When Tiso and Durcansky arrived at the Chancellery in Berlin at 7:40 on the evening of March 13, they found Hitler flanked not only by Ribbentrop but by his two top generals, Brauchitsch, Commander in Chief of the German Army, and Keitel, Chief of OKW. Though they may not have realized it, the Slovaks also found the Fuehrer in a characteristic mood. Here again, thanks to the captured confidential minutes of the meeting, we may peer into the weird mind of the German dictator, rapidly giving way to megalomania, and watch him spinning his fantastic lies and uttering his dire threats in a manner and to an extent which he no doubt was sure would never come to public attention.23
“Czechoslovakia,” he said, “owed it only to Germany that she had not been mutilated further.” The Reich had exhibited “the greatest self-control.” Yet the Czechs had not appreciated this. “During recent weeks,” he went on, working himself up easily to a fine lather, “conditions have become impossible. The old Beneš spirit has come to life again.”
The Slovaks had also disappointed him. After Munich he had “fallen out” with his friends the Hungarians by not permitting them to grab Slovakia. He had thought Slovakia wanted to be independent.
He had now summoned Tiso in order to clear up this question in a very short time.* … The question was: Did Slovakia want to lead an independent existence or not? … It was a question not of days but of hours. If Slovakia wished to become independent he would support and even guarantee it … If she hesitated or refused to be separated from Prague, he would leave the fate of Slovakia to events for which he was no longer responsible.
At this point, the German minutes reveal, Ribbentrop “handed to the Fuehrer a report just received announcing Hungarian troop movements on the Slovak frontier. The Fuehrer read this report, told Tiso of its contents, and expressed the hope that Slovakia would reach a decision soon.”
Tiso did not give his decision then. He asked the Fuehrer to “pardon him if, under the impact of the Chancellor’s words, he could make no definite decision at once.” But the Slovaks, he quickly added, “would prove themselves worthy of the Fuehrer’s benevolence.”
This they did in a conference which continued far into the night at the Foreign Ministry. According to the Nuremberg testimony of Keppler, who had been Hitler’s secret agent in Bratislava, as he had been the year before in Vienna on the eve of the Anschluss, the Germans helped Tiso draft a telegram, which the “Premier” was to send as soon as he returned to Bratislava, proclaiming Slovakia’s independence and urgently requesting the Fuehrer to take over the protection of the new state.24 It is reminiscent of the “telegram” dictated by Goering just a year before in which Seyss-Inquart was to appeal to Hitler to send German troops to Austria. By this time the Nazi “telegram” technique had been perfected. The telegram, considerably abridged, was duly dispatched by Tiso on March 16, and Hitler immediately replied that he would be glad to “take over the protection of the Slovak State.”
At the Foreign Office that night Ribbentrop also drafted the Slovak proclamation of “independence” and had it translated into Slovak in time for Tiso to take it back to Bratislava, where the “Premier” read it—in slightly altered form, as one German agent reported—to Parliament on the following day, Tuesday, March 14. Attempts by several Slovak deputies to at least discuss it were squelched by Karmasin, the leader of the German minority, who warned that German troops would occupy the country if there was any delay in proclaiming independence. Faced with this threat the doubting deputies gave in.
Thus was “independent” Slovakia born on March 14, 1939. Though British diplomatic representatives were quick to inform London as to the manner of its birth, Chamberlain, as we shall see, was just as quick to use Slovakia’s “secession” as an excuse for Britain not to honor its guarantee of Czechoslovakia after Hitler, on that very evening, March 14, acted to finish what had been left undone at Munich.
The life of the Czechoslovak Republic of Masaryk and Beneš had now run out. And once again the harassed leaders in Prague played into Hitler’s hands to set up the final act of their country’s tragedy. The aging, bewildered President Hácha asked to be received by the Fuehrer.* Hitler graciously consented. It gave him an opportunity to set the stage for one of the most brazen acts of his entire career.
Consider how well the dictator had already arranged the set as he waited on the afternoon of March 14 for the President of Czechoslovakia to arrive. The proclamations of independence of Slovakia and Ruthenia, which he had so skillfully engineered, left Prague with only the Czech core of Bohemia and Moravia. Had not Czechoslovakia in reality ceased to exist—the nation whose frontiers Britain and France had guaranteed against aggression? Chamberlain and Daladier, his partners at Munich where the guarantee had been solemnly given, already had their “out.” That they would take it he had no doubt—and he was right. That disposed of any danger of foreign intervention. But to make doubly sure—to see to it that his next move looked quite legal and legitimate by the vague standards of international law, at least on paper—he would force the weak and senile Hácha, who had begged to see him, to accept the very solution which he had intended to achieve by military force. And in so doing he could make it appear—he, who, alone in Europe, had mastered the new technique of bloodless conquest, as the Anschluss and Munich had proved—that the President of Czechoslovakia had actually and formally asked for it. The niceties of “legality,” which he had perfected so well in taking over power in Germany, would be preserved in the conquest of a non-Germanic land.
