After the Victorians

by A. N. Wilson

  The question of Czechoslovakia was very different. The 3 million Germans living in the Sudetenland, the part of ‘Czechoslovakia’ which had been cobbled together during the Versailles Peace Conference, wanted their ‘national self-determination’. This meant that they wanted to be absorbed into the greater Germany, the Third Reich. President Wilson’s principle of ‘self-determination’ was not to be more sharply tried than over this issue. Why shouldn’t they be Germans, if that was what they wanted to be? The answer is that Versailles had destroyed the empires which created ‘umbrellas’ for such peoples as the Sudeten Germans, and the League of Nations was no substitute for the Austro-Hungarian Empire when it came to holding disparate peoples together in peace. The Sudetenland abuts Poland. The power that controls it is within a few hours’ drive of Poland’s national shrine, Czestochowa, and the medieval university town of Cracow.

  Pan-Germanism had begun to show the violence which had been inherent in Hitler’s schemes from the beginning. It was not like self-determination for the Welsh, or even for the Irish. Hitler in the Sudetenland had the perfect launch-pad for the fulfilment of those dreams which he spelled out in such lurid detail in Mein Kampf: vengeance upon his Slavic neighbours for the brutality they had meted out to the East Prussians at the end of the First World War; the destruction of the Eastern Barbarian. Stalin would see this, which is why he so brilliantly pursued his own version of the ‘appeasement’ policy: signing up to an actual non-aggression pact with Hitler in August 1939, with the eager expectation that they would be able to carve up Poland between them.

  The Sudetenland had been occupied by Germany in 1938. Where did this leave the body from which the great Sudeten limb had been amputated, Czechoslovakia? This, the former region of Bohemia, now focused the minds of all the statesmen in the West. From the point of view of the democrats, Czechoslovakia was one of the great success stories of Versailles. It was an extremely prosperous democracy, it had efficient industry, mineral resources, a large and well-trained army. Any Western power that wanted to put a limit on Hitler’s expansionist powers, or to restrain his murderous activities at home by some resolute sabre-rattling, would have been well-advised to keep Czechoslovakia united, and strong.

  By handing over Czechoslovakia to Hitler, Britain neutered 36 Czech divisions, fully equipped, trained and armed, waiting on the German border. Such an army could not have fought Germany unaided, but with the help of France’s 80 divisions, and with British aircraft now rolling off the production lines at 240 a month, a formidable opposition could have been offered to Hitler – especially when we remember that this was before the Russians signed their pact with him; they could easily have been persuaded, as they later were, to fight on the side of Britain.

  Opinions differ about whether Hitler really believed that he could get away with taking Czechoslovakia without a fight, or whether he was playing a game of poker. His whole strategy, from 1936 onwards, was based on the belief that he could win short strikes, and this worked until he invaded Russia. Had he thought he could take Prague within a couple of weeks, he would probably have done so, even with armed opposition; but we shall never know. He, and Chamberlain, and Edward Daladier, who had taken over from Blum as the premier of France in April 1938, all realized that if they went to war over Czechoslovakia it would mean a general war, another European bloodbath in which millions of people would get killed. No one wanted that. Those who had argued against appeasement since it began to emerge as the foreign policy of Great Britain were not, most of them, arguing for a war; they believed that rearmaments and threats to Hitler would make him retreat or back down. This in itself is questionable. So, while seeing that the appeasers got it wrong, we also have to acknowledge that Churchill and his friends would probably have ‘got it wrong’ too had they been in charge of things in the early to mid-1930s. Building more British aeroplanes or tanks would probably not have stopped Hitler’s almost preternaturally easy path of total power. Nor would it have stopped him annexing Austria. But it might have had an effect in negotiating with Hitler over the Czechs.

  In July 1938, Chamberlain sent Walter Runciman, formerly a Liberal MP, and now a viscount and Lord President of the Council, to Prague to persuade President Benes that it was vain to resist Hitler. His role was the distasteful one of having, in effect, to tell Benes that he was a betrayed Czech. The earlier suggestions, urged by the French, that the Allies would unite to protect Czechoslovakia, were withdrawn.

