529. The Nazis' Road to War: Showdown in Munich (Part 2)

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Speaker 1 I felt quite fresh and was delighted with the enthusiastic welcome of the crowds who were waiting in the rain and who gave me the Nazi salute and shouted Heil at the tops of their voices all the way to the station.

Speaker 1 There we entered Hitler's special train for the three hours journey to Berchtesgarden.

Speaker 1 All the way up there were people at the crossings, the stations and at the windows of the houses, all hiling and saluting.

Speaker 1 We drove to the brownhouse a good deal higher up the mountain.

Speaker 1 Half way down the steps stood the Fuhrer,

Speaker 1 bareheaded and dressed in a khaki-coloured coat of broadcloth, with a red armlet and a swastika on it, and the military cross on his breast. He wore black trousers, such as we wear in the evening,

Speaker 1 and black patent leather lace-up shoes. shoes.

Speaker 1 His hair is brown, not black,

Speaker 1 his eyes blue,

Speaker 1 his expression rather disagreeable, especially in repose, and altogether he looks entirely undistinguished.

Speaker 1 You would never notice him in a crowd, and would take him for the house painter he once was.

Speaker 1 After saying some words of welcome, he took me up the steps and introduced me to a number of people,

Speaker 1 among whom I only distinguished General Keitel, a youngish, pleasant-faced, smart-looking soldier.

Speaker 1 We then entered the house

Speaker 1 and passed along a very bare passage to the celebrated chamber, or rather hall, one end of which is entirely occupied by a vast window.

Speaker 1 The view towards Salzburg must be magnificent, but this day there were only the valley and the bottoms of the mountains to be seen.

Speaker 1 That was Neville Chamberlain, who was writing to his sister Ida after his trip to Hitler's mountain lair on Thursday, the 15th of September, 1938.

Speaker 1 And Dominic seems to have been completely obsessed with what Hitler was wearing. Yes.
Amazing attention to detail. But I suppose it's a novelty for Chamberlain.
Hitler's shoes.

Speaker 1 Yes, black patent leather lace-up shoes. Yeah,

Speaker 1 you would take him for the house painter he once was. Which he wasn't, was he? No, he was never a house painter.
He was a postcard painter.

Speaker 1 The fact that Chamberlain is describing it in such banal detail to his sister, this extraordinary meeting, is a reminder of an unprecedented moment it is, right?

Speaker 1 People don't normally do this.

Speaker 1 So in the last episode, the first of our two part series on Munich, we talked about how rare it is for European statesmen to do this, to fly to each other's countries at the drop of a hat for an emergency summit.

Speaker 1 You know, this didn't happen in the build-up to the First World War. Chamberlain is doing something extraordinary here.
He's boarded his plane, we ended last time, a Hestonera drone.

Speaker 1 He's launching this remarkable kind of diplomatic coup in a desperate attempt to avoid war over Czechoslovakia, a war that Hitler is planning to launch on the 1st of October, which is just two weeks away.

Speaker 1 And which Chamberlain doesn't know that, of course. No, Chamberlain doesn't know that at all.

Speaker 1 So, just on Chamberlain and his flight, Chamberlain left with the goodwill of the British press kind of ringing in his ears.

Speaker 1 Every newspaper in Britain said it was brilliant that Chamberlain was doing this. They were so excited.
The news from Paris, you know, Paris sent him kind of messages of support.

Speaker 1 The French are delighted that he's doing it.

Speaker 1 Crucially, I think, for Britain, the Dominions, that is Australia, Canada, and so on, New Zealand, they have made it clear to him they are very, very reluctant to be dragged into a war in Central Europe.

Speaker 1 Right, because if the British don't want to die for Czechoslovakia, I guess if you're in Wellington or Sydney, I mean, that'd be even madder. Exactly.
So off he goes with their goodwill.

Speaker 1 It's actually not his first flight. This is one of the things that people think about Chamberlain that is wrong.
He gone up with

Speaker 1 the future George VI, hadn't he? At some air show or something. Is that right? At an industrial fair in Birmingham.
That's in the 1920s.

Speaker 1 It is. Yeah.
And they'd only like gone, circled the field and then landed again, but he had been in a plane before.

Speaker 1 It was great fun.

Speaker 1 Anyway, he's travelled this time with his closest aide, who is a a guy called Sir Horace Wilson, who is one of the civil servants, who is one of the key architects of the appeasement policy.

Speaker 1 Basically, let's solve the European issue by giving in to what their more reasonable demands. That's how they see it.
So they have ham sandwiches and they drink whiskey on the flight.

Speaker 1 I think that's an excellent combination, actually. I think more airlines should offer that as an option.

Speaker 1 It's a smooth flight, but then they get into Munich and there's a bit of a storm, a bit of turbulence. Oh, there's an omen there, yes.
It is an omen, yeah.

Speaker 1 They are escorted by a German plane to the ground. Chamberlain comes out of the plane, and he's very happy.
He's smiling for the cameras. He's very confident.

Speaker 1 In his own mind, I think this is really important for people to get this in their heads about Munich.

Speaker 1 Chamberlain is not doing all this sort of reluctantly, grudgingly, like he is the victim in all this. He's seizing the moment.
In his mind, he is the star. He is the hero of the hour.

Speaker 1 He is the man of destiny. the modern politician who has seized European history by the scruff of its neck.
The arbiter of the continent's fate. That's That's exactly how he sees himself.

Speaker 1 Although that said, the anti-appeasement MP, Harold Nicholson, said that Chamberlain and Horace Wilson arrived in Germany with, and I quote, the bright faithfulness of two curates entering a pub for the first time.

Speaker 1 That's a brilliant description. Which I think is pretty close to the park.
So you sort of get a sense of that from Chamberlain's, from that reading, right?

Speaker 1 There's a big sort of... Fairly pooterish quality.
Yeah. There were lots of cars, people were saluting.
Hitler had some smart shoes on.

Speaker 1 Black trousers. So he arrives at the Berghof, Hitler's Erie, his eagle's nest.
It's pouring with rain. It's very cloudy, which is why he says you can't see Selzberg.

Speaker 1 He's not the first British visitor to go there. David Lloyd George.
And the Duke of Windsor, who had been Edward VIII, notoriously had been. He'd been there, exactly.

Speaker 1 And Hitler is, as he describes, he's waiting from the steps. They shake hands.
If you look at the photos, they both look very jolly. Chamberlain, of course, has his umbrella and his hat.

Speaker 1 He obviously makes this remark about Hitler looking like a house painter. And actually, he's even more damning.
I mean, British schnobbery is a great theme of these episodes.

Speaker 1 When he goes back to the cabinet later on, he says Hitler was, and I quote, the commonest little dog he had ever seen, though it was impossible not to be impressed with the power of the man.

