Hitler

by Volker Ullrich

  Hitler, however, was anything but euphoric. “Pale and ill-tempered” was how Paul Schmidt described him when the Führer received Chamberlain in his private apartment on 30 September. While the British prime minister cheerfully expounded on the new perspectives the Munich Agreement opened up for the Anglo-German relationship, Hitler sat there distracted, uncha​racte​risti​cally hardly saying a word. In conclusion, Chamberlain took out a communiqué he had written that expressed the wish of both peoples never to “go to war with one another again” and to consult with one another to “remove possible sources of difference.” Hitler silently signed it.284 The next day he told Goebbels that he had not wanted to rebuff Chamberlain but did not believe that the document was “meant seriously by the other side.”285 In reality, Hitler never considered abandoning his war plans for a second. The reason for his bad mood was that he had failed to achieve his “big solution”—the break-up of Czechoslovakia. Hitler may have told his military attachés directly after Chamberlain’s visit that in the short term he was not thinking of “any steps that could be politically dangerous” and that “we first must digest what we’ve won.” But he was already beginning to look towards his next target for expansion after Czechoslovakia, as was revealed in his remark: “When the time is right, we’ll soften up Poland using the tried and tested methods.”286 As time passed, Hitler began increasingly to view the Munich Agreement as a setback that had disrupted his timetable.287

  Hitler’s mood would hardly have improved when he learned that the German people had showered Chamberlain with ovations as he travelled in an open car through the streets of Munich. As Schmidt noted, the enthusiasm for Chamberlain carried an “undertone of criticism of Hitler” as the one who had led the world to the brink of a major war.288 Relief that armed conflict had been averted was palpable everywhere, and only hardcore Hitler admirers such as the Wagners ascribed this fact to the Führer’s “genius.”289 Reports by SPD-in-exile observers told a quite different story. They too described an overwhelming public feeling of joy that an international affair had once again ended happily, but they warned that this was not a lasting peace, but a “temporary ceasefire that will only last a few months or one or two years at the most.” One report from south-western Germany read: “Despite the great triumph Hitler has achieved, the enthusiasm even among the most fanatical supporters of the regime is not as great as it was with the annexation of Austria.”290

  Hitler was deeply disappointed by the popular longing for peace that manifested itself in the days surrounding the Munich Agreement. “There is no way I can wage war with this people,” he is said to have complained.291 He drew his own conclusions from the pacificist mood of the population in a confidential speech to selected representatives of the press on 10 November 1938. His years of peaceful rhetoric, he said, had led to the false conclusion that the regime wanted to preserve peace “under all circumstances.” It was therefore necessary to “recalibrate the German people psychologically and make it clear that there were things which, should they not be achieved by peaceful means, would have to be pushed through by force.”292

  The Munich Agreement was also a major setback for those who opposed Hitler. They had hoped that the Western powers would finally stand up and resist Hitler’s campaign of aggression, and they were commensurately disappointed. The agreement, observers for the SPD in exile concluded, “has shaken to the core the opposition’s faith in the ultimate triumph of what’s right and the restoration of honesty and trust in the world.”293 This was true not only for Social Democrats and Communists but also for those conservative nationalist circles which had formed a conspiratorial group in response to the looming threat of war. Much remains unclear about the “September conspiracy,” as the movement has been termed by historians, since most of what we know rests on individuals’ statements after the Second World War, which may not be reliable. It seems that the movement consisted of a loose-knit network of people and groups with extremely diverse interests and ideas.294 There were high-ranking military and governmental officials like Franz Halder and Ernst von Weizsäcker, whose activities were aimed not at overthrowing Hitler, but rather preventing a major European war, which they were convinced would end catastrophically for Germany.295 Then there was a group around Lieutenant-Colonel Hans Oster in the counter-intelligence department of the Wehrmacht Supreme Command and Interior Ministry official Hans Gisevius who wanted to use the Sudetenland crisis as a springboard for deposing the regime. We can only speculate about how far any plans for a coup d’état may have progressed and whether they would have had any chance of success. In any case, when Hitler followed Mussolini’s suggestion and moderated his demands on 28 September, the rug was pulled from under their feet.296

