The drama ran its course. Mussolini now sent a verbal message to Schuschnigg saying that he considered the Austrian attitude at Berchtesgaden to be both right and adroit. He assured him both of the unalterable attitude of Italy towards the Austrian question and of his personal friendship. On February 24 the Austrian Chancellor himself spoke to the Austrian Parliament, welcoming the settlement with Germany, but emphasising, with some sharpness, that beyond the specific terms of the agreement Austria would never go. On March 3 he sent a confidential message to Mussolini through the Austrian Military Attaché in Rome informing the Duce that he intended to strengthen the political position in Austria by holding a plebiscite. Twenty-four hours later he received a message from the Attaché describing his interview with Mussolini. In this the Duce expressed himself optimistically. The situation would improve. An imminent détente between Rome and London would ensure a lightening of the existing pressure.… As to the plebiscite Mussolini uttered a warning: “E un errore” (It’s a mistake). “If the result is satisfactory, people will say that it is not genuine. If it is bad, the situation of the Government will be unbearable; and if it is indecisive, then it is worthless.” But Schuschnigg was determined. On March 9 he announced officially that a plebiscite would be held throughout Austria on the following Sunday, March 13.
At first nothing happened. Seyss-Inquart seemed to accept the idea without demur. At 5.30 a.m. however on the morning of the 11th Schuschnigg was rung up on the telephone from Police Headquarters in Vienna. He was told: “The German frontier at Salzburg was closed an hour ago. The German customs officials have been withdrawn. Railway communications have been cut.” The next message to reach the Austrian Chancellor was from his Consul-General in Munich saying that the German Army Corps there had been mobilised: supposed destination—Austria!
Later in the morning Seyss-Inquart came to announce that Goering had just telephoned to him that the plebiscite must be called off within an hour. If no reply was received within that time Goering would assume that Seyss-Inquart had been hindered from telephoning, and would act accordingly. After being informed by responsible officials that the police and Army were not entirely reliable, Schuschnigg informed Seyss-Inquart that the plebiscite would be postponed. A quarter of an hour later the latter returned with a reply from Goering scribbled on a message-pad:
The situation can only be saved if the Chancellor resigns immediately and if within two hours Dr. Seyss-Inquart is nominated Chancellor. If nothing is done within this period the German invasion of Austria will follow.*
Schuschnigg waited on President Miklas to tender his resignation. While in the President’s room he received a deciphered message from the Italian Government that they could offer no counsel. The old President was obstinate: “So in the decisive hour I am left alone.” He steadfastly refused to nominate a Nazi Chancellor. He was determined to force the Germans into a shameful and violent deed. But for this they were well prepared. Orders were issued by Hitler to the German armed forces for the military occupation of Austria. Operation “Otto”, so long studied, so carefully prepared, began. President Miklas confronted Seyss-Inquart and the Austrian Nazi leaders in Vienna with firmness throughout a hectic day. The telephone conversation between Hitler and Prince Philip of Hesse, his special envoy to the Duce, was quoted in evidence at Nuremberg, and is of interest:
Hesse: I have just come back from the Palazzo Venezia. The Duce accepted the whole thing in a very friendly manner. He sends you his regards. He had been informed from Austria; von Schuschnigg gave him the news. He had then said it [i.e., Italian intervention] would be a complete impossibility; it would be a bluff; such a thing could not be done. So he [Schuschnigg] was told that it was unfortunately arranged thus, and it could not be changed any more. Then Mussolini said that Austria would be immaterial to him.
Hitler: Then please tell Mussolini I will never forget him for this.
Hesse: Yes.
Hitler: Never, never, never, whatever happens. I am still ready to make a quite different agreement with him.
Hesse: Yes, I told him that too.
Hitler: As soon as the Austrian affair has been settled I shall be ready to go with him through thick and thin; nothing matters.
Hesse: Yes, my Fuehrer.
Hitler: Listen. I will make any agreement—I am no longer in fear of the terrible position which would have existed militarily in case we had become involved in a conflict. You may tell him that I do thank him ever so much; never, never shall I forget that.