Hitler had also set the stage to fool the German and other gullible people in Europe. For several days now German provocateurs had been trying to stir up trouble in various Czech towns, Prague, Bruenn and Iglau. They had not had much success because, as the German Legation in Prague reported, the Czech “police have been instructed to take no action against Germans, even in cases of provocation.”26 But this failure did not prevent Dr. Goebbels from whipping up the German press into a frenzy over invented acts of terror by the Czechs against the poor Germans. As the French ambassador, M. Coulondre, informed Paris, they were the same stories with the same headlines which Dr. Goebbels had concocted during the Sudeten crisis—down to the pregnant German woman struck down by Czech beasts and the general “Blutbad” (“blood bath”) to which the defenseless Germans were being subjected by the Czech barbarians. Hitler could assure the proud German people that their kinsmen would not remain unprotected for long.
Such was the situation and such were Hitler’s plans, we now know from the German archives, as the train bearing President Hácha and his Foreign Minister, Chvalkovsky, drew into the Anhalt Station in Berlin at 10:40 on the evening of March 14. Because of a heart condition the President had been unable to fly.
THE ORDEAL OF DR. HÁCHA
The German protocol was perfect. The Czech President was accorded all the formal honors due to a head of state. There was a military guard of honor at the station, where the German Foreign Minister himself greeted the distinguished visitor and slipped his daughter a fine bouquet of flowers. At the swank Adlon Hotel, where the party was put up in the best suite, there were chocolates for Miss Hácha—a personal gift of Adolf Hitler, who believed that everyone else shared his craving for sweets. And when the aged President and his Foreign Minister arrived at the Chancellery he was given a salute by an S.S. guard of honor.
They were not summoned to Hitler’s presence until 1:15 A.M. Hácha must have known what was in store for him. Before his train had left Czech territory he learned from Prague that German troops had already occupied Moravská-Ostrava, an important Czech industrial town, and were poised all along the perimeter of Bohemia and Moravia to strike. And he saw at once, as he entered the Fuehrer’s study in the early-morning hour, that, besides Ribbentrop and Weizsaecker, Field Marshal Goering, who had been urgently recalled from his holiday at San Remo, and General Keitel stood at Hitler’s side. Most probably, as he went into this lion’s den, he did not notice that Hitler’s physician, the quack Dr. Theodor
Morell, was on tap. But the doctor was, and for good reason.
The secret German minutes of the meeting reveal a pitiful scene at the very outset. The unhappy Dr. Hácha, despite his background as a respected judge of the Supreme Court, shed all human dignity by groveling before the swaggering German Fuehrer. Perhaps the President thought that only in this way could he appeal to Hitler’s generosity and save something for his people; but regardless of his motive, his words, as the Germans recorded them for their confidential archives, nauseate the reader even so long afterward as today. He himself, Hácha assured Hitler, had never mixed in politics. He had rarely seen the founders of the Czechoslovak Republic, Masaryk and Beneš, and what he had seen of them he did not like. Their regime, he said, was “alien” to him—“so alien that immediately after the change of regime [after Munich] he had asked himself whether it was a good thing for Czechoslovakia to be an independent state at all.”
He was convinced that the destiny of Czechoslovakia lay in the Fuehrer’s hands, and he believed it was in safekeeping in such hands … Then he came to what affected him most, the fate of his people. He felt that it was precisely the Fuehrer who would understand his holding the view that Czechoslovakia had the right to live a national life … Czechoslovakia was being blamed because there still existed many supporters of the Beneš system … The Government was trying by every means to silence them. This was about all he had to say.
Adolf Hitler then said all there was to say. After rehearsing all the alleged wrongs which the Czechoslovakia of Masaryk and Beneš had done to Germans and Germany, and reiterating that unfortunately the Czechs had not changed since Munich, he came to the point.
He had come to the conclusion that this journey by the President, despite his advanced years, might be of great benefit to his country because it was only a matter of hours now before Germany intervened … He harbored no enmity against any nation … That the Rump State of Czechoslovakia existed at all was attributable only to his loyal attitude … In the autumn he had not wished to draw the final conclusions because he had thought a coexistence possible, but he had left no doubt that if the Beneš tendencies did not disappear completely he would destroy this state completely.
They had not disappeared, and he gave “examples.”
And so last Sunday, March 12, the die was cast … He had given the order for the invasion by the German troops and for the incorporation of Czechoslovakia into the German Reich.*
“Hácha and Chvalkovsky,” noted Dr. Schmidt, “sat as though turned to stone. Only their eyes showed that they were alive.” But Hitler was not quite through. He must humble his guests with threats of Teutonic terror.
The German Army [Hitler continued] had already marched in today, and at a barracks where resistance was offered it had been ruthlessly broken.