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  In private, Hitler left no doubt that he considered Czechoslovakian cession of the Sudetenland only an interim solution. On 2 October, only three days after the Munich Agreement was signed, he discussed the situation with Goebbels, who noted: “His determination to obliterate the Czechs is unbroken.”297 In early October, Hitler travelled twice to the Sudetenland, inspecting the Czech defensive fortifications that had been handed over to the Wehrmacht without a fight. On 9 October, in a prominent speech in the western German city of Saarbrücken, he once again adopted a more aggressive tone towards Britain. While conceding that Chamberlain was prepared to reach an agreement, the situation would change immediately if power fell to politicians like Winston Churchill, whose explicit goal, Hitler claimed, was to “immediately unleash a new world war.” Great Britain, he said, should cast off “certain airs from the Versailles epoch,” adding, “We are no longer going to tolerate such schoolmarmish, patronising behaviour.” This was not the only remark that showed how deeply irked Hitler was by the Munich Agreement. He also criticised indirectly the German people’s predisposition towards peace. There were “weaklings” at home too, he hissed, who had not understood that “a difficult choice must be made.”298 The dictator was thinking, among others, of his military attaché Fritz Wiedemann. In late October he told Goebbels that Wiedemann would have to go since he had “not held up or kept his nerve during the crisis,” adding, “Such people are useless when things come to a crunch.”299 As we have seen, Wiedemann would be sent to San Francisco as a consul general in January 1939. The former Economics Minister Hjalmar Schacht offered him consolation, saying that for him it had been a “great boon…to be able to see things from the outside for a while.” In a letter to Wiedemann, Schacht wrote: “Things are developing with increasing speed thanks to the dynamism of the ‘movement.’ Be careful what you say. People here pay attention to every word.”300

  On 14 October, the publisher Hugo Bruckmann celebrated his seventy-fifth birthday, and Hitler personally presented his former patron with a large bouquet of flowers and chatted with him for one and a half hours, reliving old memories. “He was very personable and pleasant,” the Bruckmanns told Ulrich von Hassell. “But everything he said clearly suggested that he had not got over the intervention of the [Western] powers and would have preferred his war. He was particularly angry at England—that was the reason for his incomprehensibly coarse speech in Saarbrücken.”301 This was not the only statement of its kind in Munich around this time, and it shows that Hitler was already plotting his next foreign-policy adventure. “[Hitler will] only remain calm for a little while,” the former Economics Minister Kurt Schmitt opined. “He cannot help but cast his eye upon his next strategic move.”302

  Never stop—that was the law by which the National Socialist movement and its charismatic Führer operated and which gave the process of coming to and consolidating power its irresistible dynamic. After the great foreign-policy triumphs of 1938, Hitler never for a moment considered taking an extended break and being satisfied with what he had achieved, as Bismarck had done after 1871. He constantly needed new victories to compensate for nascent popular dissatisfaction and to bolster his own prestige. As a result, he was willing to take ever greater risks, and his fear that
he would die young lent further urgency and impatience to his expansive activism. Hitler both drove events and was himself a driven man. Thus on 21 October, he issued instructions to the Wehrmacht concerning the destruction of the “remnants” of Czechoslovakia. German plans were geared even in peacetime towards “a sudden attack…so that the Czechs have no chance to organise any sort of defence.” The goal was “to rapidly occupy the country and seal off Czech from Slovak territory.”303

  Foreign policy took a back seat in November and December 1938, as the Nazi leadership concentrated on the Kristallnacht pogrom and its aftermath. In late November, news that Berlin and Paris had come to an agreement created a bit of a stir. The initiative had come from French Foreign Minister Georges Bonnet, who sought some sort of conciliation with France’s increasingly threatening neighbour in the wake of the Munich Agreement. On 6 December, Ribbentrop and Bonnet signed a declaration in which France and Germany promised to maintain “peaceful and neighbourly relations” and recognise their mutual border. But lacking any specific commitments, this agreement was not worth any more than the Anglo-German declaration of 30 September.304