Speaker 1 So he despises Hitler, and yet at the same time, he recognises that there is a kind of demonic.

Speaker 1 quality to Hitler, though as we will see, I think Chamberlain completely misreads the balance of power between himself and Hitler. Anyway, he's arrived at the Eagle's Eagle's Nest.

Speaker 1 Hitler says, come into my study. They go into his study.
Ribbentrop, who is hanging around, is not invited in. So that would have improved his mood.

Speaker 1 No, no, he hates Chamberlain, hates Britain, loves German sparkling wine, but hates Britain. He's not allowed in, so he's very cross.

Speaker 1 And for three hours, they talk, and there's the storm raging outside, very kind of Wagnerian.

Speaker 1 Hitler is speaking quite softly. It's all been translated by his interpreter, who's a guy called Paul Schmidt.
And he's going on and on about how badly the Sudeten Germans are treated.

Speaker 1 And Chamberlain says, look, if you will rule out force, I will consider anything to make you happy. No, we can talk about any kind of solution, but you must not fight.

Speaker 1 Hitler, at this point, loses his temper and he says,

Speaker 1 well, I mean, you talk to me about force. He says, but Benesh and the Czechs.
They're already using force against my countrymen in the Sudetenland. I will not accept this.

Speaker 1 You know, I will settle this question, all this kind of thing. And then he starts, the trouble with Hitler, he can't control himself.
Yeah, he goes off on a rant, doesn't he? He goes on a massive

Speaker 1 one. He says, I don't care if there's a world war.
You know, if I want to settle this, I'd rather have a world war, frankly. I'd have let's have a world war.

Speaker 1 And Chamberlain is very cross-border this point. Chamberlain does not give in to him.
Chamberlain's not a wimp and a weed.

Speaker 1 Chamberlain says, Well, if you think like that, then I've completely wasted my time. There's no point in coming.
He says, If that's your intention, why did you have me coming to Berkdesgarden at all?

Speaker 1 Under these circumstances, I think it's better if I leave straight away.

Speaker 1 And amazingly, Hitler backs down at this point. People don't normally talk like this to Hitler.
Hitler says, oh, well, well, let's go back to your previous thing.

Speaker 1 You said you would grant self-determination to the Sudanese Germans. Well, maybe we could maybe let's talk about how that would work in reality.

Speaker 1 And Chamberlain obviously thinks to himself at this point,

Speaker 1 you stand up to this bloke and he will back down. He will be reasonable.
How are we getting this? Is this from Schmidt or

Speaker 1 Hitler or from Chamberlain? I mean, who so this is a combination of Schmidt wrote memoirs later on where he talked about all this.

Speaker 1 I mean, Schmidt is an amazing source, but also Chamberlain reports all this to his cabinet, see, and he also writes about it to his sisters. So the letter to Ida that we began with.

Speaker 1 So we get kind of different. So there is a possibility that he might be slightly bigging up his.

Speaker 1 Oh, I think throughout this, Chamberlain is definitely bigging himself up a bit. I don't think there's any doubt about that.

Speaker 1 In Chamberlain's version of the conversations, he is always the star and he is playing Hitler. Whereas I think in reality,

Speaker 1 it's the other way around. Anyway, they agree.
Chamberlain will go back to Britain and will talk to his cabinet.

Speaker 1 And Hitler says, fine, I'll wait for that and I won't order any precipitate military action.

Speaker 1 And so Chamberlain goes off and he goes down and stays at a hotel down at the bottom of the mountain in Berchtesgarten. Now, Chamberlain thinks, great, I've got a good result.

Speaker 1 Hitler, once Chamberlain's gone, is delighted. And he's rubbing his hands with glee, literally rubbing his hands.
And he says to Ribbentrop, well,

Speaker 1 I've got Chamberlain to give me this Sudetenland. He says it's win-win.
If the Czechs refuse and won't go along with this, then we'll have a war.

Speaker 1 And if they say yes, then I'll take the Sudataneland and maybe I'll just come back for the rest of Czechoslovakia later.

Speaker 1 And they all think that Chamberlain is a fuddy-daddy old bloat with an umbrella, don't they? They do. They're all kind of laughing at him and thinking he's ridiculous.
And doesn't...

Speaker 1 Hitler does kind of make an offer say that he might go to London, but he's worried that he will be heckled by... British Jews.
He'll be poorly treated in his own mind. Exactly.
So he never does.

Speaker 1 So that never happens. No, I think probably best for British, for Britain's image that we never had Hitler over.
He went to Liverpool, didn't he? Yeah.

Speaker 1 So the thing about Hitler's offer here, right, is that it is quite a departure from what he previously wanted.

Speaker 1 Up to this point, he's been talking about the Sudetenland merely as a pretext to get the whole of Czechoslovakia. He doesn't just want the Sudan land.
He wants to break up the whole of Czechoslovakia.

Speaker 1 But now he's saying, well, maybe I will just take the Sudetenland and I'll come back for Czechoslovakia for the rest later. So to that extent, he has kind of slightly blinked.

Speaker 1 Anyway, Chamberlain goes back to London. Everyone says, oh, you've done brilliantly.
Well done. What a tremendous man you are.
And he goes straight in to brief the cabinet.

Speaker 1 And here I think it's sometimes very tempting to just be unremittingly hostile to Chamberlain.

Speaker 1 But here is a point where I think it's very difficult to be anything but hostile because he clearly has completely misread. the situation because he says, I've met Hitler.

Speaker 1 I'm absolutely convinced that Hitler's objectives are strictly limited. He says, I believe Hitler when he says he only wants to bring German speakers into the world.

Speaker 1 He's like George Bush gazing into Vladimir Putin's eyes. Yeah,

Speaker 1 seeing, yeah, seeing his man.

Speaker 1 This is exactly what he says.

Speaker 1 He says, well, in spite of the harshness and ruthlessness I thought I saw in his face, I got the impression that here was a man who could be relied upon when he had given his word.

Speaker 1 I mean, given what we know about Hitler, so they know about the light and the long knives, they know about the Anschluss, they know all this. That's a mad thing for Chamberlain to say.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 Well, also the other thing is, what about the Czechs at this point? Because,

Speaker 1 you know, they're not present at this meeting, which is deciding the fate of their country. So again, I kind of looked this up and

Speaker 1 Czechs, so leading Czechs are... describing everyone involved in this in kind of very understandably very abusive terms.
So they describe Sir Horace Wilson as a sow.

Speaker 1 They refer to the French foreign minister as the swine. So there's a lot of kind of porcine-based imagery.

Speaker 1 They refer to Chamberlain as the old man. And one of them writes, the Chamberlain government is treating our head of state as if he were N-word chieftain ruling some troublesome colonial tribe.

Speaker 1 Yeah, the Czechs, they feel absolutely furious. And they're right.
I mean, the Nazis are obviously behaving in a very colonial manner, but the British are as well.

