Hitler. 1936-1945: Nemesis

early hours to find bread, ham, and Pilsner. Hitler, too, was given a glass of beer. He tasted it, pulled a face, and put it down. It was too bitter for him.¹⁰² He dictated the preamble to the decree. It stated that ‘the Bohemian and Moravian lands had belonged to the living space of the German people for 1,000 years’.¹⁰³ The terminology, sounding alien to Prussian ears, hinted at his Austrian origins; the name of the Protectorate was derived from the designations of the old Habsburg imperial crown lands. He spent the night in the Hradschin. When the people of Prague awoke next morning, they saw Hitler’s standard fluttering on the castle. Twenty-four hours later he was gone.¹⁰⁴ He showed little further interest in Prague, or the Protectorate. For the Czechs, six long years of subjugation had begun.

Hitler returned to Berlin, via Vienna, on 19 March, to the inevitable, and by now customary, triumphator’s reception. Despite the freezing temperatures, huge numbers turned out to welcome the hero. When Hitler descended from his train at the Gorlitzer Bahnhof, Goring, tears in his eyes, greeted him with an address embarrassing even by the prevailing standards of sycophancy. Thousands cheered wildly as Hitler was driven to the Reich Chancellery. The experienced hand of Dr Goebbels had organized another massive spectacular. Searchlights formed a ‘tunnel of light’ along Unter den Linden. A brilliant display of fireworks followed. Hitler then appeared on the balcony of the Reich Chancellery, waving to the ecstatic crowd of his adoring subjects below.¹⁰⁵

The real response among the German people to the rape of Czechoslovakia was, however, more mixed — in any event less euphoric — than that of the cheering multitudes, many of them galvanized by Party activists, in Berlin. This time there had been no ‘home-coming’ of ethnic Germans into the Reich. The vague notion that Bohemia and Moravia had belonged to the ‘German living-space’ for a thousand years left most people cold — certainly most north Germans who had traditionally had little or no connection with the Czech lands.¹⁰⁶ For many, as one report from a Nazi District Leader put it, whatever the joy in the Fuhrer’s ‘great deeds’ and the trust placed in him, ‘the needs and cares of daily life are so great that the mood is very quickly gloomy again’.¹⁰⁷ There was a good deal of indifference, scepticism, and criticism, together with worries that war was a big step closer. ‘Was that necessary?’ many people asked. They remembered Hitler’s precise words following the Munich Agreement, that the Sudetenland had been his ‘last territorial demand’.¹⁰⁸ In the industrial belt of Rhineland-Westphalia, according to a report from the Social Democrat underground movement, there was a good deal of condemnation of the invasion while sympathy for the Czechs was openly expressed in coal-pits, workers’ washrooms, and on the streets. The Nazi regime was criticized; but there was also contempt for the way France and Britain had let Hitler do what he wanted.¹⁰⁹ Similar sentiments were commonplace among those who detested the Nazis. ‘No shot fired. Nowhere a protest,’ noted one woman in her diary — adding to her comment the forecast of a friend: ‘I bet they now get Danzig and Poland still without war… and if they’re lucky, even the Ukraine.’¹¹⁰ ‘Can’t he get enough?’ murmured the mother of a fourteen-year-old girl in Paderborn. The young girl herself, who had been appalled the previous summer at the ‘outrages’ allegedly perpetrated against the German minority in the Sudetenland, now found herself sympathizing with the Czechs, and at the same time asking what Germany was doing in annexing the territory of ‘an entirely alien people’ who could under no circumstances be ‘germanized’. She consoled herself with the thought that no blood had been shed, that it could even be an advantage for a small country to be under the protection of a great power, and that the German people would be ‘much more generous, tolerant, and fair’ protectors than ‘some Slavic people’.¹¹¹ It was a reflection of the widespread latent hostility towards Slavs, the impact of propaganda, and of the confused sentiments that continued to accompany Hitler’s expansionism. Even opponents of Hitler recognized that moral scruples carried little weight in the face of another major prestige success. ‘Internal opponents, too, are now declaring that he’s a great man,’ ran a report sent to the exiled Social Democrat leadership in Paris. It indicated the difficulty in challenging those lauding his ‘achievements’. Counterarguments, it was said, were pointless — not least ‘the argument that Czechoslovakia has been invaded and Hitler has done something wrong’.¹¹²

