Hitler
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Ahead of his second meeting with Chamberlain in Bad Godesberg, Hitler settled on a negotiating position that was as extreme as possible. “The Führer intends to present Chamberlain with clear demands,” noted Goebbels on 22 September.
We get to draw the demarcation line as generously as possible. This area will be immediately vacated by the Czechs. The German Wehrmacht will march in. Everything within eight days. It will take that long to march in. If the other side is not happy with our [new] border, then a plebiscite in the entire area. That’s to happen before Christmas…If Chamberlain demands new negotiations at a later date, then the Führer no longer feels bound by any prior agreements and can act as he wishes.250
At noon on 22 September, Chamberlain’s plane landed in Cologne. He was housed with his delegation in the Hotel Petersberg, a short way up from Königswinter, and that afternoon Hitler received him in the Hotel Dreesen on the other side of the Rhine. This time the prime minister had brought along an interpreter of his own, Ivone Kirkpatrick, to avoid any misunderstandings.251 Chamberlain was confident going into the negotiations. He had already secured the agreement of France and the Czechoslovakian government that the Sudeten territories would be ceded to Germany, thereby fulfilling Hitler’s central demand. It was only reasonable to expect that the parties would reach quick agreement on this basis. He was therefore unpleasantly surprised when Hitler revealed that, “after the developments of the past few days,” he could no longer accept this deal. “All at once, Chamberlain sat bolt upright in his chair,” Paul Schmidt reported. “His face flushed in anger at the refusal and the lack of recognition of his effort.” Hitler then presented a map with the new demarcation line and demanded that the occupation of the territories to be ceded “happen immediately.” Chamberlain objected that this was a completely new demand that went beyond what they had agreed in Berchtesgaden, but Hitler remained adamant, declaring that he could no longer tolerate the persecution of Sudeten Germans by the Czechs. He also rejected the proposal for an international guarantee of Czech independence, arguing that Polish and Hungarian demands on Czech territory would also have to be settled soon. As the first round of negotiations concluded, the British contingent was left quite dispirited.252
The following day, Chamberlain did not appear for the scheduled continuation of talks. Instead he sent a letter that declared Hitler’s new demands incompatible with principles previously agreed upon. If German troops immediately advanced into the Sudetenland, the government in Prague would have no choice other than to order their troops to resist. The impact of the letter in the Hotel Dreesen was, in Schmidt’s words, “like a bomb” had been dropped.253 The German delegation grew edgy. William Shirer, who had the chance to observe Hitler up close in the hotel garden, was struck by “ugly black patches under his eyes” and a nervous twitching of his right shoulder, concluding: “I think the man is on the edge of a nervous breakdown.”254 Nonetheless, in the response which his interpreter delivered that afternoon, Hitler stuck to his demands. The negotiations seemed to have reached a complete impasse. “The whole situation is so tense it’s coming apart at the seams,” noted Goebbels.255 But again Chamberlain proved conciliatory, offering to serve as a mediator between Berlin and Prague and asking for the new German demands to be collected in a memorandum. He would travel to Hitler’s hotel on the other side of the Rhine to pick them up and get clarifications from Hitler.256
Around eleven that night, negotiations resumed with a wider circle of participants. On the German side Joachim von Ribbentrop, Ernst von Weizsäcker and the director of the legal department in the Foreign Ministry, Friedrich Gaus, took part. Horace Wilson and Ambassador Henderson represented Britain alongside Chamberlain. Schmidt translated the finished memorandum word for word. Hitler had not yielded an inch on the cardinal question and was still demanding that the withdrawal of Czechoslovakian forces from the Sudeten territory designated on his map begin on the morning of 26 September. It was to be concluded by 28 September, whereupon the area was to be ceded to Germany. The Czech government was being handed a deadline of four days. That was tantamount to an “ultimatum” for Chamberlain, who accused Hitler of failing to support even in the slightest his efforts to preserve peace.257 Once again the negotiations were in danger of collapsing.