Speaker 1 It's kind of like, you know, let's draw a line on the map here and whatever. Yeah.
I mean, you could say, exactly.

Speaker 1 If your Czech listens to this podcast you're like the british are behaving with complete arrogance here they're just basically signing half our country away i mean that's the story of munich isn't it the checks the story the next few days is actually really simple the british with very enthusiastic french backing say to the checks right you've got to give them this to determine and and no you can't you probably shouldn't even organize a referendum just just hand it over that's the quickest thing so here's my question couldn't the checks have fought on anyway they've got all this industrial hinterland they've got arms.

Speaker 1 They've got this incredible Maginot line in the mountains. Very, very impressive.
Which they will lose if they hand over the Sudetenland because it's on the flank of the Sudetenland.

Speaker 1 Why don't they just fight? Particularly because the German economy is on the point of collapse at this point.

Speaker 1 Because, well, first of all, they don't know that about the German economy, but also they will lose. The Germans have done their war games.
They're pretty confident they can win in no matter weeks.

Speaker 1 But they're going to lose anyway.

Speaker 1 I guess guess they think they're being put under enormous pressure by their supposed friends be reasonable give them the sudetenland it's full of german speakers anyway but the thing is with with those defences they would have had perhaps a chance yeah if they surrender those defenses they haven't got any chance at all i mean they're tom you're quite right you are quite right and lots of listeners to this podcast will no doubt say you are right i think it's because they think given that we'll lose either way, maybe if we get an international guarantee, we give them the Sudetenland and then we get a guarantee by the French and the British.

Speaker 1 I mean, you've made comparisons with Russia and Ukraine.

Speaker 1 I mean, everyone in the West assumed that Ukraine would lose the moment the Russians crossed the border. Yeah.
The Czechs seem in a stronger position to me than the Ukrainians. Yeah, and

Speaker 1 the Czechs are arguably in a stronger position than the Poles were a year later. For sure.
Poland, that took about a month. Could the Czechs have held out for two months or longer?

Speaker 1 I mean, ultimately, I think the Germans would have won. And the Czechs with no allies?

Speaker 1 That's a a big ask i suppose and they've got the hungarians and the poles sniffing around as well haven't they your yeah your neighbors fancy a bit of you as well i just wonder though because i mean the tragedy of this is that they they are very very impressively defended yeah they have to give all that up yeah of course of course because what happens is that basically after a few days they give in under unrelenting french and british pressure on the 21st of september does they get a message from prague the czechoslovovak government sadly accepts the French and British proposals, but they say that on the condition that you will do everything to safeguard our vital interests, i.e., the Sudeten will be given away, but you will maybe give us a guarantee or give us a pledge, you'll give us something anyway.

Speaker 1 Yeah, which would obviously not be worth the paper it was written on. Well, well, that's the thing, isn't it? So, meanwhile, what's Hitler been doing during all this?

Speaker 1 He has been doing his usual thing, which he does when he's stressed. He has massive lions, watches these terrible films, works out holes in flagpoles, exactly, does all this kind of thing.

Speaker 1 He thinks that the Czechs probably won't give him what he wants. But he now, having seen Chamberlain, he thinks, hey, that guy's not going to fight.
That guy's never going to go to war.

Speaker 1 So he says to Goebbels, I think we can probably push for a bit more, actually.

Speaker 1 I think let's up the ante.

Speaker 1 So let's go to the 22nd of September. Now we welcome back to the rest of this history.
Yeah. A great theme of all our series about Germany between the wars, which is the spa hotel theme.

Speaker 1 So people will remember we had a lot of spa hotels in the last season. Particularly the Night of the Long Knives, wasn't it? Which was all based in spas, pretty much.
Weddings and spas.

Speaker 1 Well, it's like a fan-favorite location.

Speaker 1 We're revisiting one of the Night of the Long Knives spa hotels because the next meeting between Chamberlain and Churchill is scheduled for a spa hotel in Bad Gordesberg on the Rhine River near Bonn.

Speaker 1 So

Speaker 1 fumes of salsa.

Speaker 1 Enormous, sweating Germans beating each other with birch twigs or whatever they do.

Speaker 1 Yeah, drinking like filthy water,

Speaker 1 laughing at nothing, just dreadful. Anyway, Chamberlain lands at Cologne, Cologne Airport just after midday.
He's got his umbrella as it's traditional.

Speaker 1 He has to inspect a detachment of SS troops, then he's driven to this hotel on the right bank of the Rhine, the Petersburg Hotel.

Speaker 1 It's been decorated for him by Ribbentrop, who stuffed it, I read, with fruit, cigars, hydrangeas, and eau de cologne. So common.
So, yeah, exactly.

Speaker 1 You turn up and there's a load of eau de cologne. That's common.
That's Nikki Haslin would hate that. Hitler was on the other bank of the Rhine at fan favorite, the Dresen Hotel.

Speaker 1 This was where he had planned the murder of Ernst Röhm. So happy memories for him.
But he's in terrible form, Tom. He's all nervous.
Chamberlain's coming. The journalists, journalists are there.

Speaker 1 The place is swarming with press. And they see him

Speaker 1 looking strained and twitching. And it's at this point that they start a rumor, some of the press, the German press, press, actually,

Speaker 1 that he chews the carpet. So they nickname him the Tepichfresser, which means the carpet biter.
And this becomes a big nickname for Hitler in the kind of 1930s, 1940s among the press.

Speaker 1 People say, oh, Hitler,

Speaker 1 it's always biting the carpet. Anyway, so Hitler's there biting the carpet.
Finally, that afternoon, Chamberlain comes over to the spa hotel to the Dresen.

Speaker 1 Chamberlain's delighted with himself. Chamberlain thinks, well, I've done a brilliant thing here.
I've done a great bit of work. The Czechs are given in.
You can have the Sudetenland.

Speaker 1 We will give a guarantee to the Czechoslovakia for the rest of its borders.

Speaker 1 And he says, maybe it would be a nice thing if you signed a non-aggression pact with Prague as well to show your good intentions. And then job done.
We can all go home. Hooray.
Brilliant day's work.

Speaker 1 And Hitler says, I'm sorry. Actually, I've changed my mind.
The circumstances have changed. And I have more demands.

Speaker 1 He says, my friends in Hungary and Poland also have territorial demands on Czechoslovakia, and I need them to be satisfied.

Speaker 1 And actually, now that I think about it, I don't really want to wait for the Czechs to give me the Sudetenland because they're mistreating our people every hour.

Speaker 1 I'm actually going to send in, I would like to send in my army right now, please. That's my plan.
So I'm actually just going to go for it.

Speaker 1 And Chamberlain, he sits there and the kind of blood drains from his features. He says,

Speaker 1 Yes. But Reich Chancellor, exactly.

