The U.S.S.R. at Geneva. In his speech of September 18, 1934, accepting membership in the League of Nations, Litvinov plunged to the point of Russia’s interest in the League. “War,” he said, “must appear to all as the threatening danger of tomorrow. The organization of peace, for which, thus far, very little has been done, must be set against the extremely active organization of war. Everybody knows now that the exponents of the idea of war, open promulgators of a refashioning of the map of Europe and Asia by the sword, are not to be intimidated by paper obstacles.” Then he stated in strong terms his belief in the indivisibility of peace and his belief that “any war will bring misfortune to all countries, whether belligerents or neutrals.”

What Litvinov said in these years at Geneva was convincing. At Geneva I listened to him in League meetings many times, sharing the impression of others that he was sincere. He spoke in English, so that inflections and emphasis could readily be connected with his words. But did he truly represent his Government? The answer was that he did, because the success of the League and Russia’s preservation from aggression were so obviously related. As Sumner Welles put it: “When the Soviet Union entered the League, even the most obstinate were soon forced to admit that it was the only major power which seemed to take the League seriously. The Soviet Government seemed to believe that the Covenant of the League meant what it said.”¹

Barthou Killed. A few days later, October 9, 1934, the one man whose firm policy could have prevented the Second World War was killed at Marseilles, along with King Alexander of Yugoslavia, by a representative of the Croatian Ustaschi, a movement with fascist connections in Rome, Budapest and Berlin. Barthou, as French Foreign Minister, saw clearly that Hitler could not be restrained by words, no matter how appeasing, but only by power. He saw, also, that the necessary power could be obtained only in Moscow. He it was who brought Russia into the League and laid the basis for a Franco-Russian Mutual Assistance Pact. Barthou was a strong man, of the Right in French politics. He might have stopped the decay of France and changed the whole course of world history had he lived.

After him came the shifty Pierre Laval, who, in April 1935, finally did sign a treaty of alliance with Russia, so hedged with reservations that it virtually nullified French aid to Russia. Then he procrastinated in ratifying it, finally throwing the treaty into the Parliament instead of sending it to the President, thus making it a heated issue of French politics. Ratification was not completed in the Senate until March 13, 1936, after Hitler’s occupation of the Rhineland.

Laval preferred the French Rightist view that security would best be attained by concessions to Germany, by cooperating with Britain and especially by friendship with Italy, with whom he had an understanding in January 1935 which opened the way for Mussolini’s conquest of Ethiopia. A month later Laval collaborated with Sir John Simon, British Foreign Minister, in preparing a disarmament plan which would be acceptable to Germany. Instead of the Eastern Locarno arrangement which Barthou and Litvinov had proposed, a Western Air Pact was advanced, one which would leave Hitler a free hand in the East. Russia was not notified of this project until after it had been widely publicized.²

Conscription in Germany. In March 1935, Germany decreed universal military service, in violation of the Treaty of Versailles and the Locarno Treaty. In the League Council Litvinov demanded:

“What is to be done if a country which demands or assumes the right to arm is exclusively led by people who have publicly announced as the programme of their foreign policy a policy which consists, not only in revenge, but in the unrestricted conquest of foreign territory and the destruction of the independence of whole States—under the leadership of people who have publicly announced such a programme and who, far from repudiating it, are ceaselessly disseminating it and educating their people in its spirit?”

Neither from London nor Paris did he receive any answer. A Soviet-Czech Pact of Mutual Assistance, signed May 16, 1935, did a little to restore the balance, but only a little since it was dependent on fulfillment by France of her obligations to Czechoslovakia. On June 18, Hitler achieved a far greater triumph in his naval treaty with Great Britain. In this treaty Hitler agreed to hold his naval construction, except in submarines, to 35 per cent of British strength, for all time, gloated Sir Bolton Eyres Monsell, British First Lord of the Admiralty, triumphantly!³ In submarines Germany was to have 45 per cent of Britain’s tonnage, but should the situation change in the opinion of Germany she could increase her U-boat tonnage to 100 per cent.

Anglo-German Naval Treaty. In all the history of an unreal period this is one of the most unbelievable events. When Hitler decreed conscription in March, Britain protested mildly, and before the month was out invited him to negotiate a naval treaty which breached the Treaty of Versailles still further. The idea was to limit the German navy while it was still young, and to oblige, Hitler made a speech on May 21, 1935, denying that he had any territorial designs on any of his neighbors, neither France, Austria nor Czechoslovakia. With such music in their ears the British leaders felt they had done a fine stroke of business in the naval treaty. German submarines had almost starved England out of the First World War, sinking 1,000,000 tons of shipping a month in the Spring of 1918. Only the convoy system and timely American aid had saved her. Yet in June 1935 London cheerfully granted a maniacal German ruler with absolute power in his hands the right to build as many submarines as Britain had, if he saw fit.

Not only that: they made this treaty without consultation with France, who was as much concerned as anyone. Needless to say, there was no thought of conserving Russia’s interests. Germany was conceded a navy which would dominate the Baltic Sea completely.

Ethiopia Abandoned

It was after this demonstration of desire, above everything else, to propitiate Hitler and to legalize his aggrandizements, that the Baldwin Government turned to the issue of restraining Italian aggression in Ethiopia.

Mussolini had had his “incident” at Wal Wal in December 1934, and had been pouring troops through the Suez Canal for eight months before Sir Samuel Hoare, new British Foreign Minister, went to Geneva early in September 1935, sternly to lead the League of Nations in imposing economic sanctions on Italy.

Peace Ballot Mandate. How could this miracle be? The answer is to be found in the remarkable unofficial National Declaration, or Peace Ballot, conducted in Britain by the League of Nations Union and dozens of supporting organizations. Ballots containing four questions were distributed to all British voters and 11,640,066, or 38·2 per cent of the total electorate, signed and returned them. This huge poll registered a majority of 95·9 per cent for continued membership in the League of Nations and comparable majorities for arms limitation “by international agreement.” On the crucial sanctions question, 86·8 per cent voted for economic sanctions and 58·7 per cent for military sanctions. On this last and most vital of questions 6,833,803 voted for military sanctions, only 366,803 against and 2,381,485 abstained.⁴

This unprecedented expression of popular will placed the Tory Cabinet in a predicament. They had done their best to ridicule and frustrate the National Declaration, but its results, when announced June 28, 1935, were too impressive to be ignored. The Baldwin Government, excepting Anthony Eden, were strongly opposed to collective security, preferring to regulate world politics themselves by power-balancing bargains. On June 18, 1935, they had received the report of the Maffey Commission, an inter-ministerial body which saw no harm in Italian absorption of Ethiopia. Their whole instinct was to go along, since the last thing they desired was the unseating of Mussolini, that mighty regimenter of the Italian masses. Yet there was the compelling mandate of the National Declaration.⁵

In these circumstances it was decided to proclaim loudly that the League was “the sheet anchor of British policy,” as Baldwin did on July 23, and try to buy Mussolini off privately, persuading him to take most of Ethiopia without force. He, however, was determined to have it in no other way. Fifteen years of struttings and rantings about the beauties of force called for some kind of conquest, rough fascist conquest.

Duplicity at Geneva. Sir Samuel Hoare accordingly told the House of Commons, on August 1, that rashness in dealing with the Ethiopian affair “however courageous it might be, would be folly to the point of criminal folly” and went to Geneva to impose such sanctions upon Italy as would not interfere with the conquest of Ethiopia. Public opinion compelled the show of sanctions, but behind the scenes Mussolini would be assured that they would not hurt him and that the British and French would help him get what he wanted.

