52: The Czech Crisis

"In war," writes Ian Kershaw, "Nazism came into its own. The Nazi Movement had been born out of a lost war. As with Hitler personally, the experience of that war and erasing the stain of that defeat were at its heart. 'National renewal' and preparations for another war to establish the dominance in Europe which the first great war had failed to attain drove it forwards. The new war not brought the circumstances and opportunities for the dramatic radicalization of Nazism's ideological crusade. Long-term goals seemed almost overnight to become attainable policy objectives. Persecution which had targeted usually disliked social minorities was now directed at an entire conquered and subjugated people. The Jews, a tiny proportion of the German population were not only far more numerous in Poland, but were despised by many within their native land and were now the lowest of the low in the eyes of the brutal occupiers of the country."

But I am getting ahead of the story; before the invasion of Poland, and the start of a new war, there was first the crisis of Czechoslovakia. If war was necessary to make the Holocaust possible then, in order to understand the Holocaust, it is important to understand how that war came to be.

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"For the first time," writes Kershaw, "in the summer of 1938, Hitler's foreign policy went beyond revisionism and national integration, even if the western powers did not grasp this. Whatever his public veneer of concern about the treatment of the Sudeten Germans, there was no doubt at all to the ruling groups in Germany aware of Hitler's thinking that he was aiming not just at incorporation of the Sudetenland in the German Reich, but at destroying Czechoslovakia itself. By the end of May this aim, and the timing envisaged to accomplish it, had been outlined to the army leadership. It meant war -- certainly against Czechoslovakia, and probably (so it seemed to others), despite Hitler's presumption of the contrary, against the western powers. Hitler, it became unmistakably plain, actually wanted war.

"The sheer recklessness of courting disaster by the wholly unnecessary (in their view) risk of war at this time against the western powers -- which they thought Germany in its current state of preparation could not win -- appalled an horrified a number of those who knew what Hitler had in mind.

"It was not the prospect of destroying Czechoslovakia that alienated them. To German nationalist eyes, Czechoslovakia could only bee seen as a major irritant occupying a strategically crucial area. Colored in addition by anti-Slav prejudice, there was little love lost for a democracy, hostile to the Reich, whose destruction would bring major advantages for Germany's military and economic dominance of central Europe. The army had already planned in 1937 for the possibility of a pre-emptive strike against Czechoslovakia -- 'Case Green' -- to counter the possibility of the Czechs joining in from the east if their allies, the French, attacked the Reich from the west. As the prospect of war with the French, something taken extremely seriously in the mid-1930s, had receded, 'Case Green' had been amended . . . to take account of likely circumstances in which the Wehrmacht could invade Czechoslovakia to solve the problem of 'living space.'

"In economic terms, too, the fall of Czechoslovakia offered an enticing prospect. Göring, his staff directing the Four-Year Plan, and the leaders of the arms industry, were for their part casting greedy eyes on the raw materials and armaments plants of Czechoslovakia. The economic pressures for expansion accorded fully with the power-political aims of the regime's leadership. Those who had argued for an alternative economic strategy . . . had by now lost their influence. Göring was the dominant figure. And in Göring's dreams of German dominion in south-eastern Europe, the acquisition of Czechoslovakia was plainly pivotal.

"But neither military strategy nor economic necessity compelled a Czech crisis in 1938. And even Göring, keen as he was to see the end of the Czech state, was anxious, as were others in the upper echelons of the regime, to avoid what seemed that almost certain consequence of any move against Czechoslovakia: war against the western powers."

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"Until 1938," writes Kershaw, "Hitler's moves in foreign policy had been bold, but not reckless. He had shown shrewd awareness of the weakness of his opponents, a sure instinct for exploiting divisions and uncertainty. His sense of timing had been excellent, his combination of bluff and blackmail effective, his manipulation of propaganda to back his coups masterly. He had gone further and faster than anyone could have expected in revising the terms of Versailles and upturning the post-war diplomatic settlement. From the point of view of the western powers, his methods were, to say the least, unconventional diplomacy -- raw, brutal, unpalatable; but his aims were recognizably in accord with traditional German nationalist clamor.

"Down to and including the Anschluss, Hitler had proved a consummate nationalist politician. During the Sudeten crisis, some sympathy for demands to incorporate the German-speaking areas in the Reich -- for another Anschluss of sorts -- still existed among those ready to swallow Goebbels's propaganda about the maltreatment of the Sudeten Germans by the Czechs, or at any rate prepared to to accept that a further nationality problem was in need of resolution. It took the crisis and its outcome to expose the realization that Hitler would stop at nothing.

"The spring of 1938 marked the phase in which Hitler's obsession with accomplishing his 'mission' in his own lifetime started to overtake cold political calculation. The sense of his own infallibility, massively boosted by the triumph of the Anschluss, underscored his increased reliance on his own will, matched by his diminished readiness to listen to countervailing counsel. That he had invariably been proved right in his assessment of the weakness of the western powers in the past, usually in the teeth of the caution of his advisers in the army and Foreign Office, convinced him that his current evaluation was unerringly correct.

