The War of the World: History's Age of Hatred

by Niall Ferguson

  I did not think that British opinion would be prepared, any more than I thought His Majesty’s Government would be prepared, to enter upon hostilities with Germany on the account of aggression by Germany on Czechoslovakia. As I had more than once said… while we naturally had the French obligations clearly in mind, it was none the less true that by no action that anyone could take on behalf of Czechoslovakia could the latter be effectively protected from German attack should such be launched. Nor, if one might imagine European statesmen after another war sitting down to draw the boundaries of Czechoslovakia in the drafting of a new peace treaty, could anyone suppose that the exact boundary as it stood today would be maintained. To fight a European war for something you could not in fact protect, and did not expect to restore, was from this point of view a course which must deserve most serious thought.

  This was a circumlocutory way of saying: ‘You’re on your own.’ Small wonder the French wilted. By this time, at last, both Halifax and Chamberlain had begun to question Hitler’s sanity. Yet this insight impelled them to be more rather than less conciliatory.

  It is a myth that there was a consensus for appeasement in the months leading up to Munich. As Duff Cooper later recalled:

  … we were being advised on all sides to do the same thing – to make plain to Germany that we would fight. This advice came from the press, almost unanimous on Sunday, from the Opposition, from Winston Churchill, from the French Government, from the United States Government, and even from the Vatican: this advice supported bysuchan overwhelming weightof opinion we were rejecting on the counter-advice of one man, the hysterical Henderson.

  Doubts within the Conservative Party were growing rapidly even before Chamberlain began his experiment with shuttle diplomacy. Cadogan, however, snidely dismissed the critics of appeasement as ‘war-boys’. Rather than approve naval mobilization, as Cooper urged, Chamberlain’s inner circle backed his ill-judged ‘Z Plan’ – a flight to Germany to make a face-to-face appeal to, of all things, Hitler’s vanity (a trait Chamberlain could at least claim to understand). ‘The right course’, the Prime Minister argued, ‘was to open by an appeal to Herr Hitler on the grounds that he had a great chance of obtaining fame for himself by making peace in Europe and thereafter establishing good relations with Great Britain.’ In truth, this was a kind of fame Chamberlain coveted for himself. What the Z Plan meant in practice was that Hitler would be offered a plebiscite in the Sudetenland, at which the inhabitants could be expected to vote for another Anschluss. The rump Czechoslovakia might then be given some kind of guarantee. The French wilted still further at being thus left out in the cold. The Soviets were even less impressed, though Chamberlain blithely dismissed Vansittart’s warning that excluding them would drive Stalin into Hitler’s arms.

  The first meeting between Chamberlain and Hitler was held on September 15 at the latter’s mountain retreat, the Berghof, just outside Berchtesgaden. Extraordinarily, Hitler’s interpreter Paul Schmidt was the only other person present when the two leaders conferred in the Führer’s study. Chamberlain had set out to flatter Hitler; indeed, the very fact of the British Prime Minister’s coming as far as the Bavarian Alps to see the German dictator in his holiday house was a fine piece of flattery in itself. Chamberlain believed he was stooping to conquer; Hitler, whom he erroneously thought of as a former house painter, struck him as ‘the commonest looking little dog’. Yet it was Hitler who played on Chamberlain’s vanity the more successfully, as the latter’s account of the meeting makes clear: ‘I have had a conversation with a man, he [Hitler] said, and one with whom I can do business and he liked the rapidity with which I had grasped the essentials. In short I had established a certain confidence, which was my aim, and in spite of the hardness and ruthlessness I thought I saw in his face I got the impression that here was a man who could be relied upon when he had given his word.’ Hitler made it clear he would settle for nothing less than the immediate cession of the Sudetenland to Germany, without a plebiscite. ‘The thing has got to be settled at once,’ he declared. ‘I am determined to settle it. I do not care whether there is a world war or not. I have determined to settle it and to settle it soon and I am prepared to risk a world war rather than allow this to drag on.’ Even if it did not come to war, he threatened to discard the Anglo-German Naval Agreement if he did not get his way. Persuading himself that Hitler’s objectives were nevertheless ‘strictly limited’ to ‘self-determination’ for the Sudetenland – a leap of faith of no small magnitude – Chamberlain did not dissent and returned to London.

  After much deliberation, and objections from Cooper and the other ‘war-boys’, the Cabinet acquiesced, provided that a plebiscite would be held before the ‘transfer’. The next step was to place the blame for the sell-out on the French since, as Halifax put it, ‘it was the French and not we ourselves who had treaty obligations with the Czechoslovak Government’. Rather than brief Daladier on what had been said at Berchtesgaden, Chamberlain proposed that ‘if the French asked us our opinion, we should reply that it was France which was primarily involved, but that we thought they would take a wise course if they said that they would not fight to prevent the self-determination of the Sudeten Germans.’ This was yet more circumlocution to the same effect as before: Britain would not fight. When Daladier came to London he expressed understandable indignation, but to no avail. The most he could achieve was to persuade Chamberlain that Britain and France should guarantee what was left of Czechoslovakia after the transfer of the Sudetenland. All that remained to be done, it seemed, was to bully Beneš into capitulating. This was an exceedingly painful process. Nevertheless, on September 21, deserted by the French, who blamed their desertion on the British, he did so.

