Transcript of 528. The Nazis' Road to War: Hitler Prepares to Strike (Part 1)

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Today, we are insulted Our blood brothers are at the mercy of their cruel abusers without any means of defending themselves. I am speaking of Czechoslovakia. Among the suppressed minorities in this state are three and a half million Germans. These Germans are God's creatures. The Almighty did not create them so that the Versailles Treaty could place them at the mercy of an alien power. And he did not create seven million checks to reign over these three and a half million, keep them in tutelage. And far less did he create them for ravage and torture. The misery of the Sudaten Germans defies description. They are being oppressed and humiliated in an unprecedented fashion. There must be an end to the injustice inflicted upon these people. The Reich will no longer stand for any further oppression and persecution of these three and a half million Germans. It is the duty of all of us to never again bow our heads to any alien will. To this, let us pledge ourselves. So help us God. That Dominic was very much not a friend of the show Adolf Hitler. He was speaking to the Nazi Party Congress in Nuremberg on the 12th of September 1938 about Czechoslovakia, as he frames it.

It's the beginning of the year. We're into 2025 now. On the rest of history, if it's the new year, it must be Nazis.

You're not wrong there, Tom. That was a very spirited performance. You didn't do an accent, which is probably best.

I wanted to evoke the sense of Hitler through the power of my acting and my oratory. So I hope people got that sense.

If you do get canceled for that reading, it's good to bow out in a very spirited performance.

I also hope that people who may be watching this on YouTube will enjoy the hand gestures, which I thought were very Hitlerian.

They were very Hitlerian, yeah. Actually, the funny thing is those are your usual hand gestures, aren't they? It is. That's actually how you speak off camera.

Actually, I find it quite easy.

Exactly. Let's give people a A bit of context. What Hitler is doing there, obviously, is he's, on the face of it, defending the interests of the German-speaking minority in Western Czechoslovakia, people who, he says, have been ravaged and tortured by their Czech or Czechoslovakian overlords. Of course, what he's really doing is preparing the ground for the invasion and dismemberment of Czechoslovakia, which he sees as a crucial step towards the creation of a new German dominion in Central and Eastern Europe. Tom, as you said, we always like to welcome the New Year with a series about the Nazis. With the Third Reich. With the Third Reich. We've done two series in the last couple of years. The first one was about their rise, the Nazis rise to power in the 1920s up to 1933, and the second one was about the Nazis and power in the course of the '30s. This one really will lead us up to the outbreak of the Second World War and the fall of Poland. This week, we're going to be focusing on one of the most discussed, most controversial, most, I guess, genuinely infamous diplomatic episodes history, which is the Munich Agreement of October 1938.

I would say it's possibly the incident from history that has had the greatest influence on the way certainly people in the West have approached international affairs since the war. Basically, it lies behind everything from the Swiss crisis to the invasion of Iraq. It absolutely does. We don't want to be Neville Chamberlain. We want to face down dictators.

The Munich analogy is probably the most well worn analogy, as you say, in all international relations. Actually, I think it's a crisis that's generally a bit misunderstood and that the nuances of it are more surprising and more interesting than people think. Maybe the lessons that people draw are not necessarily always the right ones. I think generally when people use the Munich analogy, they're using it merely as a political tool.

As a justification to go to war.

Justification for something they wanted to do anyway. Of course, that's what politicians always do, isn't it? Let's dig into this in proper detail. We'll start, I think, by reminding ourselves how absolutely central the idea of war is to the whole Nazi project. Obviously, the first point, the foundational point, is that Nazism is driven above all by the shattering experience of the great war and by the desire to put that right. As Ian Kershaw says, Richard Evans, all the great historians of Nazism and of Hitler, that the single thing that drives it more than anything else is a sense of humiliation and a thirst for revenge after 1918. Actually, you don't need to be a Nazi to have that. Loads of people in Germany have that. Any conceivable nationalistic German leader in the 1930s or 1940s would probably have wanted to fight a war.

The Nazis come to power in alliance with the conservative militaristic elites who had been the elites since the time of the Kaiser and before. In 1938, they're still on the scene, right? I mean, they've been slightly sidelined, but they're still part of the makeup of the state.

Yeah, absolutely they are. Obviously, in the army, there are lots of people in the army who have been there for years. Hitler's ambitions are absolutely, as they see it, in tune with their own long-standing ambitions that they've had since the day they were defeated in 1918, which is, let's make Germany great again, let's get our territory back, let's expand our borders, all of that.

Right. But make Germany great again and get our borders back, but not necessarily to go into other countries that don't contain Germans and conquer them as well. If Czechoslovakia contains a minority of Germans, then the majority are Czech and Slovaks, and so that makes it slightly different, doesn't it?

Yeah, who've never been part of Germany. Exactly right. I think the point worth making is that Hitler, of course, is not an ordinary nationalistic politician. He's not like a lot of these other people. He has a very, very distinctive worldview, which we discussed at great length in the very first series we did. At the center of it is this idea of racial struggle. That comes from the social Darwinist ideas of the 1880s and 1890s. You open Between the pages in Mein Kampf, it's all full of this stuff about a coming race war, the struggle for the future of the planet. Here's a random quotation, he who would live must fight. He who does not wish to fight in this world where permanent struggle is the law of life does not have the right to exist. Other European politicians do not talk like this in the 1920s and 1930s. This is distinctive.

You have to fight or you will be destroyed yourself. Exactly.

I think it's fair to say that from the moment Hitler is propelled into office by With those conservative elites in January 1933, absolutely everything is about preparing Germany for war. War is not an accident. War is the end goal. Richard Evans is brilliant on this in his book about the Nazis and Power, about how everything that Hitler does is designed to make Germany racially fit for conflict. So that's everything from popular culture, from films and whatnot, all the way down to children's textbooks. Like hammering this point home, life is about struggle. The fittest will survive You have to be hard. You have to be ruthless.

There's a lot of PE, isn't there?