So at Geneva Hoare agreed privately with Laval, on September 10, that nothing serious was contemplated. Laval told the Chamber of Deputies, on December 28, 1935, that “we found ourselves instantaneously in agreement on ruling out military sanctions, not adopting measures of naval blockade, never contemplating the closure of the Suez Canal—in a word ruling out everything that might lead to war.”⁶

Hoare thus gave Laval a veto on any pressures that might really hurt Italy. This was confirmed by Under Secretary Cranbome in the House of Commons, March 2, 1936, when he declared that “His Majesty’s Government have repeatedly made it clear that it would not in any event take isolated action.” This done, Hoare mounted the rostrum of the League Assembly, September 11, the day after his agreement with Laval, and made a firm, even moving, declaration of loyalty to the League. His Government would be “second to none in the intention to fulfill, within the measure of its capacity, the obligations which the Covenant lays upon it.”⁷

Deceit in Britain. All knowledge of Laval’s character precludes any doubt that he kept Mussolini informed that there was to be no “war” on him, only dumb show to impress the British voters and enable the London Government to win an election, which it did on November 15, 1935, under the slogan “Our Word is Our Bond.” The deception was so convincing that the British voters gave an overwhelming majority to a Cabinet which had no use for collective security and no intention of making it work or of permitting it to work.

Believing they had installed a strong pro-League government, the British voters had actually placed in power, by a 431 to 184 majority in the House of Commons, a government which would abandon the League at every turn and build up Mussolini and Hitler to the point where they were completely uncontrollable, except at the cost of mobilizing all the military power in the world against them.

The Baldwin electoral victory, so catastrophic for all mankind, having been won, it was found that the Committee of Eighteen in Geneva was moving toward adding oil, coal, iron and steel to the sanction list. Laval secured two postponements of this committee, during which ten League states, including the U.S.S.R. which supplied 74·3 per cent of all Italian imports of oil, expressed approval of the proposed new sanctions.⁸ Something had to be done, for unless Ethiopia could be conquered before the long season of rains set in, the oil sanctions alone might frustrate the conquest. Something had to be done since both Britain and France had promised Mussolini “that there was no intention of enforcing sanctions that were ‘military’.” The oil-coal-iron sanctions, said the Duce, were military. He would regard their enforcement as war. So, says Neville Chamberlain’s official biographer, “the spirit of the League pointed to a double policy: to intimidate the aggressor but to attempt conciliation,” especially since it was known full well that Laval would never fight Italy.⁹

Hoare-Laval Deal. Hoare was accordingly sent to Paris and on December 8 he made a deal with Laval awarding most of Ethiopia to Italy, which blew him temporarily out of the Cabinet and aroused a storm of indignation around the world. But the oil sanction had also been nullified.

Litvinov’s Dissent. On September 6 Litvinov had said to the Council: “I have to make a statement upon a question which does not directly affect the interests of my country but which may have the gravest consequences for the whole of international life, for the fate of the League of Nations, for the cause of general peace and consequently, sooner or later for my country.”

This was his consistent position. If the League’s law were not defended the consequences would eventually come home to everybody, including his own country. He accordingly asked that the League “stand firm on the principle that there can not be justification for military operations except in self defense.” Before the League acted, Russia had also prohibited the export of war materials to Italy and imposed financial sanctions.¹⁰

When nothing remained except to pronounce funeral orations over Ethiopia, Litvinov said, on July 1, 1936: “We are gathered here to close a page in the history of the League of Nations, the history of international life, which it will be impossible to read without a feeling of bitterness.” His Government had from the outset held “a perfectly clear and firm standpoint.” He rejected the argument that there was something wrong with the Covenant and maintained that “Article 16 has provided the League of Nations with such a powerful weapon that any aggression could be broken if it were brought into full play.” Nor was the League’s lack of complete universality an excuse. Was the League to be suited to those who “swear by the principle of collective security, but in practice are ready to carry it out only when it coincides with the interests of their country?” He did “not want a League that is safe for aggressors.” In the Ethiopian case the League had “made a huge step forward in comparison with the past.” Let it now be equipped with a strong definition of aggression. Assurance was also needed “that in all cases of aggression, irrespective of the degree of concern in the conflict, sanctions will be applied by all.” He “would like to believe that mankind will not have to undergo yet another Armageddon,” for “we must recognize that at the present time there is not one State, large or small that is not open to aggression, and that if the next war spares one State or another she must, sooner or later, attract the longing eyes of the victorious aggressor.” Now “more than ever before,” he concluded, “the League of Nations is an international necessity. It must live. It must be stronger than ever.”¹¹

This clear conception of the indivisibility of peace was poignantly active in the minds of countless individuals in the summer of 1936. Comparable statements had also been made by officials of the small powers, who had everything to lose by war. But never had any representative of a Great Power stood in the halls of the League and declared in forthright, ringing sentences the principle upon which the life of every nation depended. The principle might be ignored. It might be said that of course some dark, hidden motive was behind such apparently obvious truth, but the indivisibility of peace was certain to be proved in every succeeding month.

London Embittered. Countless British citizens felt as deeply the significance and lessons of the Ethiopian crisis, as I vividly recall from being among them at the time, but not the British Government. Chamberlain’s biographer scoffs at the “profound insincerity” of the Covenant, at the idea that “we were pledged to keep by force the frontier of every existing State and to protect an indivisible peace by making every war universal.”

Chiseling away in one sentence the whole conception of collective security, Feiling goes on to complain that “as Baldwin openly said, any sanction involved a danger of war. To many minds the implications of the Covenant were morally repugnant.” Then he portrays the benighted condition of Ethiopia; explains how natural it was for Mussolini to decide to take Ethiopia; condones Laval’s pact with Mussolini (“Was he to be asked to sacrifice this fair future for Abyssinia?”); notes how “with great soldierly endurance the Italians beat down Abyssinia’s resistance,” without mentioning their dropping poison gas on the helpless natives; and relates how Hitler’s march into the Rhineland “flowed from the accursed matter of Abyssinia.”¹²

From the standpoint of the men who ruled Britain the Abyssinian affair had been an unrelieved disaster. Public opinion had forced them, publicly and inexorably, to go through the motions of applying sanctions to Italy. Then to prevent the sanctions from succeeding their spokesman had bunglingly brought down on their heads a world explosion of wrath and repulsion, most violent of all in Britain. The British Navy had been mobilized in the Mediterranean only to watch the Italian troops pour through Suez, thumbing their noses at it. Chamberlain himself had written privately that “by putting his great army on the other side of the Suez Canal Mussolini has tied a noose around his own neck, and left the end hanging out for anyone with a Navy to pull,”¹³ but the chafing British Navy never got the orders to pull it. Yet Italy had been antagonized, maybe spoiled for use against Germany, France was divided and disgruntled, and Hitler emboldened.

Militarization of the Rhineland Accepted

From the Tory standpoint the situation could hardly be worse, except that out of it, and under false pretences, they had gotten a new five-year term of office. Hereafter there would be no nonsense about collective security. British gentlemen would decide what was good for the world and arrange it by the old methods of balance of power politics. Had Hitler suddenly smashed both the Treaty of Versailles and the Locarno Pact by occupying the Rhineland with troops and guns on March 7, 1936? Let him. The British Government would have no more sanctions. Did not Hitler’s bayonets carry olive branches offering five new treaties, something for everybody? In the Locarno Treaty Britain was a guarantor, but she now became a mediator and the French Government supinely submitted to the supreme bluff of Hitler’s invasion.

All the laws upon which the world’s peace rested were on the side of the French. Their army was still far superior, but the French Rightists feared Hitler far less than their own Left or Moscow. Did they not also have their own impregnable Maginot line? Why go beyond it?

In this fashion the last chance to restrain Hitler’s Germany at small cost was lost. At once he furiously matched the Maginot line with his West Wall, locking his front door so firmly that the British and French Governments would thereafter be powerless to check him or to prevent him from working his will in Central and Eastern Europe. Were there statesmen in London and Paris who foresaw that with easy resignation? Or was their simplicity of mind so great that they could not see one move ahead in the game they played? Certainly each one of France’s small allies in Central Europe knew what Hitler’s move meant.

