Chapter 13: Czechoslovakia Ceases to Exist
In the wake of the Munich Agreement, Hitler was not done with Czechoslovakia...
With the Munich Agreement, Hitler achieved what—publically—seemed to be his foreign policy aims. Over the course of half a year in 1938, he had united Austria and the Sudetenland with Germany. There were still pockets of German populations scattered throughout central and eastern Europe, but they were pockets. All major German population centers were now part of the same Reich.
As Shirer editorializes:
Though the British Prime Minister was gullible almost beyond comprehension in accepting Hitler’s word, there was some ground for his believing that the German dictator would halt when he had digested the Germans who previously had dwelt outside the Reich’s frontier and were now within it.
It seemed plausible enough. Why wouldn’t Hitler stop once Germany included all major German population centers?
However, in secret, Hitler had been making war plans. In these chapters, Shirer relies extensively on the German archives which were captured by the U.S. Army at the end of World War II. His own reporting supplies a bit of color here and there, but the majority of the story comes from what was not known at the time.
For instance, on October 21, 1938, just a few weeks after the Munich Agreement, Hitler wrote a top secret memo to his generals informing them that they should prepare for war. They should be able to secure Germany and to liquidate Czechoslovakia and occupy the Memel District in Lithuania (another small German-majority enclave.)
Hitler’s actual goals in foreign policy were to take over Bohemia and Moravia entirely and leave a rump Slovak state. (At one point, he even had to rebuff the Hungarians who were eager to annex all of Slovakia—the territory had long belonged to Hungary).
Before any further moves could happen on that front, though, another major world event transpired, which was to have enormous consequences for the coming years. A 17-year old Jewish refugee in Paris by the name of Herschel Grynszpan shot and mortally wounded the Third Secretary of the German Embassy in Paris, Ernest vom Rath.
When the Nazis took power and conditions for Jews deteriorated, his family had tried to send him to Palestine, but the young man had ended up in Paris and then outstayed his visa. His motivation for the assassination seems to have to been the treatment of Jews by the German government (there is some debate about other possible motivations, but Shirer doesn’t get into them.)
The Nazis were incensed. Their press notched up the hateful propaganda against the Jews even further.
In a now infamous episode in the history of Europe, over the night of November 9-10, 1938, mobs of Germans attacked Jews, destroying property, looting, massacring, and torturing.
The authorities allowed it to happen, purposefully choosing to turn a blind eye. They also did not enforce any laws that might have protected the Jews. Among the crimes of Kristallnacht, as it came to be called, only rape was looked down on by the Nazi authorities, and then not because it was rape, but because racial laws prohibited sex between Aryans and Jews.
This turn of events shocked world opinion. Hitler, in turn, was enraged by the world reaction. It only further confirmed to him that there was a worldwide Jewish conspiracy.
Back on the foreign affairs front, the Nazis proceeded with their plans to detach Slovakia from Prague and liquidate the remaining Czech lands in Bohemia and Moravia. On January 21, 1939, the Czech Foreign Minister Chvalkovsky came to Berlin to grovel. Hitler demanded that the Czechs forget their history, leave the League of Nations, reduce the size of their army, join the anti-Comintern Pact, accept German direction of its foreign policy, and have its national bank turn over a large part of the gold reserve to the Reichsbank.
These were not the conditions of two equal partners in international relations. And yet they were entirely in character for the author of Mein Kampf.
What were Britain and France doing during this time, as the letter and spirit of Munich was violated by the Germans. Well, they did send a note verbale asking Germany about its understanding of the guarantee given at Munich to Czechslovakian independence after losing the Sudetenland. But that was about it. They were in no mood to fight, and Hitler knew it.
In late February of that year, full-fledged separatist movements broke out in what remained of Czechoslovakia—in Slovakia and Ruthenia. The Czechs were damned if they did something (because the Nazis would then intervene) or damned if they didn’t (because the state would fall apart anyway). They chose to be damned in the former way. The Czech government arrested the Slovak leaders and dismissed the autonomous Ruthenian government.
Then in a series of meetings with Slovakian leaders, the Nazis orchestrated another one of their patented telegram technique takeovers. The Slovak premier proclaimed independence and then sent a telegram to the Nazi government asking for protection for the new state. Hitler then acquiesced, with plausible deniability about being the originator of the whole plot. And so on Marhc 14, 1939, Slovakia was born.
The Czech President—now of only Bohemia and Moravia—went to visit Hitler in Berlin. After a long harangue and a litany of threats, Hitler asked if President Hacha could keep the Czech people from resisting when the German army marched in. Just as the threats were cresendoing, the Czech president fainted. He was brought to with an injection and then was given a telephone to inform his cabinet of the conversation.
And so at 6 a.m. on March 15, 1939, German troops poured into Bohemia and Moravia, meeting no resistance. Slovakia became a protectorate—a separate state, but one totally beholden to Germany.
Hitler was ecstatic. He went and embraced all the women in his office, exclaiming, “Children! This is the greatest day of my life! I shall go down in history as the greatest German!”
Shirer retorts:
It did not occur to him—how could it?—that the end of Czechoslvakia might be the beginning of the end of Germany. From this dawn of March 15, 1939—the Ides of March—the road to war, to defeat, to disaster, as we now know, stretchd just ahead. It would be a short road and as straight as a line could be.
Although this is a relatively short chapter, after the momentous one on the Munich Agreement, it is a very important one. Up until this point, many external observers really believed that Hitler would stop somewhere, that there were limits. But Kristallnacht and the total dismemberment of Czechoslovakia showed that those hopes were entirely misplaced. Shirer refers his readers to Mein Kampf, where Hitler very clearly laid out his plans for achieving Lebensraum in eastern Europe for the Germans. He did pretty much exactly what he said he would do.
Of course, along the way he fooled a lot of people…
Thanks again for your patience! Please stay tuned for a couple podcast episodes upcoming with some amazing historians. As always let me know what you think.
Chapter Recaps
Topical Posts
Podcast ep. 1: The Man, The Myth: Hitler in American Culture
The Problems with the German Character Explanation of the Nazis
Podcast ep. 2: Why are Dictators (and Techno-monarchs) Appealing?
Podcast ep. 3: Interview with a 20th Century War Correspondent: Jon Randal
If You’ve Fallen Behind on the Reading, This Post is For You
Who was William L. Shirer? — part 2 (The Nightmare Years 1934-1940)