Hesse: Yes, my Fuehrer.
Hitler: I will never forget it, whatever may happen. If he should ever need any help or be in any danger he can be convinced that I shall stick to him whatever might happen, even if the whole world were against him.
Hesse: Yes, my Fuehrer.*
Certainly when he rescued Mussolini from the Italian Provisional Government in 1943 Hitler kept his word.
A triumphal entry into Vienna had been the Austrian Corporal’s dream. On the night of Saturday, March 12, the Nazi Party in the capital had planned a torchlight procession to welcome the conquering hero. But nobody arrived. Three bewildered Bavarians of the supply services who had come by train to make billeting arrangements for the invading army had therefore to be carried shoulder-high through the streets. The cause of this hitch leaked out slowly. The German war machine had lumbered falteringly over the frontier and come to a standstill near Linz. In spite of perfect weather and road conditions the majority of the tanks broke down. Defects appeared in the motorised heavy artillery. The road from Linz to Vienna was blocked with heavy vehicles at a standstill. General von Reichenau, Hitler’s special favourite, Commander of Army Group IV, was deemed responsible for a breakdown which exposed the unripe condition of the German Army at this stage in its reconstruction.
Hitler himself, motoring through Linz, saw the traffic jam, and was infuriated. The light tanks were disengaged from confusion and straggled into Vienna in the early hours of Sunday morning. The armoured vehicles and motorised heavy artillery were loaded on to railway trucks, and only thus arrived in time for the ceremony. The pictures of Hitler driving through Vienna amid exultant or terrified crowds are well known. But this moment of mystic glory had an unquiet background. The Fuehrer was in fact convulsed with anger at the obvious short-comings of his military machine. He rated his generals, and they answered back. They reminded him of his refusal to listen to Fritsch and his warnings that Germany was not in a position to undertake the risk of a major conflict. Appearances were preserved. The official celebrations and parades took place. On the Sunday, after large numbers of German troops and Austrian Nazis had taken possession of Vienna, Hitler declared the dissolution of the Austrian Republic and the annexation of its territory to the German Reich.
Herr von Ribbentrop was at this time about to leave London to take up his duties as Foreign Secretary in Germany. Mr. Chamberlain gave a farewell luncheon in his honour at No. 10 Downing Street. My wife and I accepted the Prime Minister’s invitation to attend. There were perhaps sixteen people present. My wife sat next to Sir Alexander Cadogan, near one end of the table. About half-way through the meal a Foreign Office messenger brought him an envelope. He opened it and was absorbed in the contents. Then he got up, walked round to where the Prime Minister was sitting, and gave him the message. Although Cadogan’s demeanour would not have indicated that anything had happened, I could not help noticing the Prime Minister’s evident preoccupation. Presently Cadogan came back with the paper and resumed his seat. Later I was told its contents. It said that Hitler had invaded Austria and that the German mechanised forces were advancing fast upon Vienna. The meal proceeded without the slightest interruption, but quite soon Mrs. Chamberlain, who had received some signal from her husband, got up, saying, “Let us all have coffee in the drawing-room.” We trooped in there, and it was evident to me and perhaps to some others that Mr. and Mrs. Chamberlain wished to bring the proceedings to an end. A kind of general restlessness pervaded the company, and eve
ryone stood about ready to say good-bye to the guests of honour.
However, Herr von Ribbentrop and his wife did not seem at all conscious of this atmosphere. On the contrary, they tarried for nearly half an hour engaging their host and hostess in voluble conversation. At one moment I came in contact with Frau von Ribbentrop, and in a valedictory vein I said, “I hope England and Germany will preserve their friendship.” “Be careful you don’t spoil it,” was her graceful rejoinder. I am sure they both knew perfectly well what had happened, but thought it was a good manœuvre to keep the Prime Minister away from his work and the telephone. At length Mr. Chamberlain said to the Ambassador, “I am sorry I have to go now to attend to urgent business,” and without more ado he left the room. The Ribbentrops lingered on, so that most of us made our excuses and our way home. Eventually I suppose they left. This was the last time I saw Herr von Ribbentrop before he was hanged.