Litvinov’s Warning. Litvinov also had no difficulty in assessing the gravity of what was being done. On March 17, 1936, ten days after Hitler’s occupation of the Rhineland, he spoke to the League Council, meeting in London at the request of the British Government, noting that “in the course of the brief period of eighteen months that the Soviet Union has been a member of the League of Nations this is the third time that her representative on the Council of the League has had occasion to express himself in connection with the violation of international obligations.”

The League could not be preserved, continued Litvinov, if we closed our eyes to the violation of treaties, including the Covenant itself, and if it “accustomed aggressors to ignore all its recommendations, all its warnings and all its threats.”

Taking up Hitler’s excuse that the Franco-Soviet Pact was an offensive threat “exclusively directed against Germany,” he showed that it could not come into operation unless Hitler committed an act of aggression. Answering Hitler’s charge that under the Pact France arrogated to herself the right to decide “who is the aggressor,” Litvinov quoted the declaration in Hitler’s Mein Kampf, which urged Germany never to “permit the rise of two continental powers in Europe.” It was now “a question of establishing the hegemony of Germany throughout the whole European continent.” Certainly “neither the foreign policy of the present German Government nor the ceaseless preaching during the past three years in Germany of aggression and international hatred and the glorification of the war spirit” permitted us to agree that there was any new reason for the militarization of the Rhineland. No one was threatening Germany, making any territorial claims on her, or even publishing any literature to that effect.

The Soviet Union was opposed to everything that would bring war nearer, “if only by one month,” but it was “also opposed to hasty decisions dictated by fear and other emotions rather than a sober contemplation of reality, decisions which, while seemingly removing the causes of hypothetical war today, create every condition for actual war tomorrow.” After this penetrating description of the appeasement process, Litvinov closed by declaring “on behalf of my Government that it is ready to take part in all measures that may be proposed to the Council of the League by the Locarno Powers and will be acceptable to the other members of the Council.”¹⁴

Buckingham Palace Cold. Litvinov’s plea for action was supported by Poland, Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia and Rumania, but the decisive vote of Britain was cast in the negative. The British had asked that the Council meet in London, rather than in Geneva, partly at the suggestion of King Edward VIII, and the sessions were held in Buckingham Palace, where the King had no difficulty in telling the delegates individually how he felt about the issue. He was definitely opposed to any action against Germany and as definitely opposed to Soviet Russia. His father, King George V, who was a cousin of the murdered Tsar Nicholas II, “could not mention the Bolsheviks without exploding into Royal profanity,”¹⁵ and his son shared his feelings.¹⁶

The French, who were fairly united on moving their army into the Rhineland, also found the atmosphere in London very hostile to them. British public opinion justly blamed Laval for his leading role in sabotaging the League sanctions against Italy. Now there was a strong tendency to let France stew in her own juice.

All this favored the decision of the British Cabinet, with some dissent from Eden, not to do anything about the Rhineland. This attitude had been confidently and forcibly conveyed to Hitler by Ribbentrop, his Ambassador to London, and had enabled him to convince his generals that the Rhineland coup would succeed.¹⁷

Hitler’s First Triumph. This was not an easy task. When the decision to march into the Rhineland was announced to General Werner von Blomberg, then Chief of Staff, he fainted completely away, and when the American military attaché in Moscow brought the news to the German military attaché the latter turned white.¹⁸ From the military point of view the stroke was foolish. The German troops had inadequate artillery and lacked ammunition.

They were, by universal report, under orders to withdraw if they met opposition. But Hitler was sure there would be no opposition. He had correctly taken the measure of his opponents and knew that when the British Government refused to move, the French would not dare to do so. Their own Rightist press was fulminating furiously on Hitler’s side, agreeing with him that the Franco-Russian Pact had justified Hitler’s blow. German industrialists had also done their work well among their associates in the democracies, especially in Britain, explaining that Hitler’s real aim was to suppress communism.

Locarno Liquidated. Thus perished the great Locarno Treaty which had been hailed in 1925 as the shaken-down, sober and sensible answer to Europe’s deep longing for security against another war. After the tremendous blow at world confidence in the guarantees of the League which the abstention of the United States from Geneva had caused, the many threatened nations on the Continent sought to stiffen the League with new and tighter guarantees. Both the Draft Treaty of Mutual Assistance submitted by the 1923 Assembly and the still more famous Geneva Protocol of 1924 had been rejected by Britain and the Dominions as creating too wide-sweeping obligations.

Then under the compulsion of doing something to ward off another war the British and Germans had brought forward the idea of a right and tight little treaty just covering the world’s danger spot, the Franco-German frontier. Since Britain would have to fight anyway whenever war came to the Low Countries, she would guarantee not only France, but Germany. Nothing more, however, not Poland or Czechoslovakia or anything outside of her own neighborhood. Just that much. A “realistic” arrangement, yet somewhat comforting to all the nations threatened with another German eruption, especially since the demilitarization of the Rhineland was enshrined in the Locarno Treaty as firmly as in the Treaty of Versailles.

That was in 1925. Now in 1936 the British Government made a distinction between an invasion of France and the militarization of a part of Germany. The famed Locarno guarantee evaporated in the very contingency it was meant to meet. Hitler had dazzled the British Cabinet with suggestions that he might now sign the Western Air Pact which the British so much desired and by which they hoped to make Britain as safe in the air as their naval treaty of 1935 with him had made them safe (in their own minds) on the sea. The New York Times’ correspondent reported on March 8 from London that “a chance to obtain a solid counter-value for a hopeless item on the balance sheet appears attractive to practical politicians in London.”

Hitler’s push-over militarization of the Rhineland removed the last opportunity to stop his career of aggression, by the only means which he would respect. If he had been prevented from fortifying the demilitarized zone he would not have been free to attack all of his Eastern neighbors one at a time. Nor could he have started a war with France across an unfortified Rhineland. His mobility would have been gone, unless he could complete the internal disintegration of France, and even that would have been much more difficult.

Spain Strangled

French surrender to this militarization of the Rhineland opened wide the fascist assault on France. Having locked his own front door, Hitler, along with Mussolini, now boldly took possession of France’s back door and in the process killed what was left of French spirit.

Nor was any time lost. In July 1936 a Rightist revolt was begun against the Popular Front Government of the Spanish Republic. The rebellion was planned in Berlin and Rome, as well as in Spain, and was instantly given military support by both Germany and Italy.

This move into Spain struck straight at the very life of France and equally directly at the imperial interests of both Britain and France. Axis control of Spain threatened Britain’s “life line” through the Mediterranean as sharply as it could be done. Spain in the Axis camp also put France in mortal peril of having her communications with her African colonies cut, at the same time that she was surrounded by fascist states on all sides.

In this situation every instinct of self-preservation called for a firm British-French union to defeat this dangerous thrust to their very existence. For France especially the issue was mortal. Yet outwardly it was France in the person of Leon Blum, Socialist Premier of a Popular Front cabinet, which took the first step toward appeasing the Axis with “non-intervention.” The voice was the feeble one of Blum, who feared both his determined Rightists and the loss of British support, but the directing hand was Britain’s.¹⁹

“Non-Intervention.” Britain at once insisted that the Non-Intervention Committee meet in London instead of Geneva. Some twenty-seven European governments were invited to join, and did so. This amounted to organizing a new ad hoc League of Nations under British control. The committee adopted an attitude of trying to prevent any military help from reaching either side—a completely new departure in international law and usage. The Spanish Government was a democratic one, legally elected by the whole Spanish people. By all past precedent it had the right to buy arms for its defense anywhere. It would be the insurgents who would have all the difficulties and be discriminated against, but this traditional situation was completely reversed. The Government was reduced to the same level as the rebels. Its fight for survival against its own rebels, plus Italy and Germany, was placed on the same moral basis as that of the rebels and the foreign governments intervening.

