The Deaths of Austria and Czechoslovakia - Part 4
© William Waller
Even knowing the story, it is quite sickening for this writer to go over again the final steps in the betrayal of Czechoslovakia perhaps more so because the writer is English and the betrayal was led, masterminded and was cause of great self congratulation, by English politicians. Somehow you expect your own to be different but, no, they are politicians and cannot therefore be trusted except to be self-serving.
From 10th to 30th September 1938, people in Europe prepared themselves for a full-scale war and when, at the end, this was averted almost no one outside Hitler's own circle realized that the end of peace was less than a year away. Perhaps individuals knew but who were they and how were they to make themselves heard - and believed? If someone as prominent as Churchill, out of office and in opposition in the House of Commons, could be classed as a warmonger and ignored, what chance did anyone else have? It just does not seem possible that all 500 odd members of the House of Commons were so blind that they could not see that war was inevitable because Hitler had shown himself to be a liar, and that nothing he said in public could be believed. The government leaders of both Britain and France, Chamberlain and Halifax, Daladier and Bonnet, the diplomats, Henderson and Runciman, Francois-Poncet, all men who should have learned to spot a fraud when they saw one, fell over themselves to give Hitler more than even he dared to ask for. They threatened and pressured Eduard Benes, who saw his country isolated, and on 15th September Chamberlain agreed to the secession of the Sudetenland, as if he and not Benes ruled the country. By 21st the Czechs, still themselves trying to appease Hitler, agreed to the secession but now Hitler wanted to march in like a victorious army. This was a step too far for the Allies and there were even protests from the King of Sweden and the Americans. Hitler had to appear to back down a bit so, on 27th, he agreed to negotiate, using Mussolini as the arbitrator. And the Allies agreed with no demur, ignoring Mussolini's own dictatorial government and his needless invasion of Abyssynia. This was equivalent to inviting the fox into the chicken coop!
On 29th, very late at night, the Munich Conference ended, a conference to which the Czechs were not invited and where the Chairman was fed all his lines by Hitler. The Sudeten would be occupied, though this had been rejected only 8 days earlier, starting on 1st October, with an international commission to decide disputed areas by 7th. Two Czech diplomats had been allowed to wait outside the conference room and were now informed what the big powers had decided and to which they must now acquiesce. The whole thing is so grotesque, so against all tenets of international relations that it is hard to credit that these things happened. If any one of the Allied participants had looked at a map and read a few economic statistics, they would have found that they had condemned Czechoslovakia to death. The country lost about 80 percent of its mineral resources and electricity supply and, from then on, it was simply a matter of Hitler making sufficient excuse to march into Prague before he annexed the remainder, less the areas taken by Poland and Hungary. It appears that Hitler, like a child showing off, was intent on a triumphal march into Prague to satisfy his now overwhelming megalomania. His promise to guarantee the remains of Czechoslovakia was simply an empty gesture at Munich, and Russia's agreement to help protect the country was easily avoided because they only needed to act if France honoured their promises. France, it was obvious to all, had ceased to be a force to be reckoned with, its people wanting only a comfortable life and its politicians only too willing to maintain the status quo, all of which was to show in their behaviour from the outset of war in September 1939 until their separate surrender to the Nazis in June 1940.
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