It was the Russians who now sounded the alarm, and on March 18 proposed a conference on the situation. They wished to discuss, if only in outline, ways and means of implementing the Franco-Soviet pact within the frame of League action in the event of a major threat to peace by Germany. This met with little warmth in Paris and London. The French Government was distracted by other preoccupations. There were serious strikes in the aircraft factories. Franco’s armies were driving deep into the territory of Communist Spain. Chamberlain was both sceptical and depressed. He profoundly disagreed with my interpretation of the dangers ahead and the means of combating them. I had been urging the prospects of a Franco-British-Russian alliance as the only hope of checking the Nazi onrush.
Mr. Feiling tells us that the Prime Minister expressed his mood in a letter to his sister on March 20:
The plan of the “Grand Alliance”, as Winston calls it, had occurred to me long before he mentioned it.… I talked about it to Halifax, and we submitted it to the Chiefs of Staff and F.O. experts. It is a very attractive idea; indeed, there is almost everything to be said for it until you come to examine its practicability. From that moment its attraction vanishes. You have only to look at the map to see that nothing that France or we could do could possibly save Czechoslovakia from being overrun by the Germans, if they wanted to do it. I have therefore abandoned any idea of giving guarantees to Czechoslovakia, or to the French in connection with her obligations to that country.*
Here was at any rate a decision. It was taken on wrong arguments. In modern wars of great nations or alliances particular areas are not defended only by local exertions. The whole vast balance of the war-front is involved. This is still more true of policy before war begins and while it may still be averted. It surely did not take much thought from the “Chiefs of Staff and F.O. experts” to tell the Prime Minister that the British Navy and the French Army could not be deployed on the Bohemian mountain front to stand between the Czechoslovak Republic and Hitler’s invading army. This was indeed evident from the map. But the certainty that the crossing of the Bohemian frontier line would have involved a general European war might well even at that date have deterred or delayed Hitler’s next assault. How erroneous Mr. Chamberlain’s private and earnest reasoning appears when we cast our minds forward to the guarantee he was to give to Poland within a year, after all the strategic value of Czechoslovakia had been cast away, and Hitler’s power and prestige had almost doubled!
The reader is now invited to move westward to the Emerald Isle. “It’s a long way to Tipperary,” but a visit there is sometimes irresistible. In the interval between Hitler’s seizure of Austria and his unfolding design upon Czechoslovakia we must turn to a wholly different kind of misfortune which befell us.
Since the beginning of 1938 there had been negotiations between the British Government and that of Mr. de Valera in Southern Ireland, and on April 25 an agreement was signed whereby, among other matters, Great Britain renounced all rights to occupy for naval purposes the two Southern Irish ports of Queenstown and Berehaven, and the base in Lough Swilly. The two southern ports were a vital feature in the naval defence of our food supply. When in 1922 as Colonial and Dominions Secretary I had dealt with the details of the Irish Settlement which the Cabinet of those days had made, I brought Admiral Beatty to the Colonial Office to explain to Michael Collins the importance of these ports to our whole system of bringing supplies into Britain. Collins was immediately convinced.” Of course you must have the ports,” he said; “they are necessary for your life.” Thus the matter was arranged, and everything had worked smoothly in the sixteen years that had passed. The reason why Queenstown and Berehaven were necessary to our safety is easy to understand. They were the fuelling bases from which our destroyer flotillas ranged westward into the Atlantic to hunt U-boats and protect incoming convoys as they reached the throat of the narrow seas. Lough Swilly was similarly needed to protect the approaches to the Clyde and Mersey. To abandon these meant that our flotillas would have to start in the north from Lamlash and in the south from Pembroke Dock or Falmouth, thus decreasing their radius of action and the protection they could afford by more than 400 miles out and home.
