Hitler: Ascent, 1889-1939 (135 page)

Around eleven that night, negotiations resumed with a wider circle of participants. On the German side Joachim von Ribbentrop, Ernst von Weizsäcker and the director of the legal department in the Foreign Ministry, Friedrich Gaus, took part. Horace Wilson and Ambassador Henderson represented Britain alongside Chamberlain. Schmidt translated the finished memorandum word for word. Hitler had not yielded an inch on the cardinal question and was still demanding that the withdrawal of Czechoslovakian forces from the Sudeten territory designated on his map begin on the morning of 26 September. It was to be concluded by 28 September, whereupon the area was to be ceded to Germany. The Czech government was being handed a deadline of four days. That was tantamount to an “ultimatum” for Chamberlain, who accused Hitler of failing to support even in the slightest his efforts to preserve peace.
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Once again the negotiations were in danger of collapsing.

At this moment, one of Hitler’s assistants brought the news that Beneš had ordered the general mobilisation of Czechoslovakia’s armed forces. “Dead silence descended upon the room,” Paul Schmidt recalled. “You could hear a pin drop.” As though this bombshell had brought him to his senses, Hitler suddenly became more conciliatory. In a soft voice he reiterated his commitment not to take military action against Czechoslovakia as long as negotiations were ongoing and declared his willingness to extend the deadline for evacuation by two days, until 1 October. He amended the memorandum in his own hand and made some corrections to soften the wording. For his part, Chamberlain stuck to his promise to pass on the document to the Czechoslovakian government. Thus when the two sides took leave of one another on 24 September the atmosphere was not unfriendly. Hitler once again displayed his charm, thanking Chamberlain profusely for his efforts to preserve peace and assuring him that “the Sudeten question would be the last major problem he saw himself compelled to resolve.”
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But during a long walk with Goebbels though the Chancellery garden on the afternoon of 25 September, Hitler made it clear how much such assurances were worth. “He does not think that Beneš will give in,” Goebbels noted. “But terrible justice will be meted out upon him if he does not. On 27 or 28 September, the deployment of troops will be complete…And then we’ll mobilise. That will be so lightning-quick that the world will see it as a miracle.” Hitler therefore had by no means abandoned the plan of destroying Czechoslovakia with a sudden military invasion. “The radical solution is the best one,” Goebbels added. “Otherwise we’ll never get rid of this matter.”
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In fact, in a personal message to Hitler delivered by Horace Wilson on the afternoon of 26 September, Chamberlain reported that the government in Prague had rejected the memo as “fully unacceptable.” Although Hitler could hardly have been surprised by the news and, in light of what he told Goebbels the day before, perhaps even welcomed it, he nonetheless reacted with agitation. He jumped up from his seat, yelling, “There is no point in negotiating any further.” He ran to the door as if he were about to quit the room and had to be coaxed into listening as the message was read out in full. Afterwards, Schmidt recalled, “he had a fit of a magnitude I never heard before or after in a diplomatic discussion.” Wilson repeatedly asked Hitler to calm down, which only encouraged more outbreaks of fury.
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It seems as though Hitler’s rage was not play-acted. As he had done in the attempted putsch of 1923 and the Night of the Long Knives in 1934, he had likely worked himself up into an extraordinary psychological condition as the Sudeten crisis inexorably moved towards a conclusion. In this state, in the evening of 26 September, he gave a speech at Berlin’s Sportpalast, by the end of which he was, in William Shirer’s words, “shouting and shrieking in the worst state of excitement I have ever seen him in.”
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He began with an overview of his efforts for “practical policies of peace” in Europe, mentioning the German–Polish non-aggression pact, the naval agreement with Britain, his renunciation of Alsace-Lorraine, German friendship with Italy and the peaceful
Anschluss
of Austria. “And now we stand before the final problem that must and will be solved!” he shouted. “It is the last territorial demand I will make on Europe, but it is a demand upon which I will not yield and that I will, God willing, see fulfilled.” He wildly lambasted Beneš, accusing the Czech president of waging a “war of extinction” against Germans in Czechoslovakia and declaring that “the time has come to talk in plain language.” He had made Beneš an offer in his memorandum of 23 September, Hitler claimed, adding: “The decision is now in his hands.” He then levelled a barely veiled threat: “War or peace. Either he can accept this offer and give Germans their freedom, or we will take this freedom ourselves!…We are determined. Herr Beneš now has the choice!”