There's an awful lot of PE, but there's a moral reeducation. You did a brilliant episode in our last series about the Nazis, about this attempt to morally reeducate people, to brainwash people, I guess, so that they become harder than hard, the most ruthless people on the face of the planet. Spartans. Spartans, exactly. In pursuit of his goal, Hitler has been helped by three things. First of all, you've already mentioned it. He's had to support of the army and the conservative establishment because they're delighted by this. This is what they always wanted. Secondly, he benefits from the fact that internationally, the Germans do actually have genuine sympathy. There are loads of people in Britain and France who, for completely understandable reasons. You may not agree with them now, but lots of people, you can understand why they thought it. People feel guilty about the Great War and the way that it ended. They think it was a terrible struggle, slaughter. Germany did lose a lot of territory. It did lose a lot German speakers. Who wouldn't be a bit upset about that?

Punic peace.

Yeah. Why shouldn't Germany have a proper army? Why shouldn't the Germans be treated with dignity and respect? There are lots of people who think that. Then the third thing is, because of the Great Depression, Britain and France, in particular, are fixated on their own internal problems. They don't want to spend a lot of money on guns. They want to spend a lot of money on soup kitchens.

So quite familiar.

Yeah, exactly. Very familiar. All of this meant that Hitler's foreign policy, up to 1938, had actually been, if you're a conservative or nationalistic German, it's a succession of foreign policy, stunning achievements. Takes them out of the League of Nations, see massive rearmament, goes back into the Rheinland, which we did an episode about that, alliances with Italy and Japan, intervenes in the Spanish Civil War, and then most spectacularly annexes Austria in March 1938. It takes a big German-speaking country and brings it his homeland and brings it into the Reich. At this point, Nobody says at this point, Well, these are very outlandish goals, and clearly, he's a man who wants to take over the world. I mean, well, a few people do, Churchill or whoever. But in Germany, people say this is actually completely reasonable. This is like he's going down the wishlist of things that any patriotic German would want to see. We would want to have our troops in the Rheinland. We would want to bring Austria.

What's wrong with that?

Yeah, what's wrong with that?

National self-determination, because that's the Hitler's genius, isn't it? Is that the League of Nations which has been set up after the first World War, it's all about national self-determination. It's the progressive thing to be in favor of. Why shouldn't Germans have self-determination like everyone else?

That's exactly what he's playing on. If you have a city or a country with loads of German speakers who want to be part of Germany, the Woodrow Wilson, Versailles Treaty, League of Nations principle is, you let them choose. You give them the freedom to choose. Absolutely. He has judged the whole thing perfectly. As Ian Kershaw says in his brilliant biography. He had been bold but not reckless. His timing had been excellent. The combination of bluff and blackmail effective. His manipulation of propaganda to back his coups masterly. That sounds like Kershaw is in a mire of Hitler, which he absolutely isn't. But he's played his cards really, really cleverly. The result every time has been a massive propaganda boost. You have these wonderful sources on public opinion in Germany, which the reports of Social Democratic Party, SPD agents to their leaders in exile. They say, Look, he's really popular whenever he does this. His popularity will often flag, and then I'll have a foreign policy achievement. Even people who don't really like him will say, Hitler, he's brilliant. Getting the Austrians back, that was fantastic, all of this thing.

Yes, it may not be making the trains run on time necessarily, but he does get chunks of the Austro-Hungarian Empire that had never belonged to Germany before. We've now got them. Hooray.

Exactly. Hitler himself, by the way, has, by this point, he has completely drunk the Kool-Aid. He, as Kershaw says, he began thinking that he was merely going to be John the Baptist to some other nationalistic leader. He was the drummer in his own terminology. But by this point, he really believes, he refers to it again and again in his speeches, he says, I've been chosen by providence. Fate has appointed me to bring the Germans to greatness. Nobody believes in the Führer cult more than Hitler himself. By this point, his He's going to be turning 50 next year in 1939. He feels a tremendous sense of urgency. He feels that weight of history on his shoulders as well.

But it's more supernatural than that, isn't it? He feels appointed by some incoate spirit to guide his nation to glory.

He totally does.

And he believes that literally. Yes, he does. I mean, it's not just a abstract spirit. He feels ordained by some supernatural power. Yeah.

It's like he's a Hégalian character who incarnates the spirit of history and science, and he's been appointed. Yeah, exactly that. However, what's nagging at him is that both his parents died young, and he himself is a horrendous hyperchondriac.

Well, he's drinking gun cleaning oil, isn't he? He is. We talked about that in the previous episode, and I think we both agreed that although we don't have medical backgrounds, we didn't feel this was the wisest thing for him to be drinking.

No, he's drinking this trench medicine, which is got to clean the oil. Basically, this gives him horrendous stomach problems. To deal with this, his doctor, who's called Dr. Morel, has given him this cocktail of vitamins and amphetamines and stuff that he is taking. Basically, it's fair to say Hitler is a bit of a crank. I bet we can go on the record here.

Well, I hope that people sense the presence of amphetamines in that performance I gave at the start of the show.

Almost certainly they did. He's got a personal sense of urgency. He thinks he might drop dead at any moment. Secondly, the wheels are beginning to come off the German economy. The German economy has been built on massive arm spending. Because of that, they're always running out of... Remember we talked about this bit in the last series? They're always running out of fats of various kinds. Butter, lard, I don't know, oil. They're always running out of these things. There's always massive consumer shortages. Basically, by 1938, the economy is very short of raw materials and cheap labor, and who's in charge of all this, keeps saying the wheels are going to fall off at any minute.

And foreign currency as well has gone, hasn't it? Yeah. Aren't there international boycottts, which the Nazi high command can then blame on international jury?

Exactly, right. They've They've gone for an autarchy, so they've slightly tried to go for sealing themselves off in the world economy and this huge drive for arm spending. But basically this is unsustainable. This is going to collapse in the next couple of years. Finally, they are conscious by 1938 that the Western allies, Britain and France, are at last beginning to rearm. The window of opportunity, as they see it, is beginning to close. At the end of 1937, Hitler told his bigwigs, Look, we've probably got about seven years to do this. I think we should be looking to fight a European war, about 1943 to 1945.

The European war would include taking on Britain and France and attacking the Soviet Union. Basically, taking on everyone. What are his plans at At this point, I think it's possible that in Hitler's dream scenario, he doesn't fight Britain.

I think he probably thinks he'll always have to fight France, but he thinks the French can easily be beaten. Of course, he's not entirely wrong.

So he'll leave Britain to its empire.