  In early February 1939, after his speech to the Reichstag on the anniversary of taking power, Hitler withdrew to the Obersalzberg with the express intent of pondering his next foreign-policy moves. “Perhaps it will be the Czechs’ turn again,” Goebbels speculated. “That problem has only been half solved.”305 On 10 February, Hitler returned to Berlin to speak to army commanders in the Kroll Opera House. The transcript of this speech, which was meant to be confidential, is an enlightening document. Hitler spelled out his plans for the future with rare openness. He began by criticising “certain Wehrmacht circles” for adopting “a wait-and-see, if not sceptical attitude” towards his risky policy on the Sudetenland. For that reason, Hitler said, he felt it necessary to let the officer corps in on the “internal reasons” that motivated his action. All of his foreign-policy moves since 1933, Hitler claimed, had followed a predetermined plan and were anything but spontaneous reactions to various situations. The triumphs of 1938 were by no means the final fulfilment of his ambition, but merely “a step along a long path, to which we have been predestined, gentlemen, and whose necessity I now want to briefly explain.”

  At this point Hitler revealed to his officer corps what he had told his top military leaders on 3 February 1933 and 5 November 1937. As the “strongest people not just in Europe but practically the entire word,” Hitler said, the 85 million Germans, all members of a highly civilised race, had a right to greater space in order to preserve their standard of living. “I have taken it upon myself to solve the German question,” Hitler declared, “that is, the German problem of [not having enough] space. You should be aware that as long as I live this thought will dominate my entire existence.” He would never “shrink back even from the most extreme measures,” Hitler added, and he expected his officer corps to stand behind with “trusting faith.” Without explicitly naming the Soviet Union, he told his army commanders: “The next struggle will be a war purely of world views, a war between peoples and races.”306 The response to these revelations was apparently mixed. Hitler’s attaché Gerhard Engel described the reaction as “partly enthusiastic and partly very sceptical.”307

  To start with, however, Hitler set about capturing what had escaped his clutches in the autumn of 1938. His preparations for the annexation of the remaining Czech territory were twofold. On the one hand, he came up with a variety of excuses for delaying the acknowledgement of Czech sovereignty guaranteed under the Munich Agreement; on the other, he encouraged separatist Slovaks to break away from what was left of Czechoslovakia. When negotiations between Prague and Bratislava over Slovak autonomy broke down, the new Czechoslovakian president, Emil Hácha, dismissed the local Slovakian government under Father Jozef Tiso, a German ally, and sent troops into Slovakia. “This is a launching pad,” noted Goebbels with glee. “Now we can get a complete solution to the problem we were only half able to solve in October.” At noon on 10 March, Hitler summoned Goebbels, Ribbentrop and Keitel to the Chancellery. “Decision: on Wednesday, 15 March, we’ll invade and destroy the entire monstrous construct that is Czechoslovakia,” Goebbels wrote. “The Führer is crowing with delight. The outcome is dead certain.”308 The Wehrmacht was issued its orders on 12 March. “The people are completely calm,” Goebbels noted. “No one knows or suspects anything.”309

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  On the afternoon of 13 March, Jozef Tiso arrived in Berlin at the Nazi government’s request. Hitler informed him that Germany was about to occupy Czech territory and told him to proclaim Slovakian independence immediately. Otherwise, Hitler threatened, he would abandon Slovakia to its fate—that is, give Hungarian troops massing on the border carte blanche to invade.310 On 14 March, the parliament in Bratislava declared Slovakia an independent state. At noon that day, as Hitler and Goebbels were discussing the details for what would become the “Reich Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia,” news arrived that Hácha had requested an audience with Hitler. Hitler agreed to meet the Czechoslovakian president but also informed the Wehrmacht leadership that the scheduled invasion would proceed no matter the circumstances.311 That evening, accompanied by Czech Foreign Minister František Chvalkovský, Hácha arrived at Anhalter station in Berlin. The guard of honour on hand to welcome him was nothing but a façade. Hitler had no intention of negotiating in good faith. His goal was complete Czech capitulation, and he employed the same tactics of wearing down his opponent that he had used against Kurt von Schuschnigg. He kept his visitors waiting for hours in the Adlon Hotel, while he watched a movie at the Chancellery.312