Hitler had been contemptuous of the western powers before the taking of Prague. He correctly judged that once more they would protest, but do nothing. However, everything points to the conclusion that he miscalculated the response of Britain and France after the invasion of Czecho-Slovakia. The initial reaction in London was one of shock and dismay at the cynical demolition of the Munich Agreement, despite the warnings the British government had received. Appeasement policy lay shattered in the ruins of the Czecho- Slovakian state. Hitler had broken his promise that he had no further territorial demands to make. And the conquest of Czecho-Slovakia had destroyed the fiction that Hitler’s policies were aimed at the uniting of German peoples in a single state. Hitler, it was now abundantly clear — a recognition at last and very late in the day — could not be trusted. He would stop at nothing. Chamberlain’s speech in Birmingham on 17 March hinted at a new policy. ‘Is this the last attack upon a small State, or is it to be followed by others?’ he asked. ‘Is this, in fact, a step in the direction of an attempt to dominate the world by force?’¹¹³ British public opinion was in no doubt. Hitler had united a country deeply divided over Munich. On all sides people were saying that war with Germany was both inevitable and necessary. Recruitment for the armed forces increased almost overnight.¹¹⁴ It was now clear both to the man in the street and to the government: Hitler had to be tackled.

The following day, 18 March, amid rumours circulating that Germany was threatening Romania, the British cabinet endorsed the Prime Minister’s recommendation of a fundamental change in policy. No reliance could any longer be placed on the assurances of the Nazi leaders, Chamberlain stated. The old policy of trying to come to terms with the dictatorships on the assumption that they had limited aims was no longer possible. Chamberlain regarded his Birmingham speech, he told the cabinet, ‘as a challenge to Germany on the issue whether or not Germany intended to dominate Europe by force. It followed that if Germany took another step in the direction of dominating Europe, she would be accepting the challenge.’ Lord Halifax, the Foreign Secretary, underlined the view that ‘the real issue was Germany’s attempt to obtain world domination, which it was in the interest of all countries to resist’. Britain alone, he argued, could organize such resistance — though he admitted that it was hard to see how Britain could effectively attack Germany — if the Germans invaded Romania or whether they turned on Holland. ‘The attitude of the German government was either bluff, in which case it would be stopped by a public declaration on our part; or it was not bluff, in which case it was necessary that we should all unite to meet it, and the sooner we united the better. Otherwise we might see one country after another absorbed by Germany.’ The policy had shifted from trying to appease Hitler to attempting to deter him. In any new aggression, Germany would be faced at the outset with the choice of pulling back or going to war. As the Foreign Secretary’s comments made clear, the geographical thrust of any new move by Hitler was immaterial to this new strategy. But the Prime Minister had little doubt as to where trouble might next flare up. ‘He thought that Poland was very likely the key to the situation… The time had now come for those who were threatened by German aggression (whether immediately or ultimately) to get together. We should enquire how far Poland was prepared to go alone these lines.’¹¹⁵ The British Guarantee to Poland and the genesis of the summer crisis which, this time, would end in war were foreshadowed in Chamberlain’s remarks.

Similar reactions were registered in Paris. Daladier let Chamberlain know that the French would speed up rearmament and resist any further aggression. The Americans were told that Daladier was determined to go to war should the Germans act against Danzig or Poland. Even strong advocates of appeasement were now saying enough was enough: there would not be another Munich.¹¹⁶

IV

Before the Polish crisis unfolded, Hitler had one other triumph to register-though compared with what had gone before, it was a minor one. As we noted, Hitler had referred in his directive of 21 October 1938 to preparation for ‘the occupation of Memelland’.¹¹⁷ The incorporation of Memelland in the German Reich was now to prove the last annexation without bloodshed. After its removal from Germany in 1919, the Memel district, with a mainly German population but a sizeable Lithuanian minority, had been placed under French administration. The Lithuanians had marched in, forcing the withdrawal of the French occupying force there in January 1923. The following year, under international agreement, the Memel had gained a level of independence, but remained in effect a German enclave under Lithuanian tutelage. Trouble had flared briefly in 1935 when the Lithuanians put 128 Memelland National Socialists on trial, sentencing four of them to death. But other than launch a fierce verbal