MUNICH, 1938 Appeasement and World War II DAVID FABER Simon & Schuster 1230 Avenue of the Americas New York, NY 10020 www.SimonandSchuster.com Copyright © 2008 by David Faber Originally published in Great Britain as Munich in 2008 by Simon & Schuster UK Ltd. All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever. For information address Simon & Schuster Subsidiary Rights Department, 1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020. First Simon & Schuster hardcover edition September 2009 SIMON & SCHUSTER and colophon are registered trademarks of Simon & Schuster, Inc. For information about special discounts for bulk purchases, please contact Simon & Schuster Special Sales at 1-866-506-1949 or [email protected]. The Simon & Schuster Speakers Bureau can bring authors to your live event. For more information or to book an event contact the Simon & Schuster Speakers Bureau at 1-866-248-3049 or visit our website at www.simonspeakers.com. Manufactured in the United States of America 1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Faber, David. Munich, 1938 : appeasement and World War II / David Faber. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. 1. Munich Four-Power Agreement (1938) 2. World War, 1939–1945—Causes. 3. World War, 1939–1945 —Diplomatic history. 4. Europe—Politics and government—1918–1945. I. Title. D727.F34 2009 940.53’112—dc22 2008044896 ISBN 978-1-4391-3233-3 ISBN 978-1-4391-4992-8 (ebook) PHOTO CREDITS 1, 4, 5, 6, 8, 9, 10, 12, 13, 15, 16, 17, 18, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 27, 28, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36 © Getty Images 2 © Solo Syndication/ Associated Newspapers Ltd. 3, 7, 26, 29, 30 © AKG Images 11© Bayerische Staatsbibliothek München Hoffmann 14 © Corbis 19 © NI Syndication For my mother who remembers the Czech refugees at Birch Grove Contents Prologue: Heston 1 Hitler Sees His Chance 2 Scandal in Berlin 3 The Last Frail Chance 4 The Loaded Pause 5 A Spring Storm 6 Crisis in May 7 A Faraway Country 8 Czechoslovakia Stands Alone 9 In Full War Cry 10 On the Razor’s Edge 11 A New and Sharper Sword 12 On the Banks of the Rhine 13 Keep Calm and Dig 14 The Flying Messenger of Peace Photo Insert Epilogue: Drawing the Sword Notes Bibliography Acknowledgments Index Prologue Heston COUNSEL: Mr. Chamberlain. You are charged that on the night of September 30th, 1938, you did indecently expose yourself at the windows of your home, No. 10 Downing Street, clad only in a scrap of paper and shouting “Peace With Honour,” “Peace With Honour.” How say you, guilty or not guilty? CHAMBERLAIN: I’m not sure. Alan Bennett, Forty Years On, 1968 Friday, September 30, 1938, was a clear, sunny, late summer’s day. Throughout the afternoon, huge crowds had been gathering at Heston Aerodrome, west of London, many of them lured there by the blanket coverage in the morning newspapers. The Prime Minister, Neville Chamberlain, would be making a triumphant return from his meeting with the German Chancellor and Führer, Adolf Hitler, at Munich. “PEACE!” screamed the headline in the Beaverbrook- owned Daily Express, the three-inch-high letters set in the largest typescript ever seen on the front of a British newspaper.1 “No conqueror returning from a victory on the battlefield,” gushed The Times, “has come adorned with nobler laurels.”2 In a special report, entitled “LONDON GOES TO HESTON,” the Evening News published details of the best means of getting to the airport, whether by car, bus or train. Additional buses had been provided on all the major routes from central London to nearby Cranford, while extra staff had been summoned for duty at Hounslow West Underground station to meet the crowds arriving on the District and Piccadilly lines.3 The airport at Heston was nine miles west of London, and had opened for business in 1929 as a private air club. Until June 1936 it had been the principal terminal for British Airways’ daytime passenger operations, when services had been transferred to the newly modernized Gatwick Airport. However, flooding problems which led to a persistently waterlogged runway at Gatwick, and the prevalence of fog at Croydon, where British Airways took temporary refuge, had led to the airline returning to Heston in May 1938. Yet air travel was still a comparatively rare luxury for the privileged few, and Heston was situated in a quiet rural setting, well outside London’s ever-expanding suburbia.4 As the afternoon wore on, the traffic on the Great West Road became increasingly congested, to the extent that, as more and more cars converged on the area, the narrow approach roads to the airport ground to a halt in both directions. Many onlookers, desperate not to miss witnessing the moment of Chamberlain’s return, simply abandoned their cars beside the road, and decided to walk the last mile or so instead. By 5 P.M. there were several thousand onlookers cramming the approach roads, and pressed up against the perimeter fence of the airport. The police had eventually been forced to close the roads in the immediate vicinity of the airport, and to prevent anyone further from gaining access who was not in possession of an official police pass. Many, however, were already safely inside, and had been waiting for several hours. Just inside the airport gates were schoolboys from nearby Eton College, who, “on their own initiative had sought and obtained permission to be there,” and had formed an impromptu guard of honor along the tree-lined avenue that led to the main terminal.5 Others had climbed onto the roofs of the airport buildings, or had gathered behind the rope and timber barriers that marked out the landing enclosure. On the tarmac itself, an impressive array of VIPs had assembled, headed by the Lord Chamberlain, the Earl of Clarendon, who had been sent to represent the King and had arrived in good time. Alongside him was the Lord Mayor of London, Sir Harry Twyford, assorted Cabinet ministers, the High Commissioners of all the Dominions, and the ambassadors of France and Italy, together with the German chargé d’affaires. Only the Foreign Secretary, the Earl of Halifax, had been less well organized. He and his wife had been collected from his home in Eaton Square by the Permanent Under-Secretary at the Foreign Office, Sir Alexander Cadogan, and they made painfully slow progress through the heavy traffic. As they approached Heston the sunshine gave way to a sudden, heavy downpour of rain, and at one stage Cadogan was forced to drive his car down the wrong side