not share the general elation. Ribbentrop had pushed for war until the last minute. He felt robbed of his humiliation of the British — all the more so since Chamberlain was feted on his journey through Munich in an open-topped car as the hero of the moment, the actual saviour of Europe’s peace.400 Hitler’s own mood had altered overnight. The impressions he had given of savouring his triumph over the western powers had vanished by the next morning.401 He looked pale, tired, and out of sorts when Chamberlain visited him in his apartment in Prinzregentenplatz to present him with a joint declaration of Germany’s and Britain’s determination never to go to war with one another again. Chamberlain had suggested the private meeting during a lull in proceedings the previous day. Hitler had, the British Prime Minister remarked, ‘jumped at the idea’. Chamberlain regarded the meeting as ‘a very friendly and pleasant talk’. ‘At the end,’ he went on, ‘I pulled out the declaration which I had prepared beforehand and asked if he would sign it.’402 After a moment’s hesitation, Hitler — with some reluctance it seemed to the interpreter Paul Schmidt — appended his signature.403 For him, the document was meaningless. And for him Munich was no great cause for celebration. He felt cheated of the greater triumph which he was certain would have come from the limited war with the Czechs which had been his aim all summer.404 Even military action for the more restricted goal of attaining the Sudetenland by force had been denied him. He had been compelled, through the readiness of the western powers to make Czechoslovakia concede the Sudetenland, to compromise on the directives that he had upheld since May despite internal opposition. During the Polish crisis the following summer this would make him all the more determined to avoid the possibility of being diverted from war. But when that next crisis came, he was even more confident that he knew his adversaries: ‘Our enemies are small worms,’ he would tell his generals in August 1939. ‘I saw them in Munich.’405
Of those in Hitler’s immediate entourage, none had done more to bring about the eventual acceptance of a negotiated settlement than Goring. He had ultimately scored a victory over his arch-rival, and leading hawk, Ribbentrop. The draft which formed the basis of the Munich Agreement had been largely Goring’s work. His excellent mood at Munich reflected his pleasure that his own approach had ultimately triumphed. But it marked the end of Goring’s influence on foreign policy. It was the first, and last, time that he had pressed for a solution which did not meet with Hitler’s favour. The Fuhrer’s displeasure was apparent to him. His standing with Hitler was diminished. During the following months, he would be totally displaced by Ribbentrop as Hitler’s right hand in all matters related to foreign policy. Weakened and depressed, Goring would take himself on an extended holiday in the Mediterranean in early 1939, leaving the way clear for his arch-rival, and would be largely excluded from decisions on the expansionist programme that culminated in the Polish crisis and war.406
Hitler was scornful, too, of his generals after Munich.407 Their opposition to his plans had infuriated him all summer. How he would have reacted had he been aware that no less a person than his new Chief of Staff, General Haider, had been involved in plans for a
Hitler’s own popularity and prestige reached new heights after Munich. He returned to another triumphant welcome in Berlin. But he was well aware that the elemental tide of euphoria reflected the relief that peace had been preserved. The ‘home-coming’ of the Sudeten Germans was of only secondary importance. He was being feted not as the ‘first soldier of the Reich’, but as the saviour of the peace he had not wanted.412 At the critical hour, the German people, in his eyes, had lacked enthusiasm for war. The spirit of 1914 had been missing. Psychological rearmament had still to take place. A few weeks later, addressing a select audience of several hundred German journalists and editors, he gave a remarkably frank indication of his feelings: ‘Circumstances have compelled me to speak for decades almost solely of peace,’ he declared. ‘It is natural that such a… peace propaganda also has its dubious side. It can only too easily lead to the view establishing itself in the minds of many people that the present regime is identical with the determination and will to preserve peace under all circumstances. That would not only lead to a wrong assessment of the aims of this system, but would also above all lead to the German nation, instead of being forearmed in the face of events, being filled with a spirit which, as defeatism, in the long run would take away and must take away the successes of the present regime.’ It was necessary, therefore, to transform the psychology of the German people, to make it see that some things could only be attained through force, and to represent foreign-policy issues in such a way that ‘the inner voice of the people itself slowly begins to cry out for the use of force’.413
The speech is revealing. Popular backing for war had to be manufactured, since war and expansion were irrevocably bound up with the survival of the regime. Successes, unending triumphs, were indispensable for the regime, and for Hitler’s own popularity and prestige on which, ultimately, the regime depended. Only through expansion — itself impossible without war — could Germany, and the National Socialist regime, survive. This was Hitler’s thinking. The gamble for expansion was inescapable. It was not a matter of personal choice.
The legacy of Munich was fatally to weaken those who might even now have constrained Hitler. Any potential limits — external and internal — on his freedom of action instead disappeared. Hitler’s drive to war was unabated. And next time he was determined he would not be blocked by last-minute diplomatic manoeuvres of the western powers, whose weakness he had seen with his own eyes at Munich.
3. MARKS OF A GENOCIDAL MENTALITY
‘In Germany the Jew cannot hold out. This is a question of years. We will drive them out more and more with an unprecedented ruthlessness.’
‘If the German Reich comes into foreign-political conflict in the foreseeable future, it can be taken for granted that we in Germany will think in the first instance of bringing about a great showdown with the Jews.’
‘The Jews have not brought about the 9 November 1918 for nothing. This day will be avenged.’
‘I want today to be a prophet again: if international finance Jewry inside and outside Europe should succeed in plunging the nations once more into a world war, the result will be not the bolshevization of the earth and thereby the victory of Jewry, but the annihilation of the Jewish race in Europe!’
