That was his strategy, and it worked, first in Chigwell, on March 10, 1939, and then at Waltham Abbey four days later. He was in fine, fiery form at Chigwell, repeating his indictment of Munich (“I do not withdraw a single word”), declaring that he would “cordially support” larger defense appropriations, approved of a recent Chamberlain call at the Soviet embassy “to show the world” that Britain was prepared to cooperate with Moscow “so long as Russia continues to show herself an active friend to peace,” and—this was mendacious—saying, “I have been out of office for ten years, but I am more contented with the work I have done in these past five years as an Independent Conservative than of any other part of my public life.” He asked them: “What is the use of Parliament if it is not the place where true statements can be brought before the people?”45
Winston was confident, and no wonder. In the months following Munich, Hitler himself had entered the fray on behalf of those working against Churchill. No doubt the Führer had felt provoked: “When you look long into an abyss,” Nietzsche wrote, “the abyss also looks into you.” Churchill had been glaring at the Reich since the birth of the Nazi regime, and as the Führer looked up and their eyes locked, staring across the North Sea, Hitler impulsively decided to hound his gadfly from public life. The Führer had been nettled by the attempts of Britons, and particularly Winston in his syndicated columns, to arouse anti-Nazi Germans. Speaking at Weimar he said: “If Mr. Churchill had less to do with traitors and more with Germans, he would see how mad his talk is, for I can assure this man, who seems to live on the moon, that there are no forces in Germany opposed to the régime—only the force of the National Socialist movement, its leaders and its followers in arms.” If Churchill returned to office, he predicted that his “aim would be to unleash [loslassen] at once a new world war against Germany.”46
Churchill immediately issued a statement expressing surprise that “the head of a great State” should attack private members of Parliament “who hold no official position and who are not even leaders of parties.” He said: “Such action on his part can only enhance any influence they may have, because their fellow countrymen have long been able to form their own opinions about them, and really do not need foreign guidance.” As A. J. P. Taylor puts it, Hitler tried to “split British opinion.” Assuming that Englishmen could be manipulated like Germans, he believed that advocacy of British rearmament would raise opposition among England’s pro-Germans—whose number he vastly exaggerated, and whom he expected to sway by denouncing Winston as a “warmonger” (“Kriegshetzer”). This, he thought, would be Churchill’s undoing. It was a kolossal error. The voters, in Taylor’s words, “resented Hitler’s interference in their affairs. They believed in non-interference. Hitler could do what he liked in Eastern Europe; he could demolish Czechoslovakia or invade the Ukraine. But he must leave British politicians alone.” His demands that Churchill be routed gave the English Kriegshetzers, Taylor observes, “a popularity which they could not have won for themselves.”47
One wonders who, or what, was behind the challenges to Churchill. Obscure backbenchers are voted in and out of the House, but no one could remember a concerted attempt to unseat an eminent statesman known and respected in every European capital. There was gossip of German money being distributed among Winston’s critics, but this lurid version is wholly without evidence. Thornton-Kemsley hinted at a more plausible source of support when he said that unless Winston was prepared to work with “our great Prime Minister, he ought no longer to shelter under the goodwill and name which attaches to a great Party.” Later he added: “It was made clear to me that the growing ‘revolt’ in the Epping Division… was welcomed in high places.”48
How high he did not say, but it was hardly a secret that the P.M. would be glad to see his eloquent critic retired; he had written his sister that Winston was “carrying on a regular campaign against me with the aid of [Jan] Masaryk, the Czech minister. They, of course, are totally unaware of my knowledge of their proceedings.” He said he had “information of their doings & sayings which for the nth time demonstrated how completely Winston can deceive himself when he wants to, & how utterly credulous a foreigner can be when he is told the things he wants to hear.” It seems unlikely that Chamberlain would instigate a plot against Churchill, but it is even unlikelier that Tories “in high places” would encourage Thornton-Kemsley without the knowledge and even the support of the party’s national leader. Viewed in any light, the effort to unseat Churchill is depressing, a symptom of the squalid political intrigues which afflicted England as her hour of peril approached—and a direct consequence, ironically, of a selfless but mindless crusade for peace.49