Yes, because he's making off, as we would discover in this series, He's making offers to Britain to stay out of the war up until the very last possible minute. He's spending much more effort on Britain than he is on France. So some of his generals were always anxious about this. They'd liked the idea of fighting small Central European countries, they'd never liked the idea of fighting Britain and France. But by 1938, Hitler is being encouraged in this aim by a terrible man, another terrible man. This guy is the ultimate warhawk, and he is the new foreign minister. This is Joachim von Ribbentrop, who will be featuring a lot in this series. If you see photographs of Ribbentrop, Ribbentrop looks quite suave, doesn't he? And quite dapper, which was not his reputation in Britain, where people said he was always wearing inappropriate trousers or something.

Yes, and he's very rude to tailors in Britain. He'll summon them to come and measure him, and then he won't turn up. His name is Mud on Savil Row.

Well, we take Savil Row very seriously, Tom. We do.

That's very poor. Also, the other thing, his name is Mud in the Church of England because he gives a Nazi salute in Durham Cathedral. Really? And has to be almost forcibly restrained. Yeah, absolutely disgraces himself.

So Rubentrop had been ambassador to Britain. He'd actually worked in Britain beforehand, and he'd He also worked in Canada before the war.

So he speaks English, doesn't he?

He speaks English. He'd won the Iron Cross in the Great War, so he was physically quite courageous. But then he'd worked in the drinks trade, hasn't he? And he'd married the heiress to a German sparkling wine firm. This basically made him an absolute figure of fun in Britain when he became ambassador. Everybody said, Look at this, champagne salesman. That's what people said. He's a champagne salesman.

I put it in my order.

Yeah, not even real champagne, right? German sparkling wine. Who wants that? No one.

Oh, dear. Imagine if the Nazis had one, the vengeance he'd have had.

I've always said two things about Ruben Trott. They were surprising that I learned from Richard Evans' recent book on the Nazis. First of all, he was a brilliant violin And secondly, he competed in the Canadian National Figure Skating Championships. Really? So that's a nice image.

The Torvillan Dean of the Nazi Party.

Exactly. Which one was he? Torvallin' or Dean? Anyway, he's Tonya Harding. Surely he's the Tonya Harding. Yeah, he is.

That's harsh on Tonya Harding, who's subject to a very good film that made me more sympathetic to her.

Okay, well, fine. Margot Robbie.

I apologize. You can't equate Margot Robbie to Ribbentrop.

No, that's strange casting. That's not casting anyone.

No, we want to put on the record. I think you should just say you're not comparing Ribbentrop to Margot Robbie.

I'm not comparing Margot Robbie and Jorkan von Ribbentrop. I want to be quite clear about that. Good. Okay, so Ribbentrop takes the hardest possible line for a Ministry. He always eggs Hitler on. He always says that's the way to Hitler's favor, basically, to be even more of a Nazi than Hitler is. Secondly, I think this is a really important point. Ribbentrop is completely blinded by his hatred of Britain. He always says to Hitler, The British are absolutely spineless. They are the most pathetic pitiful curves, a feat. They will never fight because they're too busy making jokes about champagne salesman and in Ravel Row. If we do ever fight them, we will crush them like insects underfoot. He gives Hitler very, very bad advice.

Who else is, of course, revealing to Hitler that Britain's air defenses aren't any good is Unity Mitford.

Yeah, I wanted if she would make an unwanted appearance in this podcast, and she has. All right, so let's pick up the narrative. In March 1938, Hitler comes back from Vienna on the 15th of March to a tumultuous He's had an amazing time in Austria. He's been to his boyhood house. He's addressed this enormous crowd, and barely has he returned. Then he gets out on a map, Goebbels' diary describes it, and they go over the map together and Hitler says, I can't wait because basically, I'm going to see, I realize now that I will see in my lifetime the great German Reich, the German Empire over all Europe and all the world. The next step is going to be Czechoslovakian.

Because I'm right that with the Anshelus, so Austria is now part of a greater Reich, that Czechoslovakia is basically sticking into the gut of this Reich. It is indeed. So purely on a map, it looks like it should be swallowed up.

It's encircled. It's virtually encircled, exactly right. It's a island of Slaves, or partially surrounded by a lot of Germans, exactly. However, Czechoslovakia is also a pretty serious target, a much more serious target than Austria. It's bigger than Austria. It's got 15 million people. It was created from the Austro-Hungarian Empire, so Bohemia and Moravia from the Austrian bit and Slovakia from the Hungarian bit. It is the By far the most resilient liberal democracy in Central Europe. It's got a very well-educated population. It has weathered the Depression reasonably well. It's got a really, really serious industrial base. I know Skoda became a joke in Britain in the 1980s, but-Not in Northumberland.

Not in Northumberland. Where everyone drives a Skoda Yeti.

Do they?

Yeah, Sadie bought one. It's a pride of joy. We're very pro Skoda. The other thing about Skoda Are you touting for sponsorship?

Is that what you're doing?

If Skoda want to give us a free Yeti, we're here. But the other thing which I hadn't realized is that Skoda made the brengum, which I always thought was British.

The Skoda Works, which is in Pilsen in Western Czechoslovakia, is one of the largest industrial complexes in Europe. It is a really, really serious business.

A massive prize for a German economy on its uppers.

It's a gigantic prize. If you're playing a board game, you're desperate to get this thing. They make tanks, they make the best guns, some of the best guns in Europe.

So the British Army using it. I mean, I'm amazed by that.

Exactly. They make tanks, tools, ships, locomotives.

They've got lignite.

They make loads and loads of stuff. And Czechoslovakia, therefore, has this colossal military arsenal and a very, very well-trained and well-motivated army.

And Dominic, don't they also on the borders where the mountains are But Germany, they've built a fairly impregnable series of defenses. Can't imagine a line but in a mountain chain.

They have indeed. Their frontier defenses are pretty serious. They have a lot of raw materials. They have tungsten, they have uranium ore, I think it is.

Dominic, as I mentioned, lignite. I don't really know what that is, but whenever I see it in this book, I always- You're pleased to see it.

I want the lignite. On top of that, the Czechs have two very serious allies, France on the one hand, and the Soviet Union on the other.

The fact that France is an ally, if France goes to war, then Britain is obliged to go to war. Yeah, probably. We're back to a pre-First World War. Exactly. You know, mountaineers all tethered up by a single rope.

