked in. She managed to get herself into trouble with some Henlein men, and thought she could wangle her way out of it by mentioning her brother-in-law, General von Reichenau, whose corps was across the border waiting for orders to march. For a while she was in custody, but managed to escape to Berlin.53

  BERLIN

  Goebbels may have been thinking wishfully when he described the mood of ‘his’ Berliners that autumn as ‘half war mania and half determination’. It was his idea that Hitler should address them at the Sportpalast on the 26th.54 Despite the apparent enthusiasm of the Berlin crowd, Goebbels was not taking any chances. The ‘audience should represent the people only’, which meant he was going to rig it.55 On the night, the Führer reiterated his mendacious claim that this venture was his last territorial demand. He found easy meat in the Allied principle of self-determination: the Czech state was a lie, there was no Czechoslovakia, there were just Czechs and Slovaks and the Slovaks did not like the Czechs. A catalogue of untruths and exaggerations followed. The decision lay with Beneš: peace or war. Either he gave the Czech Germans their freedom or the Germans would snatch it for them. ‘Now let Herr Beneš make his choice.’56 Groscurth called it ‘a horrible, undignified rant’.57

  War seemed unavoidable. In Washington, President Roosevelt was alarmed enough to make an appeal for peace and to tell Chamberlain to negotiate to the last moment.58 The threat was keenly felt in the concentration camps too. In Dachau they realized that, if the conflict broke out, it would be curtains for them. They were perfectly aware that any lip service to international opinion or law would be jettisoned at that point.59 They noted with trepidation the disappearance of their guards: the younger SS-men were sent to the Czech border and were replaced by older men of a more kindly disposition than the usual eighteen-year-old sadists. The bubble burst when Chamberlain flew to Munich at the end of the month and the young men returned and resumed their brutal ways.

  On the morning of the 27th, Sir Horace Wilson found Hitler obdurate. Not even the mention of Britain’s need to support France’s mobilization had any effect. Hitler claimed to be wholly indifferent about whether there was a European war or not. ‘So – next week we’ll all find ourselves at war with each other.’60 After Wilson left he assembled yet more elements of the Wehrmacht to go into action on the 30th. The gambler Hitler had been more impressed with British moves than he appeared, however, and was prepared to lend an ear to the doves who made up the majority of his entourage. Once again the only other warmonger was Ribbentrop. Another intimate member of Hitler’s circle who had increasing reservations about war was Goebbels. He was still keeping his head down because of the fallout from his affair with Lida.

  That day Hassell lunched with a number of conservative Germans at the Continental in Berlin. One of those present was Popitz, the Prussian Minister of Finance. Popitz told him that speeches like that which the Führer had just delivered at the Sportspalast gave him physical nausea. There were also fears that Hitler’s next move would be to proceed against the ‘upper stratum’, as he called it. Before lunch Hassell had had a meeting with Emil Georg von Strauss, President of the Deutsche Bank. He was ‘one of the first business leaders to go over to Hitler. He is now filled with the greatest anxiety and disgust.’61 It seemed certain that Hitler would go to war.62

  The German Army was on the point of mutiny. There were desperate worries about the weakness of Germany’s western defences. France could bring sixty-five divisions to bear against, at the most, a dozen German. Meanwhile the Czechs had called a million men to arms. The German people were not enthusiastic. In some cities open criticism was heard in public places.63 When an armed division rumbled through the streets of Berlin for an hour and a half on the evening of 27 September, the Berliners observed them with ‘frigid silence’.64 At the Foreign Office Spitzy told Kordt: ‘Look at the people’s faces, filled with pale horror at the prospect of war.’65 At the beginning Hitler stood on his balcony to watch the parade, but when he saw how things were going, he went inside and hid behind a curtain.66 He had hoped that it would concentrate the minds of the foreign journalists and diplomats in the capital. He was amazed and infuriated by the apathy of the Berliners, which struck the journalists far more than the show of firepower on the roads.ix

