Year of Reckoning

YEAR OF RECKONING G. WARD PRICE YEAR OF RECKONING By G. WARD PRICE Author of “I Know these Dictators” etc. First published October 1939 Printed in Great Britain by Greycaine Limited, Watford, Herts. F.639 CONTENTS BACKGROUND ............................................................................................ vii CHAPTER I WHAT GERMANY WANTS ................................................ 1 CHAPTER II YEARS OF ILLUSION ...................................................... 10 CHAPTER III TACTICS OF THE DRANG NACH OSTEN .................. 17 CHAPTER IV EASTERN EUROPEAN REACTIONS .......................... 24 CHAPTER V FIRST STAGES OF THE EXPANSION .......................... 31 CHAPTER VI HOW HITLER CAME TO LINZ .................................... 44 CHAPTER VII FINIS AUSTRIÆ ............................................................. 57 CHAPTER VIII THE FÜHRER’S TRIUMPHAL PROGRESS ............ 66 CHAPTER IX AUSTRIA AFTER THE ANSCHLUSS........................... 79 CHAPTER X WHAT HITLER SAW IN ITALY ..................................... 88 CHAPTER XI GROWTH OF THE SUDETEN PROBLEM ................. 97 CHAPTER XII EARLY STAGES OF THE CZECH CRISIS .............. 105 CHAPTER XIII THE SUDETEN STORM BREAKS ........................... 114 CHAPTER XIV FIRST CONTACT AT BERCHTESGADEN ............ 125 CHAPTER XV DANGEROUS HOURS AT GODESBERG ................ 139 CHAPTER XVI THE CLIMAX OF MUNICH ...................................... 152 CHAPTER XVII SEQUEL TO MUNICH .............................................. 163 CHAPTER XVIII THE IDES OF MARCH ............................................ 172 BACKGROUND BEING a journalist, I am always working against time. The production of this book was no exception to that rule. In its early chapters I dealt with certain things to come. Before I reached the later ones, some of these had already to be dealt with in the past tense. On May 1, 1939, my MS. is complete. Before its publication several weeks must elapse. In the present “Year of Reckoning” events are moving so swiftly that this brief interval may give a new turn to the situation. Yet, whatever developments occur in the action of the drama, its fundamental theme remains unchanged. It is the underlying facts, trends, objectives and principles that I have tried to define and analyse in the following pages. They are the key to our future fate. Neglect of such indications in the past has brought about the situation connoted by the title of this book. Compulsory military service; unprecedented peace-time taxation; stagnant stock-markets; slack business and universal anxiety make up the reckoning of failure to grapple earlier with the greatest development of this century-the renewal of Germany's claim to domination in Europe. Contact with the men and conditions responsible for that challenge has given me unusual opportunities of realising its formidable nature. From the first it was clear that the relations between the Nazi Government and Britain would be the chief factor in deciding whether the issue would be settled in peace or by War. I have always tried to set out the views and aims of the National Socialist leaders clearly and impartially, hoping in this way to contribute to an understanding between two countries capable, in co- operation, of achieving so much. Whatever the faults of the Nazi regime, such a development would have been preferable to the present drift towards war. The internal action of the totalitarian States, however, caused them to be kept at arm's length by the Western Powers. This policy was intensified by the aggressive and abusive attitude publicly adopted by the German Government. The possibility of cordial relations has now passed away. It remains only to consider the factors and forces of the opposing alignment which has taken its place. vii YEAR OF RECKONING CHAPTER I WHAT GERMANY WANTS ONE evening in May, 1938, I sat at dinner in Karlsbad, then in Czecho-Slovakia, with a friend of Adolf Hitler's. Except for ourselves, the restaurant was empty, for the Sudeten troubles and the mobilisation a few days earlier of part of the Czech army on the frontier had stopped the influx of tourists and “cure-guests” into that pleasant town. The band, being German and dutiful, was playing loudly to the vacant tables, almost drowning our voices. Such conditions are to be preferred for talking politics anywhere in Central Europe today. My companion and I were discussing the prospects of a German occupation of the Sudetenland before the end of 1938. We agreed that it was extremely likely, and that the only uncertain elements of the situation were whether the Czech Government would resist, and, if so, whether the result would be a European war. This led to conjecture as to where the new frontier would be drawn. I maintained that the Nazi Government would not want to carry it beyond the Sprachgrenze or language boundary. “You are wrong,” said my companion. “The Führer says that Prague is historically a German city, much too good to be left to people like the Czechs.” “But you