Exactly. It's a tough It's not to crack, right? On the other hand, if you could crack it, great, because these are the attractions. First of all, as you said, it's a rich Slav country that obtrudes into the Reich. Loads of Hitler's generals think, I'd love to crush that. It's Allied to France. If there is ever a war, Czechoslovakia would fight, and that would automatically mean Germany would face a war on two fronts. Let's knock that out first. That makes sense.

Am I right also that Hitler has potential allies himself because both the Hungarian and the Poles have irredentist ambitions. They want to carve out a chunk.

This is true of every country in Central Europe, and it will become a really important theme. The dream of the French, in particular, was always to put together a Central European alliance against Hitler. But the problem with that is exactly the point that you've identified, that their neighbors think, I quite fancy a bit of a check. Yeah, exactly. So that's going to be a real problem. The Germans obviously want, as you've already mentioned, they want checks like his raw materials, they want the industry, they want the currency and stuff. For Hitler, I think it's also quite personal. He hates the checks, and he hates them because he was Austrian. If you were a German-speaking Austrian history. Before the First World War, the Czechs were basically your arch enemy within the empire.

So they are the Slaves with whom Hitler had grown up having a personal experience of. Exactly. So not the Poles.

Not the Poles. This will surprise people. Hitler has no prior with the Poles. He doesn't care about the Poles. He's never had any dealings with them. For him, it's the Czechs.

But also he has a artist's yearning to ride in triumph through Prague, doesn't he? This great, beautiful city with its incredible churches and, of course, synagogues, the great castle. So a bit like Paris, I guess. It haunts his imagination as a foreign city that he would love to have as a prize.

He has that slightly adolescent, Wagner-loving fantasy, I will ride through Prague as a conqueror, that thing.

He absolutely.

Yes, exactly. So as Lug would have it, going back to the speech that you began the episode, he has a perfect pretext for German action. Because the great floor of Woodrow Wilson's project after the First World War of Self Determination, all these new Nation States, was there are so many minorities. And in Czechoslovakia, there are 3 million German speakers who live along the Western border, this area known as the Sudetenland. Now, they have never been Germans. They were Austrian subjects. But obviously, in this world of nationalism, of new Nation States, their German-ness, the fact they speak German becomes a massive issue for them. Now, they are pretty well treated. They're probably better treated than any other minority in Europe. They have full legal equality with their Czech neighbors. The Czechs don't massively discriminate against them. But they've been quite hard hit by the depression, so a lot of them have been put out of work. Secondly, of course, over the border, they've got this bloke ranting and raving about German and saying he's going to build a greater German Reich. Obviously, a lot of them I think. I can't fancy being part of that. The main Sudatan German Party is led by this bloke who was an Austrian war veteran called Konrad Henlein, who also, I have to say, was a gymnastics instructor, and is, I think, a He's a PE teacher, basically.

But more than that, he's a racist PE teacher. He's a racist PE teacher. They're the worst PE teacher.

Yeah, and actually the worst racist.

He's a bad man.

Yeah, he's a bad man, Konrad Henlein. So he's the leader of the Sudeten German Party, and he says, Oh, let's basically get into bed with Hitler. So Hitler, as soon as he gets back from the Anshales, he sets the wheels in motion. He gets Henlein to Berlin for a secret meeting, and he He's like, I want to sort this out. I'm going to start agitating for you. Let's get you all riled up. So a month later, April 1938, Henline gets his party together and he says, Oh, we're being totally bullied by the Czechs. We want total self-government. We want autonomy and all this. Now, the important thing here is this is not the aim. The aim is actually to dismember the whole of Czechoslovakia. This is just a pretext. So Czechoslovakia said Brilliant. Well, you can have autonomy. That's not good enough. Hitler would be furious. That's not what they want. They want to give the checks a load of demands they can't possibly answer.

So make them so humiliating that there's no way that the Czech government can possibly accept them.

A little bit like that Austrian ultimatum to Serbia before the first World War, remember? Meanwhile, Hitler gets his commanders together and he says, I want you to draw up plans for the invasion of Czechoslovakia. Again, worth emphasizing, this is not just about the Sudetenland He wants the whole country. He says to the head of the Wehrmacht, guy called Wilhelm Keitel, he says, I want the whole country as a launch pad for the showdown in the east with Bolshevism. He's still thinking beyond this, right? You're going to fight in the USSR. He He also says, When we do invade, I want the whole thing done and dusted in four days because I don't want to give the British in a… I don't want a European war with Britain and France. I don't want to give them a chance. I want to present them with a fata complet, so that they don't get stuck in as well. But at this point, he says, This is a long term thing. We're not going to rush this. This could be like a year, a couple of years, who knows? But then something happens that massively advances his timetable. It's a slightly complicated and weird story, but basically, there are local elections in the Sudetenland.

There are some scuffles. At the same time, the Germans army are having maneuvers, just ordinary military maneuvers, nothing sinister in it. The Czechs get in a massive funk and mobilize their reserves. They think the Germans are about to attack them. Actually, weirdly, this is the one time that Hitler is not going to attack them. As a result of this, there's all sorts of diplomatic excitement, rowers between ambassadors and stuff. There's a huge row between Ribbentrop and the British ambassador, the British ambassador. The British ambassador is like, Are you going to attack Czechoslovakian? What are you doing?

So the British ambassador, he's Sir Neville Henderson, and he's, I think, the first of two British performers in this story who don't turn up absolutely brilliantly called Neville. If you're called Neville, it's not good for you. He is basically a guy who is calculated to rub Ribbentrop up the wrong way because he has impeccable tailoring. He's always seen wearing a carnation. In fact, did you know his uncle married Alice in Wonderland? Alice Little.

Really?

Yeah. He's the embodiment of an English gentleman.

Yeah, Ribbentrop would hate that.

He likes going shooting, so would get on very well with Gurring. In fact, does get on very well with Gurring, I think they all go off and to shoot Elk together. But in all kinds of ways, he's a terrible man to have sent to Berlin because there's no way that Ribbentrop will get on with him. In fact, am I right that he has been sent because he's basically the person in the foreign office who people think he is most sympathetic to autocracies.

Yeah, he's an archipaiser, actually, is what he is, Neville Henderson, which is then ironic that Ribbentrop and him don't really get along. Because they have a massive brow at this point. Henderson says, If you're really going to attack, I mean, you're mad to attack veca, because France will fight and they will have to fight you. And Ribbentrop goes absolutely mental and says, Well, that would be the greatest defeat in French history. And if Britain were to join France, once again, we'll fight you to the death. That's not a harmonious relationship.