of the road, almost unable to see through the windshield. A quarter of a mile from Heston, on hearing the distant sound of an aircraft, Cadogan accelerated, and crashed his way through the crowds at the gates, the Foreign Secretary brandishing his police pass at the hapless constables on duty. At 5:38 P.M. the waiting crowds, by now drenched by the sudden cloudburst, also heard the roar of aircraft engines, and a few moments later the outline of the silver airplane could be made out against the thick, gray cloud. The aircraft in question was the very latest addition to the British Airways fleet, a Lockheed 14 Super Electra, call sign AFG-N, which had been delivered from the United States at the beginning of September. Just a fortnight earlier it had set a new aviation distance record during its maiden flight, traveling nonstop to Stockholm and back in just over ten hours. A few days previously it had also carried Chamberlain on his second visit to Germany, indeed only the second time he had ever flown—to Bad Godesberg on the Rhine, by way of Cologne. On that occasion, Chamberlain had later described his return to the Cabinet. That morning he had flown up the river over London. He had imagined a German bomber flying the same course. He had asked himself what degree of protection we could afford to the thousands of homes which he had seen stretched out below him and he had felt that we were in no position to 6 justify waging a war to-day in order to prevent a war thereafter. Just as Cadogan pulled up alongside the other waiting cars on the tarmac, the Prime Minister’s plane landed, followed by a second identical aircraft carrying his supporting officials. Both aircraft taxied toward the waiting crowd of dignitaries, press correspondents and the general public. Possibly because of the heavy rain, the pilot appeared to overrun the main airport terminal, and he eventually came to a halt outside a nearby hangar, forcing the reception committee to half-walk, half-run to ensure that they kept up. As the door swung open, the crowd surged forward as Chamberlain appeared. It had been a long and tiring journey, but he looked animated enough, and waved his hat at the assembled, cheering throng.7 “I’ve got it!” he shouted at Halifax. “I’ve got it!”8 At the foot of the aircraft steps the Prime Minister was met first by Lord Clarendon, who handed him a letter. “From the King, From the King.” An excited murmur went round the crowd. Next to greet him was Lord Halifax, who doffed his bowler hat, and shook hands with the Prime Minister.9 As the waiting journalists closed in around him, cameras and microphones were hastily erected to record his words. The BBC, their coverage anchored by the television reporter Richard Dimbleby, broke into their output to cover Chamberlain’s speech live on the radio, while both television and newsreel cameras recorded the proceedings for broadcast that evening. Chamberlain paused for a moment, before addressing the crowd. “There are only two things I want to say,” he began. First of all I received an immense number of letters during all these anxious days—and so has my wife—letters of support and approval and gratitude; and I cannot tell you what an encouragement that has been to me. I want to thank the British people for what they have done. Next I want to say that the settlement of the Czechoslovak problem which has now been achieved is, in my view, only a prelude to a larger settlement in which all Europe may find peace. At this point he paused again. He slowly removed a single sheet of paper from his breast pocket, carefully unfolded it, and held it aloft for the crowd to see. “This morning I had another talk with the German Chancellor, Herr Hitler,” he continued, “and here is a paper which bears his name upon it as well as mine. Some of you perhaps have already heard what it contains, but I would just like to read it to you.”10 We, the German Führer and Chancellor and the British Prime Minister, have had a further meeting today and are agreed in recognising that the question of Anglo-German relations is of the first importance for the two countries and for Europe. We regard the agreement signed last night and the Anglo-German Naval Agreement as symbolic of the desire of our two peoples never to go to war with one another again. At these words, the remainder of his carefully prepared statement was drowned out by the ovation of the crowd, and the noisy renditions of “For he’s a jolly good fellow” and “Rule Britannia” which followed.11 The King’s handwritten letter invited Chamberlain to visit him immediately. My Dear Prime Minister, I am sending this letter by my Lord Chamberlain to ask you if you will come straight to Buckingham Palace so that I can express to you personally my most heartfelt congratulations on the success of your visit to Munich. In the meantime this letter brings the warmest of welcomes to one who by his patience and determination has ensured the lasting gratitude of his fellow countrymen throughout the Empire. 12 Yours sincerely and gratefully, George RI As his car left the airport, with Halifax sitting at his side in the back seat, Chamberlain was mobbed by the waiting crowds; mounted police were forced to clear a path. The Etonians cheered, hundreds of young children waved miniature Union Jacks, and women threw flowers through the open car window. The nine- mile drive to London took an hour and a half and, as Chamberlain himself later recalled, the roads “were lined from one end to the other with people of every class, shouting themselves hoarse, leaping on the running board, banging on the windows and thrusting their hands into the car to be shaken.”13 As at Heston, so it was too at Buckingham Palace, where crowds had been gathering for much of the afternoon. “Indifferent to the heavy rain,” reported The Times, “they stood, densely packed, a happy throng, their hearts full of relief and a deep sense of thankfulness towards the man who had lifted a great weight from their minds.” As dusk fell, the air of anticipation grew. At 6:15 P.M. Mrs. Annie Chamberlain arrived from Downing Street. When she had taken her daily walk in the park that morning she had been cheered by a large crowd, among which a number of women had been so overcome with emotion that they had fainted. Now, as the rain stopped, a rainbow, “hailed by some as an omen,” appeared above Buckingham Palace. Half an hour later Chamberlain’s car finally came into view. Motorists sounded their horns, and the crowd rushed to fill the space