  The hawks paid no heed to the reservations expressed by the military men. Himmler – who hoped to be able to replace the army by his own Waffen-SS – ‘complained about the generals. The Führer added his sharpest verdict on the old, senile generals. They should be laid off as soon as possible.’67 Not all of Himmler’s men agreed with Himmler, or with Goebbels’ optimistic view of the Berliners. SS-Gruppenführer Lorenz told Ribbentrop, ‘If the Berliners knew how much you have been beating the drum for war, I’d have to position the entire Leibstandarte along the Wilhelmstrasse to protect you.’ For the first time since Hitler came to power, it was clear that the Germans were ready for change.68

  The last thing the people wanted was war. There was a bad harvest, which was compounded by an outbreak of foot and mouth disease.69 That same day Chamberlain made his notorious speech on the wireless about a ‘faraway country’, reiterating his reluctance to fight. The broadcast was not seen in the bad light it enjoys today, when it is perceived as an admission of indifference to the fate of Czechoslovakia. Groscurth thought that, in contrast to Hitler, the British Prime Minister had been ‘calm and dignified’.70 Later Admiral Raeder brought Hitler the news that the Royal Navy had been mobilized. The planned declaration of war against the Czechs was hurriedly retracted. Hitler fired off a letter to Chamberlain, leaving it up to him to make the Czech government see reason.

  Göring was still at Carinhall near Berlin on the 27th. He had been informed that the power of his present airfleet was insufficient to destroy London as planned. In panic he ordered that the experimental Junkers Ju 88 be put into production immediately. He reappeared in Berlin the next day, when his credentials as a peacemonger were most needed.

  The 28th of September has gone down as Black Wednesday, the gloom of impending war hung like a pall over the capitals of Western and Central Europe. The French were the first to attempt to dispel it. François-Poncet arrived in the Chancellery at 11 a.m. to find tables set for lunch for commanders designated to invade Czechoslovakia.71 He brought Hitler an offer that would allow partial occupation by the 1st and complete evacuation of the areas in question by the 10th. ‘Why should you take the risk when your essential demands can be met without war?’72

  Hitler was visibly moved by what the Frenchman told him but a little more pressure was required to make him desist. The British had decided to bring in Mussolini, who was as alarmed as anyone at the prospect of a European war. Hitler had kept the Duce in the dark as the proposed mee
ting between the two dictators at the Brenner had not taken place. Mussolini saw Chamberlain’s policy as the ‘liquidation of English prestige’ but both he and his son-in-law Ciano were convinced there would be war.73 Chamberlain also offered to fly for a fifth time, this time to Berlin.74

  At 10 a.m. the British ambassador in Rome, Lord Perth, showed Ciano a telegram from Chamberlain: with four hours to go before the German armies went into Bohemia, Italian mediation was the last chance to save Europe. Mussolini despatched his ambassador, the highly experienced, anti-Nazi Bernardo Attolico, who arrived on the heels of François- Poncet.75 Attolico was also a friend and confidant of Weizsäcker. The Italian asked for a twenty-four-hour stay of execution. Hitler was not impressed by the sight of the Italian diplomat, who arrived flushed and breathless, and told Linge, ‘He’s shitting himself! If we took his advice we’d never see the end of this business.’ He listened for all that.

  Göring and Neurath were also working on Hitler, while the Finance Minister Schwerin-Krosigk submitted his views in writing. Hitler dismissed Göring’s qualms, calling him an old woman. Schwerin-Krosigk’s line echoed that of Schacht: Germany did not have enough money to go to war. The country was already ‘done for’.76 Next Henderson arrived bringing Chamberlain’s reply to his letter. The Prime Minister wanted an international conference. Hitler said he would talk it over with Mussolini. Attolico had a message from the Duce that he supported Chamberlain’s plan. In his ‘dazzling hatred’ for Britain, Ribbentrop was alone in egging Hitler on. Göring took the RAM to one side and angrily berated him as a ‘criminal fool’. Göring said he knew the meaning of war and that it was not to be undertaken lightly. If it were to break out, Ribbentrop should sit beside him in the first bomber. There was never any love lost between the two.77 It was a Madhatter’s Tea Party only to be compared to that which followed the abortive 20 July Plot in 1944.