Well, this is what comes when people who have different views on tailoring to meet up in the chapserries of Europe. Exactly.

Never have a champagne salesman. I mean, that's basically the... Don't get involved with champagne salesman or indeed, PE teachers. Ribbentrop tells all this to Hitler, and Hitler is absolutely furious. He's outraged at the loss of prestige He sees this as a complete humiliation. The Czechs mobilized their army, the British have all kicked off, whatever. He says to his aides, I can't live like this. We have to solve this problem now. He spends the next week at his Eri, the Eagle's his nest in Bertha's garden on top of this mountain. Then he comes back on the 28th of May, 1938, to Berlin, and he summons his generals. And he says, Okay, I've come to a decision. We need to get this started. I want my living space, my labor We're going to have to strike east eventually. And because of this, he says, One day we're going to have to fight France and Britain. But in that case, we can't have the Czechs hanging around on the other side, so we have to knock them out first. And he says, I am, quote, I am utterly determined that Czechoslovakia should disappear from the map. Two days later, Keitel presents him with the finalized plan.

It's called Falgrun, case green. The preface to the plan lays out the explicit aim, to smash Czechoslovakia by military action.

The stage is set for war. I think we should take a break at this point. When we come back, we will see what the upshot is. Hi, everyone. It's Cathy here from the Rest is Politics US. Anthony Scaramucci and I want to tell you about our new series that looks at one of the darkest days in modern American history, the capital riots of January the sixth.

Four years have passed since Donald Trump supporters stormed the Capitol building and tried to overturn the 2020 election results. Cathy and I are going to explore the tensions and the personalities at the heart of that storm.

We're going to look at the whole story, starting off with, of course, the 2020 election result itself, Joe Biden's victory, Donald Trump's attempts to undermine that result right up until January the sixth and those horrifying that all of us watched on television back then. So don't miss it. Go and search the rest is politics US, wherever you get your podcast to hear just how Donald Trump tried to defy American democracy. We've included a clip from the series for you to listen to at the end of this episode. Hello, welcome back to the Rest is History. We are looking at the development of the Munich crisis. Hitler wants to dismember Czechoslovakia. Dominic, we heard just before the break how he has summered his generals, told them, Draw up a plan. Let's get on with this. What happens next?

Tom, what I always say is your first take of that, you confused me with Adolf Hitler. I did. Which I think people who enjoy my journalism will appreciate that. That's Freudian slip.

You know the German gym teacher? He wrote for the Daily Mail.

Conrad Henlein? Yeah.

They featured a splash from him, and he came I'm proud of it very badly.

Really? Joseph Conrad wrote for the Daily Mail.

And he wasn't a Nazi. You, Conrad, and this PE teacher. Right.

You ask about Hitler's Generals, what they make of all this. Quite a lot of people from the very beginning are very, very worried about Hitler's ambitions. There's no sense that the German people want a war. So as we will discover in this whole of this series in the next couple of weeks, all that Nazi indoctrination has not been as successful as Hitler hoped.

Well, can I also ask you about whether there is... So quite aside from the fact, do they want to go and conquer a country that does not contain German speakers, do they feel any sense of identity with the Sudatan German? Germans. Do they feel this is their kith and kin?

I think it's the classic thing that some people who care about such things work themselves up into a lather about it. Oh, it's terrible that fellow German speakers are being poorly treated. I mean, that is a big theme in German newspapers in the 1920s and in the 1930s, but also probably most people are never particularly bothered about other people, are they?

A dog that doesn't bark in the night is the Germans in the Tyrol, which is part of Italy. Yes. They're much worse treated, aren't they? But nobody seems to raise a pipe about them.

But it's a question about what the newspapers, what Goebbels' propaganda machine lights on, isn't it? So Goebbels' propaganda machine will run stories day after day about the plight of the Sudeten Germans and hammer it home into people's minds.

The fact that the Germans go on and on about the Sudatan Germans, but not the ones in the Tirol, they don't really care about them. I mean, is this all just a... I mean, do they passionately believe in... Or is it just an excuse?

Yeah, it's an excuse. I think if it never come up in the newspapers, people wouldn't be walking around the streets of Hamburg saying, I often think about the Sudatan land and the Sudatan Germans.

But I was wondering about the Nazi high command, the fact that they don't raise a peep over the Tirol Germans, but the Sudatan Germans, they do. Are they just using them or do they genuinely think that this is disgraceful?

I think a lot of them, ideally, would love to have the Sudayan Germans in a greater... They'd like to have every German speaker in a greater German Reich.

Because I suppose it gives them more manpower as well, doesn't it?

Yeah, and they believe in it ideologically. As regards the Germans in the Tyrell and Northern Italy, they probably just think, Well, more important to keep MussaliniMussolini on side. More important to keep Mussolini on side. But to go back to the thing about what do people think about Hitler's war plans, a lot of the traditional Conservatives, and including actually people like Hermann Göring, who's not a traditional conservative, he really is a Nazi. But they're quite anxious about it. They're like, Really? Risk war with France?

Göring's torn, isn't he? Because he does want all the arms factories and the lignite and stuff. That would be brilliant because that would help out his various four-year plans or whatever they are, five-year plans. But obviously, he doesn't want Germany to be crushed by Britain and France.

No. Gering, as we should see in this series, is extremely anxious about fighting Britain and France. But above all, it's actually some of the generals who are really, really disturbed about it. The chief among them is the Army Chief of Staff, who is a guy called General Ludwig Beck. He was very experienced general. He was very pro-Nazi. He's not a Nazi member, but he really believes in the making Germany great again project. If you've seen the film Valkyrie with Tom Cruise playing Staufenberg, He's Terence Stampe in this film. Beck, he likes the idea of fighting Czechoslovakia, but he thinks, Whoa, we are going way too fast here. This will mean war with France and therefore with Britain, and we will definitely he lose. He's the Chief of Staff of the Army. He's a serious person. So all summer, he is firing off memos saying, this is a dreadful idea. We shouldn't do this. The thing is, he is seen as a doomsster, and the younger officers, in particular say, oh, this old man, he's too pessimistic, all of this thing. Even people who agree with him are nervous about going along with him because, of course, ever since the Night of the Long Knives, they've sworn a personal oath of loyalty to the Führer, so they can't disobey the Führer or go against him.

