From Munich to European war

The twelve months before September 1939 witnessed a decisive change in European diplomacy. In 1938, British and French statesmen permitted the Reich to annex Austria and the German-speaking parts of Czechoslovakia; in 1939, London and Paris signalled their determination to stop Nazi expansion by extending security guarantees to Poland, Romania and Greece.

Hitler's mounting impatience is our starting point. Before 1937, to achieve his goals, Hitler exploited opportunities as they appeared. Afterwards, Hitler accelerated the pace by initiating crises. Why? Much of the answer lies in his thirst for violence. Hitler craved war not just to satisfy his bloodlust, but also to make the law of the jungle the law of Europe. The first indication of this change in posture came at a meeting of Hitler's top officials on 5 November 1937. With a theatrical flourish that revealed how his inflated sense of destiny and mortality played on him, the Führer remarked that what he was about to say constituted his ‘last will and testament'. The aim of long-range policy, he declared, was to obtain Lebensraum for the growth of the ‘German racial core', and this could ‘only' be executed with force of arms. To sustain the breakneck pace of German preparations for war and to move closer to autarky, the resources of Austria and Czechoslovakia had to be seized before 1943—45. By that stage, the military advantage that the Reich had obtained by arming early would begin to waste away as the other Powers caught up. Hitler speculated that Austria and Czechoslovakia might be taken earlier than anticipated if France was immobilized by civil war or if a war broke out between Britain, France and Italy.

Hitler's view prevailed. In February 1938, the army generals who at the November conference had voiced anxiety about the risks of a general European war were ousted from their posts. Hitler assumed supreme command of a Wehrmacht which had grown from a few under-armed units to one of Europe's most operationally capable armed forces. His hold on the economy and diplo­macy was also tightened. Goring, who headed the Luftwaffe and the Four-Year Plan, extended his authority over the economy, while Ribbentrop, a pompous sycophant who said only what his master wanted to hear, became foreign minister. The first test for the regime, now free of conservative voices, appeared to confirm Hitler's appraisal of the European situation. On 9 March, Kurt von Schuschnigg, Austria's chancellor, took a bold step to counter German economic and political penetration into his country. He announced a plebiscite to determine whether his fellow Austrians wished to remain independent of the Reich. The tactic caught Berlin by surprise. To pre-empt an Austrian vote for sovereignty, the Nazis quickly improvised preparation for an armed intervention. A torrent of threats from Berlin persuaded Schuschnigg to cave in. On 11 March, Germany occupied Austria and Hitler proclaimed the Anschluss. Britain and France did not oppose him.

Attention now turned to Czechoslovakia. To keep the issue on the boil, Hitler ordered Konrad Henlein, the leader of the Nazi movement among the three million Sudeten Germans in Czechoslovakia, to demand minority rights that the government in Prague would find impossible to grant. War planning against Czechoslovakia (Operation Green) was stepped up to take into account the fact that German forces could now attack from Austria as well as Germany.

Sudetenland

The geographical area in Bohemia mainly inhabited by ethnic Germans. In 1919 it was placed on the Czech side of the German-Czech border and in 1938 led to an international crisis ending in the infamous Munich Agreement.

The setting of the crisis of 1938 came as little surprise. After Locarno, informed observers agreed that once Germany and Russia revived, Central and Eastern Europe would become unstable. Ultimately, the fate of the ‘successor' states rested on the approach Berlin and Moscow would adopt towards them. Would the intermediaries be regarded as useful buffers or prey? Nazi and Soviet ideology, the myriad revanchist claims and national hatreds that divided the region, and the limited capabilities of the small states, combined to ensure that the predatory approach would be adopted.

self-determination

The idea that each national group has the right to establish its own national state. It is most often associated with the tenets of Wilsonian internationalism and became a key driving force in the struggle to end imperialism.

Moreover, the British never regarded Eastern Europe's frontiers as sacrosanct. To them, plunging Europe into war for the sake of a disputed border or the custody of a discontented national minority was as absurd in the 1930s as fighting a nuclear war for the sake of a united Germany or Korea appeared in the Cold War. Many sympathized with complaints that the Paris peacemakers had applied the principle of national self-determination unjustly against the aspirations of German nationalists. This is why the British did not attempt to reverse the Anschluss. What the British did not know for certain was whether Hitler was exploiting the alleged injustice of Versailles as a pretext for more far-reaching goals.

