Natural History. They are trying to spark a riot, but the Czech police have been told not to intervene. Acts of violence, pillage, and vandalism perpetrated by Germans awaiting the arrival of their Nazi brothers are war cries that find no echo in the silence of the capital.
Night swoops upon the city. An icy wind sweeps the streets. Only a handful of adolescent hotheads hang around to yell insults at the police on guard duty outside the Deutsches Haus. Beneath the Astronomical Clock in the Old Town Square, the little skeleton pulls its cord as it has done every hour for centuries. The bells toll midnight. The creaking of the wooden shutters is heard, but tonight, I bet no one bothers to watch the little figures march around the tower. They quickly go back inside: perhaps they will be safe there. I imagine clouds of crows flying around the sinister watchtowers of the dark Tyn Church. Under the Charles Bridge flows the Vltava. Under the Charles Bridge flows the Moldau. The peaceful river that crosses Prague has two names—one Czech, the other German. It is one too many.
The Czechs toss and turn in their beds. They hope that if they make more concessions, the Germans will be merciful—but what concessions have they not already made? They hope President Hacha’s servility will move the Germans to pity. Their will to resist was broken at Munich by the betrayal of the French and the British. Now they have only their passivity to protect them from the Nazis’ bellicosity. What is left of Czechoslovakia has no greater aim than to be a small and peaceful nation. But the gangrene that infected the country in the time of Premysl Ottokar II has spread—and the amputation of the Sudetenland didn’t change anything. Before dawn, the radio broadcasts the terms of the agreement concluded between Hitler and Hacha. It is annexation, pure and simple. The news explodes like a bombshell in every Czech home. Day has still not risen when the streets begin to buzz with this rumor, and gradually the noise turns from a murmur to a clamor. People leave their houses. Some carry small suitcases: they will go to the doors of the embassies to ask for asylum and protection, which will generally be refused. The first suicides are reported.
At 9:00 a.m., the first German tank enters the city.
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Actually I don’t know if it was a tank that first entered Prague. The most advanced troops seem largely to have driven motorbikes with sidecars.
So: at 9:00 a.m., German soldiers on motorbikes enter the Czech capital. Here they discover local Germans welcoming them as liberators, which makes them relax a little after several days of high tension. But they also see Czechs shaking their fists, shouting hostile slogans, and singing their national anthem, which is more worrying.
A dense crowd has gathered on Vaclavske namesti, the Czech equivalent of the Champs-Elysees, and in the city’s main thoroughfares Wehrmacht trucks are soon blocked by the vast numbers of people. The German troops don’t know where they stand.
But this is far from an insurrection. Acts of resistance are limited to throwing snowballs at the invaders.
The main strategic objectives are achieved without a shot being fired: control of the airport and of the War Ministry. Above all the Germans control Hradcany—the castle perched high on its hill, the seat of power. Before 10:00 a.m., artillery batteries are ranged on the battlements, aimed at the city below.
The only real problems are logistical: the most difficult test faced by German vehicles is the blizzard, and here and there we find broken-down trucks, tanks immobilized by mechanical troubles. The Germans also have problems finding their way in Prague’s maze of streets: we see them asking directions from Czech policemen, who answer obligingly—out of Pavlovian respect for the uniform, I suppose. Nerudova, the beautiful street decorated with banners that leads up to the castle, is blocked by a lost armored car. While the driver gets out to ask the way from a delegation of Italian diplomats, the soldier remains alone on his gun turret, his finger tensed on the machine-gun trigger, watched by the silent, gawking crowd that surrounds him. But nothing happens. The general in command of the German vanguard has nothing worse to complain about than acts of minor sabotage: a few slashed tires.
Hitler can prepare for a peaceful visit. Before the end of day, the city is “secured.” Troops on horseback move calmly along the banks of the Vltava. A curfew is decreed, forbidding Czechs to go outside after 8:00 p.m. The doors of hotels and official buildings are patrolled by German guards carrying long rifles with bayonets. Prague has fallen without a fight. The cobblestones of the city are stained with dirty snow. This is the beginning of a long, dark winter for the Czechs.
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Passing the endless, serpentine line of soldiers marching along the icy road, a convoy of Mercedes cars makes its way laboriously toward Prague. All the most eminent members of Hitler’s clique are here: Goring, Ribbentrop, Bormann. And in the Fuhrer’s own car, next to Himmler, sits Heydrich.
What goes through his mind when, after this long journey, they finally arrive at their destination? Is he struck by the mazelike beauty of the city of a hundred towers? Or is he too busy savoring the importance of his position? Does he grow irritated when the convoy gets lost in the city conquered by the Fuhrer that very morning? Or is there, in his calculating brain, the first glimmer of an idea that his career will one day take him back to the former Czech capital?
Today, the future Hangman of Prague, whom the Czechs also nicknamed “the Butcher,” sees for the first time the Bohemian city of kings: the streets are deserted because of the curfew; the tire tracks of the German army are visible in the mud and snow on the roads; an impressive calm reigns. The windows on the high street reveal expensive glassware boutiques and delicatessens; in the heart of the Old Town stands the Opera House, where Mozart created
The convoy enters what was until yesterday the presidential palace. A swastika flag flies over the castle, signaling the presence of its new masters. When Hacha returns from Berlin—his train still hasn’t arrived, having been conveniently delayed in Germany—he will use the servants’ entrance. I suppose he will feel the full ironic weight of the situation, having been so thrilled by the presidential welcome he received in Berlin. The president is now nothing but a puppet, and they’re making sure he knows it.
Hitler and his followers settle into their rooms in the castle. The Fuhrer climbs the stairs to the first floor. There is a famous photo of him, hands leaning on the sill of an open window, contemplating the city below. He looks pleased with himself. Afterward he goes back downstairs and enjoys a candlelit dinner in one of the dining rooms. Heydrich can’t help noticing that the Fuhrer eats a slice of ham and drinks a Pilsner Urquell, the most famous Czech beer—Hitler, who is a teetotaler and vegetarian. He keeps saying that Czechoslovakia has ceased to exist, and no doubt he wishes to mark the historic importance of this day—March 15, 1939—by departing from his usual eating habits.
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The next day, Hitler makes this proclamation:
For a thousand years, the provinces of Bohemia and Moravia have been part of the German people’s living space. Czechoslovakia has shown its inability to survive, and today it is reduced to a state of complete dissolution. The German Reich cannot tolerate continual difficulties in this region. So, out of self-preservation, the German Reich is now determined to intervene. We will take decisive measures in order to establish the basis of a rational order in central Europe. Over a thousand years of its history, the Reich has proved—with the greatness and qualities of the German people—that it alone is qualified to undertake this task.