Embargoes on arms were laid against both sides. The democracies, with spasmodic exceptions in France, obeyed the rules. The Axis didn’t. Italy sent everything she had, including troops totalling upwards of 100,000 men. In the Battle of Guadalajara an entire Italian army of men who had little desire to be in Spain was routed by the Republicans, the world’s laughter so enraging the fascist Caesar that he almost bankrupted Italy to avenge his humiliation in Spain. In fact he so impoverished his already poor country that when the big war came he was helpless and had to wait until he could safely pounce upon the back of a stricken France.

Germany sent technicians, equipment of every kind, and troops. The Germans used the Spanish Republicans as guinea pigs upon which to test all of the new arms they were preparing to use on Europe. The bombing of Guernica, on April 26, 1937, was the classic example of this policy. Guernica was a town of several thousand people in the Basque country. It was not on any military front, but it was a sacred place to the Basque people. Its destruction would be a heavy moral blow to them, so the German aviators came on market day, when the town was crowded with peasants and ruthlessly obliterated the whole place. Then as the people fled out on a hub of roads they machine-gunned and bombed the roads. For a time Franco’s sympathizers denied the crime. As G. L. Steer, correspondent of the New York Times, wrote, the bombing “led to some of the most horrible and inconsistent lying heard by Christian ears since Ananias.”²⁰

In high quarters in London there was some embarrassment over this event, but no government leaders saw in it the coming destruction of Coventry, Plymouth, Rotterdam, Belgrade, and many other fair cities. Even toward the close of the Spanish war warnings that “the Ebro flows down Oxford Street” caused no alarm. London clung tenaciously to “Non-Intervention,” setting up one device after another, including a naval blockade by the Western Big Four in which Germany and Italy guarded parts of Loyalist Spain. Plans for withdrawing the foreign “volunteers” were soberly proposed and as solemnly pursued, even after Anthony Eden resigned from the Cabinet on February 20, 1938, partly because his colleagues would not insist on an actual withdrawal of some Italian troops. In the long three years before the Spanish people were finally conquered, their resistance sorely tried the wise men in London and deeply irked the Caesars in Rome and Berlin. What they had all thought would be quickly over, after the blanket of “Non-Intervention” was drawn over the Spanish tragedy, went on and on. The slowness of Spain’s execution was most exasperating. Mussolini complained to Chamberlain at Munich on October 2, 1938, that he was “fed up” with the Spanish business, where he had already lost 50,000 men.²¹

Popular Front. The resistance of the Spanish people was one of the epics of the whole period of the Second World War. Almost without arms they saved Madrid and Central Spain. Then they created an army, having to find officers where they could, since nearly all of the army officers were disloyal. Scrounging a little here and there, they obtained some arms from a world organized against them and fought fascism so long and so heroically that its revolting essence was stripped bare for all who would see. Herbert L. Matthews, one of the greatest of New York Times correspondents, went to cover the Loyalist side of the Spanish war in a state of “stark insensibility” about the issues involved, but six years after its grim conclusion, and after many other war experiences, he wrote: “I know, as surely as I know anything in this world, that nothing so wonderful will ever happen to me again as those two and a half years I spent in Spain. And it is not only I who say this, but everyone who lived through that period with the Spanish Republicans. Soldier or journalist, Spaniard or American, British or French, German or Italian, it did not matter. Spain was a melting pot in which the dross came out and pure gold remained. It made men ready to die gladly and proudly. It gave meaning to life; it gave courage and faith in humanity; it taught us what internationalism means, as no League of Nations or Dumbarton Oaks will ever do.”²²

But the 35,000 anti-fascists from all over the world who went to Spain, usually as individuals, could only help a little. Though a majority of them were recruited communists, a huge minority was composed of “volunteers” in the fullest sense of the word, but neither they nor the Spanish people could prevail against Franco’s Moors, plus the military might of Germany and Italy.

Russia’s Role. Throughout the struggle the fascist forces promoted the Red bogey, claiming that the Spanish Loyalists were all Red, and this charge was easily believed by conservatives everywhere. Yet when the war started there were only 50,000 Communists in all Spain. Militarily they excelled and gained much leadership, but politically the Socialists and Republicans held control until the end.²³

Was it then Russia’s intervention on the side of the Republic which damned it in the democratic world? All accounts agree that Axis intervention was instant and constant, from July 18, 1936 on. But it was not until October that the Soviets began to send limited aid to the Republic, aid which while it may have saved Madrid could never match the flood of arms to the other side. Matthews’ comment is that Russia started late, did little and withdrew early.²⁴

Diplomatically the Russian record is better. The democratic governments having hastily retired from Geneva, it was left to Litvinov to do what he could there.

Cold Front at Geneva. On five separate occasions, covering a period of two years, the Spanish Government appealed to the League of Nations for help against the organized aggression of the Axis, but always in vain. The real show was in London. In Geneva the same governments mumbled feebly some weak suggestions for relief or stonily ignored Spain’s cry for aid. Only Soviet Russia spoke out plainly and strongly in Spain’s behalf.²⁵

The Spanish Government first called the League’s attention to the international war which was raging in Spain on September 25, 1936. The warning was carefully ignored. Another appeal, when full documentary proof of Axis intervention was available, led only to a resolution hoping that “Non-Intervention” would be made stronger.

In May 1937 Spain appealed again to the League of Nations, whose Covenant was stern about intervention in any state’s domestic affairs, as well as definite on what to do about international aggression. On May 28 Litvinov spoke, citing the indisputable evidence presented of armed intervention, reminding the Council that the Spanish Government would have coped with the rebellion long ago, if left alone, and warning that the safety of every European state was at stake. The League would be doomed if it was completely ignored and would stand aside in such cases. He added, also, that when the revolt broke out, his government had no diplomatic relations with Spain and not a single Soviet citizen in Spain.

French Independence at Stake. Earlier, on November 28, 1936, Litvinov had pointed out that it was “self-evident that Germany and Italy by no means need fascism in Spain for the sake of fascism as such or for the declarations of any ideological doctrine. Fascism is in this case a means of achieving entirely different and by no means ideological aims.”²⁶ He thus referred to the obvious interest of Russia in preventing the power of the Axis from expanding at the expense of her ally France. It took no prophet to foresee that France could be so enervated and enfeebled morally by the events in Spain that her value as an ally would be destroyed.

Actually, that was precisely what happened. Feiling admits it in his statement that “the rivals were contesting for the soul of France.” The moderate liberals who controlled the French Popular Front Government could never summon the courage to defy their embattled Rightists and save Spain. If they had, there might well have been civil conflict in France. They lacked the courage to risk that, so they assisted in the long strangulation of Spain and in the process killed the spirit and faith of their own people. As Feiling truly says: “Both in Britain and France the Left Wing found a Franco victory almost unendurable.”²⁷ After living through the long agony of it the Left in France could not believe in anything. The whole nation was open to the Fascist cry that nothing mattered except to stay behind the Maginot Line.

Tory Victory. For the Right, too, their victory in Spain was as satisfying as the defeat of the Left was stupefying. Conservative opinion in Britain was united on the proposition that the war in Spain had been a civil war, that “non-intervention” had kept it limited, that recognition was a question of fact and that Franco was well disposed.²⁸

Here in a sentence was the whole conservative case. It did not matter that a democracy had been killed and a nation restored to its ancient chains. In all the world no nation had been as privilege-ridden. Since the Napoleonic wars the Spanish Army had remained ludicrously bloated with generals who played politics and repressed liberal growth. Franco was only the latest of a long line of military politicos, who supported the feudal privileges of a host of great landlords. These magnates lived in luxury in Madrid and San Sebastian while hard-fisted foremen mercilessly drove the peasants on the land. Hunger was always rife in Spain and education always repressed by the Church, whose prelates presided over vast wealth, in mines, factories and land. Six times after 1767 the Jesuits had been driven out by the Spanish people, mainly for their “unshakeable habit of seeking and accumulating wealth. . . . As late as 1931 the Jesuits controlled about one third of the national wealth.”²⁹

It was this long history of exploitation which had made church burning endemic in Spain since 1834. At Barcelona alone in 1909 some seventy churches and religious buildings had been burned. Widespread church burning during the civil war was only an extension of past resentments, but it had a mighty impact on Catholic opinion elsewhere.