Chamberlain believed that Germany could be pacified, if only Hitler could be brought to the bargaining table. When he became prime minister, he had had six triumphant years as chancellor of the exchequer. Long before Baldwin stepped down in May 1937, Chamberlain, who towered in cabinet, was tipped to replace him. Neither narrow-minded nor provincial in outlook, his politics mixed a radical, reforming zeal at home with liberal imperialism abroad. He believed in the empire and in Britain's unique mission to promote peace and prosperity. He hated war, yet he did not seek ‘peace at any price'; he saw spending on arms at the cost of social spending as a waste, yet he armed to deter war. ‘What a frightful bill we do owe to Master Hitler,' he said, ‘damn him!' And damn him he did. In no way was Chamberlain drawn to Nazism. He despised the dictators, but he knew he had to deal with the Nazi Führer if war was to be averted. The question was, how?

Convinced that the professional diplomats had blocked progress, Chamberlain's answer was to open a direct channel to Berlin. In November 1937, his friend Lord Halifax (who became foreign secretary after Eden resigned in February 1938) was sent to the Reich on an unofficial visit to explain Britain's position. Halifax told Hitler that Britain wanted a frank exchange of views on economic, colonial and territorial issues. If London and Berlin could arrive at reasonable solutions to these problems, then peaceful relations could be established between the European Great Powers. In reply, Hitler confessed that he too desired peace and only demanded a redress of Germany's legitimate grievances.

Military considerations bolstered the case for a diplomatic solution. True, the arms balance was less dire than anyone at the time believed. British and French intelligence exaggerated the might of the Wehrmacht, especially the prospect of a knockout blow delivered by the Luftwaffe, while downplaying the strengths of their own forces. Planners on both sides of the Channel advised caution. The rearmament programmes of 1936 would only peak in 1939—40. By then, war could be faced with more confidence. Yet, even by that stage, the Reich could only be beaten in a protracted and ruinous war; there was no short cut to victory. ‘We can do nothing to prevent the dog getting the bone, and we have no means of making him give it up', the British chiefs of staff concluded, ‘except by killing him by a slow process of attrition and starvation.' Such calculations also lay behind French policy. The Czechs had a fine army, which would put up a brave fight before certain defeat, but French officials were unsure about whether France itself could withstand even a brief fight. The air force possessed only fifty modern planes. Aircraft production had slowed to a trickle. Since 1936, the franc had been devalued three times. Gold reserves dwindled and revenue declined. France faced bankruptcy. External politics did not augur well either. Poland (and Hungary) lined up with Germany to demand Czech territory, and the French were unwilling to count on the Soviets. Chamberlain and Halifax, though acutely aware that they could never forsake France, attempted to ‘restrain' their French counterparts by refusing to state plainly whether they would assist France in a war against Germany. The British instead pressed French ministers to persuade their Czech allies to offer the Germans concessions. Edouard Daladier, the French defence minister and, since April 1938, premier, concluded that France could not uphold its treaty obligations to Czechoslovakia without inviting national disaster. He did not share Chamberlain's optimism that there could be lasting peace with Germany, yet one thing was certain. As General Maurice Gamelin, his top commander, advised, ‘It is essential that we have Britain with us.'

During the crisis, it was Chamberlain who therefore had the initiative. He pursued the course he had laid out after Halifax's visit to Germany. In August 1938, he sent an emissary to mediate between the Sudetenlanders and Czechs. Hitler meanwhile turned up the heat with war preparations and further orders to Henlein to become more recalcitrant. Hitler's plan for a bloodletting and Chamberlain's plan to satisfy his stated aim of uniting the German-speaking peoples peacefully collided. Twice Chamberlain flew to Germany for bilateral talks with Hitler. This was a spectacular gambit in an age unfamiliar with ‘shuttle diplomacy'. On 15 September, at the first meeting, Chamberlain said ‘yes' in principle to a German annexation of the Sudetenland, though Paris and Prague would also have to agree. Three days later, Daladier did agree, so long as Britain guaranteed the rump Czech state. Under pressure from London and Paris, and calculatingly mixed signals from Moscow about its intentions, the Czech president, Edvard Benes, had little choice. On 22 September, the prime minister flew to inform Hitler that he would now get what he wanted. In reply, Hitler screamed for more, including the immediate occupation of the Sudetenland by German forces. Hitler still wanted his war by 1 October. After two difficult meetings with Daladier, Chamberlain at last told him that Britain would stand with France, and that the two governments should send a final plea for diplomacy as well as a military warning. The French army and the British navy mobilized for war. Hitler now decided to back away from a war over the timing and method of Germany's annexation of the Sudetenland. On 28 September, he took up Mussolini's proposal for a Four-Power conference, which met at Munich on the following day with the Duce, Daladier, Chamberlain and Hitler in attendance.