At this moment, one of Hitler’s assistants brought the news that Beneš had ordered the general mobilisation of Czechoslovakia’s armed forces. “Dead silence descended upon the room,” Paul Schmidt recalled. “You could hear a pin drop.” As though this bombshell had brought him to his senses, Hitler suddenly became more conciliatory. In a soft voice he reiterated his commitment not to take military action against Czechoslovakia as long as negotiations were ongoing and declared his willingness to extend the deadline for evacuation by two days, until 1 October. He amended the memorandum in his own hand and made some corrections to soften the wording. For his part, Chamberlain stuck to his promise to pass on the document to the Czechoslovakian government. Thus when the two sides took leave of one another on 24 September the atmosphere was not unfriendly. Hitler once again displayed his charm, thanking Chamberlain profusely for his efforts to preserve peace and assuring him that “the Sudeten question would be the last major problem he saw himself compelled to resolve.”258
But during a long walk with Goebbels though the Chancellery garden on the afternoon of 25 September, Hitler made it clear how much such assurances were worth. “He does not think that Beneš will give in,” Goebbels noted. “But terrible justice will be meted out upon him if he does not. On 27 or 28 September, the deployment of troops will be complete…And then we’ll mobilise. That will be so lightning-quick that the world will see it as a miracle.” Hitler therefore had by no means abandoned the plan of destroying Czechoslovakia with a sudden military invasion. “The radical solution is the best one,” Goebbels added. “Otherwise we’ll never get rid of this matter.”259
In fact, in a personal message to Hitler delivered by Horace Wilson on the afternoon of 26 September, Chamberlain reported that the government in Prague had rejected the memo as “fully unacceptable.” Although Hitler could hardly have been surprised by the news and, in light of what he told Goebbels the day before, perhaps even welcomed it, he nonetheless reacted with agitation. He jumped up from his seat, yelling, “There is no point in negotiating any further.” He ran to the door as if he were about to quit the room and had to be coaxed into listening as the message was read out in full. Afterwards, Schmidt recalled, “he had a fit of a magnitude I never heard before or after in a diplomatic discussion.” Wilson repeatedly asked Hitler to calm down, which only encouraged more outbreaks of fury.260
It seems as though Hitler’s rage was not play-acted. As he had done in the attempted putsch of 1923 and the Night of the Long Knives in 1934, he had likely worked himself up into an extraordinary psychological condition as the Sudeten crisis inexorably moved towards a conclusion. In this state, in the evening of 26 September, he gave a speech at Berlin’s Sportpalast, by the end of which he was, in William Shirer’s words, “shouting and shrieking in the worst state of excitement I have ever seen him in.”261 He began with an overview of his efforts for “practical policies of peace” in Europe, mentioning the German–Polish non-aggression pact, the naval agreement with Britain, his renunciation of Alsace-Lorraine, German friendship with Italy and the peaceful Anschluss of Austria. “And now we stand before the final problem that must and will be solved!” he shouted. “It is the last territorial demand I will make on Europe, but it is a demand upon which I will not yield and that I will, God willing, see fulfilled.” He wildly lambasted Beneš, accusing the Czech president of waging a “war of extinction” against Germans in Czechoslovakia and declaring that “the time has come to talk in plain language.” He had made Beneš an offer in his memorandum of 23 September, Hitler claimed, adding: “The decision is now in his hands.” He then levelled a barely veiled threat: “War or peace. Either he can accept this offer and give Germans their fr
eedom, or we will take this freedom ourselves!…We are determined. Herr Beneš now has the choice!”262
Shirer, who was sitting in the gallery directly above Hitler, remarked: “All during his speech he kept cocking his shoulder, and the opposite leg from the knee down would bounce up.” For the first time, the American journalist thought that the Führer had “completely lost control of himself.” After the speech, when Goebbels swore an oath of loyalty to the Führer and declared that “a November 1918” would never be repeated, Hitler could not hold himself back. “He leapt to his feet and with a fanatical fire in his eyes that I shall never forget brought his right hand, after a grand sweep, pounding down on the table and yelled with all the power in his mighty lungs: ‘Ja!,’ ” wrote Shirer. “Then he slumped into his chair exhausted.”263
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The following morning Hitler was still in a state of agitation veering between euphoria and hysteria. Around noon, Horace Wilson appeared with another letter from Chamberlain. Britain, the prime minister wrote, would guarantee that Czechoslovakia honoured its commitment to evacuate the Sudetenland, if Germany would forgo using violence. Hitler refused even to consider the offer, insisting categorically that his memorandum had to be accepted by 2 p.m. on 28 September. Otherwise, the Wehrmacht would march into the Sudetenland on 1 October. He repeatedly threatened to “crush the Czechs,” rolling his R’s for dramatic effect. Whereupon Wilson calmly declared that he had also been instructed to communicate a further message from the prime minister. If France’s obligations put it in a position where it had to directly engage in hostilities against Germany, the United Kingdom would consider itself bound to support France. Seemingly untouched by the significance of this statement, an enraged Hitler shot back: “If France and England want to start a fight, they should go ahead. It does not matter to me at all. I’m prepared for all eventualities.”264 With that the discussion was over. Wilson flew back to London that afternoon.