"He felt the western powers would do nothing to defend Czechoslovakia. At the same time, this strengthened his conviction that the Reich's position relative to the western powers could only worsen as their inevitable build-up of arms began to catch up with that of Germany. To remain inactive -- a recurring element in his way of thought -- was, he asserted, not an option: it would merely play into the hands of his enemies. Therefore, he characteristically reasoned: act without delay to retain the initiative.

"The time was ripe in his view to strike against Czechoslovakia. Until Czechoslovakia was eliminated -- this was the key strategic element in Hitler's idea -- Germany would be incapable of taking action either in the east or in the west. He had moved from a position of foreign policy supported by Great Britain to one where he was prepared to act without Britain, and, if need be, against Britain. Despite the forebodings of others, war against Czechoslovakia in his view carried few risks. And if the western powers, contrary to expectation, were foolish enough to become involved, Germany would defeat them."

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"More important even than why Hitler was in such a hurry to destroy Czechoslovakia," adds Kershaw, "is why he was by this time in a position to override or ignore weighty objections and to determine that Germany should be taken to the very brink of general European war. Decisive in this was the process, which we have followed, of the expansion of his power, relative to other agencies of power in the regime, to the point where, by spring 1938, it had freed itself from all institutional constraints and had established unchallenged supremacy over all sections of the 'power cartel.'

"The five years of Hitler's highly personalized form of rule had eroded all semblance of collective involvement in policy-making. This fragmentation at one and the same time rendered the organization of any opposition within the power-elite almost impossible -- not to speak of any attached dangers to life and liberty -- and inordinately strengthened Hitler's own power. The scope for more cautious counsel to apply the brakes had sharply diminished.

"The constant Hobbesian 'war of all against all,' the competing power fiefdoms that characterized the National Socialist regime, took place at the level below Hitler, enhancing his extraordinary position as the fount of all authority and dividing both individual and sectional interests of the different power elites (the Movement, the state bureaucracy, the army, big business, the police, and the sub-branches of each). Hitler was, therefore, as the sole linchpin, able internally to deal, as in foreign policy, through bilateral relations -- offering his support here, denying it there, remaining the sole arbiter, even when he preferred (or felt compelled) to let matter ride and let his subordinates battle it out among themselves. It was less a planned strategy of 'divide and rule' than an inevitable consequence of Führer authority.

"Without any coordinating bodies to unify policy, each sectional interest in the Third Reich could thrive only with the legitimacy of the Führer's backing. Each one inevitably, therefore, 'worked towards the Führer' in order to gain or sustain that backing, ensuring thereby that his power grew still further and that his own ideological obsessions were promoted.

"The inexorable disintegration of coherent structures of rule was therefore not only a product of the all-pervasive Führer cult reflecting and embellishing Hitler's absolute supremacy, but at the same time underpinned the myth of the all-seeing, all-knowing infallible Leader, elevating it to the very principle of government itself. Moreover, as we have witnessed throughout, Hitler had in the process swallowed the Führer cult himself, hook, line, and sinker. He was the most ardent believer in his own infallibility and destiny. It was not a good premise for rational decision making."

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"The international constellation also played completely into Hitler's hands," writes Kershaw. "Czechoslovakia, despite its formal treaties with France and the Soviet Union, was exposed and friendless. France's vacillation during the summer reflected a desperation to avoid having to fulfill its treaty obligations to Czechoslovakia through military involvement for which there was neither the will nor the preparation. The French were fearful of Czechoslovakia coming under German control. But they were even more fearful of becoming embroiled in a war to defend the Czechs. The Soviet Union, in any case preoccupied with its internal upheavals, could only help the defense of Czechoslovakia if its troops were permitted to cross Polish or Romanian soil -- a prospect which could be ruled out.

"Poland and Hungary both looked greedily to the possibility of their own revisionist gains at the expense of a dismembered Czechoslovakia. Italy, having conceded to the rapidly emerging senior partner in the Axis over the key issue of Austria, had no obvious interest in propping up Czechoslovakia. Great Britain, preoccupied with global commitments and problems in different parts of its Empire, and aware of its military unreadiness for an increasingly likely conflict with Germany, was anxious at all costs to avoid prematurely being drawn into a war over a nationality problem in a central European country to which it was bound by no treaty obligations.

"The British knew the French were not prepared to help the Czechs. The government were still giving Hitler the benefit of the doubt, ready to believe that designs on Sudeten territory did not amount to 'international power lust' or mean that he was envisaging a future attack on France and Britain. Beyond this, it was accepted in London that the Czechs were indeed oppressing the Sudeten German minority. Pressure on the Czechs to comply with Hitler's demands was an inevitable response -- and one backed by the French.

"On top of its increasingly hopeless international position, Czechoslovakia's internal fragility also greatly assisted Hitler. Not just the clamor of the Sudeten Germans, but the designs of the Slovaks for their own autonomy placed the Czech government in an impossible situation. Undermined from without and within, the only new democracy surviving from the post-war settlement was about to be deserted by its 'friends' and devoured by its enemies."

Source:

Kershaw, I. (2008). Hitler: A Biography. London: W. W. Norton and Company.