At Munich, the transfer of the Sudetenland was settled and the Four Powers guaranteed the frontiers of what was left of the Czech state. Munich was the sort of nineteenth-century Great Power arbitration that many considered to be the

Plate 7.1 Munich Conference, Germany, 30 September 1938. (Left to right) Prime Ministers Neville Chamberlain (UK) and Edouard Daladier (France), Nazi German Chancellor Adolf Hitler, Benito Mussolini (Italy) and Italian Foreign Minister Count Ciano gather to sign the Munich Treaty between Nazi Germany, France, Italy and the United Kingdom, authorizing Hitler to annex Czech territory. (Photo: Staff/AFP/Getty Images)

only way out of the extended crisis of the 1930s. Chamberlain thought that Munich would be the start of a general appeasement that would see Germany rejoin the League and progress towards world disarmament, and an end to autarky. It was a victory for the prime minister’s shuttle diplomacy and, apparently, for the Führer. After all, he had been given what he had demanded so many times in public — the Sudetenland. Hitler was in fact enraged at having been cheated out of his Czech war. On 30 September, Chamberlain had even persuaded him to sign the notorious Anglo-German declaration, which committed Hitler to ‘consulta­tion’ as the normal method of settling disputes. All Hitler ever wanted from the British was to be left alone. Now he would rid Europe of Britain.

Document 7.1

The Anglo-German declaration, 30 September 1938

We, the German Führer and Chancellor and the British Prime Minister, have had a further meeting to-day and are agreed in recognizing that the question of Anglo-German relations is of the first importance for the two countries and for Europe.

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 with one another 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 to contribute to assure the peace of Europe.

Adolf Hitler

Neville Chamberlain

September 30, 1938

Over the winter of 1938-39, Hitler raised the production targets for the expansion of the Luftwaffe and the German navy — both forces directed against the British. Ties with Tokyo and Rome were to be strengthened to paralyse the British Empire. The prerequisite to Lebensraum was now the subjugation of France. But the Czechs and Poles would have to be dealt with first to safeguard the eastern front. On 14—15 March 1939, under the threat of air bombardment, the Prague government was given no choice but to allow Germany to occupy what was left of the Czech state. Slovakia declared its independence under a German protectorate. Poland was a more complex problem. What Hitler wanted was extra­territorial rights in the Polish corridor, the annexation of the Free City of Danzig

— both of which had been granted in 1919 to Poland to provide access to the sea

— as well as Polish adherence to the Anti-Comintern Pact. In exchange, Hitler and Ribbentrop promised Warsaw territory in Ukraine after Germany turned eastward to deal with the Soviet Union. The implications of the German offer were clear enough: Poland was to become a vassal state of the Greater German Reich. Ribbentrop put the deal repeatedly to Josef Beck, Poland's foreign minister; each time the offer was turned down. On 3 April 1939, Hitler gave the order for war preparations against Poland to begin.

Danzig, Free City of (Polish: Gdansk)

A historically and commercially important port city on the Baltic Sea. In 1919, the Paris peacemakers made Danzig politically independent as a ‘free city' under the League of Nations in order to give the new state of Poland free access to the sea. However, the vast majority of the city's inhabitants were Germans. The return of Danzig to German sovereignty was thus a key issue for German nationalists between the wars. Hitler exploited the Danzig question as a pretext for his attack on Poland in 1939.