  At home, in London, the government gave orders for trenches to be dug in the London parks. Thirty-eight million gas-masks were distributed. The message was clear: do you want to be gassed and bombed, or do you want to let your politicians betray a little country in the middle of Europe about which none of you really care? The Foreign Office was, by September, playing a game of brinkmanship. ‘If German attack is made upon Czechoslovakia … France will be bound to come to her assistance, and Great Britain and Russia will certainly stand by France.’24

  On 15 September, Chamberlain had flown to Berchtesgaden and met Hitler in his mountain retreat. Chamberlain was not a poker player. He arrived with all his cards visible. He offered Hitler the Sudetenland if he left the remainder of Czechoslovakia alone. It was a ridiculous, as well as disgraceful thing to have done, thereby destroying any hope for the rest of Czechoslovakia to survive as an independent political entity. It made war look, for a week or two, more rather than less likely. But there were behind-the-scenes negotiations with Mussolini. The British public had been terrified by the trenches and the gas-masks ploy. They had been psyched up now to yearn for any solution of the crisis, however disgraceful.

  Harold Nicolson, who had abandoned his flirtation with Mosley’s New Party and become an anti-appeaser and pro-Churchill, records on 15 September that his wife Vita ‘takes the line that the Sudeten Germans are justified in claiming self-determination and the Czechs would be happier without them in any case. But if we give way on this, then the Hungarians and the Poles will also claim self-determination, and the result will be that Czechoslovakia will cease to exist as an independent State. Vita says that if it was as artificial as all that, then it should never have been created.’ Yet Nicolson reaches the nub of these strange times when he adds: ‘Hitler has all the arguments on his side, but essentially they are false arguments. And we, who have right on our side, cannot say that our real right is to resist German hegemony. That is “imperialistic”.’25 We are back in the mysterious moral territory entered by Churchill when he said, of Spain: ‘I am English and I prefer the triumph of the wrong cause.’

  On 18 September, Daladier, the French Prime Minister, and Bonnet, his Foreign Minister, visited London to draw up a plan by which all areas of Czechoslovakia with a more than 50 per cent German population should be handed over to Hitler. But when, on the 22nd, Chamberlain flew back to meet Hitler at Godesberg to present him with these craven concessions, he was told they were not enough. The Hitler whom Chamberlain now met was not the smiling, friendly fellow he had met the previous week – ‘a man who could be relied upon’. He would not even listen to the Anglo-French plans, and when Sir Horace Wilson patiently began to go through the proposals, Hitler went into one of his rages. He jumped to his feet and shouted: ‘There is no point in negotiating further!’ The interpreter had never seen Hitler so incandescent. ‘If France and England want to strike,’ he shouted, ‘that is entirely indifferent to me!’ (Mir ist das vollständig gleichgültig.) He gave the Czechs until 28 September to accept his terms for negotiating the Sudetenland, otherwise Germany would occupy the territory by force. In the huge Sportspalast in Godesberg that evening Hitler did one of his set-piece shouting-acts to an audience of 20,000. The American journalist William Shirer thought him ‘in the worst state of excitement I’ve ever seen him in’. In Dr Goebbels’s view the speech was a ‘psychological masterpiece’.26

  No doubt it was, for it sent the leaders of the Free World scuttling

  back to their parliaments, terrified that they might have le
d their countries to the brink of war and determined to do anything they could to negotiate themselves out of the difficulty. By the end of September the public were prepared for the worst. On the 28th, Parliament was recalled and Chamberlain was able to produce a last-minute reprieve. It was, he said, ‘horrible, fantastic, incredible that we should be digging ditches and trying on gas masks here because of a quarrel in a far-away country between people of whom we know nothing’. Mussolini had persuaded Hitler to hold a four-power conference at Munich the next day. Peace remained a possibility. ‘Herr Hitler has just agreed to postpone his mobilisation for twenty-four hours and meet me in conference with Signor Mussolini and Signor [why not Monsieur?] Daladier at Munich.’ Harold Nicolson thought it was one of the most dramatic moments he had ever witnessed. For a while there was silence and then the whole House of Commons broke into ecstatic cheering and sobbing. Churchill went up to Chamberlain and said to him, sourly: ‘I congratulate you on your good fortune. You were very lucky.’27