But Hitler was not nearly as indifferent to Chamberlain’s warning as he pretended. In the days following the Bad Godesberg meeting, Hitler had assumed the British were “bluffing.”265 Now there was no longer any doubt that a German attack upon Czechoslovakia would mean war with both Britain and France. Facing this scenario, Hitler was unsure, even if he tried to conceal that fact from his entourage. In a conversation with Goebbels at noon on 27 September, he played the role of the steel-nerved statesman, pursuing his goal with the single-mindedness of a sleepwalker. His leading admirer was swept away—or at least pretended to be in his diary: “His hand did not tremble for a moment. A great genius walks among us…You simply have to serve him with profound faith.”266
However, an incident in the centre of Berlin in the late afternoon of 27 September must have made an impression on Hitler. A motorised army division rolled down Wilhelmstrasse on its way to the Czech border in what was no doubt a demonstration of the Wehrmacht’s military readiness. But pedestrians reacted quite differently than the crowds in the Sportpalast had, hurrying to the next underground station to avoid having to witness the spectacle. The few hundred people who had assembled on Wilhelmplatz stood in complete silence. When Hitler then briefly appeared on his balcony at the Chancellery, there were no cheers, and he quickly went back inside.267 There was an unquestionable lack of enthusiasm among the public at large for another war, and for the first time, major doubts arose about Hitler’s qualities as a statesman. Contemporary observers even talked about a crisis of trust between the people and their Führer.268 This did not escape Goebbels’s notice. Several days later, the propaganda minister admitted that the military division’s passage through the centre of Berlin “had served to establish clarity about the mood of the people, and it was against war.”269
On the evening of 27 September, Hitler seemed to have come to his senses and reconciled himself to the idea of a diplomatic solution that would hand him the risk-free triumph of amalgamating the Sudetenland, while only temporarily postponing his actual goal of destroying Czechoslovakia. He sent a conciliatory letter to Chamberlain, writing that he left it up to the British prime minister whether he thought it was worth continuing his efforts to bring the government in Prague “to reason at the final hour.”270 It was unclear whether Chamberlain would be willing to act as a mediator again, and Hitler kept the military option open for the more likely scenario that the prime minister refused to continue his mission. Around midnight, he repeated to Ernst von Weizsäcker that he wanted to “obliterate” the Czech state. As Weizsäcker wrote in a letter: “It will take a miracle to preserve peace.”271
Ulrich von Hassell called 28 September “a critical day of the highest order.”272 The tension could be felt that morning in all of Europe’s capitals. Only a few hours remained until Hitler’s ultimatum elapsed. Nothing seemed capable of interrupting the momentum towards war. The Chancellery was a hive of activity, just as it had been on 11 March before the Anschluss. Ministers, military officers, high-ranking party functionaries and their staffs were standing and sitting around everywhere. Hitler, who was in an “extremely agitated, nervous mood,” went from one group to the next, lecturing them. “There were many miniature Sportpalast speeches that morning,” recalled Paul Schmidt.273
Shortly after 11 a.m., Hitler received the French ambassador, one of the few foreign diplomats he respected and whose opinion he valued. André François-Poncet urgently warned Hitler against the illusion that the conflict with Czechoslovakia could be localised. “If you attack this country, you will set all of Europe aflame…” Hitler was told. “Why do you want to take this risk, seeing that you can get your fundamental demands fulfilled without war?” Schmidt felt he could see in Hitler’s face “how the scales gradually tipped towards peace.” Unlike the previous day, Hitler did not blow his top, but rather patiently listened to François-Poncet’s arguments.274
It was Mussolini’s intervention, however, which finally tipped the balance. Around 11:40 a.m., the Italian ambassador, Bernardo Attolico, appeared at the Chancellery and announced breathlessly that he had an urgent message to convey from Il Duce. Hitler was summoned from his conversation with François-Poncet. The British government, Attolico announced, had asked via its ambassador if Italy would be willing to mediate. Mussolini had agreed to do so and therefore requested that the German government postpone mobilising its troops for twenty-four hours. Hitler briefly considered the request and then accepted Il Duce’s suggestion. Only two hours before the German ultimatum was set to expire, the immediate threat of war had been removed.275 At 12:15 p.m., when British Ambassador Henderson arrived at the Chancellery, he could sense that the atmosphere had changed. Henderson delivered Chamberlain’s answer to Hitler’s letter of the previous evening. The British prime minister suggested coming to Germany with the leaders of France and Italy for a conference to find a peaceful solution to the crisis. After Attolico had attested to Mussolini’s willingness, Hitler agreed.276 That afternoon, invitations were issued for a conference in Munich the following day.