Speaker 1 He is outraged by this, and he basically storms off back to his hotel and refuses to come out again. So they're in their kind of rival hotels.
Power play. Very, very much.

Speaker 1 Chamberlain doesn't show up the next day, the next day's meeting. He sends a

Speaker 1 letter instead, and he says

Speaker 1 a firmly worded letter, though. A firmly worded letter.
He says, British public opinion will not stand for this. This is very poor.
He says, also.

Speaker 1 The Czechs will fight you if

Speaker 1 you try to go in without a deal. Hitler sends him a letter back, quite a polite letter actually by Hitler's standards.
And eventually they agree that they will meet that evening.

Speaker 1 So back at Hitler's hotel. Chamberlain goes in and Hitler says,

Speaker 1 I've changed my mind. Actually, they can have four days.
They've got to be out on the 28th. And then I'm going in.
They've got to be out. Otherwise, it's war.
And Chamberlain's very shocked at this.

Speaker 1 And then another twist. We do like a twist in this series.
A man comes in with a note for Hitler. Hitler opens this note and he says,

Speaker 1 my God,

Speaker 1 the Czechs have mobilized their army. And there's this long silence.

Speaker 1 And Chamberlain apparently thought that Hitler was just going to go absolutely berserk and order an invasion right then and there on the spot. And then Hitler says,

Speaker 1 fine.

Speaker 1 They can have a bit more time. They have to be out by the 1st of October.
I'll give them more days. Because this seems a great tragic moment.
The Czechs have shown their determination.

Speaker 1 They've mobilized. They've presumably occupied all these fortresses.

Speaker 1 It just seems awful that they then just surrender it. Yeah.
You're taking this very personally, Tom, and not unreasonably. It's a terrible thing.
I mean, it's a terrible story. And we behave so badly.

Speaker 1 Although they're obviously not as bad as the Nazis. No, no, it's so important to stress that, I think.

Speaker 1 We're not the chief villains in this. No.
And of course, Hit sells this to Chamberlain by appealing against Chamberlain's vanity.

Speaker 1 He says to him, this concession that I'm making that they can have till the 1st of October, I'm only making this for you because of how much I respect you. I wouldn't make this for anybody else.

Speaker 1 And of course, he loves this because he thinks, I am the star of the show. I have once again pulled off this coup.
So

Speaker 1 Chamberlain goes back to London. Hitler goes back to Berlin.
Hitler spends... that next day, which is a Sunday, strolling in the gardens of the Reichschancellor at Goebbels.

Speaker 1 And he says, look, what we're going to probably end up with now is we'll get the Sudetenland. We'll probably have to leave it at that.

Speaker 1 And then we'll come back next year or whenever for the rest of Czechoslovakia. Meanwhile, Chamberlain is meeting his cabinet.
And many of them are actually really shocked.

Speaker 1 They're much more shocked than Chamberlain was. that Hitler had been asking for more, that Hitler had kind of changed the terms of the game.

Speaker 1 And they say, well, what we'll do is we'll send to Horace Wilson, to Chamberlain's kind of right-hand man, civil servant, send him back to Berlin, and will tell Hitler, look, you will stress to him, you cannot attack the Czechs.

Speaker 1 We have to get the deal. If you use force at all, then the French will enter the war and Britain will support France.
They are taking a firmish line on France.

Speaker 1 And they're starting to kind of get ready for war themselves, aren't they? They are. So the French are kind of sending troops up to the Maginot line.
There is a sense that...

Speaker 1 France and Britain are gearing up to take a strong position. Yes, absolutely there is.
26th, 27th of September, this is when they start making really serious preparations.

Speaker 1 You know, kind of anti-aircraft batteries are being called up and there's thoughts about evacuating people from cities. Gas master children and things.
Exactly so. Exactly.

Speaker 1 So the next day, Monday the 26th, Horace Wilson gets to Berlin. He gets there in the afternoon.

Speaker 1 He finds Hitler in a very peculiar mood because Hitler has got a big speech that evening at the Sport Palast in Berlin.

Speaker 1 Sport again. It's this Enders P theme.
Yeah, exactly. It's going to be all those people in the stadium, indoor stadium.
With medicine balls.

Speaker 1 Hitler's going to address, 20,000 people is going to address them. And Hitler's in a very, you know, sort of grumpy mood.

Speaker 1 And he says to Horace Wilson, I'm sick of all this, like, negotiations and hotels and stuff. He says, basically, the checks have to be out by the 1st of October.

Speaker 1 Or if they're not, I'll attack them. And he says, and I quote, if France and England want to strike, let them go ahead.
I don't give a damn.

Speaker 1 And he says to Wilson, do you not think that we want to fight? Come and see my speech. So Wilson goes along to see this speech.
And Hitler is absolutely ranting and raving like a lunatic.

Speaker 1 William Shirer, the American journalist we've quoted a few times, he was there and he said, Hitler was shouting and shrieking in the worst state of excitement I've ever seen him in with a fanatical fire in his eyes.

Speaker 1 And he's screaming about Germandom and the Germans being oppressed and we will stand and fight and all this kind of thing.

Speaker 1 And his audience, who are keen Nazis, go absolutely berserk every sentence they applaud and at the end they chant for minutes führer be fierle wir folgen leader command we will follow you know this sort of quite chilling scene so not the way that chamberlain would address the good people of birmingham not

Speaker 1 not at all

Speaker 1 rather nice tea cozy yeah exactly the people of birmingham would enjoy a kind of uh an indoor arena with a sort of... They could do it.
The NEC. The NEC in Birmingham.
Villa Park.

Speaker 1 It's not indoors, though, is it? It's not the same. No, it's not, I suppose.

Speaker 1 Anyway, this is spiralling off. The next day, Horace Wilson goes back to the Reich Chancellery and he says, look, I've had a new message from Chamberlain.
Chamberlain says, don't use force.

Speaker 1 If you don't use force, we will guarantee... Britain will guarantee.
that the Czechs will clear out of the Sudetenland. So Britain is actually really now...
Yeah,

Speaker 1 get out of your well-prepared fortifications. Yeah, Britain is letting itself down, I think, at this point, Tom.
It's fair to say. And Hitler actually is very sulky at this point.

Speaker 1 He says, well, I don't care what Britain does. I don't care what you do.
All I care about is the checks have got to be out by the 1st of October. He says, look, I want an answer in two days.

Speaker 1 Are they going to clear out or not? If they do not clear out, he says, I will smash the checks. He repeats that two more times.
I will smash. the checks.

Speaker 1 And Wilson, who is a very tall man, he kind of draws himself up to his full height. He says, I am warning you.

Speaker 1 If you do that, and if France feels honour bound to fight in defense of its obligations to Czechoslovakia, quote, the United Kingdom would feel obliged to support her.