Tomorrow morning at six o’clock the German Army was to enter Czechia from all sides and the German Air Force would occupy the Czech airfields. There were two possibilities. The first was that the entry of German troops might develop into fighting. In that case, resistance would be broken by brute force. The other possibility was that the entry of the German troops would take place in a peaceful manner, in which case it would be easy for the Fuehrer to accord Czechoslovakia a generous way of life of her own, autonomy, and a certain measure of national freedom.
He was doing all this not from hatred but in order to protect Germany. If last autumn Czechoslovakia had not given in, the Czech people would have been exterminated. No one would have prevented him doing it. If it came to a fight … in two days the Czech Army would cease to exist. Naturally, some Germans would be killed too and this would engender a hatred which would compel him, in self-preservation, not to concede autonomy. The world would not care a jot about this. He sympathized with the Czech people when he read the foreign press. It gave him the impression which might be summed up in the German proverb: “The Moor has done his duty; the Moor can go.” …
That was why he had asked Hácha to come here. This was the last good turn he could render the Czech people … Perhaps Hácha’s visit might prevent the worst …
The hours were passing. At six o’clock the troops would march in. He was almost ashamed to say it, but for every Czech battalion there was a German division. He would like now to advise him [Hácha] to withdraw with Chvalkovsky and discuss what was to be done.
What was to be done? The broken old President did not have to withdraw to decide that. He told Hitler at once, “The position is quite clear. Resistance would be folly.” But how, he asked—since it was now a little after 2 A.M.—could he, in the space of four hours, arrange to restrain the whole Czech people from offering resistance? The Fuehrer replied that he had better consult with his companions. The German military machine was already in motion and could not be stopped. Hácha should get in touch at once with Prague. “It was a grave decision,” the German minutes report Hitler as saying, “but he saw dawning the possibility of a long period of peace between the two peoples. Should the decision be otherwise, he saw the annihilation of Czechoslovakia.”
With these words, he dismissed his guests for the time being. It was 2:15 A.M. In an adjoining room Goering and Ribbentrop stepped up the pressure on the two victims. According to the French ambassador, who in an official dispatch to Paris depicted the scene as he got it from what he believed to be an authentic source, Hácha and Chvalkovsky protested against the outrage to their nation. They declared they would not sign the document of surrender. Were they to do so they would be forever cursed by their people.
The German ministers [Goering and Ribbentrop] were pitiless [M. Coulondre wrote in his dispatch]. They literally hunted Dr. Hácha and M. Chvalkovsky round the table on which the documents were lying, thrusting them continually before them, pushing pens into their hands, incessantly repeating that if they continued in their refusal, half of Prague would lie in ruins from bombing within two hours, and that this would be only the beginning. Hundreds of bombers were waiting the order to take off, and they would receive that order at six in the morning if the signatures were not forthcoming.*
At this point, Dr. Schmidt, who seems to have managed to be present whenever and wherever the drama of the Third Reich reached a climax, heard Goering shouting for Dr. Morell.
“Hácha has fainted!” Goering cried out.
For a moment the Nazi bullies feared that the prostrate Czech President might die on their hands and, as Schmidt says, “that the whole world will say tomorrow that he was murdered at the Chancellery.” Dr. Morell’s specialty was injections—much later he would almost kill Hitler with them—and he now applied the needle to Dr. Hácha and brought him back to consciousness. The President was revived sufficiently to be able to grasp the telephone which the Germans thrust into his hand and talk to his government in Prague over a special line which Ribbentrop had ordered rigged up. He apprised the Czech cabinet of what had happened and advised surrender. Then, somewhat further restored by a second injection from the needle of Dr. Morell, the President of the expiring Republic stumbled back into the presence of Adolf Hitler to sign his country’s death warrant. It was now five minutes to four in the morning of March 15, 1939.
The text had been prepared “beforehand by Hitler,” Schmidt recounts, and during Hácha’s fainting spells the German interpreter had been busy copying the official communiqué, which had also been written up “beforehand,” and which Hácha and Chvalkovsky were also forced to sign. It read as follows:
Berlin, March 15, 1939
At their request, the Fuehrer today received the Czechoslovak President, Dr. Hácha, and the Czechoslovak Foreign Minister, Dr. Chvalkovsky, in Berlin in the presence of Foreign Minister von Ribbentrop. At the meeting the serious situation created by the events of recent weeks in the present Czechoslovak territory was examined with complete frankness.
The conviction was unanimously expressed on both sides that the aim of all efforts must be the safeguarding of calm, order and peace in this part of Central Europe. The Cze
choslovak President declared that, in order to serve this object and to achieve ultimate pacification, he confidently placed the fate of the Czech people and country in the hands of the Fuehrer of the German Reich. The Fuehrer accepted this declaration and expressed his intention of taking the Czech people under the protection of the German Reich and of guaranteeing them an autonomous development of their ethnic life as suited to their character.
Hitler’s chicanery had reached, perhaps, its summit.
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!”
The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich: A History of Nazi Germany Page 71