Entering Waltham Abbey for his speech on March 14, Winston was handed a report that Nazi troops were massing along the frontiers of mutilated Czechoslovakia. At the lectern he departed from his notes to say: “The Czechoslovakian Republic is being broken up before our eyes. They are being completely absorbed; and not until the Nazi shadow has finally been lifted from Europe—as lifted I am sure it will eventually be—not until then will Czechoslovakia and ancient Bohemia again march into freedom.” But, he added, to suppose that this new aggression did not threaten England was “a profound illusion.” Although Britain could “do nothing to stop it,” Britons would suffer “on a very great scale.” Not only would they have to make financial sacrifices, which “would have been unnecessary if a firm resolve had been taken at an earlier stage,” but English lives would be forfeit, and for the same reason.50
Late that night, after a BBC broadcast announced that Hitler had annexed Bohemia, Churchill—who was at the time writing about the late seventeenth century—told his son: “It’s hard to take one’s attention off the events of today and concentrate on the reign of James II—but I’m going to do it.” It was perhaps the most remarkable example of his genius for concentration. Randolph stared in astonishment as his father rose and plodded up the stairs to his study. The reports were, in fact, extraordinary, and the following day they were confirmed. Barely three years earlier, in the Friedensrede following his Rhineland coup, the Führer of the Third Reich had assured the world that he had “no territorial demands” to make in Europe, and that “Germany will never break the peace!” At Munich he had told Chamberlain that he wanted no Czechs in his realm and had even joined the British prime minister in guaranteeing the frontiers of the truncated Czech state. Now, on March 15, he was entering its capital at the head of his troops, standing erect in an open Mercedes, beaming and extending a stiff-armed Hitlergruss. But here, unlike Vienna and the Sudetenland, few arms rose in response. The Czechs were stunned. So was all Europe. So was Neville Chamberlain.51
HITLER IN PRAGUE!” screamed the newspaper posters on kiosks throughout England. What, outraged Englishmen asked one another, was he doing there? They had read his personal pledges to Chamberlain at Munich and his promise to be guided by the international commission, which would recognize Reich sovereignty only in “predominantly German” areas. Most Britons were unaware that Germany had ignored the commission with the connivance of London and Paris, unaware of Czechoslovakia’s slow disintegration, unaware that the Nazis had, in defiance of the Munich Agreement, “awarded” Hungary and then Poland large tracts of Czech territory, inhabited by over one and a quarter million citizens of Czechoslovakia, none of them German, now made citizens of other states. These ominous events, heavy with implications, had been reported in the British press, but only briefly and obscurely.
His Majesty’s Government had not prepared their countrymen for this blow. The fact is that they, too, were unprepared for the Prague invasion. In Hitler’s most recent speech he had reflected upon how fortunate the world would be if Britons and Germans could unite “in full confidence with one another.” On March 10, only five days before Hitler’s Prague coup, the P.M. had told the House of Commons that the Continent was now “settling down to a period of tranquillity.” Hoare, speaking next, had predicted that if Hitler, Mussolini, Franco, Chambe
rlain, and Daladier were to work in tandem they could banish nightmares of war and burdens of armament and thus “in an incredibly short space of time transform the whole history of the world.” As a consequence of this joint effort, Hoare had envisioned a new “Golden Age,” whose promise would be realized if the “jitterbugs”—singling out those who had appealed for a stronger British military presence: Churchill, Eden, Duff Cooper, Bracken, Amery, Boothby, Sandys, Nicolson, Macmillan, and Keyes—were denied their goals.52
A backbencher softly quoted Shakespeare:
That England, being empty of defense
Hath shook and trembled at the ill neighborhood….