  Chamberlain set off for Germany again – this time bound for Bad Godesberg on the Rhine – with what he hoped was the solution. He met Hitler on September 22, a day later than the Germans had been led to expect. The meeting was a fiasco. Claiming that he now had to take into account Polish and Hungarian claims with respect to their minorities in Czechoslovakia, Hitler rejected the idea of a plebiscite out of hand (‘Es tut mir fürchtbar leid, aber das geht nicht mehr –‘I am terribly sorry, but that will no longer do’). In desperation, Chamberlain offered to drop the plebiscite if only territory with a population that was over 50 per cent German were handed over at once; the rest could be referred to a commission, as had happened with disputed territory after 1918. Alleging continued violations of the Sudeten Germans’ rights, Hitler insisted on immediate cession of the territory, to be followed by German military occupation. Indeed, if no agreement were reached, he threatened to send troops into the Sudetenland on September 28, just six days later. To reinforce this crude ultimatum, more German troops were moved to the Czech border, bringing the total number of divisions there to thirty-one. Chamberlain blustered, saying that British public opinion would not tolerate a military occupation; Hitler replied that German opinion would stand for nothing less. Chamberlain complained that Hitler was presenting him with a Diktat; Hitler solemnly replied that, if he read the text of the German demands carefully, he would see that it was in fact a ‘memorandum’. Flummoxed, Chamberlain agreed to communicate this ‘memorandum’ to the Czechs. Hitler responded by agreeing to postpone the date of his threatened occupation by three days, a quite empty ‘concession’. The Prime Minister returned to London and put on a brave face, his analysis of the situation mystify-ingly unaltered. Hitler had no ambition beyond the Sudetenland. He was a man Chamberlain could do business with:

  Herr Hitler had a narrow mind and was violently prejudiced on certain subjects; but he would not deliberately deceive a man whom he respected and with whom he had been in negotiation… The crucial question was whether Herr Hitler was speaking the truth when he said that he regarded the Sudeten question as a racial question which must be settled, and the object of his policy was racial unity and not the domination of Europe… The Prime Minister believed that Herr Hitler was speaking the truth… He [Chamberlain] t
hought that he had now established an influence over Herr Hitler, and that the latter trusted him and was willing to work with him.

  Predictably, Duff Cooper now pressed for ‘full mobilization’, echoed by Winterton, Stanley, de la Warr and Elliot. Leslie Hore-Belisha, the War Minister, also declared himself in favour of mobilizing the army. Halifax too – hitherto so loyal to Chamberlain – jibbed; Hitler was ‘dictating terms, just as though he had won a war’. So did Lord Hailsham, another erstwhile supporter. With the news that the French as well as the Czech government had rejected the German demands, and the appearance of Daladier to confirm France’s readiness to fight if necessary, Chamberlain had no alternative but finally to take a firmer line. Now Chamberlain proposed sending his confidant Horace Wilson to Germany to present Hitler with a choice: to refer the dispute to a joint German, Czech and British Commission or face war with Britain too if France should enter on the side of the Czechs. This was such a ‘complete reversal’ that Duff Cooper could ‘hardly believe’ his ears and had to ask Chamberlain to repeat what he had said.

  For a fleeting moment it seemed as if Hitler had overplayed his hand. The Czechs were readying for war. The French sent a telegram to London asking the British ‘(a) [to] mobilize simultaneously with them: (b) [to] introduce conscription: [and] (c) [to] “pool” economic and financial resources’, requests repeated when General Maurice Gamelin, Chief of the French General Staff, visited London on the 26th. Chamberlain phoned Wilson, now in Germany, and informed him that the French had ‘definitely stated their intention of supporting Czechoslovakia by offensive measures if [the] latter is attacked. This would bring us in: and it should be made plain to Chancellor [Hitler] that this is [the] inevitable alternative to a peaceful solution.’ Although Chamberlain still refused to heed Churchill’s advice to link Russia to the Anglo-French threat, Halifax issued a press statement that, in the event of a German attack on Czechoslovakia, ‘France will be bound to come to her assistance and Great Britain and Russia will certainly stand by France.’ Far from running counter to popular pacifism, this accurately reflected the public mood, which had never been as supine as Chamberlain and his inner circle. A Mass Observation Opinion Poll conducted at around the time of the Bad Godesberg meetings showed only 22 per cent of the public in favour of appeasement, with 40 per cent against. After Munich, despite the defeats suffered by anti-appeasement candidates in Oxford and Kinross, there was a marked drop in government support at by-elections and a surge in support for the Opposition parties – enough to dissuade Chamberlain from holding the general election he had contemplated. The mood in the House of Commons also shifted at this time. In France even Phipps had to admit that there had been a ‘complete swing-over of [French] public opinion since Hitler’s demands had become known’. On September 27, Chamberlain reluctantly agreed to mobilize the fleet, a decision Duff Cooper was able to make known to the press. In London, gas masks were issued and trenches dug in the parks; the fantasy that war would mean instantaneous German air raids on the capital continued to exert its fascination. Even in the Berlin embassy ‘there was general satisfaction that the die had been cast’.