Anyway, what's very bad for Beck is in June, they hold war games, and the war games suggest that actually Hitler's plan might work. They could beat Czechoslovakia in 10, 11 days. Even if they were then fighting France, they could then transfer troops to the Western front and hold back the French. When the result of these war games comes in, Beck sees this and he says, Oh, God, this is terrible. This is going to happen. He says to his fellow generals, We should all resign collectively. That will force Hitler's hand, get him to back down.

He says, Desperate times require desperate measures, or something like that, some famous line.

We have to save the fatherland from destruction. Exactly that. The other generals say, No, if you want to resign, you resign. I'm not resigning. He resigns in August. And this is actually a massive, massive lost opportunity in the story of stopping Hitler, because Beck is persuaded by Hitler to basically resign privately, not make a huge political fuss about Because Hitler says to him, Look, this would play into the hands of Germany's enemies. Actually, if Beck had played his cards differently, who knows? There are loads of senior Nazis who felt very anxious about the rush to war. And maybe, who knows? If he gone public, things might have been different.

Goering is the new Führer.

Exactly. Anyway, he keeps his resignation secret. Actually, here's a really interesting thing. The late summer, the autumn of 1938, Beck and other senior people in the regime and get together and they construct a plot to topple Hitler, to have a coup in Berlin. They say, Look, we've achieved so much. He's actually now going too far and he's going to risk it all. They make informal links, particularly with the British. If we did topple Hitler, would you be on side? The head of military intelligence, Adminal Canaris, is in on this. The former finance minister, the guy who's the most respected financier and industrialist in in Germany, who's a guy called Hjalmar Schacht.

What's he called, Dominic?

He's called Hjalmar Schacht, Tom. Good. Yeah. You didn't think I could pronounce that twice in a row, but you were mistaken. You were mistaken. You thought it was Schleswig-Holstein all over again. But no. They get this plot together. A guy called Lieutenant Colonel Hans Oster, who's a counterintelligence chief, he draws up the blueprint for storming the Reich Chancellery, killing Hitler, possibly bringing back the monarchy.

It's the Kaiser who's in exile in Holland. Is he on this or not?

I'm not sure he's in on it as... Yeah, he's not pulling the strings.

Because Hitler hates the monarchy by this point, doesn't he? Because he's just been to Rome, where he feels he's been humiliated by the king of Italy. That's right.

Yes, exactly. The king of Italy did not treat him as an equal, but treated him as a commoner. Hitler did not like this. Exactly. The big question, I guess, is could this plot have worked? Because this is a real what if. My answer probably is that it couldn't because they did try something similar to the Valkyrie plot in 1944, and that didn't work at all. I think the big issue for them, though, is that if Hitler could somehow get Czechoslovakia without having a world war, they would look like total mugs. Exactly. Let's see if he can do that. That summer, 1938, Hitler spends it at the Eagle's Nest. So this is his Eerie in Bechert's garden in the south of Germany. He does his usual routine, loafing around, watching terrible films, talking to Albert Speer about architecture until basically he stays up very late doing nothing. In other words, he has Theo's life. He conducts himself like Theo.

Except Theo, of course, is not hanging out with a Mitford sister, which Hitler is. I think this is when he's seeing her most of all. They go to Bayreuth together, to Wagner, and then they have to leave early because Hitler wants to go to a gymnastics contest. Oh my God. He takes unity to that as well. I don't know whether the Sudeten land guy, whether the PE teacher is there.

There's far too much gymnastics in this.

It's a warning from history, Dominic.

Yeah. Actually, Hitler spends his time when he's doing any work. He does it on absolutely inconsequential things. The incursional lists the stuff that Hitler was doing that summer in 1938. Punishment for traffic offenses. Considerations of whether all cigarettes should be made nicotine free. Theer would not like that. Or the type of holes to be put into flagpoles.

Yeah, that's not very Third Reich, isn't it? No. Not what comes into mind when you think the might of the Nazi state.

That's Jimmy Carter's approach to administration. That's what that is. Anyway, this is actually your affront. Hitler is fooling the world because all the time he is waiting for the attack on Czechoslovakia. He has set a date of the first of October, and he says, That's when will go in. He's absolutely convinced that the Western Allies will do nothing about it. And you know what? He's right. They won't. First of all, the Czechs, two main allies, the Soviet Union, ally number one. Stalin has just started purging the Red Army. So he started killing all the officers in the Red Army. The last thing that Stalin wants is a war. So Stalin is not going to fight. Secondly, the French. France is going through massive internal political ruptions because the Popular Front has just come to power, which is the left wing organization. That has provoked a huge backlash on the right. There's a sense in which French politics is pulling towards the extremes. There's a lot of overheated stuff. Is there going to be a French civil war? Like a Spanish Civil War. Of course, there isn't. All of this means is the French basically are in no psychological condition to get stuck into a rerun of the Great War.

Which means that Britain isn't either.

Which means that if the French go in, then the British definitely won't go in because as you see, the British, basically, when it comes to it, don't give a damn about Czechoslovakia. All that summer, Goebbels fires up his propaganda machine. This goes back to the question you were asking, Tom, do people care? They care when you shove it in their face day after day. When in the front page of the newspapers, it's Sudeten Germans are being attacked, they're being beaten, the Czechs will run them over in the street, the Czechs have got plans to gas German villages. Just mad, lourded story The story is loads of stuff about how Czechoslovakia is actually full of Bolsheviks. It's a Trojan horse for the common turn. The whole stuff is actually very reminiscent of Vladimir Putin about Ukraine. Ukraine full of Nazis, all that stuff.

Are there people in Britain and France who worry about this, who think we'd rather Hitler had it than Stalin, Czechoslovakia? No, I don't think so. Maybe you think quite in those terms.