Speaker 1 And Hitler just stares at him with his cold blue eyes and he says, if France and England strike, let them do so. It's a matter of complete indifference to me.
I am prepared for every eventuality.

Speaker 1 It is Tuesday today, he says, and by next Monday, we shall all be at war.

Speaker 1 Yet another cliffhanger. I mean you've promised cliffhangers and they keep coming.

Speaker 1 Like

Speaker 1 fire from a machine gun, from a Bren gun perhaps. So let's take a break now and when we come back we'll find out if uh Britain and Germany do end up at war in nineteen thirty eight.

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Speaker 1 first of all i must say something to those who have written to my wife or myself in these last weeks to tell us of their gratitude for my efforts and to assure us of their prayers for my success

Speaker 1 most of these letters have come from women mothers or sisters of our own countrymen

Speaker 1 but there are countless others besides from France, from Belgium, from Italy, and even from Germany, and it has been heartbreaking to read the growing anxiety they reveal.

Speaker 1 If I felt my responsibility heavy before, to read such letters has made it seem almost overwhelming.

Speaker 1 How horrible,

Speaker 1 fantastic,

Speaker 1 incredible it is that we should be digging trenches and trying on gas masks here

Speaker 1 because of a quarrel in a faraway country between people of whom we know nothing.

Speaker 1 It seems still more impossible that a quarrel which has already been settled in principle should be the subject of war.

Speaker 1 But as long as war has not begun, there is always hope that it may be prevented.

Speaker 1 And you know that I am going to work for peace to the last moment.

Speaker 1 That is Neville Chamberlain, of course, unmistakable tones, addressing the British people on the night of the 27th of September 1938 with a great rousing piece of oratory that deserves to stand beside

Speaker 1 the address of Henry V

Speaker 1 before the Battle of Ashing Core,

Speaker 1 the colours rung up by Nelson before the Battle of Trafalgar, ringing stuff.

Speaker 1 Yeah. I mean, it's not.
Listen to that. Yeah, he's not the most stirring of.
No, no, listen to that. You're not going to like, you know, reach for your gun and

Speaker 1 rush to the battlefront, are you? I mean, Chamberlain, you know, he was never a war leader. He said explicitly, I am a man of peace to the depths of my soul.

Speaker 1 Armed conflict between nations is a nightmare to me. He's completely upfront about that.

Speaker 1 And frankly, if you've been through the Great War, of course, that's a completely reasonable position to to take.

Speaker 1 Because that famous line, how horrible, fantastic, incredible it is that we should be digging trenches and trying on gas miles here because of a quarrel in a faraway country between people of whom we know nothing, very famous phrase, and always used to condemn him.

Speaker 1 But I mean, there he is absolutely articulating what the mass of people in Britain feel. Yeah.

Speaker 1 And that when Churchill, for instance, who is the most famous anti-appeacher, says that what Britain is contemplating is shameful.

Speaker 1 They don't want to hear him say that. No, I think that's absolutely right.

Speaker 1 I think because people probably deep down know that it's shameful and yet at the same time they think we must do anything to avoid a rerun of the great war that would be worse wouldn't it because it would be it would be a london and other cities would burn as well exactly exactly now even as as chamberlain is is preparing that speech People are queuing up for gas masks in British town halls and village halls.

Speaker 1 The first children, blind children, are being evacuated from London. They've installed anti-aircraft batteries on Westminster Bridge.

Speaker 1 There is this sense that a war that nobody wants is coming and will happen within days.

Speaker 1 Interestingly, the mood in Germany is very similar.

Speaker 1 So that same day, the 27th that Chamberlain made that speech, Hitler had arranged for a motorized division to pass through Berlin towards the Czech border.

Speaker 1 And this was basically, he wanted really to impress the diplomatic corps. with Germany's readiness for war and Germany's war enthusiasm.

Speaker 1 And there's an amazing description of it by William Shirer, the journalist we've mentioned a lot.

Speaker 1 And he talks about how the motorized division goes through the tanks or the armoured cars or whatever they are, and people won't look at them. People turn away.
They duck into the subway.

Speaker 1 They don't cheer. There is total silence.
He says it was one of the most striking demonstrations against war that I've ever seen.

Speaker 1 And actually, you know, Goebbels and the Nazi high command, they're all quite disappointed with the Berlin reaction. But actually, even in the Nazi High Command, there is massive anxiety, isn't there?

Speaker 1 So Ribbentrop is all, you know, he's all in favor of it. But

Speaker 1 other members of the Nazi high command are thinking, oh, not really not sure about this. Yeah.
War with Britain and France. Really? Are we ready? And also in the German army.

Speaker 1 I mean, they're really nervous about it. So the figures on that is that on Germany's western flank, they are hugely outnumbered by the French army.
Yeah, as they would be in 1939. But in 1939,

Speaker 1 the Western allies did not have an independent Czechoslovakia with strong frontier defenses. That's right.
Well, we'll see about this point about the Nazi high command is a really important one.

Speaker 1 And it's about to produce another of these twists in the story. So the next day is Wednesday, the 28th of September.
The House of Commons in London holds an emergency debate.

Speaker 1 And at this point, most people think we will probably be at war within, it could be within hours, not even, because if Hitler gives the go-ahead, France will feel honor-bound to defend Czechoslovakia and we will feel honor bound to fall in behind France.

Speaker 1 So Chamberlain's giving this enormous speech, this slightly plodding speech to the fellow MPs, explaining the whole backstory, all the negotiations with Hitler, all being for nothing, all this kind of thing.

Speaker 1 And then there's an amazing, I mean, it really is an amazing moment. He has passed a note.
It kind of comes down the chain along the bench. A piece of paper.
A piece of paper.

Speaker 1 So John Simon, who's sitting next to him, hands in this piece of paper. And it's news from the British ambassador in Berlin.

Speaker 1 And he stops talking, he reads it, he pauses, he clears his throat, very theatrical and then he says, I have something further to say to the house. He says, I've got an invitation.

Speaker 1 I have an invitation from Herr Hitler to meet him in Munich tomorrow morning. He's also invited Signor Mussolini and Monsieur de Ladier.
Signor Mussolini has accepted.

Speaker 1 I've no doubt Monsieur de Ladier is the French prime minister, will also accept. I need not tell you, he says, what my answer will be, as in, I'm definitely going to go.

Speaker 1 And when people hear this, there's this colossal roar

Speaker 1 of relief. Peace in our time.
I mean, people are literally shouting, because people credit Chamberlain with this, right?

Speaker 1 They say he wanted, he called for peace to the last moment, and Hitler has blinked. And they are cheering.
They're waving their order papers.

Speaker 1 People are literally shouting. Thank God for the Prime Minister.
Hurrah for the Prime Minister and all this kind of thing. And the debate is brought to a premature conclusion.

