Carroll Quigley - Tragedy and Hope - A History of the World in Our Time

By this last date Hitler was ready to strike at the rump of Czechoslovakia. Hungary was invited to join in this operation, and eagerly accepted on March 13th. In the meantime the projected victim was a nest of intrigue. Sudeten Nazis were everywhere, seeking to make trouble. Poland and Hungary were working to get a common frontier by obtaining Slovakia as a protectorate for Poland and Ruthenia as a province of Hungary. They hoped in this way to block Germany’s movement to the east and to keep Russian influence out of central Europe. Within the two autonomous provinces, Slovakia and Ruthenia, and to a much lesser degree in Bohemia-Moravia, there was turmoil as various reactionary and semi-Fascist groups angled for power and German favor.

The degree of political maturity in Slovakia may be judged from the fact that the members of Monsignor Tiso’s Cabinet personally took bombs from the Nazis to stir up trouble in their own province. Their efforts to break away from Prague completely were hampered by the financial insolvency of Slovakia. When they appealed to Prague for financial assistance on March 9, 1939, President Hácha deposed the Slovak premier and three of his ministers. Seyss-Inquart, accompanied by several German generals, forced the Slovak Cabinet to issue a declaration of independence from Prague. Tiso, summoned to Hitler’s presence in Berlin on March 13th, was “persuaded” to approve this action. The declaration was received with profound apathy by the Slovak people, although the German radio filled the air with stories of riots and disturbances, and various Nazi bands within both Slovakia and Bohemia did their best to make the facts fit this description.

On March 14th, Hácha, the president of Czechoslovakia, was forced to go to Berlin. Although he was sixty-six years old, and not in the best of health, Hácha was subjected to a brutal three-hour long tongue-lashing by Hitler during which he had to be revived from a fainting spell by an injection administered by Hitler’s physician. He was forced to sign documents handing Czechoslovakia over to Hitler and ordering all resistance to the invading German forces to cease. Ruthenia had already proclaimed its independence (March 14th). Within a week, Bohemia-Moravia and Slovakia were declared German protectorates, and the former was taken within the German economic system. Ruthenia was annexed by Hungary after one day of independence.

Europe had not yet recovered from the shock of March 15th when Germany seized Memel from Lithuania on March 22nd, and Italy obtained its crumb of satisfaction by seizing Albania on April 7, 1939.

It is usually said that the events of March 1939 revealed Hitler’s real nature and real ambitions, and marked the end of appeasement. This is certainly not true as stated. It may have opened the eyes of the average man to the fact that appeasement was merely a kind of slow suicide, and quite incapable of satisfying the appetites of aggressors who were insatiable. It also made clear that Hitler was not really concerned with self-determination or with a desire to bring all Germans “back to the Reich.” The annexation of territories containing millions of Slavs showed that Hitler’s real aim was power and wealth and eventually world domination. Thus, from March onward, it became almost impossible to sell appeasement to the public, especially to the British public, who were sufficiently sturdy and sensible to know when they had had enough.

But the British public and the British government were two different things, and it is quite untrue to say that the latter learned Hitler’s real ambitions in March 1939 and determined to oppose them. Above all, it is completely wrong to say this of Chamberlain, who, more and more, was running foreign policy as his own personal business. Hitler’s real ambitions were quite clear to most men in the government even before Munich, and were made evident to the rest during that crisis, especially by the way in which the German High Command seized hundreds of villages in Czechoslovakia with overwhelming Czech populations and only small German minorities, and did so for strategic and economic reasons in the period October 1-10, 1938. But for the members of the government, the real turning point took place in January 1939, when British diplomatic agents in Europe began to bombard London with rumors of a forthcoming attack on the Netherlands and France. At that moment, appeasement in the strict sense ceased. To the government the seizure of Czechoslovakia in March was of little significance except for the shock it gave to British opinion. The government had already written off the rump of Czechoslovakia completely, a fact which is clear as much from their direct statements as by their refusal to guarantee that rump, and the attention given to other matters even when the seizure was known (as it was after March nth). For example, Lord Halifax sent President Roosevelt a long letter analyzing the international situation on January 24th; it is completely realistic about Hitler’s outlook and projects, but Czechoslovakia is not mentioned; neither is appeasement.

Nevertheless, concessions to Germany continued. But now parallel with concessions went a real effort to build up a strong front against Hitler for the day when concessions would break down. Moreover, concessions were different after March 17th because now they had to be secret. They had to be secret because public opinion refused any longer to accept any actions resembling appeasement, but they were continued for several reasons. In the first place British rearmament was slow, and concessions were given to win time. In the second place the projects of the anti-Bolsheviks and “three-bloc-world” supporters demanded continued concessions. In the third place, Chamberlain continued to work to achieve his seven-point settlement with Hitler in the hope that he could suddenly present it to the British electorate as a prelude to a triumphant General Election which he planned for the winter of 1939-1940. Of these three causes, the first, to gain time for rearmament, was the least important, although it was the one most readily used to justify secret concessions when they were found out. This is clear from the nature of the concessions. These were frequently such as to strengthen Germany rather than to gain time for Britain.

The projects of the anti-Bolsheviks and the “three-bloc-world” supporters were too dangerous to admit publicly, but they were sufficiently well known in Berlin to lead to the belief, even in moderate circles, that Britain would never go to war for Poland. For example, Weizsacker, the German secretary of state, chided Nevile Henderson in June 1939 for abandoning his often-repeated statement that “England desired to retain the sea; the European Continent could be left to Germany.” However, these two groups, although still active in 1939, and even in 1940, had not originally envisaged the complete destruction of Czechoslovakia or Poland. They had expected that Hitler would get the Sudentenland, Danzig, and perhaps the Polish Corridor and that he would then be stabilized between the “oceanic bloc” and the Soviet Union, with contact with the latter across the Baltic States. It was expected that a rump Czechoslovakia and a rump Poland would be able to survive between Germany and Russia, as Holland or Switzerland could survive between the oceanic bloc and Germany. Moreover, the “three-bloc-world” supporters never wanted Hitler to drive southward either to the Adriatic or to the Aegean. Accordingly, although divided in respect to Romania and the Black Sea, they were determined to support Turkey and Greece against both Germany and Italy.

As a consequence of these hidden and conflicting forces, the history of international relations from September 1938 to September 1939 or even later is neither simple nor consistent. In general, the key to everything was the position of Britain, for the aims of the other countries concerned were relatively simple. As a result of the dualistic or, as Lord Halifax’s biographer calls it, “dyarchic” policy of Britain, there were not only two policies but two groups carrying them out. The Foreign Office under Lord Halifax tried to satisfy the public demand for an end to appeasement and the construction of a united front against Germany. Chamberlain with his own personal group, including Sir Horace Wilson, Sir John Simon, and Sir Samuel Hoare, sought to make secret concessions to Hitler in order to achieve a general Anglo-German settlement on the basis of the seven points. The one policy was public; the other was secret. Since the Foreign Office knew of both, it tried to build up the “peace front” against Germany so that it would look sufficiently imposing to satisfy public opinion in England and to drive Hitler to seek his desires by negotiation rather than by force so that public opinion in England would not force the government to declare a war that they did not want in order to remain in office. This complex plan broke down because Hitler was determined to have a war merely for the personal emotional thrill of wielding great power, while the effort to make a “peace front” sufficiently collapsible so that it could be cast aside if Hitler either obtained his goals by negotiation or made a general settlement with Chamberlain merely resulted in making a “peace front” which was so weak it could neither maintain peace by the threat of force nor win a war when peace was lost. Above all, these involved maneuvers drove the Soviet Union into the arms of Hitler.