Because I don't think they think that Stalin is seriously going to have Czechoslovakia. They know that Czechoslovakia is a democracy and very robust democracy. So the Nazis are pumping out all these stories. But here's the interesting... Well, actually, here's the answer to your question. People are shocked at the stories. They feel sorry for the States and Germans, but they don't really care that much. One of the best sources for Germany in this period is a guy called William Shira, who was a radio-American journalist. American journalist who wrote a diary. And he said, I don't think Hitler will get his war because people are against it. People don't want it. They say, Oh, they feel sorry for the Sudatans, but they don't want to fight a war about it. The SPD agents who are reporting to their ex-seld leadership, they say, actually, people feel a bit sorry for the Sudatans, Germans, but they're much more worried that a war will come about, and then there won't be so much food, and then it'll be really miserable and the economic miracle will come to an end and all of this. And Goebbels is actually really annoyed about all this.

He's aware of it. He talks about the German people having a war psychosis. He's a bit like George C. Wallace's running mate, Curtis LeMay, saying that people had a phobia of nuclear weapons.

They need to man up. Yeah. Get a backbone.

People have this mad phobia about a world war. Why?

What's not to like?

Right, exactly. We get to late August. The propaganda machine has been Running and running and running. Because of that, the stories have now filtered through to newspapers in London and in Paris as well. By the middle of August 1938, London is full of rumors What? Is Hitler going to attack Czechoslovakia? What's going on here? So now we come to Britain. And obviously, our focus in this story is on the Nazis themselves. So we're not going to... We could do thousands of episodes about Britain and appeasement, but we should just do five minutes here. The Prime Minister is Neville Chamberlain. He's been Prime Minister for a year or so. He became Prime Minister in 1937. I think the thing that people need to get into their heads, this counterintuitive. Neville Chamberlain is not a weedy, dithery, indecisive cowardly man. That is absolutely not what he is. He is intellectually very formidable. He is very arrogant. He is very inflexible. And he intimidates his cabinet and other politicians because he is the man who knows.

He's vulpine, isn't he? He is. A bit chilly.

He is. There's a brilliant portrait of him, actually, in Robert Harris's book on Munich, Robert Harris's novel, where he really captures that sense of chamberlains, his pride, his vanity, that he will never change his mind, all of this thing. He always thinks he knows best. He's not this foppish wimp, which is the way he's commonly portrayed.

But you get that sense, don't you? Partly because he seems, compared to, say, the Nazis, an old-fashioned figure. So his wing collar, his umbrella, which becomes hisemblem, the fact he's only once in his life been up in an airplane, whereas Hitler spent the whole time winging his way around Germany in airplanes. There is a feeling. So I was just looking up on this because I read a great book about Chamberlain years ago, so I just looked up, and there was this comment from Ernst von Weisaker, who's a diplomat, who's part of that plot, isn't he? Part of the general's plot. Actually, father of the Weisaker, who then became President of Germany, I think in the '90s. He wrote, If Chamberlain comes, these louts, by which he means the Nazis, will triumph and proclaim that some Englishman has taken his cue and come to heal. They, the English, should send an energetic military man who, if necessary, can shout and hit the table with a riding crop, a marshal with many decoration and scars, a man without too much consideration. The guy he wanted was a general literally called General Ironside. He thought this was the guy who should go.

So I think there is a sense that Chamberlain's image is a problem, that he does seem fusty in Edward Canadian, compared to the go-ahead fascist.

Here's the weird thing with Chamberlain. Chamberlain, in his own mind, is a very modern politician. So although he dresses in an old-fashioned way, he thinks, I am modernity. Because here's the thing. He thinks they are old-fashioned. He thinks all that stuff about wearing a military uniform, wars. He thinks that's like Winston Churchill. That's like 1890s.

Because he's all about municipal drains.

Yes, that's the future. Health Service. He was a brilliant Minister for Health in the 1920s.

Because he's a product of the civic government of Birmingham, isn't he?

Absolutely. So Neville Chambers in his own mind is the future, and Hitler and co are the past. They're mad relics of the Great War. But of course, you're absolutely right. To them, he looks like this effeminate, foppish, effete, absolute wimp and weed who is backward. You're dead right about that. But I think Chamberlain does embody British public opinion in the late 1930s. All the commentary in Britain about war at this point is that war would be unbelievably apocalyptic, that our cities would be leveled by bombers.

A bomber always gets through. A bomber always gets through. The bomber always gets through.

That's a comment. Stanley Baldwin quote. The whole business is about gas masks. All the famous pictures of little children clutching their gas masks and they're being evacuated. We will be attacked with gas. Of course, we know now that didn't happen. But people think at the time, everybody will be gassed if a war happens. There will be millions and millions of casualties. This is the heyday of peace petitions, peace ballots. The Labor Party is the party of disarmament.

The Oxford Union saying that they wouldn't fight for king of country.

Wouldn't fight for king of country. All of this. Of course, Chabelen knows all this. He also knows most people in Britain could not give a hoot about Central Europe. Richard Evans, in his book on the Nazis of War, makes this point, and he's absolutely right. Most people in Britain, they do care about India, Australia, South Africa, because those are the stories that are in their newspapers every day.

Even then, they don't really care about that much.

Of course.

They might care about Australia if they're playing cricket, but otherwise, they don't They really care about the empire very much.

The lesson of history, nobody ever cares about anybody else, let's be honest. But they definitely don't care about Czechoslovakia, where they've never been. They don't know where it is. They don't understand what it is, as we will see from Neville Chamberlain's quote.

A far away country of which we know little.

Yeah. The other big problem I think Chamberlain has. Chamberlain is a smart guy. He's a very rational person. He's very controlled. I think as a result of all that, he is imaginatively limited. So he cannot conceive of the person Hitler is. He's never met anyone like Hitler. The idea that this person could be seething with racial animosity and could be driven by this apocalyptic worldview There's nobody like that in the House of Commons. There's no one like that in Birmingham, Tom. He's never met anyone like that. When he looks at this, he says, well, it seems to me perfectly rational that we could solve this Sudaten problem and everybody We could all be friends, which is obviously, that's the great flaw in Chamberlain's vision, as we shall see. Anyway, let's move towards the end of the episode. On the 30th of August, as a result of all this, Chamberlain's cabinet agree they will not issue a warning to deter Hitler from attacking Czechoslovakia. Why not? Because they think it would inflame him and it would provoke things. They want to have a peaceful settlement. So what they'll do is they will talk to the Czechoslovak President, who's a guy Edvard Benesch, and they will get him to give concessions to the Sudeten Germans.