After Munich, the British and the French experienced a change in outlook. In London, Chamberlain and his ministers were puzzled over what was happening inside the German camp. In Paris too, politicians and officials wondered where Germany would strike next. Over the winter of 1938—39, the answers came in the form of spine-chilling intelligence, which suggested that the Wehrmacht was preparing a sudden attack on the Low Countries in order to seize bases for bombers. Neither the French nor the British intelligence services detected a slackening in the pace of German rearmament. Furthermore, on 9—10 November, a fierce pogrom against German Jews (Kristallnacht) swelled the sense of moral outrage against the Nazis that many had long tried to suppress. In both capitals, the unwinding of appeasement did not occur overnight, nor was it attributable to any single factor — yet it certainly began before Hitler occupied what was left of the Czech state. Some moved faster than others. Halifax abandoned appeasement more quickly than Chamberlain — although both men were always prepared to fight rather than see Nazi hegemony in Europe. In Paris, Daladier wished to construct a powerful Franco-British alliance, and to restore France's influence in Eastern Europe, while his foreign minister, Georges Bonnet, argued that France should adjust to a subordinate role in Europe.

The trend towards a resolute stand against Hitler was complicated by the fact that Munich had undermined French and British credibility. The solution was to offer firm commitments and guarantees. The process began in February 1939, when Chamberlain offered a public pledge to uphold French security. Conversations between British and French military staffs to draft joint war plans were scheduled. To build a barrier against the German domination of Eastern Europe, France and Britain offered security guarantees in March to Poland, Romania and Greece. Hesitantly, conversations with Moscow about an alliance also began. In May, to put military muscle behind these declarations, peacetime conscription was introduced in Britain. What was striking about this period was the way in which military perceptions altered so rapidly. British and French intel­ligence now highlighted German weaknesses, particularly in economic readiness for war and in trained manpower, and to underscore Anglo-French strengths as the 1936 construction programmes started to pay off. Rearmament was acceler­ated, so that British aircraft production would soon overtake German output. French armour, gun and aviation production now began to recover along with the French economy. ‘If it comes to a duel between France and one other nation,' Daladier confidently declared, ‘I would have no mortal concerns for the outcome.' British and French statesmen now knew that they could face the burdens of a protracted war with a united home front — no small thing for the fighting power of democracies. Indeed, Hitler's Prague coup had its greatest impact on the populace. No one relished war, but now there was a grim resolve to resist Hitlerism. It was not, however, public opinion, as some historians still argue, that dragged the ‘peace at any price' men to war. Instead, British and French officials attempted to balance the issuing of credible threats designed to deter what they now perceived to be open-ended Nazi expansionism against the need not to throw away the chances of a German climb-down.

That such a balance should have been struck stemmed from an erroneous understanding of how Berlin worked. British and French diplomats argued that Hitler could be influenced by playing to moderates in his inner circle. In truth, Hitler was not swayed by moderates or extremists. The decisions were Hitler's alone, and the prospects in 1939 of a climb-down were nil. This was the legacy of Munich. If Hitler had gone to war even after Chamberlain had resolved the Sudeten question, then the full extent of his ambitions would have been exposed to the world, and the war could not have been localized to Central Europe. The fears of his military advisers and the downcast response of the German people to the prospect of war had also troubled his thoughts. In 1939, he was determined that he would not lose his nerve again or be drawn into diplomacy. Hitler would not permit ‘at the last minute some Schweinhund [to] make a proposal for media­tion'. His craving for violence, his growing aggravation as he tried unsuccessfully to manipulate events and the lack of brakes on his authority, all combined to produce the crucial miscalculations. In April 1939, in response to Poland's refusal to submit to his will and the granting of the Anglo-French guarantees to Warsaw, the Führer denounced the Polish-German non-aggression treaty of 1934 and the Anglo-German naval agreement of 1935. In May, to pave the way for a localized war against the Poles, Germany signed a ten-year alliance with Italy, the so-called Pact of Steel. Ribbentrop now assured Hitler that Britain and France were only bluffing; they would abandon the Poles as they had the Czechs. Hitler did not need any convincing. Dismissing signs of British and French determination and rearmament, he reached for the trump card, Soviet Russia. Actually, neither Hitler nor his commanders took the threat of Soviet arms very seriously in 1939 or earlier. The negotiations between Ribbentrop and Molotov in August were only of consequence because of the effect that a German-Russian treaty might have on Poland's guarantors. A Nazi-Soviet pact, so the Führer believed, would bring down Chamberlain's government, and provide the West with a pretext to desert the Poles. Despite the diplomatic coup, London and Paris firmed up their alliances. Count Ciano, meanwhile, said that Italy did not have the resources to join its Axis partner in a general war. Hitler pulled back, yet only briefly. The German-Polish war scheduled for 26 August was delayed until 1 September.