  Yet, unbeknown to his colleagues, Chamberlain had diluted his instructions to Wilson by sending a message via the German embassy that Hitler should not consider the rejection of his demands as the last word. Instead of warning Hitler of Britain’s intention to support France and Czechoslovakia in the event of a war, Wilson allowed himself to be intimidated by Hitler’s fury at Czech intransigence. Within a few days, Hitler declared, ‘I shall have Czechoslovakia where I want her.’ To Wilson’s consternation, ‘He got up to walk out and it was only with difficulty he was prepared to listen to any more and then only with insane interruptions.’ This was precisely the kind of theatrics at which Hitler excelled.* To increase the pressure on Chamberlain’s feeble emissary, Hitler brusquely brought forward the deadline for acceptance of his demands to 2 p.m. on September 28, just two days later. Göring added, for good measure, that Germany could count on Polish support in the event of a war. Wilson went even weaker at the knees after hearing Hitler rant and rave at the Berlin Sportpalast, and recommended not relaying Chamberlain’s warning at all. He was overruled and did as he was asked on the 27th, but ‘more in sorrow than in anger’. Hitler was unmoved: ‘If France and England strike, let them do so,’ he retorted. ‘It is a matter of complete indifference to me. I am prepared for every eventuality.’

  Wilson returned to London, and Chamberlain now argued that the Czechs should be asked to withdraw their troops from the contested area, pending arbitration, though the majority of ministers rejected this course. The British military attaché at Berlin was brought in to testify to the poor state of Czech defences and morale, subjects about which he was less than well informed; his less pusillanimous colleague in Prague was not invited to offer an opinion. The appeasers also expressed scepticism about French intentions. When French ministers visited London, they were ‘cross-examined’ by the Chancellor of the Exchequer Sir John Simon (by training a lawyer) and their answers found wanting. Gamelin’s plans were taken to mean that the French would advance into Germany but flee back to the Maginot Line if they encountered serious resistance. Chamberlain’s broadcast to the nation on September 27, in which he expressed his deep reluctance ‘to involve the whole of the British Empire in war simply on… account [of] a small nation confronted by a big and powerful neighbour’, dealt another blow to the ‘war-boys’:

  It was the most depressing utterance [complained Duff Cooper]. There was no mention of France in it or a word of sympathy for Czechoslovakia. The only sympathy expressed was for Hitler, whose feelings about the Sudetens the Prime Minister said that he could well understand, and he never said a word about the mobilization of the Fleet. I was furious. Winston rang me up. He was most indignant and said that the tone of the speech showed plainly that we’re preparing to scuttle.

  This was prophetic.

  Chamberlain took to the air once more. What was agreed at the Munich conference on September 29 affected only the timing of the dismemberment of Czechoslovakia and the means whereby Hitler would achieve his goal. Instead of the Sudetenland’s being forcibly occupied forthwith, as Hitler had demanded, the occupation was spread over the first ten days of October. Plebiscites were supposed to be held under the supervision of an international commission, which would also determine the new boundary between Germany and Czechoslovakia and other matters such as property disputes and currency questions. Individuals were to have the right to opt in or opt out of the territories to be transferred. Of these German concessions, only the first, specifying the timing of the German occupation, was ever implemented. Chamberlain returned home waving a piece of paper that he had persuaded Hitler to sign when the two met privately in Hitler’s apartment. It read:

  We regard the agreement signed last night and the Anglo-German Naval Agreement as symbolic of the desire of our two peoples never to go to war again. We are resolved that the method of consultation shall be the method adopted to deal with any other questions that may concern our two countries, and we are determined to continue our efforts to remove possible sources of difference and thus contribute to assure the peace of Europe.

  It was this that Chamberlain, in a moment of ill-judged euphoria on his return to Downing Street, described as signifying ‘peace in our time’. The next day, Duff Cooper resigned, the only member of the Cabinet to do so, on the ground that Munich meant imminent war, not peace, and that the Prime Minister’s statement would make it hard to justify the accelerated rearmament that was needed.

  Cooper was right. By the end of October the Germans had made it clear where their next territorial claims would be: the Lithuanian city of Memel and the international city of Danzig. By the end of November the News Chronicle was reporting that Hitler was preparing to march on Prague. The final boundary settlement between Germany and Czechoslovakia was so far from ‘self-determination’ that it placed 30,000 Czechs under German rule. Nothing was don
e in response, because the promised guarantee to the rump Czechoslovakia never took concrete form. Meanwhile, Hitler made a mockery of Chamberlain’s hopes for disarmament, openly pledging to achieve parity with the Royal Navy in submarines. Then, less than six months after Munich, on March 15, 1939 German troops marched into Prague, catching the British almost completely by surprise. With German encouragement, Slovakia declared independence and Czechoslovakia ceased to exist – precisely the outcome Churchill had predicted in the Commons just a few days after Chamberlain’s return from Munich.