Speaker 1 People are crowding round Chamberlain, they pat him on the back, and actually the last person to go up and shake his hand is Winston Churchill, who says to him, Godspeed.

Speaker 1 And off he, because he's going to go off on this mission to try and bring peace to Europe.

Speaker 1 And actually, what lies behind this is an intervention from a character who's, you know, who's well known to our listeners. He's been very quiet in the last few episodes.
I think it's fair to say.

Speaker 1 He's been off hunting. A bad man,

Speaker 1 but a memorable man, because we finally welcome back to the rest of his history the sweating, white-suited bulk of Hermann Goering.

Speaker 1 So it's around this time that the Italian foreign minister bumps into Goering and finds in him a slight suggestion of Al Capone.

Speaker 1 So Goering at this point is an absolutely enormous man. If you see him in this suit, the suit is like multiple sizes too small for him.

Speaker 1 He's got all kinds of diamond studded type ins in the shape of swastikas and things. Yeah.

Speaker 1 So Goering, who's a, who's a sweaty man as it is, he's been sweating like a beast for the last few days because he's in a massive funk about the idea of a European war.

Speaker 1 He thinks a European war is bonkers. Like, we're going to get the Sudetenland.
What do we want to fight? uh France and Britain for. He hates Ribbentrop with an absolute passion.

Speaker 1 He keeps saying to Ribbentrop, stop asking for a war, you fool. And at one point, they have a massive row.
Goering says, well, I know what war is. He says, if Hitler wants a war,

Speaker 1 I'll be on the first plane over Britain. But he says to Ribbentrop, I'll make sure you're strapped in next to me on that plane.

Speaker 1 Imagine if you were on that plane with what a terrible nightmare that is. Who am I going to see next? He's so large, isn't he?

Speaker 1 He has crashed the plane. I'm in the middle of the three between Goering and Ribbentrop.
What a nightmare. Anyway, what actually happens? Goering goes behind Hitler's back.

Speaker 1 He sends messages to Mussolini and informal messages to London and Paris. And he says to Mussolini, I think you should call, if you call for a peace conference, you're Hitler's ally.

Speaker 1 Hitler will have to go along with it. And actually, if Mussolini calls for a peace conference, it's a brilliant way for Hitler to kind of back down a bit on the war thing without losing too much face.

Speaker 1 He will look like... a person who in the final analysis was prepared to be reasonable because he gave in to his great pal's request.
And so, this is exactly what happens.

Speaker 1 Earlier that day, the Italian ambassador had gone to see Hitler and said, Oh, the Duce thinks you could postpone the invasion, have one more meeting with the British, invite the French along.

Speaker 1 And Hitler's kind of trapped. You know, he can't, when he could ignore Mussolini completely, but that would risk his alliance with his biggest ally in Europe.
So, Hitler says, Yeah, fine. Whatever.

Speaker 1 All right. So, that is the cue.

Speaker 1 That is what lies behind the infamous Munich peace conference, which begins the very next day.

Speaker 1 And I think at this point, we'll be leading up to Munich, but it's actually worth pausing to make a point that I think is often lost.

Speaker 1 If you've been listening to all their story, it should be obvious at this point that Munich is not the great turning point. No, no, no.
Because the betrayal has already happened.

Speaker 1 The British and French have already basically told the Czechs to give over the Sudetenland and made it very clear they will not fight for the Sudetenland. So actually,

Speaker 1 what's happened happened at Munich is not Chamberlain and Delatier backing down. It's Hitler backing down.

Speaker 1 It's Hitler not forcing his war on the Czechs and on the world because of Goering and Mussolini going behind his back.

Speaker 1 It's not, Chamberlain's not going to give away anything that he hadn't given away weeks earlier, actually.

Speaker 1 And this is fatal for Hitler's willingness in future to listen to anything that Goering has to say on. foreign policy.
So he calls him an old woman, doesn't he? Exactly. He does.

Speaker 1 Furious about it. He's yeah, Hitler feels cheated, and this will run through the rest of this episode and indeed next week's episodes.
Hitler's sense of being cheated of his war.

Speaker 1 Now, Chamberlain doesn't get this at all. Chamberlain still thinks I'm the star of this story.

Speaker 1 I mean, everyone in Britain kind of treats him like he's the star of the story. When he flies out the next day, the whole cabinet comes to the aerodrome to see him off.

Speaker 1 The high commissioners of Australia, Canada, Ireland, and South Africa, they all come to see him off. Godspeed, good luck, all that kind of thing.

Speaker 1 Like they think he is the architect of this, which he absolutely isn't. And Chamberlain loves it.
He says, he has this

Speaker 1 quotation to the cameras. When I was a little boy, I used to repeat, if at first you don't succeed, try, try, try again.
That's what I'm doing.

Speaker 1 When I come back, I hope I will be able to say, as Hotspur says in Henry IV,

Speaker 1 out of this nettle, danger, we pluck this flower. safety.
Of course, Hotspur

Speaker 1 lost the subsequent battle. He did indeed.
So So not a good Omen. It's not a good Oma.

Speaker 1 But on the other hand, it's kind of nice to think that we once had prime ministers who would randomly quote from Henry IV. Yeah, I can't imagine Starmer doing that.

Speaker 1 No, no, I can't see Starmer doing that. So, as soon as he lands in Munich, the conference opens straight away.

Speaker 1 They're meeting in Hitler's Munich headquarters, the Fuhrer Bau, it's called, which is this huge neoclassical building that was built especially for the Nazi Party.

Speaker 1 It's not a hotel, but it's basically.

Speaker 1 It's full of kind of marble and flowers, and I'm sure Ribbentrop has sprayed it with Eau de College, that sort of champagne.

Speaker 1 So the delegates all go straight up to Hitler's private study, and they're sitting around this sort of little table beneath a portrait of Bismarck.

Speaker 1 And presumably, there's a famous conference, isn't there, where Disraeli goes.

Speaker 1 Yeah, Berlin.

Speaker 1 And Disraeli is seen as the guy who has bearded Bismarck in his lair and sorted Europe out. And that must surely be on Chamberlain's mind that he's playing that role.

Speaker 1 Because that's where the Peace With Honour, Peace in Our Time line comes from. He's quoting Disraeli after 1878, I think it was.
So they're around this table. Hitler is there.
Mussolini is there.

Speaker 1 Edouard Deladier, we haven't mentioned him. He had actually fought at the Battle of Verdun.
So he's a serious person, but he's very, very miserable throughout all this.

Speaker 1 Everyone said he looked like a snail, which I can kind of see, actually. I gather Hitler and Goebbels thought he was more impressive than Chamberlain, though.
Did they?