American Complicity. In the United States it was the power of the Catholic hierarchy, coupled with isolationist zeal, which kept the United States firmly anchored to “Non-Intervention” until the end of the Spanish war. The authors of the neutrality laws, designed to keep us out of war, had not thought about civil wars until an enterprising American got together a few second-hand aircraft and some munitions to sell to the Spanish Republic. His temerity caused a convulsion on Capitol Hill in Washington. Frantic efforts were made to pass another law and get it signed before the tramp ship Mar Cantigo could put to sea. The law was just too late, though Franco’s navy accounted for the ship on the other side.

Thereafter, the United States firmly adhered to Non-Intervention, in defiance of all past law, of our tradition of standing for human liberty and of our interest in turning back the fascist flood. Toward the close of the conquest of Spain, American opinion revolted and a Gallup poll showed 76 per cent in favor of lifting the arms embargo against the Spanish Republic, but it was not raised.³⁰

This, too, was to be the outstanding blot on the diplomatic record of the Roosevelt Administrations. Former Under Secretary of State Welles wrote in his Time for Decision that it was “the cardinal error” of the long Roosevelt-Hull conduct of our foreign affairs—“of all our blind isolationist policies, the most disastrous.”³¹ Certainly it was a blunder which tied the United States in deeply with the policy of steady surrender to fascist conquests. With our aid the sacrifice of the Spanish people was nullified and they were restored to the ruthless rule of the old regime.

Fascism Appeased

In the process a million Spaniards died, yet not in vain, for Spain had saved her soul. At a later time she would regain her liberty—unless the democratic governments kept Franco in power until communism came with the final cataclysm.

“Civil War.” In the meantime, Conservative opinion in Britain was firmly united on the principle “that this had been a civil war.” It had been, but not in the sense that the Conservatives meant. It had been a stage in a world civil war in which the victory of the Extreme Right in Spain had made the estates and rule of British Conservatism seem more secure—until the bombs rained on England, first the little ones, then the block busters, then the V-1’s, then the V-2’s, against which there was no defense—until the bid of the Fascists to rule the earth largely destroyed the economic base of the British Conservatives and deprived them of political power for many a day.

For the Soviet Union the new lessons in intervention administered in London were profoundly disturbing. She herself had suffered the long agony and turmoil of the Allied interventions from 1918 to 1920, sparked and led from London and Paris. Now she was forbidden to go to the aid of a member of the League of Nations fighting for its very life. The determination of the British leaders was absolute. As Feiling says: “With exemplary patience the British leaders in the non-intervention committee drove the rivals, Germany, Italy and Portugal on one side, and on the other Russia, through one deadlock to the next.”³² It was a set-up in which the Russians were caught in a vise. They could not win, when all the law was on their side and when their ally France was being reduced to a state of helplessness.³³

Austria Sacrificed

For Hitler intervention was altogether advantageous. While he was winning with force of arms, in defiance of the League Covenant and all other international law, non-intervention firmly held the ring for him for as long as it might take to complete his conquest of Spain. This, however, was onerous and dangerous labor for the British rulers, since the outraged feelings of their people flamed dangerously high. So non-intervention was transformed into active intervention—to force Hitler’s eastern neighbors to yield to him without a fight, lest the fight explode public opinion in Britain and France, or compel the formation of a common front with the U.S.S.R.

With Italy allied to Germany and deeply embroiled in Spain, the “solution” of the Austrian question was obviously indicated. Sir Nevile Henderson, the British Ambassador to Germany whose mission was appeasement, was told twice during September and October 1937 that Austria was the “first and last” German objective, and the usual offer was made not to interfere with Britain’s power overseas if she would give Germany a free hand in Eastern Europe. This offer was conveyed to London and an opportunity was made for Lord Halifax to go over to Germany, ostensibly as a fox-hunter, and see the German leaders. With them he left the impression that London and Paris would not resist Hitler with force in Central Europe.

Hitler therefore moved in for the kill. In January, 1938 so many Nazi spies were in evidence in Austria that a raid was made and a plot for revolution and occupation by Germany discovered. On February 13, Chancellor Schuschnigg of Austria was hailed to Berchtesgaden, mercilessly browbeaten by Hitler and forced to give in to demands which enabled new hordes of German “tourists” and “commercial travellers” to invade Austria. Schuschnigg was trapped. None of the Western powers would lift a finger for him. His Clerical-Rightist backing was a minority in the country, the labor forces having been smashed with artillery in February 1934.³⁴

Litvinov’s Plea. In Geneva, Litvinov was still a voice crying in the wilderness. On February 1, 1938 he told a committee which was considering the “reform” of the Covenant that the League was strong enough to deal with the aggressor if it would. He warned that “rampant aggression spreading over all continents” was confronting all States, large and small, with danger. “Political and military autarchy, with all its burdensome increase in home armaments” was not enough. “The collective character of the committed aggression must inevitably impel the States toward collective security. Collective security is Article 16, and we must preserve it, and, when it is possible, make it stronger.”³⁵

Collective Security Denounced by Britain. No other way of escaping another conflagration was visible, but collective security was anathema to Britain. In the House of Commons, on February 22, 1938, Chamberlain repudiated the whole idea. He called upon the League to “throw off the shams and pretences” of sanctions and reduce itself simply to “a moral force to focus public opinion throughout the world.” How much effect this would have on Hitler and Mussolini he did not promise, but on March 7 he made it totally clear to Austria that she must not look to the League for salvation, saying: “We must not try to delude small and weak nations into thinking that they will be protected by the League against aggression.”³⁶

Schuscfinigg’s Defiance. This was as clear a repudiation of the central principle upon which the League was founded as could be invented. In desperation Chancellor Schuschnigg announced a plebiscite in Austria to determine whether Austria should be incorporated into Germany or remain independent. The vote was to be held in four days and it spoiled all plans for a peaceable Austrian demise. “It was the throw of a desperate gambler,” complained Sir Nevile Henderson, adding: “I still do not believe, any more than I did at the time, that the rape of Austria in the form which it finally took, or at that date was definitely premeditated.”³⁷

Schuschnigg’s pathetic last effort was definitely inconsiderate, since Hitler could not permit a democratic decision of Austria’s future, especially one that might go against him. He had hastily and brutally to march into Austria and take the country with naked force.

Litvinov Warns Again. Very soon after he had done so Litvinov gave an interview to the press, on March 17, 1938, in which he said that after joining the League “for the purpose of organized collaboration with other peaceful states, the Soviet Government had not neglected a single opportunity to show its “readiness to take an active part in all measures designed to organize collective rebuffs to the aggressors. At the same time the Soviet Government gave warning that international passivity and the impunity of aggression in one case would fatally lead to the repetition and multiplication of such cases.” Now not only the eleven countries “bordering on the aggressor” were in danger but all others, and not only in Europe. The “inevitable enslavement” of the small states would create the “prerequisites for pressure and even attack on big States.”

Czechoslovakia, he noted, was obviously the next victim. The fate of the world now rested with the peaceful states, especially the large states. Then he concluded:

“. . . The Soviet Government is aware of its share in this responsibility; it is aware of the obligations incumbent upon it under the League Covenant, the Briand-Kellogg Pact and the treaties of mutual assistance it has concluded with France and Czechoslovakia, and I can say on behalf of the Government that, on its part, it is ready as before to join in collective action which, decided jointly with it, would have the purpose of arresting the further development of aggression and removing the accentuated danger of a new world shambles. It agrees to proceed immediately to discuss practical measures, dictated by the circumstances, with other Powers in the League of Nations or outside of it. To-morrow might be too late, but to-day there is time yet, if all States, particularly great States, take up a firm unambiguous standpoint on the problem of the collective salvation of peace.”³⁸

Czechoslovakia Dismembered

As Litvinov warned, the hour was very late. Only the firmest stand by Britain, France and Russia could stop the accelerating collapse of the peace, and in London there was not the faintest intention of taking this course.

