It was not only the democrats of western Europe who were concerned by Hitler’s ill-judged departure from Karl Haushofer’s geopolitical game plan, which although blatantly nationalistic, at least made it appear that the Führer’s territorial ambitions were limited. No one could feel safe if Hitler could so easily tear up a treaty. Italy’s Fascist Foreign Minister, Count Ciano, immediately perceived the dangers of the situation: ‘The thing is serious, especially since Hitler had assured everyone that he did not want to annex one single Czech. This German action does not destroy the Czechoslovakia of Versailles, but the one that was constructed at Munich and Vienna. What weight can be given in the future to those declarations and promises which concern us more directly?’39
Hitler’s move against Czechoslovakia also took Albrecht Haushofer by surprise. Despite his position close to the centre of Nazi geopolitical planning, he had remained largely unaware of Hitler’s true strategy for attaining his Greater Germany. Haushofer thought in terms of discussion, negotiation and plebiscite. Hitler, on the other hand, was running to a different timetable. He was aware that Germany would not be able to sustain her military superiority for very long before Britain and France attained parity.
Back in November 1937, Hitler had held a secret conference at the Chancellery to discuss this very situation, with War Minister Field Marshal Werner von Blomberg, commander-in-chief of the army General Werner von Fritsch, commander-in-chief of the navy Admiral Erich Raeder, Reich Minister for Air and commander-in-chief of the Luftwaffe as well as President of the Reichstag Hermann Göring, Foreign Minister von Neurath, and a certain Colonel Hossbach, who took the minutes. Hitler had begun by ‘stating that the subject of the present conference was of such importance that its discussions would, in other countries, certainly be a matter for a full Cabinet meeting, but he – the Führer – had rejected the idea of making it a subject of discussion before the wider circle of the Reich Cabinet just because of the importance of the matter’.
After much debate on the subject of a Greater Germany, and how the nation was to attain Lebensraum for its people, Hitler declared: ‘Germany’s problem could only be solved by means of force and this was never without attendant risks … If one accepts as the basis of the following exposition the resort to force with its attendant risks, then there remain still to be answered the questions of “when” and “how” …’40 The ‘when’ and ‘how’ were then divided into three criteria.
Firstly, Hitler judged that after 1943–45 Germany’s military position would become increasingly unfavourable, as ‘our relative strength would decrease in relation to the rearmament which would by then have been carried out by the rest of the world’.
Secondly, he declared it was hoped that ‘internal strife’ would occur in France (indeed, the Nazis began covertly financing the right-wing Cagoulards, who were gearing up to attempt a coup d’état41), precipitating a crisis that would absorb the French army completely and ‘render it incapable of use in a war against Germany’.
Thirdly, it was hoped that France might become ‘so embroiled by a war with another state that she cannot proceed against Germany’.
The implication was clear to the men seated around the conference table at the Reich Chancellery: Hitler was gearing up the German economy, as well as her politico-military bodies, for war.
Finally, Hitler revealed that he intended to absorb the Czech state into the Reich. Thus, what in the spring of 1939 appeared to be a belligerent Hitler whim was in fact part of his overall long-term strategy, for as he explained in November 1937:
the annexation of Czechoslovakia and Austria would mean an acquisition of foodstuff for five to six million people … The incorporation of these two states … means, from a politico-military point of view, a substantial advantage because it would mean shorter and better frontiers, the freeing of forces for other purposes, and the possibility of creating new units up to a level of about twelve divisions, that is, one new division per million inhabitants.42
In a last-ditch effort to preserve the European peace, whilst at the same time pursuing a line that would enable Germany to settle her grievances over her eastern territories lost to Poland in 1919, Albrecht Haushofer wrote to his old friend, the British MP Lord Clydesdale, in July 1939: ‘My Dear Douglo, I have been silent for a very long time …’ After some brief introductory pleasantries, he quickly got down to business, explaining the difficulties faced by Germany after the end of the First World War. He expanded upon the fact that Germany had been unfairly stripped of much territory that she now wanted back, despite the terrible danger of war, and that Germany had a need – both politically and psychologically – to regain her formed territories. He continued:
I cannot imagine even a short-range settlement without a change in the status of Danzig and … the Corridor … (people in England mostly do not know that there are some 600,000–700,000 Germans scattered through the inner parts of Poland!) – but if there is to be a peaceful solution at all, it can only come from England and it must appear to be fair to the German people as a whole …
Last September Mr Neville [Chamberlain] had the trust of the majority of Germans. If you want to win a peace without – or even after – war, you need to be regarded as trustees of Justice, not partisans. Therefore – once more – if you can do anything to promote a general British peace and armaments control plan – I am sure you would do something helpful.43
Clydesdale decided to discreetly show Haushofer’s letter to a few of his top-ranking political acquaintances. But rather than the Foreign Secretary or the Prime Minister, the first person he approached was Winston Churchill. After carefully reading the letter, Churchill handed it back to Clydesdale with the comment: ‘There’s going to be a war very soon.’
‘In that case,’ replied Clydesdale, ‘I very much hope that you will be Prime Minister.’
‘What a hell of a time to become Prime Minister,’ Churchill responded with a resigned shake of his head.44
Clydesdale next showed the letter to the Foreign Secretary, Lord Halifax, before taking it on to the Prime Minister, Neville Chamberlain. Yet neither felt compelled to act or reply.
It is noteworthy that even before war was declared, and indeed ten months before Chamberlain’s resignation, Clydesdale, like many other Britons, already knew who was going to become important in the terrible times to come; and it wasn’t going to be Neville Chamberlain.
Haushofer’s letter, which did nothing to deflect the progression to war, is important, if for no other reason than that it set the pattern for the line of communication that would begin just over a year later, and that again involved key men who all knew each other well – Albrecht Haushofer, Clydesdale (by then Duke of Hamilton), Winston Churchill and Lord Halifax.
Back in Germany, Rudolf Hess added his voice to the Nazi assertions of peaceable intent, giving a speech in Berlin in August 1939. Germany had already absorbed Austria, the Sudetenland and, worst of all, Czechoslovakia by intimidation and force of arms. Now Hess tried to legitimise the invasion of Poland, which he knew was just days away. Decrying Polish aggression, he publicly requested Neville Chamberlain to inspect German refugee camps and see with his own eyes the horrors of Poland’s terror campaign. ‘There is bloodshed, Herr Chamberlain!’ he declared. ‘There are dead! Innocent people have died.’ He went on to state that ‘England has point-blank refused all the Führer’s proposals for peace throughout the years.’45
Hess’s pleas, however, fell on deaf ears. In London no one was listening any more. The time of appeasement had passed, and diplomatic deals were busily being done to bolster an Anglo–French partnership to support Poland.