  Chamberlain flew back to Germany the next day to meet Hitler at Munich. It was in effect an advertisement to the whole world that, whatever the terms Britain thought it could dictate or suggest, Hitler would override them. He promised peace if all he took was the Sudetenland, but it was perfectly obvious to all that he would eventually do what he did in March 1939, that is occupy the rest of Bohemia. The craven way in which Chamberlain gave in to Hitler at Munich only increased the German leader’s cocksure certainty that he could do as he liked. ‘Our enemies are small worms,’ he would tell his generals in August 1939. ‘I saw them at Munich.’28

  The news of Chamberlain’s caving in to Hitler at Munich meant no war – yet. It was therefore greeted with ecstatic joy. ‘No conqueror returning from the battlefield has come home adorned with nobler laurels,’ said The Times. Chamberlain appeared on the balcony of Buckingham Palace with the King and Queen to a crowd of adoring and happy people. When he had arrived at the airport, the king’s message was waiting for him – ‘Come straight to Buckingham Palace so that I can express to you personally my most heartfelt congratulations on the success of your visit to Munich.’29 Forty thousand letters congratulating Chamberlain came to Number 10 Downing Street, 4,000 tulips were sent from Holland. There were telegrams from the King of Norway and the King of the Belgians.

  Yet even as he did it, Chamberlain, and his Foreign Secretary Lord Halifax, knew that the peace could not hold, and that honour had been lost. Maynard Keynes, listening to the wireless news that night, must have been expressing what many felt even in the midst of their relief. ‘Tremendous relief’ … but ‘his [Chamberlain’s] sympathies are distasteful. If he gets us out of the hole, it was he (and The Times) who got us into it by leading the Nazis into the belief that the English ruling class were with them … We are not out of the trouble yet … but we shall be, if only the PM can bring himself to be just a little harsh to the Führer.’30

  Harold Nicolson felt gloomy. ‘Even Winston seemed to have lost his fighting spirit,’ he noted on 29 September 1938. The Church of England responded very largely as if the men of Munich had been guided by Almighty God. ‘You have been enabled to do a great thing in a great way at a time of almost unexampled crisis. I thank God for it,’ wrote Cosmo Lang to Chamberlain.31 There were services of thanksgiving in all the churches and cathedrals of England on the next Sunday. In Lincoln Cathedral, the dean held the congregation spellbound ‘by ascribing the turn of events to God’s wonderful providence’.32

  One young man, however, a theological student, ran from the cathedral ‘feeling sick to the point of convulsion’. He was twenty-five years old. He had been born in 1913, in Berlin, into a scholarly family. The Bonhoeffer family were neighbours and friends, and as a boy, this child, named Ulrich Simon, had played the triangle in their family orchestra while Dietrich, future theologue and martyr, ‘very fair and beautiful and manifestly kind … who shone like a star’, played in the strings as they performed the Toy Symphony, which was at that date still attributed to Haydn. At school during a period of hardship in Berlin, when he had to pay 840,000 marks for a packet of cotton wool when sent on an errand by his mother, he had a peculiar Scripture master who had ranted to the eleven-year-old about the inequity of the Sermon on the Mount. If only Abraham had sacrificed Isaac, said this teacher, we should not be in the hands of the profiteers, the racketeers, the usurers and money-grubbers. This man was later to be executed as an Obergruppenführer of the SS, having massacred thousands of Poles and Jews. Ulrich Simon, until exposed to this sort of thing at school, had no idea that he was Jewish. His parents did not practise a religion. By an extraordinary geographical and imaginative journey, he found himself in Lincoln Cathedral aged twenty-five, a naturalized Englishman just in time before the war, and training to become an Anglican clergyman. At the Armistice service in 1938 he preached from St Paul’s text: ‘Are they Hebrews? So am I.’33 His short book Sitting in Judgement, an Interpretation of History 1913–1963 is the best account I know of what was really going on in the late 1930s, and the significance of Munich, appeasement and all.