Purges in Russia. To all the deep fears and dislikes of Soviet Russia in the minds of the British leaders there was now added the revulsion and perplexity aroused by the great purges which swept through the Soviet Union during 1937 and 1938. Seven generals and many other high personages were shot, along with many thousands of lesser ones. Was such an ally worth anything? Hadn’t she weakened herself fatally by the purges?

British Purpose Firm. In London there was not the slightest prospect that Litvinov’s urgent call for a solid front against Hitler, on March 17, would be heeded. On November 26, 1937, after the visit of Halifax to Germany, Chamberlain had written about the Germans that “of course they want to dominate Eastern Europe,” and he concluded that Britain should say to Germany: “give us satisfactory assurances that you won’t use force to deal with the Austrians and Czechoslovaks, and we will give you similar assurances that we won’t use force to prevent the changes you want, if you can get them by peaceful means.”³⁹

In other words, Hitler might absorb Austria and Czechoslovakia if only he would do it by the threat of force and by the wholesale use of fifth columns, a phrase already immortalized by the Spanish war. But, like the Austrians, the Czechs did not want to die and they were a much more formidable people.

Russian Overtures Rejected. On March 24, Chamberlain replied in a public speech to Russia’s request on March 17 for a conference between Britain, Russia, France and the United States to discuss means of checking future aggression. His Majesty’s Government felt “themselves unable to give the prior guarantee suggested” in Czechoslovakia’s behalf. As for the proposed four-power conferences he commented that

“The proposal appeared to involve less consultation with a view to settlement than concerting of action against an eventuality that has not yet risen. . . . (Such a conference) would aggravate a tendency toward establishment of exclusive groups of nations which must be inimical to the prospects of European peace. The British Government believes differences between nations should be resolved by peaceful settlement, not by methods of force.”⁴⁰

Chamberlain was striving incessantly to establish a Four Power group which would exclude Russia from European decisions. It was already a year and a half since Japan had joined the Axis by signing the Anti-Comintern Pact, November 25, 1936. But when a grouping including the Soviet Union was proposed Chamberlain loftily rejected it as aggravating “a tendency toward establishment of exclusive groups of nations.”

The Break-up of Czechoslovakia Planned. Aside from its rejection of the Russian bid to a conference, Chamberlain’s speech of March 24 was “a masterpiece of obfuscation,” but “his evasiveness regarding Britain’s contingent support of France was disastrous.” It allowed George Bonnet and other French appeasers to conduct a corroding whispering campaign in France. Yet the speech had really revealed Chamberlain’s plan—to bring such pressure to bear upon Czechoslovakia that the French alliance with Prague would never become operative.⁴¹ As yet no one knew what German demands on Prague might be, but whatever they were they must be granted. Sensing this from Chamberlain’s equivocations, Hitler summoned Konrad Henlein, the head of the German Nazis in Czechoslovakia, to Berlin on March 28 and told him to make his demands very strong.

The result was the eight Karlsbad demands of April 24 which called for the abandonment of the idea that there was a Czechoslovak state with a German minority; for the demarcation of the German area, in which there should be only German officials, with full autonomy in every department of public life; and for complete liberty to proclaim their Germanism and their adhesion to “the ideology of Germans.” That, said Henlein, meant National Socialism and he capped his requirements with a demand for “a complete revision of the Czech foreign policy which up to today had led the State into the ranks of the enemies of the German people.” This meant the annulment of all Czechoslovakian alliances.

Since it was obvious that no government could accept such demands and live, Premier Daladier and Foreign Minister Bonnet of France hurried to London on April 28, and Daladier urged strong joint and parallel action in Prague and in Berlin. Chamberlain demurred. British equivocation again weakened the confidence of those who would have resisted Germany and strengthened the hands of the French appeasers. It was made clear to the French Ministers that “in no circumstances would Britain give immediate support to either France or Czechoslovakia,” and “from that moment the French, consciously or subconsciously, wrote off their own obligations” to Czechoslovakia. From this moment also the sovereignty and independence of Czechoslovakia became an obstacle in Chamberlain’s mind to his appeasement plan.⁴²

On May 10, Chamberlain revealed his plans for the break-up of Czechoslovakia in Germany’s behalf to a group of American and Canadian newspaper men at Lady Astor’s. Neither France, Russia nor Britain would fight for Czechoslovakia, said the Prime Minister, who also advocated his plan for a Four Power Pact, including Britain, France, Germany and Italy, from which Russia would be excluded. When this news appeared in the New York Times and New York Herald Tribune on March 14 the effect in all of the European capitals was profound, especially when acrid criticism in the House of Commons on June 20, 21 and 27 failed to wring any denial from Chamberlain.⁴³

Crisis in May. On May 19 extensive German troop concentrations on the Czech frontier precipitated an intense crisis. The next day the Czech Government ordered a partial mobilization, which was quickly and smoothly carried out, while the alarmed governments in London, Paris and Moscow all gave Germany firm and repeated warnings, both in Berlin and in their respective capitals. This unexpected solid front deeply alarmed the German General Staff and Hitler’s political advisers. They all urged a retreat and on May 22 Hitler bitterly agreed.

The Appeasers Aroused. The governments which had everything to fear from Nazi aggrandizement had given, spontaneously and under the whip of fear, a perfect illustration of the right way to deal with Hitler. One would have thought that they would now consolidate their solid front and enforce the peace. But, on the contrary, in Berlin, London and Paris the Czechs were now guilty of a deep indiscretion. Their resolute action had called Hitler’s hand for the first time. Since in Russia and everywhere else people had rejoiced, the fat was now in the fire. His Volcanic Majesty in Berlin had been humiliated, so of course the Czechs would have to pay for such stupidity.

Far from taking up the long-standing invitation of the Soviet Union to military staff conferences the British and French appeasers were terrified at their own success. They denounced Benes almost as violently as Hitler himself. Chamberlain practically apologized to Germany, and on June 3 The Times urged Prague to let the Sudeten Germans go. In France, Bonnet blamed the Czechs, and carried on a constant campaign of hints to the Cabinet that Britain would not support France and of tips to Britain that France could not fight. In public he stood for the alliance with Prague. In private he undermined it incessantly.

Runciman Forced on Prague. These processes went on until July 18 when an emissary from the Fuehrer to London warned that the murder of one Sudetendeutsch would lead Hitler to march. Captain Wiedemann also dangled the prospect of a Four Power Pact. Without a day’s delay London proposed to Benes that Lord Runciman be appointed an independent “arbitrator.” Halifax took the proposal to Paris. There it met strong opposition in the Cabinet and was toned down. Runciman would be a “mediator and advisor.” This general idea was reluctantly accepted by the French and Runciman was forced upon Prague. On July 26 Chamberlain gave the news to the House of Commons in a speech which, says Wheeler-Bennett, was “as remarkable an example of prevarication as that Chamber can ever have heard.” Throughout the speech Chamberlain lied brazenly and deliberately. He declared that Prague had requested that a mediator be sent, that Britain was not hustling the Czechs and that there was a détente, a lessening of tension in the European situation. This mission was purely informal and the Government had no responsibility for it.⁴⁴

Actually Chamberlain knew that the German campaign for the destruction of Czechoslovakia was in full swing and that the Czechs were not intimidated by Germany. Apart from the large Czech estate owners, the Agrarians who helped to paralyze the Government at the end, the Czechs were united in a grim determination to fight to the last man. They were confident, too, that the military factors were on their side, given the assistance of their allies France and Russia. It would take extreme measures to prevent them from defending themselves and compelling France to honor her alliance.