Hoare was fatuous, and Churchill knew it, but he could not deliver a plausible rebuke without exposing informants already being tailed by the Gestapo. Two weeks after Munich, Hitler had summoned Frantisek Chvalkovsky, Prague’s new pro-German foreign minister, and told him that Czechoslovakia must abandon her cordial relationship with Britain and become reconciled to her “proper place” as a colony of the Reich. The Czechs must “not play any tricks with Germany.” If they did, “in twenty-four hours—no, in eight hours—I’ll finish her off [mache ich Schluss]!” The following month one of Winston’s sources sent him a secret memorandum in which the Führer had described the next phase of his foreign policy to Ribbentrop and Weizsäcker. Britain, he had said, “must be attacked with speeches and in the press… first the Opposition, and then Chamberlain himself.” Munich had taught him “how to deal with the English—one had to move aggressively [vor den Bauch treten].” His objective, he declared, was “to overthrow Chamberlain.” The Opposition, he assumed—an absurd assumption, revealing his ignorance of parliamentary rule—“would not then be capable of forming a new government, and the same would occur as in France. The political strength of Great Britain would be paralyzed” and “Fascism would gain the upper hand.”53
On March 12, three days before Hitler’s rape of the rump Czech state, Chartwell had received another report from an agent in Brno, Moravia. “Hitler,” Winston had learned, “is coming to Vienna”—fifty miles from Prague—“this week.” Swastika banners “lavishly decorated” a “great many public buildings,” and each evening Czech Nazis “gathered in or around the Deutsches Haus to sing and demonstrate.” One night a procession of anti-Nazis paraded by the German House; the men wearing the hakenkreuz brassards shouted “Sieg Heil!” and sang the “Horst Wessel Song.” These Nazis had been told that “Hitler will come on March 15 and the greeting ‘Heil Marz!’ instead of ‘Heil Hitler!’ has been quite common for some weeks.”54
On the morning of March 14 the Slovakian legislature, which had been quarreling with the national government in Prague, had declared its independence. This presented the Führer with his opportunity. Obviously, he declared, Prague could not control its people. The Czechs were informed of his displeasure by Ribbentrop, who stressed the need for an immediate solution. At 10:40 P.M.—just as Churchill’s meeting at Waltham Abbey was breaking up—a train bearing Chvalkovsky and Dr. Emil Hácha, formerly a judge of Czechoslovakia’s supreme court and now the country’s president, drew into Berlin’s Anhalt Station. An SS guard of honor escorted them to the Hotel Adlon and then the Reich Chancellery, where the Führer kept them waiting until 1:15 A.M. Hácha was no Masaryk, no Beneš; he had come prepared to grovel. He denounced his great predecessors and actually said that after Munich “I asked myself whether it was a good thing for Czechoslovakia to be an independent state at all.” He realized that the destiny of his country lay “in the Führer’s hands, and I believe it is in safekeeping in such hands.” He knew that the Czechs had a bad reputation in the Wilhelmstrasse. His explanation was that “there still exist many supporters of the Beneš regime.” But, he was “trying by every means to silence them.” He meekly added that he hoped the Führer “will understand my holding the view that Czechoslovakia has the right to live a national life.”55
Hitler didn’t understand it, however. Hácha’s “Rump State” (“Rest-bestand”), he said, owed its very existence to his indulgence. At Munich he had hoped that the Czechs, under new leadership, would mend their ways, but he had also resolved that “if the Beneš tendencies did not completely disappear he would completely destroy this state.” It was now obvious that they had not disappeared. Therefore, last Sunday, March 12, “die Würfel waren gefallen” (“the die was cast”). He had issued the orders for the invasion by German troops and for the incorporation of Czechoslovakia into the German Reich. Schmidt, his interpreter, noted that the Czechs “sat as though turned to stone. Only their eyes showed that they were alive.” Hitler told them that at 6:00 A.M., on his orders, his armies would cross their borders near points where the Luftwaffe had already seized Czech airfields. Any attempts at defense would be broken by “rohe Gewalt” (“brute force”). He paused. Of course, he said, they had a choice. If the defenders laid down their arms the Führer would treat them with generosity, assure their autonomy, and even grant them a certain measure of freedom. He suggested they step into the next room and talk it over.56
