Hitler's War Read Free Page B

argue with him all day, but didn’t get the chance. Chamberlain and Daladier returned to the office. Both heads of government looked thoroughly grim, their aides even grimmer. Daladier spoke for them: “I regret to have to say that, if Germany attacks Czechoslovakia, the French Republic and the United Kingdom will honor their commitments to their ally. We cannot believe that the murder
of Monsieur
Henlein is anything but a trumped-up provocation. Peace and war, then, lie entirely in your hands.”
    Hitler almost screamed wild laughter. He wanted war, yes. But to have the leaders of the democracies ready to fight him because they were sure he’d done something of which he was entirely innocent…If that wasn’t irony, what was?
    “I must tell you, you are making a dreadful mistake,” he said. “That Czech, that Stribny, murdered
Herr
Henlein on his own. I had nothing to do with it. Germany had nothing to do with it. Henlein left Czechoslovakia and entered the
Reich
because he feared for his own safety. And now we see he had reason to fear. If anyone inspired Stribny, it was the wicked Slavs in Prague, just as the wicked Slavs in Belgrade inspired Gavrilo Princip a generation ago.”
    Every single word of that was the gospel truth. But it fell on deaf ears. He could tell as much even while Dr. Schmidt was translating. Chamberlain and Daladier had made up their minds. If he told them the sun was shining outside, they would call him a liar.
    Chamberlain murmured something in English. “What did he say?” Hitler asked sharply.
    “He said, ‘And then you wake up,’
mein Führer,”
Schmidt replied.
    “What does that mean?”
    “It’s slang, sir. It means he doesn’t believe you.”
    “Donnerwetter!”
Hitler could see the Allies’ propaganda mill spewing out endless lies. They would shout that he was a murderer, that he’d got rid of his own henchman to start a war. They would make him look bad to all the neutrals in Europe and Asia and the Americas. The Allies had trounced Germany and Austria-Hungary in the propaganda war during the World War. Now they had a great chance to do it again.
    “If you are truly innocent of this crime, then do not assume the guilt of plunging the world into battle because of it,” Daladier said.
    “This is madness!” Hitler cried. “If I had ordered Henlein killed, maybe a guilty conscience would keep me from taking advantage of it. But my conscience is clean.”
Of this, anyhow
he added, but only to himself.He got angrier by the word as he went on, “Konrad Henlein must have vengeance. The Sudeten Germans must have vengeance. Germany, to which they were about to return, must have vengeance. Czechoslovakia must be punished. If you want to line up behind a pack of skulking, cowardly assassins, go ahead—and be damned to you!”
    “Mein Führer—”
Göring began.
    “No!” Hitler roared. He was in full spate now. Nothing could stop him, or even slow him down. “They want war? They can have war! They will have war! War!…War! War! War!”
    He threw open the doors to his office. “Is everything all right,
mein Führer
?” one of the guards asked. “We could hear you shouting.…”
    So even the thick oak doors hadn’t muffled him? Well, too bad! “It is war!” he bellowed. “Colonel Hossbach!”
    “Ja, mein Führer?”
his adjutant said.
    “Begin Case Green. Immediately! War with Czechoslovakia! Now!” Yes, Hitler had what he most wanted, handed to him by, of all people, a Czech.
    GUNS THUNDERED ON BOTH SIDES of the Ebro. General Sanjurjo’s Fascists had modern German and Italian pieces, guns that could put a shell on an outspread blanket five miles away. The Republic had a few Russian howitzers that weren’t bad. The rest were the artillery pieces the Republicans had started the fight with. After more than two years of civil war, they kept only vestiges of their original rifling—and they weren’t such hot stuff back when they were new.
    Crouching in a foxhole