Speaker 1 May not be saying much, but they thought he was, yeah. Well, I mean,

Speaker 1 who would ever disagree with Hitler and

Speaker 1 what tremendous judges of character they are? Yeah, but they'd have a sense of who they thought were. I suppose they would, yeah, they would.
Now, of course, the people who aren't there, the Czechs.

Speaker 1 No one's advised the Czechs. Hitler has said, there's no way the Czechs are coming.
And the Czechs are outraged at this.

Speaker 1 And Chamberlain said to Edward Benesch, the Czech president, well, I'll represent you. I mean,

Speaker 1 that's... That's like classic British arrogance, isn't it? The conference actually, I didn't really know this about the Munich conference until reading up on it.
It was a complete shambles.

Speaker 1 It was like German efficiency, it was not. They didn't have enough pens and pencils.
They forgot to bring any paper. It was a complete mess and the phones didn't work properly.

Speaker 1 Ribbentrop was going mad about the phones not working. He said it was a great embarrassment for Germany.

Speaker 1 And the British had to go back and use the phones in their hotel because the phones didn't work properly. Anyway.

Speaker 1 As we said, I think the weird thing about the Munich Conference, it's so well known, but it's such a non-event because it's basically just kind of... Nothing to decide, really.
They've decided.

Speaker 1 They've already decided. Hitler's going to take the Sudetenland.
Britain and France are going to let him do it. And that's it.
And it takes them 13 hours to go through all the technicalities.

Speaker 1 Chamberlain and Deladier are obviously a little bit downbeat. Hitler's just bored.
He doesn't speak any language but German. So he can't understand what's going on.

Speaker 1 But I'll tell you who does speak a lot of languages. Who is a real master of tongues? Like you.
Very like me. Very similar people.
Journalist. Yeah.
A certain strut. Thanks.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 Physical resemblance. I mean, come on.
Mussolini speaks German. He speaks English and he's fluent in French.
So Mussolini is like doing a bit of translating. He's having a great time.

Speaker 1 Is that how he's doing it? He's doing it like

Speaker 1 a guy from a restaurant in New Jersey. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Welcome. Welcome.
Bienvenu.

Speaker 1 So at about two o'clock in the morning of the 30th of September, the deal is done. The Czechs will have 10 days to get out of the Sudetenland.
10th of October, the Germans will march in.

Speaker 1 And when you say the Czechs, I mean, you mean it's not just the Czech army. It's literally the Czechs.
Well, this is unclear, right? A lot of Czechs flee the Sudetenland.

Speaker 1 It's not laid down that they have to. And they're not being offered any compensation or anything.
No. No, I don't think so.
I mean, that seems a bad deal. It's a terrible Czech.
It's not a bad deal.

Speaker 1 I see no positive there. It's a very bad deal.
Anyway, the deal is done. There's no point in you complaining about it now.
They bring out, they say there has a big signing. Hitler dips his pen.

Speaker 1 in the special inkwell that he has to sign the deal. There's no ink.
There's no ink in the ink well. Ribbentrop's Ribbentrop's face, furious.
Another

Speaker 1 make of that. Yeah,

Speaker 1 another disaster for Germany. And actually, I looked at, I watched the final scenes, the Pathé Newsreels on YouTube.
Hitler looks exhausted. Mussolini is having a brilliant time, clearly.

Speaker 1 But actually, the person who's also loving it is Goering. Goering is in this unbelievably tight white suit.

Speaker 1 And he's kind of cracking jokes and slapping people on the back and stuff. Because, of course, this is, he regards this as a victory for himself.

Speaker 1 He's big mates with Seneva henderson the british ambassador because they've gone out shooting exactly he's having a wonderful time

Speaker 1 hitler though is very gloomy and despondent he's he's actually not got what he wanted which was his war and the next day he has one last meeting with chamberlain they're obviously very tired because they've been up until very late chamberlain goes in to see him and chamberlain

Speaker 1 piece of paper chamberlain surprises we will be friends forever

Speaker 1 and

Speaker 1 everyone will be happy and the flowers will come and everything we promise that we will never go to war. Britain and Germany will never go to war again with each other again.

Speaker 1 No fairy will ever die again.

Speaker 1 Now, in Robert Harris's novel about Munich, which is brilliant, he presents this as quite as you know, Chamberlain's clearly emotionally invested a lot in this piece of paper.

Speaker 1 If nothing else, it actually is actually a useful political prop because I think it is important, that piece of paper, in

Speaker 1 the decline of appeasement. Stiffening British.
Stiffening British resolve. Hitler has made an explicit promise that he goes on to break.
And so I think it does, it is an important piece of paper.

Speaker 1 Hitler at the time sees the piece of paper. He's baffled by it.
He thinks it's a complete waste of time. He says, sure, I'll sign it.
I mean, I don't care. And he signs this piece of paper.

Speaker 1 And Ribbentrop says to him afterwards, what was that piece of paper? And Hitler says it was of no significance whatsoever, which I think is wrong.

Speaker 1 I think it really mattered in terms of British public opinion because this is the piece of paper that Chamberlain waves when he gets back to Heston Aerodrome.

Speaker 1 The paper that bears his name upon it, as well as mine. You know,

Speaker 1 the promise. The promise.
Peace with honour. Peace for our time.
Which is, of course, what Chamberlain says when he comes back.

Speaker 1 And he's greeted by great crowds and he's invited onto the balcony of Buckingham Palace. And he's the absolute hero of the hour in Britain.

Speaker 1 And indeed, in the English-speaking world, more generally, there are messages from America, from Australia, Canada. Well done.
But presumably not from Prague. But not from Prague at all.

Speaker 1 The news of the deal reached Prague on that same morning, so the 30th of September. President Benesh was having a bath when the news was brought to him.
And he said,

Speaker 1 very pressingly, he said, it's a betrayal which will be its own punishment. They think they will save themselves from war and revolution at our expense.
And they are wrong.

Speaker 1 He did think about fighting anyway. So this is an answer to your question.
The Czechs did think about fighting anyway, and they thought about asking the Soviet Union for their help.

Speaker 1 And eventually they decided, look, we're bound to lose. We're not going to condemn our people to so much suffering.
And they said, Benesh said, we've been defeated not by Hitler, but by our

Speaker 1 friends, our so-called friends. There are huge demonstrations in Prague.
People saying, don't do it. But of course, they do do it.
The German army crosses the border, just as Hitler had planned.

Speaker 1 Huge crowds of Sudeten Germans throwing their flowers and giving Nazi salutes and all this kind of thing. And here's the answer to your other question about the Czechs.

Speaker 1 So there's a huge population flight from the Sudetenland. By the time the Germans crossed the border, about 25,000 Czechs had already fled.
And in the next two months...

Speaker 1 Leaving everything. You know, the classic thing of people with their thing on carts.
Wheelbarrows and things.

Speaker 1 Exactly. And in the next two months, another 150,000 people, including obviously the Jewish population of Sudetenland.