Awaiting them there were Göring and Ribbentrop, who literally chased them around a table strewn with documents, thrusting the papers at them, pushing pens into their hands, shouting that if they refused to sign, within two hours half of Prague would be bombed to ruins and their families slain. Suddenly Schmidt heard Göring shout: “Hácha hat einen Schwächeanfall bekommen!” Hácha, who had a heart condition, had indeed fainted, and a single thought crossed the minds of the Germans: the world would say that Czechoslovakia’s president had been murdered in the Reich Chancellery. Then Dr. Theodor Morell—Hitler’s personal physician, whose strange drugs later addicted the Führer—gave Hácha an injection. A special telephone line to Prague had been rigged up; over it, in a slurred voice, the revived president advised the cabinet to capitulate. Morell gave him another shot, and both Czechs signed the papers. It was 3:55 A.M. Two hours later German troops swarmed over the shrunken Czech frontier. Hácha was appointed governor of the German Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia. But the world already knew who really ruled the country now. Hitler had told them. Before retiring for the night in Hradschin Palace he issued a triumphant statement: “Die Tschechoslowakei existiert nicht mehr!”—“Czechoslovakia has ceased to exist.”57
That evening, as Hitler slept in his hijacked palace, Churchill dined at the Grillions Club with Sir Horace Rumbold, formerly His Majesty’s ambassador to Berlin, who had been dismissed after the Nazis, opening his pouches, found he was reporting the facts about Hitler’s regime and demanded an envoy more sympathetic to the Führer’s policies. Rumbold was in low spirits. Learning that Hitler was in Prague, he concluded that “Even Chamberlain’s eyes must now be opened to the fact that Hitler’s statements and assurances are not worth the breath with which they have been uttered…. I confess that I have never in my life been so disheartened as I am now.” He was angry that the Foreign Office had ignored his warnings six years before and that Chamberlain had been so gulled by Hitler. Over the past few months, however, he had begun to note “increasing disgust with Germany” on all levels of British society and “a growing conviction that there is nothing to be done with the Nazis.”
This, he told Churchill, gave him a flicker of hope. And yet there were Englishmen who were still working toward an Anglo-German alliance. One, he said, was Lord Brocket, whom he regarded as “among the most gullible of asses.” Brocket had been shooting with Göring. Göring had entrusted him with news of great importance: “Neither he [Göring] nor Hitler had any knowledge of the recent Nazi action against the Jews.” On reflection Rumbold became convinced that further aggression by Nazis in 1939 was inevitable. The following day he wrote to his brother: “This year… is their last opportunity of doing so with any chance of success.” There was a general feeling of uneasiness, he wrote Churchill that same afternoon. “You asked me last night what I thought of the present situation. I replied that I was profoundly disheartened. This was an understatement
…. I have never felt so depressed or so nauseated as I feel now and this because it seems to me that our Government have, for a year or more, failed to look ahead or to understand the character of the man with whom they are dealing…. I only hope that it will not enter into the PM’s head to pay Hitler another visit.” On March 20 Churchill replied, thanking Rumbold for his letter and adding: “Since you wrote it events have told their unanswerable tale.”58
“The blow has been struck,” Churchill told his readers on March 24. Hitler had “broken every tie of good faith with the British and French who tried so hard to believe in him. The Munich agreement which represented such great advantages for Germany has been brutally violated.” British confidence in the Nazi hierarchy
can never again be mended while the present domination rules in Germany…. A veritable revolution in feeling and opinion has occurred in Britain, and reverberates through all the self-governing Dominions. Indeed, a similar process has taken place spontaneously throughout the whole British Empire. This mass conversion of those who had hitherto been hopeful took place within a single week, but not within a single day. It was not an explosion, but the kindling of a fire which rose steadily, hour by hour, to an intense furnace heat of inward conviction.59