  A fortnight after Hitler occupied Prague and took over the rest of Czechoslovakia, Britain and France signed an agreement that they would go to war if he marched into Poland. Much of the credit for this must go to Halifax, who realized that the policy of appeasement had failed, and run its course. In common with Churchill, Halifax believed passionately in the British Empire. It was to preserve that Empire from involvement in another European apocalypse, which would almost certainly spell its downfall, that he had supported appeasement. Now, something stirred inside this tall, gaunt ‘holy fox’. Britain, which had been rearming now for two years, scarcely felt itself ready for war, but something happened in the year following Munich.

  War was declared on 3 September 1939. The change which took place in the public mind, from ecstatic joy over the Munich disaster in September 1938 to a recognition of what had to be done after Hitler had (inevitably) invaded Poland in September 1939, was something which had been taxing the minds of theologians for the last few years. That is, was it possible to be a good person in a bad world, without getting your hands dirty? In India, Gandhi was having a remarkable success at dismantling the British Empire by the means of Tolstoyan pacificism. But this was surely because, for all the immense gulfs between Gandhi and the imperialists, there was at some deep core a shared value, a belief in freedom and decency which made the British feel that such things as the massacre at Amritsar in 1919 had been an aberration, a departure from the civilized values that they sought to promote. Halifax saw the British Empire as ‘a rallying point of sanity for a mad civilisation’.34 The centre of his life was religion. He took his chaplain with him on honeymoon. If you stayed at his Yorkshire house, Hickleton Hall – later converted into a hospital for the insane – the butler could greet you in the morning with the alternative: ‘Tea or Eucharist, sir?’35 You can hardly imagine a government composed of such men as this treating Gandhi and the Indian rebels as Hitler or Stalin treated their dissidents.

  For the Nazis, a massacre such as Amritsar would not be an aberration, it would be the norm. The first six years of Hitler’s regime in Germany could leave no one in any doubt that the very values on which European civilization had been thought to be based were now quite disregarded.

  A pessimistic Spenglerian vision of things would have thought that there was an inevitability about this. The age of Christianity was over, and it was now the time of Yeats’s ‘rough beast, its hour come round at last’. Such an attitude of pessimism surely informed the peoples of the world who thought that Munich was a cause for celebration. But a year’s reflection made it quite clear that it was no such thing. Nor could virtue of the kind preached by Tolstoy or practised by Gandhi be quite enough when confronting so committed an overturn of the Judaeo-Christian inheritance as formed part of Hitler’s programme. Moral man had to defend himself against an immoral society, an anti-moral system. That was how Reinhold Niebuhr (1892–1971) defin
ed the dilemma. Today he is best known as the author of ‘The Serenity Prayer’ read at meetings of Alcoholics Anonymous. From the moment of his arriving in the United States in 1928 as a professor at Union Theological College in New York, he had a profound effect on the public awareness of what issues were involved in the politics of Europe. As Ulrich Simon says, ‘He believed in freedom, reason and love – the very qualities which were now ridiculed and about to be stamped out by the totalitarian states.’36

  In August 1939, Dietrich Bonhoeffer wired to John Baillie in Edinburgh that he had decided upon the theme of the Croall lectures that he was due to give in Edinburgh: ‘Death in the Christian Message’. As Ulrich Simon says, ‘They were never to be given except in blood.’37

  Bonhoeffer had moved a very long way from the Liberal Protestantism of his master Adolf Harnack. He and his fellow Christians in Germany were at the very front line, living out the new thoughts developed by Niebuhr. Bonhoeffer’s Ethics is one of the great books of the twentieth century, written almost in blood, and confronting the question, how good people – and Christian good people at that – can respond to evil on the scale which had overcome first Germany, now so much of Europe. In individual cases, he knew that it was a call to martyrdom. But in generalized terms, he saw it as a stage to that ‘religionless Christianity’ which would surely come to pass after the Inferno. There must be a preparedness, in defence of the highest good, to forsake one’s own moral purity and to fight.

  After the invasion of Poland, there followed the so-called Phoney War, in which the reality of what was being proposed on both sides had failed to sink in. A Heinkel bomber crashed in Clacton-on-Sea, Essex, in April 1940 causing not only great damage on the ground, but also the deaths of all four of its German crew. The four young men were carried to the local cemetery with full RAF honours. Local women wept. ‘The gallant foe were laid to rest amidst numerous floral tributes, their coffins being covered with wreaths of lilies, irises and other spring flowers.’38