Runciman acted accordingly. His first day in Prague, August 4, 1938, consisted of three brief courtesy calls on the Government and two very long conferences with the Sudeten leaders. His days were spent mainly in the castles of Nazi aristocrats, guarded by Henleinist storm troopers, whom he addressed on one occasion.⁴⁵ Long memoranda from German democrats were received, but never mentioned in his report. Before he arrived the Czech Government had published its plans for far-reaching concessions to the Sudeten Germans. These were further extended four times under pressure from Runciman until “national self government” was promised to the Germans on September 4. On this last occasion President Benes asked Henlein’s deputies to write down on a sheet of blank paper their “party’s full demands for the German minority,” promising in advance to grant them immediately. When the thunderstruck delegates were unable to write, Benes did it for them. They haltingly dictated their original Carlsbad demands and Benes accepted them. Consternation was complete in both the Henlein camp and in Berlin as well as in London and Paris.⁴⁶

Surrender Advised. The Nazis could think of nothing more to say, so the appeasers said it for them. On September 6 an article in La Republique, the known mouthpiece of Bonnet, said that the Sudeten Germans and Czechs “must be separated” and the next day the London Times, edited by Chamberlain’s friend Geoffrey Dawson, advised Prague to cede the Sudetens to Germany. What the Germans had not dared to propose, the outright breakup of Czechoslovakia, was now offered them by Czechoslovakia’s fellow democracies.⁴⁷ At the same time Bonnet in Geneva rejected, on September 11, an urgent request by Litvinov for a joint démarche. Litvinov in the presence of the Rumanian Foreign Minister assured Bonnet that Rumania would give Russian troops passage through Rumania.⁴⁸

Inspired Revolt. The next day, on September 12, came Hitler’s tirade to the annual Nazi Party Congress, toward which Nazi propaganda had been building for weeks. The speech revealed Hitler’s venom at being blocked in May, and was filled with the grossest insults to Benes and the Czechs. It was one long invitation to the Henleinists to revolt. Hitler told how the Czech State “beat up bodily three and a half million members of a race of eighty million people” and when he had finished, in hundreds of Bohemian towns the Henleinists poured into the streets by prearrangement and wrecked the shops of all Czechs and Jews.

Travelling through the area, Gedye saw how easily the Czechs restored order, and he recorded the flood of messages of loyalty from democratic Sudeten Germans which poured into Prague when the Henleinists fled over the border. Gedye wrote that “no one living through this summer in Prague could fail to be conscious of something almost sublime in the attitude of the humblest person one met every day; a consciousness of high destiny was on everyone, a realization that this country was singled out for martyrdom; a fine pride in the fact that it was Czechoslovakia which, perhaps by its own death, was going to redeem liberty in Europe.”⁴⁹

Runciman’s Report. Matters had reached a point where Runciman could do no more in Czechoslovakia.⁵⁰ He returned to London on September 16 and wrote a report which consisted of two parts. In the first part he set forth the inescapable facts of constantly stepped-up Henleinist demands and of easy mastery of the rebellion by the Czech authorities. Then in the body of the report he expressed “much sympathy” for the Sudeten case, condemned Czech immigrants to the Sudeten areas as “these Czech invaders,” and censured them for building Czech schools in the area. In contradiction of all the evidence to the contrary he concluded that “a very large majority of the inhabitants” desired union with Germany and that this should be brought about forthwith. He believed cession to be inevitable, thought a plebiscite would be “sheer formality” and urged the cession at once.

To complete the conquest of the Czechs, Runciman recommended that all of them who had been pursuing a policy hostile to Germany’s interests “should be forbidden to continue their agitations, if necessary by legal means.” Ignoring completely the thunderous agitations, propagandas and provocations of the Nazis, on both sides of the border, he actually proposed the silencing of all protest by the Czechs and their complete submission to German will. To make crystal clear his intention to make the rump of Czechoslovakia into a German puppet state he urged the compulsory destruction of Czechoslovakia’s defensive alliances, accepting the Goebbels line that these alliances might make Czechoslovakia guilty of an “attack” against Germany, or guilty of “aggressive action arising from obligations to other states.”⁵¹

A Powerful Bastion. Runciman had done what he was sent to do. He had carried out his mission as faithfully as Chamberlain could have desired. Yet the Czech bastion still stood. The impression has been propagated by the defenders of British policy that Czechoslovakia’s position was hopeless after the German conquest of Austria, that the Germans could quickly have cut the country in two with a pincers attack. Feiling says that German armies could have severed “the narrow ill-protected throat of Czechoslovakia in an afternoon.”⁵² The Czechs disbelieved that, because they had been fortifying the two danger spots vigorously, whereas the Germans lacked both fortifications and roads in Austria. Later, when the German Army occupied Czechoslovakia their generals found that the Czech defenses were much stronger than they had suspected. Even the weakest sector, the old Austrian border, amazed the Germans and their astonishment deepened when they examined the Czech Maginot Line. Hitler later confessed that “we had run a serious danger” and Keitel testified that the High Command did not believe that they could break through the Czech fortifications.⁵³

The Germans could not count on Poland to join in war against Czechoslovakia, either, while Russia’s alliance with Czechoslovakia stood. Poland was too vulnerable in the East and the great Polish landlords in the White Russian and Ukrainian half of Poland could not risk a Russian invasion. Similar considerations would make it extremely unlikely that Hungary, militarily weak as she was, would move against the Czechs. The Russian air force was only 150 kilometers away and the Red Army, given a little time, could send aid across Rumania.

These considerations appeared to necessitate huge concentrations of German troops near the two pincer points of attack, mobilizations which could not be concealed and which would have been extremely vulnerable to bombing. If Czechoslovakia’s allies stood by her, large German forces in the East would have had to face Russia and the French had an excellent chance to take over the Rhineland by bombing the Rhine bridges. Not more than thirty to forty German divisions would remain to throw against Czechoslovakia, the Czechs thought, and within three weeks they expected to have that many divisions in the field. It would require sixty divisions, they believed, to crush them, and they felt that they could hold out from three to six months alone.

With France also a good plan of campaign had been perfected. The distance across southern Germany, from Alsace to Czechoslovakia, was not great. It was an excellent set-up for shuttle bombing. The plans were ready and the airfields supplied with many thousands of tons of bombs. Intensive bombing of a strip across southern Germany gave good promise of cutting off the Munich area and Austria from the main part of Germany and of opening up a path of invasion down which the two allies could advance from each end. Meanwhile, Russian air strength could be pouring into Czechoslovakia, even if ground forces were slower in arriving.

For such campaigns the military resources of the Czechs were impressive. They had 1,500,000 trained men splendidly equipped and supplied by one of the largest and best munitions industries in the world. They had an air force of 1500 planes and they were standing on the great Bohemian plateau, surrounded by a ring of high mountains which had been fortified, after Germany left the League of Nations in 1933, at an expense of $400,000,000. The Czechs had reason to believe that their Little Maginot Line was better than its French counterpart. This formidable strength was backed, too, by a calm, unshakeable determination to fight to the last man in defense of the democratic liberties which the Czechs had enjoyed for only a brief twenty years and which they had shared with the Sudeten Germans to a remarkable degree.

The power of the nations threatened by German aggression was in fact so great that a German attack on Czechoslovakia could have been prevented by a common front. It is quite true that Hitler was aching for war in 1938 and determined to crush Czechoslovakia by military force, but he was rampant because he knew well that his allies in Britain and France would not combine with Russia to defend Czechoslovakia. A firm front against him would have put an entirely different face on matters. At Nuremberg, General Keitel frankly admitted that “had there been, in place of the Munich Conference, a collaboration between Great Britain, France and the U.S.S.R., it would have been impossible for us to strike.”⁵⁴ Hitler could plunge ahead because there was no one to stop him. Far from opposing him his logical opponents in the West were anxious to help him.