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Shirer, who was sitting in the gallery directly above Hitler, remarked: “All during his speech he kept cocking his shoulder, and the opposite leg from the knee down would bounce up.” For the first time, the American journalist thought that the Führer had “completely lost control of himself.” After the speech, when Goebbels swore an oath of loyalty to the Führer and declared that “a November 1918” would never be repeated, Hitler could not hold himself back. “He leapt to his feet and with a fanatical fire in his eyes that I shall never forget brought his right hand, after a grand sweep, pounding down on the table and yelled with all the power in his mighty lungs: ‘Ja!,’ ” wrote Shirer. “Then he slumped into his chair exhausted.”
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The following morning Hitler was still in a state of agitation veering between euphoria and hysteria. Around noon, Horace Wilson appeared with another letter from Chamberlain. Britain, the prime minister wrote, would guarantee that Czechoslovakia honoured its commitment to evacuate the Sudetenland, if Germany would forgo using violence. Hitler refused even to consider the offer, insisting categorically that his memorandum had to be accepted by 2 p.m. on 28 September. Otherwise, the Wehrmacht would march into the Sudetenland on 1 October. He repeatedly threatened to “crush the Czechs,” rolling his R’s for dramatic effect. Whereupon Wilson calmly declared that he had also been instructed to communicate a further message from the prime minister. If France’s obligations put it in a position where it had to directly engage in hostilities against Germany, the United Kingdom would consider itself bound to support France. Seemingly untouched by the significance of this statement, an enraged Hitler shot back: “If France and England want to start a fight, they should go ahead. It does not matter to me at all. I’m prepared for all eventualities.”
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With that the discussion was over. Wilson flew back to London that afternoon.

But Hitler was not nearly as indifferent to Chamberlain’s warning as he pretended. In the days following the Bad Godesberg meeting, Hitler had assumed the British were “bluffing.”
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Now there was no longer any doubt that a German attack upon Czechoslovakia would mean war with both Britain and France. Facing this scenario, Hitler was unsure, even if he tried to conceal that fact from his entourage. In a conversation with Goebbels at noon on 27 September, he played the role of the steel-nerved statesman, pursuing his goal with the single-mindedness of a sleepwalker. His leading admirer was swept away—or at least pretended to be in his diary: “His hand did not tremble for a moment. A great genius walks among us…You simply have to serve him with profound faith.”
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However, an incident in the centre of Berlin in the late afternoon of 27 September must have made an impression on Hitler. A motorised army division rolled down Wilhelmstrasse on its way to the Czech border in what was no doubt a demonstration of the Wehrmacht’s military readiness. But pedestrians reacted quite differently than the crowds in the Sportpalast had, hurrying to the next underground station to avoid having to witness the spectacle. The few hundred people who had assembled on Wilhelmplatz stood in complete silence. When Hitler then briefly appeared on his balcony at the Chancellery, there were no cheers, and he quickly went back inside.
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There was an unquestionable lack of enthusiasm among the public at large for another war, and for the first time, major doubts arose about Hitler’s qualities as a statesman. Contemporary observers even talked about a crisis of trust between the people and their Führer.
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This did not escape Goebbels’s notice. Several days later, the propaganda minister admitted that the military division’s passage through the centre of Berlin “had served to establish clarity about the mood of the people, and it was against war.”
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On the evening of 27 September, Hitler seemed to have come to his senses and reconciled himself to the idea of a diplomatic solution that would hand him the risk-free triumph of amalgamating the Sudetenland, while only temporarily postponing his actual goal of destroying Czechoslovakia. He sent a conciliatory letter to Chamberlain, writing that he left it up to the British prime minister whether he thought it was worth continuing his efforts to bring the government in Prague “to reason at the final hour.”