can't take Prague without taking the 7,000,000 Czechs who live around it,” I objected, “- and the Nazi race-principle disqualifies them for German nationality.” “They will become second-class inhabitants of Germany,” was the reply. “Czechs will not be eligible to serve in the army, for instance, though they may be conscripted for auxiliary labour service. Otherwise they will be left to develop their country under German protection.” All through the following summer the tension between Czecho-Slovakia and Germany grew. Then came the crisis of the autumn, ending in a solution apparently accepted by all parties. As I listened on the wireless to Herr Hitler's Sport Palace speech of September 26, I heard him say: “When the Czechs have come to an understanding with their minorities, I shall not be interested in the Czech State any more, and, so far as I am concerned, I can guarantee it. We do not want Czechs any more.” The forecast of my Karlsbad companion seemed further than ever from fulfilment. Yet during the winter, as German penetration of Czecho-Slovakia developed, in the form of arrangements to transport goods without Customs examination and to build an extra-territorial road across her territory, I began to credit the private report rather than the public statement of Herr Hitler's intentions. Onlookers sometimes see most of the game. On Friday, March 10, before the first signs of the sudden German action against Prague had arisen, I was discussing at a luncheon party in London the probability of a German annexation of Bohemia before the end of the month, at a time when not even the highest members of the German Government had any such expectation -or otherwise Marshal Goering would not have been playing tennis at San Remo. This was not due to any inside information but to common-sense consideration of the facts. 1 YEAR OF RECKONING That Herr Hitler. had always intended to bring the Czech province within the Reich is certain. It was only Mr. Chamberlain’s intervention which prevented him from doing so at the autumn crisis of 1938. I am convinced, however, that the date for the fulfilment of this scheme was not fixed in advance. It occurred when it did as another instance of Herr Hitler's genius for swiftly exploiting an opportunity-provided in this case by the Czech President's dismissal of the Slovak Premier on the ground that he had failed to counteract the Separatist Movement in Slovakia. At a quarter past six on the morning of Wednesday, March 15, the telephone by my bedside rang and a voice from The Daily Mail office said: “We have just heard that German troops crossed the Czech frontier at six o'clock this morning.” (An hour's difference in time between Germany and England accounts for the apparently instantaneous transmission of the news.) That moment opened a new chapter in European history. It was the first step, unjustified by any racial argument, towards the foundation of a German “Empire of Europe” intended ultimately to embody all the States lying between the Eastern frontier of Germany and the shores of the Black and Caspian Seas. Germany does not necessarily mean to annex the whole of this territory,. but she intends to dominate it. Leading Germans, visualising the future Empire of their dreams compare it with the British Commonwealth of Nations. In doing so, they leave out of account the fact that in the British Dominions, with the exception of South Africa the population is predominantly of British stock, and that in any case; the British Government exercises no control over their affairs. When the “New World Order” which they believe themselves to be creating is complete, Germans say there will be five great World-Empires: The British World Empire; The “Monroe Doctrine” Empire of North and South America; The French Colonial Empire; The Russo-Asiatic Empire; The new German European Empire. In their view, this represents an equitable distribution of world-power, with which they assert that Germany will be content. It is noticeable that no place is reserved in the list for the Japanese or the Italian Empire. Italy does not stand high in the German scale of international values. The Germans regard their Italian and Japanese allies in much the same light as Cæsar considered the auxiliaries skirmishing on his flanks. It is in her own legions that Germany puts her trust. Five days after Germany had embodied 7,000,000 Czechs within the, frontiers of the Reich, Herr von Ribbentrop, the Foreign Minister, expounded to me as we sat alone at supper in the Hotel Kaiserhof, in Berlin, the philosophical background of the policy upon which his country had so manifestly and energetically embarked. “Your statesmen should do what Hitler is always urging us to do,” he said, “and look at this thing from the standpoint of posterity. Their mistake is that they get excited about the details of a great world-process whose true character they as yet fail to understand. “It is natural and inevitable that a great people like the Germans should expand.

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