  It was past midnight when Hácha and Chvalkovský were led through the long hallways and reception rooms of the Reich Chancellery to Hitler’s gigantic office, which was only dimly lit by several standing lamps.313 To put additional pressure on his visitors, Hitler had a large group of underlings in attendance. Alongside Göring, Keitel and Ribbentrop, there were Ernst von Weizsäcker, Otto Meissner, Press Spokesman Otto Dietrich and the interpreter Paul Schmidt; also present was the SS officer and Foreign Ministry State Secretary Walter Hewel, who took the minutes of the meeting.314 What ensued was the political equivalent of a scene from a gangster film without parallel in recent diplomatic history. Hácha had hoped to preserve at least partial Czech independence, but Hitler made it brutally clear right from the outset that there was no room for compromise. He rattled off a litany of supposed Czech affronts, claimed that the new Czech government was still animated by the “spirit of Beneš” and announced his intention to turn the remaining Czech territory into a German protectorate: at 6 a.m., the Wehrmacht would be invading. Hácha could do his people “one final service” by phoning his minister of war with the order not to resist German troops. “Hácha and Chvalkovský sat frozen in their seats,” Schmidt recalled.315 While an underling tried to establish a telephone connection with Prague, Göring threatened an aerial bombardment of that city if German demands were not met. That was apparently too much for the Czech president, who collapsed. Hitler’s personal doctor Theodor Morell was called to give the only-semi-conscious Hácha an injection.316

  Hácha recovered sufficiently to confer with his foreign minister in a separate room and issue the orders demanded to Prague via telephone. Around 4 a.m., he and Chvalkovský signed a declaration, presented to them by Hitler, in which the Czech president “entrusted the fate of the Czech people and country to the hands of the Führer of the German Reich.” At this point, the minutes read, “The Führer accepted this declaration and expressed his commitment to take the Czech people under the protection of the German Reich and to guarantee an autonomous development of its ethnic-popular life in keeping with its particular characteristics.”317 None of the Germans present, including Weizsäcker, raised a word of objection to the treatment of the Czech delegation, which violated the basic conventions of diplomacy and common decency. On the contrary, in his 1950 memoirs, Weizsäcker still had the audacity to accu
se Hácha of being complicit in the “seemingly legal beginning of Hitler’s march on Prague.”318 This top diplomat also shared the Führer’s racist prejudices against the Czechs. “They were never pleasant: outside the Reich border they were lice in the fur and inside, scabies under the skin,” Weizsäcker remarked one day after the unscrupulous coercion of Hácha, which he euphemistically called a “memorable late-night act of negotiation led by the Führer using the whole range of tactics.”319

  Hitler himself was “overjoyed” and self-satisfied by the “greatest stroke of political genius of all time.”320 He demanded that his two secretaries Christa Schroeder and Gerda Daranowski, who had spent the night in a room next to Hitler’s office, each give him a kiss on the cheek, saying: “This is the best day of my life…I will go down in history as the greatest German ever.”321 In the small hours German troops crossed the Czech border, and by 9 a.m. the first units had reached Prague, where they were greeted not with cheers, but with silence and choked-back anger. Around noon, Hitler boarded a train for the Bohemian town of Ceská Lípá, from where he travelled the remaining 100 kilometres to Prague in his three-axle Mercedes limousine. It was snowing heavily, so the city’s inhabitants barely noticed him arriving at the Hradschin Castle, the office of the Czech president. Nothing had been prepared for his arrival, so his adjutants were sent out to procure some ham, sausage and beer.322