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It was unclear whether Chamberlain would be willing to act as a mediator again, and Hitler kept the military option open for the more likely scenario that the prime minister refused to continue his mission. Around midnight, he repeated to Ernst von Weizsäcker that he wanted to “obliterate” the Czech state. As Weizsäcker wrote in a letter: “It will take a miracle to preserve peace.”
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Ulrich von Hassell called 28 September “a critical day of the highest order.”
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The tension could be felt that morning in all of Europe’s capitals. Only a few hours remained until Hitler’s ultimatum elapsed. Nothing seemed capable of interrupting the momentum towards war. The Chancellery was a hive of activity, just as it had been on 11 March before the
Anschluss
. Ministers, military officers, high-ranking party functionaries and their staffs were standing and sitting around everywhere. Hitler, who was in an “extremely agitated, nervous mood,” went from one group to the next, lecturing them. “There were many miniature Sportpalast speeches that morning,” recalled Paul Schmidt.
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Shortly after 11 a.m., Hitler received the French ambassador, one of the few foreign diplomats he respected and whose opinion he valued. André François-Poncet urgently warned Hitler against the illusion that the conflict with Czechoslovakia could be localised. “If you attack this country, you will set all of Europe aflame…” Hitler was told. “Why do you want to take this risk, seeing that you can get your fundamental demands fulfilled without war?” Schmidt felt he could see in Hitler’s face “how the scales gradually tipped towards peace.” Unlike the previous day, Hitler did not blow his top, but rather patiently listened to François-Poncet’s arguments.
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It was Mussolini’s intervention, however, which finally tipped the balance. Around 11:40 a.m., the Italian ambassador, Bernardo Attolico, appeared at the Chancellery and announced breathlessly that he had an urgent message to convey from Il Duce. Hitler was summoned from his conversation with François-Poncet. The British government, Attolico announced, had asked via its ambassador if Italy would be willing to mediate. Mussolini had agreed to do so and therefore requested that the German government postpone mobilising its troops for twenty-four hours. Hitler briefly considered the request and then accepted Il Duce’s suggestion. Only two hours before the German ultimatum was set to expire, the immediate threat of war had been removed.
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At 12:15 p.m., when British Ambassador Henderson arrived at the Chancellery, he could sense that the atmosphere had changed. Henderson delivered Chamberlain’s answer to Hitler’s letter of the previous evening. The British prime minister suggested coming to Germany with the leaders of France and Italy for a conference to find a peaceful solution to the crisis. After Attolico had attested to Mussolini’s willingness, Hitler agreed.
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That afternoon, invitations were issued for a conference in Munich the following day.

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On the evening of 28 September, Hitler travelled in a chartered train to the Bavarian capital. The following morning he went to Kufstein, where he boarded Mussolini’s train, and the two dictators agreed a joint negotiating strategy. At the same time, French Prime Minister Edouard Daladier and Chamberlain landed at Oberwiesenfeld airport and were given a friendly welcome by Munich crowds on the way to their hotel.
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In the early afternoon, the conference was opened in the “Führerbau” on Königsplatz. Taking part, in addition to the four heads of government, were Joachim von Ribbentrop, Count Ciano, Horace Wilson and the state secretary in the French Foreign Ministry, Alexis Léger. Göring, Weizsäcker, the ambassadors of Britain, France and Italy as well as expert lawyers, assistants and secretaries also joined the proceedings. Hitler was polite and solicitous, but he obviously felt uncomfortable. His face was pale, and his movements were agitated. Unable to speak any foreign languages, he stuck by Mussolini’s side during the conference breaks, talking in German with him. Indeed, Hitler seemed positively fixated on the self-confident Italian leader. “When Il Duce laughed so did he; when Il Duce knitted his brow so did he,” recalled François-Poncet. “I will never forget the scenes of imitation.”
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