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On the evening of 28 September, Hitler travelled in a chartered train to the Bavarian capital. The following morning he went to Kufstein, where he boarded Mussolini’s train, and the two dictators agreed a joint negotiating strategy. At the same time, French Prime Minister Edouard Daladier and Chamberlain landed at Oberwiesenfeld airport and were given a friendly welcome by Munich crowds on the way to their hotel.277 In the early afternoon, the conference was opened in the “Führerbau” on Königsplatz. Taking part, in addition to the four heads of government, were Joachim von Ribbentrop, Count Ciano, Horace Wilson and the state secretary in the French Foreign Ministry, Alexis Léger. Göring, Weizsäcker, the ambassadors of Britain, France and Italy as well as expert lawyers, assistants and secretaries also joined the proceedings. Hitler was polite and solicitous, but he obviously felt uncomfortable. His face was pale, and his movements were agitated. Unable to speak any foreign languages, he stuck by Mussolini’s side during the conference breaks, talking in German with h
im. Indeed, Hitler seemed positively fixated on the self-confident Italian leader. “When Il Duce laughed so did he; when Il Duce knitted his brow so did he,” recalled François-Poncet. “I will never forget the scenes of imitation.”278
One after another, the four heads of government stated their views. All of them stressed that they wanted to find a peaceful solution. “The atmosphere was one of general amicability interrupted only by several enraged attacks by Hitler on Beneš and some spirited rebuttals by Daladier,” recalled Schmidt.279 In the end Mussolini presented a written proposal. He was not the author, however: the document had been drawn up by Göring, Neurath and Weizsäcker, who had bypassed the warmongering Ribbentrop and given it directly to the Italian ambassador for transmission to Rome.280 The document, which merged the demands from the German memorandum with British and French suggestions, formed the basis of the Munich Agreement, which the four leaders signed in the early hours of 30 September. It specified that the German army would begin occupying the Sudetenland on 1 October, and that the process would be completed in stages by 10 October. An international committee was to be formed consisting of representatives from Germany, Great Britain, France, Italy and Czechoslovakia. Popular referendums were to be held in disputed areas before the definitive borders of Czechoslovakia were set. Sudeten German political prisoners were to be granted amnesty. Moreover, in a separate declaration, Britain and France guaranteed the integrity of the remaining Czechoslovak state. Germany and Italy pledged to join the agreement as soon as the question of the country’s Polish and Hungarian minorities was settled.281 Before sunrise, Chamberlain and Daladier informed two representatives from Czechoslovakia, who had not been permitted to attend the conference, about its final outcome. William Shirer described Daladier as a “completely beaten and broken man.”282 To keep the peace and buy time, and in response to pressure from Britain, the French government had abandoned its commitment to its ally Czechoslovakia. By contrast, the mood in Berlin was euphoric. “We’ve achieved everything we set out to according to our little plan,” Goebbels commented. “The big plan cannot be realised due to the prevailing circumstances at the moment. We walked a narrow tightrope over a dizzying abyss. Now we have solid ground under our feet again. That’s a nice feeling.”283