Hitler's War Read Free Page A

yes! Warming to his theme, he went on, “I have said all along that these Slavs are not to be trusted. I have said all along that they do not deserve nations of their own. Look what happened to Archduke Franz Ferdinand in 1914. Those murderous Serbian maniacs plunged a continent into war. And now the Slavs have done it again!”
    “This need not be,” Neville Chamberlain said urgently. “As a result of this most unfortunate incident, I am sure we can extract more concessions from Mr. Masarik and Mr. Mastny.” The Foreign Ministrycounselor and the Czech minister to Germany waited to hear what the great powers would decree for their country. The British Prime Minister continued, “And I do not see how the government of Czechoslovakia can fail to ratify whatever agreement we reach.”
    “No,” Hitler said. “Not a soul can claim I was unwilling to meet you halfway, your Excellency. My thought all along was that Czechoslovakia deserved punishment for her arrogance and brutality. But I restrained myself. I convened this meeting at your request. You persuaded me the Czechs could be trusted far enough to make it worthwhile. In this we were both mistaken.”
    He paused to let Dr. Schmidt translate. Schmidt was an artist, keeping a speaker’s tone as well as his meaning. Hitler’s tone, at the moment, had iron in it. So did the interpreter’s when he spoke English.
    “You could overlook the enormity if you chose,” Chamberlain insisted. When turning his words into German, Schmidt somehow sounded like a fussy old man. “Henlein was, after all, a citizen of Czechoslovakia, not of the German
Reich
—”
    “He was a German!”
Hitler thundered, loud and fierce enough to make every pair of eyes in the room turn his way. “He was a German!” he repeated, a little more softly. “That is the whole point of what we have been discussing. All the Germans of the Sudetenland belong within the
Reich
. Because the Czechs will not allow this and go on persecuting them, we see disasters like this latest one. I am very sorry, your Excellency, very sorry indeed, but, as I said, blood calls for blood. As soon as I leave this office, Germany will declare war on Czechoslovakia.”
    “May
Monsieur
Daladier and I have a few minutes to confer with each other?” Chamberlain asked, adding, “The situation has changed quite profoundly in the past few minutes, you understand.”
    Would they throw Czechoslovakia over the side because of what Stribny had done? If they would, Hitler was willing to give them as much time as they needed. Their turn would come next anyhow. “Youmay do as you please,” the
Führer
said. “I must ask you to step outside to talk, though; as I said, I shall not leave the room without declaring war.”
    Chamberlain, Daladier, and their flunkies almost fell over one another in their haste to leave. As soon as they were gone, Mussolini asked, “Did you—?”
    He left the question hanging, but Hitler knew what he meant.
“Nein,”
he said roughly. As he shook his head, a lock of hair flopped down over one eye. Impatiently, he pushed it back. “The Czechs did it themselves. They did it to themselves. And they will pay. By God, they
will
pay!”
    “Italy still is not truly ready for this struggle,” the
Duce
warned.
    “When the Czechs murder the leader of an oppressed minority, will you let them get away with it?” Hitler asked in astonishment. Full of righteous indignation that the
Untermenschen
should dare such a thing, he forgot for the moment all his own murders.
    “They shouldn’t,” Mussolini admitted. “Still, England and France and Russia…”
    “Russia? What good is Russia?” Hitler said scornfully. “She doesn’t even border Czechoslovakia. Do you think the Poles or the Romanians will let her ship soldiers across their territory? If she tries, we’ll have two new allies like
that.”
He snapped his fingers.
    “I suppose so.…” Mussolini still didn’t sound convinced.
    Hitler was ready to