The British cabinet met on Sunday, September 25, to discuss Hitler’s memorandum. It flatly rejected the new demands and promised the French government British support in case of a military involvement with Germany. Prague, too, which had accepted the Berchtesgaden conditions only under the utmost pressure, now regained its freedom of action and rejected Hitler’s proposals. Preparations for war began in England and France.
In the face of this unexpected intransigence by the opposing side, Hitler once more adopted the role of a man enraged beyond all bearing. “There’s no point at all in going on with negotiations,” he shouted at Sir Horace Wilson on September 26. “The Germans are being treated like niggers; nobody dares to treat even Turkey this way. On October 1 I’ll have Czechoslovakia where I want her.”85 Then he set a deadline for Wilson: he would hold back his divisions only if the Godesberg memorandum were accepted by the Prague government by 2 P.M. on September 28. In the past several days he had vacillated constantly between a safe partial success and a risky total triumph that far better suited his radical temperament. He would sooner conquer Prague than receive Karlsbad and Eger as a gift. The tensions racking him during these days were discharged in the famous speech in the Berlin Sportpalast, by which he once again aggravated the crisis, while at the same time contrasting it with the tempting idyl of a continent at last entering a period of tranquillity:
And now before us stands the last problem that must be solved and will be solved. It is the last territorial claim which I have to make in Europe, but it is the claim from which I will not recede and which, God willing, I will make good.
Scornfully, he pointed out the contradictions between the principle of self-determination and the reality of the multinational State of Czechoslovakia. In describing the course of the crisis he again put himself into the dramatic role of the offended party, cried out against the terror in the Sudetenland, and in giving refugee figures allowed himself to be carried far beyond facts:
We see the appalling figures: on one day 10,000 fugitives, on the next 20,000, a day later, already 37,000, again two days later 41,000, then 62,000, then 78,000: now 90,000, 107,000, 137,000, and today 214,000. Whole stretches of country have been depopulated, villages are burned down, attempts are made to smoke out the Germans with hand grenades and gas. Mr. Benes, however, sits in Prague and is convinced: “Nothing can happen to me: in the end England and France stand behind me.”
And now, my fellow-countrymen, I believe that the time has come when one must mince matters no longer…. He will have to hand this territory over to us on October 1…. The decision now lies in his hands: Peace or War!
Once again he gave assurances that he was not interested in wiping out or annexing Czechoslovakia: “We want no Czechs!” he shouted, and as he came to his peroration worked himself up into a state of ecstasy. Eyes raised to the roof of the hall, fired by the greatness of the hour, the cheering of the masses, and his own paroxysm, he ended on a rapturous note:
Now I go before my people as its first soldier and behind me—let the world know this—there marches a people, and a different people from that of 1918…. It will feel my will to be its will. Just as in my eyes it is its future and its fate which gave me the commission for my action. And we wish now to make our will as strong as it was in the time of our struggle, the time when I, as a simple unknown soldier, went forth to conquer a Reich…. And so I ask you, my German people, take your stand behind me, man by man, and woman by woman…. We are determined!
Now let Mr. Benes make his choice!
Storms of applause followed, and while Hitler, bathed in sweat, glassyeyed, sat down, Goebbels sprang up. “One thing is sure: 1918 will never be repeated!” he shouted. William Shirer observed from the balcony the way Hitler looked up at Goebbels “as if those were the words which he had been searching for all evening and hadn’t quite found. He leaped to his feet and with a fanatical fire in his eyes that I shall never forget brought his right hand, after a grand sweep, pounding down on the table, and yelled with all the power of his mighty lungs: la!’ Then he slumped into his chair exhausted.”86 That evening Goebbels coined the slogan: Führer befiehl, wir folgen! (“Führer command, we obey!”) The masses went on chanting it long after the end of the meeting. As Hitler departed, they began to sing Der Gott, der Eisen wachsen Hess, a combat song repudiating subjection.
Still inspired by the heat and the hysteria of the previous night, Hitler once again received Sir Horace Wilson next day at noon. If his demands were rejected he would destroy Czechoslovakia, he threatened; and when Wilson replied that England would intervene militarily if France found herself compelled to hasten to the aid of Czechoslovakia, Hitler declared he could merely note the fact: “If France and England strike, let them do so. It is a matter of complete indifference to me. I am prepared for every eventuality. It is Tuesday today, and by next Monday we shall all be at war/’87 That same day he ordered additional mobilization measures.
But the afternoon of September 27 again dampened his euphoria. In order to test and increase the populace’s enthusiasm for war, Hitler had ordered the second motorized division to pass through the capital on its way from Stettin to the Czechoslovak border and to roll down the broad East-West axis, through Wilhelmstrasse past the chancellery. Perhaps he hoped the military spectacle would bring people pouring into the streets and awaken a fighting spirit which, whipped up by a last appeal from the chancellery balcony, could be converted into a general “cry for violence.” What actually happened has been recorded by the American journalist William Shirer in his diary:
I went out to the corner of the Linden where the column was turning down the Wilhelmstrasse, expecting to see a tremendous demonstration. I pictured the scenes I had read of in 1914 when the cheering throngs on this same street tossed flowers at the marching soldiers, and the girls ran up and kissed them…. But today they ducked into the subways, refused to look on, and the handful that did stood at the curb in utter silence…. It has been the most striking demonstration against war I’ve ever seen.
…I walked down the Wilhelmstrasse to the Reichskanzlerplatz, where Hitler stood on a balcony of the Chancellery reviewing the troops…. There weren’t two hundred people there. Hitler looked grim, then angry, and soon went inside, leaving his troops to parade by unreviewed.88
The sobering effect of this incident was reinforced by a flood of bad news indicating that France’s, England’s, and Czechoslovakia’s preparations for war were going further than expected and the strength of these Allies evidently surpassed by a good deal Germany’s potentialities. Prague alone had mobilized a million men and together with France would be able to commit three times as many troops as Germany. In London air raid shelters were being dug and hospitals evacuated. The population of Paris was leaving the city in droves. War seemed inevitable. In the course of the day Yugoslavia, Rumania, Sweden, and the United States issued warnings declaring in favor of Germany’s adversaries. And since the deadline Hitler had set expired in a few hours, the either-or mood in the chancellery began to swing around. During the late evening hours of September 27 Hitler started to dictate a letter to Chamberlain that struck a definitely conciliatory tone, offering a formal guarantee for the continued existence of Czechoslovakia and ending with an appeal to reason. But in the meantime other things had been happening which promised to give developments an unexpected twist at the last moment.