It was incredible to me that the Chiefs of Staff should have agreed to throw away this major security, and to the last moment I thought that at least we had safeguarded our right to occupy these Irish ports in the event of war. However, Mr. de Valera announced in the Dail that no conditions of any kind were attached to the cession. I was later assured that Mr. de Valera was surprised at the readiness with which the British Government had deferred to his request. He had included it in his proposals as a bargaining counter which could be dispensed with when other points were satisfactorily settled.
Lord Chatfield has in his last book devoted a chapter to explaining the course he and the other Chiefs of Staff took.* This should certainly be read by those who wish to pursue the subject. Personally I remain convinced that the gratuitous surrender of our right to use the Irish ports in war was a major injury to British national life and safety. A more feckless act can hardly be imagined—and at such a time. It is true that in the end we survived without the ports. It is also true that if we had not been able to do without them we should have retaken them by force rather than perish by famine. But this is no excuse. Many a ship and many a life were soon to be lost as the result of this improvident example of appeasement.
THE HITLERITE AGGRESSIONS
CHAPTER XIII
CZECHOSLOVAKIA
WHILE the invasion of Austria was in full swing Hitler said in the motor-car to General von Halder, “This will be very inconvenient to the Czechs.” Halder saw immediately the significance of this remark. To him it lighted up the future. It showed him Hitler’s intentions, and at the same time, as he viewed it, Hitler’s military ignorance. “It was practically impossible,” he has explained, “for a German army to attack Czechoslovakia from the south. The single railway line through Linz was completely exposed, and surprise was out of the question.” But Hitler’s main political strategic conception was correct. The West Wall was growing, and, although far from complete, already confronted the French Army with horrible memories of the Somme and Passchendaele. He was convinced that neither France nor Britain would fight.
On the day of the march of the German armies into Austria we heard that Goering had given a solemn assurance to the Czech Minister in Berlin that Germany had “no evil intentions towards Czechoslovakia”. On March 14 the French Premier, M. Blum, solemnly declared to the Czech Minister in Paris that France would unreservedly honour her engagement to Czechoslovakia. These diplomatic reassurances could not conceal the grim reality. The whole strategic position on the Continent had changed. The German arguments and armies could now concentrate directly upon the western frontiers of Czechoslovakia, whose border districts were German in racial character, with an aggressive and active German Nationalist Party eager to act as a fifth column in the event of trouble.
In the hope of deterring Germany the British Government, in accordance with Mr. Chamberlain’s resolve, sought a settlement wit
h Italy in the Mediterranean. This would strengthen the position of France, and would enable both the French and British to concentrate upon events in Central Europe. Mussolini, to some extent placated by the fall of Eden, and feeling himself in a strong bargaining position, did not repulse the British repentance. On April 16, 1938, an Anglo-Italian agreement was signed, giving Italy in effect a free hand in Abyssinia and Spain in return for the imponderable value of Italian goodwill in Central Europe. The Foreign Office was sceptical of this transaction. Mr. Chamberlain’s biographer tells us that he wrote in a personal and private letter, “You should have seen the draft put up to me by the F.O.; it would have frozen a Polar bear.”*
I shared the misgivings of the Foreign Office at this move.
Hitler was watching the scene with vigilance. To him also the ultimate alignment of Italy in a European crisis was important. In conference with his Chiefs of Staff at the end of April he was considering how to force the pace. Mussolini wanted a free hand in Abyssinia. In spite of the acquiescence of the British Government, he might ultimately need German support in this venture. If so, he should accept German action against Czechoslovakia. This issue must be brought to a head, and in the settling of the Czech question Italy would be involved on Germany’s side. The declarations of British and French statesmen were of course studied in Berlin. The intention of these Western Powers to persuade the Czechs to be reasonable in the interests of European peace was noted with satisfaction. The Nazi Party of the Sudetenland, led by Henlein, now formulated their demands for autonomy in the German-border regions of that country, and the British and French Ministers in Prague called on the Czech Foreign Minister shortly afterwards to “express the hope that the Czech Government will go to the furthest limit in order to settle the question”.
The Second World War Page 17