Now, Benesch, he is a former lecturer in sociology. People who enjoy scouting, be pleased to hear that like Harold Wilson, he was a massive enthusiast for the boy Scout movement, Benesh, which I think reflects well on him. Do you know what? He was also a free Mason like Shaquille O'Neill. If you have an image in your mind of a sociology lecture who's a fusion of Shaquille O'Neill and Harold Wilson.

Goodness, there's something. Yeah. I mean, you wouldn't have thought that a sociology lecturer was the person who would basically be suited to standing up to Hitler.

No, I'm not going to be right.

But actually, Benesh, he's pretty tough. Hitler ends up saying, Well, he's a lot tougher than the Austrians were.

Yes, well, he is. There's no doubt about that. The Czechsleraks are much tougher than the Austrians. So Benesh says, Okay, fine. We'll give the Sudeten Germans what they want. We'll give some more autonomy. We'll move to a more federal system in Czechoslovakia. Czechoslovakia already has other tensions between the Czechs and the Slobecks, for example. He says, We'll have a more federal system, fine. Of course, that's not what Hitler wants. Hitler doesn't want concessions. He wants a pretext for a full invasion Eritrean. Basically, he says to the Sudeten Germans, just reject that offer. Say that you can't trust Banesh, which they do. They say, Oh, we can't. Nothing you offer us will be good enough because we don't believe a word you say. Another week goes by and it's full of claims from the Sudeten Germans, Oh, we're being attacked, we're being abused, all of this thing. Then on the 11th of September 1938, there is a dramatic new development. Across Western Czechoslovakia, the Sudeten Germans, Henline supporters, stage big demonstrations and they incite clashes with the Czech police. Of course, this was done on orders from Berlin. This was the context for the speech that you began with, Hitler's great rant at the party Congress in Nuremberg, where he says they're being ravaged, they're being tortured, all of this thing.

He has planned this out meticulously. This is the starting gun. This is going to be the great launch for the campaign. So in three weeks time, we'll go in. In that speech, preach that you did, he lays out his case very carefully. He says, Czechoslovakia is a made up country created by the United Nations. He says, and I quote, the Sudeten Germans are being ravaged and raped. I have begged and begged the democracies for redress, but they have ignored me. Finally, Germany, we're going to have to stand up for our kith and kin. This is Vladimir Putin's speech, 2022, before going into Ukraine. Same day he gives that speech, there is a new outbreak of violence across Czechoslovakia's Western borderlands. There are bomb scares, there are attacks on post offices and railway stations and so on. Then the next day, the 13th of September, a lot of fighting breaks out in a place called Hisbirch, his village. The Czech police are sent in, and four of them are killed by Henlion's goons, by his thugs. And the Czechs then declare martial law, and they send troops into the streets.

So this is brilliant. This is just what Hitler wants. All going to plan.

Exactly.

What could possibly go wrong?

Well, then, Tom, there is a twist. There are going to be so many twists in these episodes. This is the first of a series of massive twists.

Because Neville Chamberlain, in a while, has been off grouse shooting while all this is going on.

Of course he has.

So But I guess while he's been out there in the heather, he's been working out what could we do.

His mighty mind.

His volpine, cool, chill, calculating brain has been at work. Exactly.

It has. Now, Chamberlain has already decided the sedate and should be given to Germany. He just thinks it's mad to fight for this today. It's full of Germans. The Czechs should just let it go. He knows the British people don't want war. His military chiefs have already told him, they told him on the 13th of September, if there is a war, Czechoslovakia would fall in weeks, and we anticipate the Luftwaffe would bomb our cities every day for two months. We're incredibly bleak, miserable prognosis. Chamberlain is horrified by this because he hates war, but he also thinks, I'm the man, I can fix this. He comes up with something that he calls Plan Z, and he thinks, I can carry out a diplomatic coup that will change the entire picture. He's always He's writing these letters to his sisters, and he writes a letter to his sister, and he says, I will wait. I will bide my time. I will wait until things look blackest, and then I will astonish the world. He's a very vain man, Chamberlain. On the night of the 13th of September, he decides the time has come, and he sends this message to Berlin.

In view of the increasingly critical situation, he says, I am prepared to rip up diplomatic protocol I will fly personally to Germany to meet Hitler and to find a peaceful solution. I could come tomorrow, if you like. I'm ready. This is an amazing thing.

Because no summit like this has ever happened before. Exactly.

But think about the series we did about the buildup to the Great War, where it's all telegrams, and no one would ever check their holiday to do anything.

It's, again, I guess it's looking forward to the summits that will be held between the Americans and the Soviets.

Yeah, exactly. This is a sign again of Chamberlain's modernity, right? That he's happy to do this. Half a day goes by and the world is waiting. Then on the early afternoon of the 14th of September, the reply comes from Berlin, and Hitler says, I would be delighted to see you at the Eagle's Nest tomorrow. At 8:00 in the morning of the 15th of September 1938, Neville Chamberlain boards his plane at Heston aerodrome for one of the most controversial flights in history.

Well, Dominic, you said that this is a story full of twists and cliffhangers, and this is definitely a cliffhanger. If you want to find out what happens next, how will Chamberlain get on with Hitler? Will there be peace in our time? You can hear the next episode right away. If you are not a member of the Restless History Club, you can join and get it at therestlesshistory. Com. But if you'd rather wait, we will be back on Thursday with the story of Chamberlain's three flights to Germany, the Munich conference, and, well, I'm giving it away here, the fall of Czechoslovakia. Goodbye. Goodbye. As promised, here's a clip from the Rest is Politics US mini-series.

Trump is naturally a conspiracy theorist fueler. He will fuel the fire of any conspiracy theory because he's always seen himself as an outsider, and he wants to foment the people from the outside to attack the people from the inside. So He's developing these ideas that he eventually uses in January, on the sixth of January. And the ideas are, there's misinformation out there, there's lies out there. Let's use these lies as father to attack the people on the inside. He's doing it with COVID. I think hydroxychloroquine works. You may remember this. I took hydroxychloroquine. Mr. President, you took hydroxychloroquine? Yeah, I'm on it. I took it. And this is the beginning. This is the kernel of what's about to come. And it all starts with COVID, and it leads up to this insurrection, or as the President says, peaceful group of tourists descending upon the Capitol building.

If you want to hear the rest of the show, go and search therestispolitics. Us, wherever you get your podcasts.