Speaker 1 Who know exactly what Nazism will mean for them. This was a catastrophe for Czechoslovakia.
They lost 3 million people. They lost 11,000 square miles of territory.

Speaker 1 They lost a fifth of their industrial production.

Speaker 1 And crucially, they lost those frontier defenses that you've been talking about, which have now fallen to the Germans without a single shot being fired.

Speaker 1 So, if the Germans do want to finish the job, if they want to go into the deeper into Bohemia,

Speaker 1 nothing to stop them at all. What is worse, or as bad,

Speaker 1 Hungary and Poland both nibbled at the borders of Czechoslovakia and took more bits,

Speaker 1 as we'll talk about the Polish bit next week. And Czechoslovakia, the whole balance of it was kind of upset.
So the Slovaks demanded more autonomy.

Speaker 1 Basically, they end up with a much weaker, more federalized country.

Speaker 1 There's a Czech bit, there's an autonomous Slovakia, and the Far East, there's a bit called sub-Carpathian Ruthenia, which is now in Ukraine, which is kind of a Ukrainian majority.

Speaker 1 And there, the German consul is basically the big man. So, in other words, the process of dismemberment has begun and Hitler can basically move in to claim the rest whenever he fancies it.

Speaker 1 And obviously this is terrible news for the Czechs, but it's also, I mean, it's not great news for the conspirators in the German high command, is it? No.

Speaker 1 So that plot, which we talked about last time, Ludwig Beck, Admiral Canaris, Oster, all these other characters who are thinking about moving against Hitler, that's completely fizzled out.

Speaker 1 Hitler's done it again. Another foreign policy coup.
So, you know, there's no mileage for a conspiracy against him. And they say Chamberlain saved Hitler.
You know, we would have moved against him.

Speaker 1 Whether that's the case and whether it would have worked, I don't know. But they definitely think that Chamberlain saved Hitler.

Speaker 1 And that is the last coordinated conspiracy against Hitler within Germany until 1944. Until 1944.

Speaker 1 It's a kind of ancestor of the Stauffenberg plot, which is what slightly leads me to think it probably wouldn't have worked because, of course, the Stauffenberg plot fizzles out within it.

Speaker 1 Well, it might have, I think it might have worked had the Czechs held out, had this resulted in kind of economic meltdown, which was coming anyway.

Speaker 1 Obviously, the absorption of Czechoslovakia means that economic meltdown is staved off. But

Speaker 1 I think

Speaker 1 circumstances might have been different. Well, we never know, will we? I mean, that's the thing.

Speaker 1 As it is, people across Eastern Europe in particular think, you know,

Speaker 1 Hitler wins. Hitler is the master now.
So two countries, in particular, Hungary and Romania, from this point onwards, they basically say, well, it's not much point in this.

Speaker 1 All the French trying to build all these alliances, they're a complete waste of time. They'll never fight for you.

Speaker 1 You know, we want to be in with the Germans, they're the big, they're the big men now.

Speaker 1 But the person who isn't happy is Hitler. He wanted his war, and he's been he's been betrayed as he sees it by Mussolini and by Goering and by Chamberlain.

Speaker 1 But he has stared into the eyes of Chamberlain and Deladier,

Speaker 1 and he

Speaker 1 thinks that he sees weakness and pusillanimity and cowardice, yes, and that therefore he can take them on. I mean, he calls them worms, doesn't he? Little worms.
Little worms. I've seen them.

Speaker 1 I've seen how contemptible they are. Yes.
And of course, that is not actually the right. So he is mistaken as well.

Speaker 1 Because actually, when Chamberlain gets back, I mean, he does all his, you know, paper waving and going on the balcony of Buckingham Palace and things, but he does also say, we've got to rearm.

Speaker 1 You know, we've got to press the accelerator on this. Yes, he does.
He absolutely does. I think

Speaker 1 in the last episode, I quoted Ian Kershaw saying about how

Speaker 1 cunning Hitler's foreign policy coups had been, how brilliantly planned, how ruthlessly the propaganda had been cranked up. What a great judge of timing Hitler had been.

Speaker 1 This is really the first point at which I think you can say his instincts completely begin to desert him. He believes his own publicity and he misreads the situation.
I think you're dead right.

Speaker 1 I think he completely misreads Britain and France after this. I mean, all the stuff like they will never fight, they're weak, all that.
He is dead wrong.

Speaker 1 He's running out of time now before they do fight.

Speaker 1 And he doesn't see that. I think he doesn't see that at all.
One thing about Hitler, though, he feels that the German people have let him down. He's really discomforted.

Speaker 1 that there was not more enthusiasm for war in the autumn of 1938. He was shocked that people cheered Chamberlain as he drove through the streets as a people.

Speaker 1 They've let Germany down, they've let Hitler down, but worst of all, they've let themselves down. They've let themselves down, they've let the school down.

Speaker 1 And he says, so I wonder whether the pogrom of Kristallnacht, the night of broken glass, against the Jewish population of Germany, which happens just a few weeks afterwards, in November 1938, we did an episode on it in our previous season.

Speaker 1 The violence of that,

Speaker 1 I think, and the violence for which Hitler, you know, he personally was responsible, he ordered it.

Speaker 1 I wonder at some level whether his sense of frustration that he hasn't got his war, his obsession with

Speaker 1 a kind of spoiled,

Speaker 1 very violent toddler. Yeah.
I mean, that lashing out you get with this. Lashing out, exactly.

Speaker 1 On the second night of Kristallnacht,

Speaker 1 he summons a closed meeting of German newspaper editors and he says to them,

Speaker 1 I'm sick of all this stuff about peace, world peace, peace propaganda, or peace is the most important thing. And he said, said, it isn't the most important thing.
You know, we need war.

Speaker 1 We should arrange things, he says. So I quote, the inner voice of the people itself slowly begins to cry out for the use of force.
And from this point, he is already thinking about the next conquest.

Speaker 1 This is the thing with Hitler. He just cannot, he's addicted.
He's like a drug addict. He cannot hit.
Yeah, he needs the next hit. So the next thing he thinks, I'll get the rest of Czechoslovakia.

Speaker 1 He wants a port called Memel, which um was a baltic german seaport that's now basically uh been swallowed up by lithuania but he's also now for the first time thinking about another target and this would be his biggest target yet and this

Speaker 1 would be poland right dominic thank you a very somber brilliant account um and we will be telling the terrible story of the build-up to Hitler's war on Poland, its course and its aftermath next week.

Speaker 1 And members of the Rest is History Club will get all three episodes of that story on Monday.

Speaker 1 And if you're not a member of that club, but you would like to get those episodes on Monday, then you can sign up at therestishistory.com.

Speaker 1 But either way, we will be back with the Nazi war on Poland on Monday. Bye-bye.
Bye-bye.