A Working Democracy. In April 1938 the British Royal Institute of International Affairs published a thorough study of the Czechs and Germans by Elizabeth Wiskemann. In her final chapter the author states that “a German citizen of Czechoslovakia who accepts the political principles of the State is no more aware of the police or the censorship than a Czech; in any court of law he will be just as well looked after.” It is really remarkable, she continues, “to find that Sudeten Germans, who have consistently preached treason against the Republic in many cases, live free and unmolested in its midst; no dictatorship would allow such a thing.” The Sudetens enjoyed a degree of personal freedom which would have been unthinkable in Nazi Germany. They were “able to criticize, to combine, to complain and to disagree, in the press, in parliament and abroad.”

After her exhaustive investigations on the spot, Miss Wiskemann concluded that federalization of Czechoslovakia was impossible because no one could draw language frontiers between the Czechs and Germans. The same difficulty would frustrate any fair attempt to cede the German-speaking districts to Germany. Evidently believing strongly in the viability of Czechoslovakia, she concluded that there was “an efficiency, a determination, and a vitality about the Czechs which promised well for the future, if external violence should not distort normal expectations.” On the other hand, the Sudeten and Czech territories were so economically knit together that “if Germany possessed the former she would inevitably covet and absorb or frankly seize the latter.” The Czechs had explained this to the Paris Peace Conference in 1919 and it was still true. The cession of the Sudeten Districts to Germany meant the complete domination of Central Europe by Germany.⁵⁵

The Appeasers Adamant. Knowledge of Czechoslovakia’s strong position and formidable fighting power did not give any pause to the British and French conservatives. Nor did the fact that the fall of the Czech bastion would make Hitler master of all Central Europe and the Balkans make any difference. In France, Foreign Minister George Bonnet was working frantically to prevent the invocation of France’s alliance with Czechoslovakia. Led by its press, the entire Right, with the exception of Henri de Kerillis, was pointing out the foolishness of dying for Czechoslovakia. This was the last moment when a firm stand by France and Britain could have stopped Hitler’s career of aggression without war. Or, failing that, it was the last opportunity to mobilize a great coalition against him, before he had seized the great war-making resources of Czechoslovakia and the Balkans. Yet in London the Chamberlain Cabinet was as determined as ever that Hitler must be given what he wanted in Czechoslovakia without a fight.

The failure of Lord Runciman to bring about this result compelled sterner measures, and Chamberlain was ready with a plan. Prior to September 3, Chamberlain had decided that if Runciman could not accomplish the breakup of Czechoslovakia from Prague he himself would go to Germany and arrange it directly with Hitler.⁵⁶

On September 13, the day after Hitler’s Nuremberg tirade, Chamberlain telegraphed to Hitler that he was coming over as soon as the latter would see him, and he was received the next day. Returning on the 16th, he convoked the Cabinet at once to hear Runciman’s recommendations for Czechoslovakia’s dissolution. On the 18th the French leaders came over and it was decided to urge Czechoslovakia to cede at once territories in which Germans were a majority. Afterward Britain would join in a guarantee of the new boundaries, provided that Czechoslovakia should give up her existing military alliances, that is, her alliance with the Soviet Union. “Britain, in other words, stood ready to guarantee truncated Czechoslovakia, if the guarantee would not offend Hitler, who had long campaigned against the Soviet-Czechoslovak Mutual Assistance Pact, and provided the guarantee would not involve the risk of war!”⁵⁷

Czech Surrender Forced. In Paris, Bonnet promised the resistance group in the Cabinet—Reynaud, Mandel and Champetier de Ribes—that he would not exert pressure on the Czechs, which he immediately did. In Prague the British-French note of September 19 presented President Benes with an appalling choice. He sat with his Cabinet and military advisers continuously for a day and a half, before it was decided to propose the settlement of the whole dispute by reference to arbitration under the German-Czech Treaty of 1925.

To this proposal the British and French Ambassadors at once replied that if it were persisted in Britain and France would certainly declare themselves uninterested in the fate of the Czechs. In London and Paris it was greeted with “an outburst of petulance and anger.” In Paris, Bonnet and Daladier did not dare to let the Cabinet see the Czech note with its supreme appeal. In London the Inner Cabinet—composed of the appeasers, Chamberlain, Lord Halifax, Sir Samuel Hoare and Sir John Simon—met until 10:30 p.m. on September 20. Then President Lebrun of France was mobilized to sanction the utmost pressure on the Czech Government.

After midnight President Benes went to bed for the first time in three days, only to be awakened an hour later by the British and French Ambassadors who presented him with an ultimatum which brutally demanded the acceptance of the Anglo-French plan immediately and unconditionally. Otherwise, they would wash their hands of Czechoslovakia, because of her culpable obstinacy, and she would stand before the world solely responsible for the war which would ensue. Then as the Czech ministers debated through the night, insolent, insistent inquiries came over the telephone from London: “What is the meaning of this delay? Has not Benes yielded yet?”⁵⁸

Eventually the two Ambassadors threatened that Hungary and Poland would also attack Czechoslovakia, overwhelming it from all sides, and the Czech Government finally surrendered, at 5:00 p.m. in the afternoon.

When the news became known in Czechoslovakia, “a nation broke into tears.” An immense demonstration in Prague forced the resignation of the Hodza Government, and the calling of General Syrovy, the man who had led the Czech legions across Siberia in 1918–20. On the 22nd the whole nation rose to its own defense, while Chamberlain flew to Godesberg to report results. There he found, as usual, that Hitler had raised his terms. He would occupy the conceded districts, specified on his own maps, not later than October 1. In other areas a plebiscite should be conducted, with everybody disfranchised who did not live there in October 1918.

When Chamberlain brought this ultimatum back to London it produced a wave of resistance in Britain and throughout the Empire. Even the French Cabinet stiffened. The two governments advised Czechoslovakia to decree mobilization. All the world thought that at the last moment Czechoslovakia was to be saved. But on the 26th, Chamberlain appealed to Hitler for an international conference, to give him what he wanted without war. Hitler replied the same night with a speech which was “a slanderous and nauseating attack upon the Czechs in general and President Benes in particular.”⁵⁹ On the same day a British communique, issued without consultation with Russia, stated that Britain and Russia would stand by France if Czechoslovakia were attacked. In Paris the press organs of the French Foreign Office implied that this statement was a forgery and bitterly attacked all of the Ministers who wished to honor France’s treaty with Czechoslovakia.⁶⁰

On the evening of the 27th, Chamberlain made his famous radio broadcast in which he revealed his deep revulsion at the turn events had taken, saying: “How horrible, fantastic, incredible, it is that we should be digging trenches and trying on gas masks here because of a quarrel in a far-away country between people of whom we know nothing.” Later in the evening he received a message from Hitler to which he immediately replied: “After reading your letter I feel certain that you can get all essentials without war and without delay. . . . However much you distrust the Prague government’s intentions, you cannot doubt the power of the British and French governments to see that the promises are carried out fairly and fully and forthwith.”⁶¹ The next day, while he was addressing Parliament, the invitation to Munich was dramatically presented to him and read to the relieved House and nation.

Munich. At Munich the representatives of Czechoslovakia were not admitted to the conference. When its decisions were ready they were curtly handed to the Czech Minister, M. Mastny, by the British and French delegations, who summoned him for the purpose. When he tried to ask a few questions he was cut short. The hour was late and Mr. Chamberlain was tired. He yawned continually until the Czechs were dismissed.

At once in Czechoslovakia, as the Czech troops withdrew, all the sadistic horrors of the Nazi occupation of Austria were repeated. Brown-shirted brutality was given full rein. The plundering, the beating, the destruction of property, the deadly insults to other races—for now the Czech minority had to join the Jews under the label of “sub-humans”—set in throughout the Sudeten territory. A few months later the same terror was to engulf all of Czechoslovakia. Czech university students were to be herded wholesale to the public squares of Prague, the young men to be beaten to death while the girls were publicly raped.

The British Government had at last achieved its long pursued dream of achieving a four-power union with the fascist dictatorships.

Munich’s Consequences

The Munich Conference of 1938 was one of the most decisive events of the past hundred years. It was so decisive for Czechoslovakia that the Czech people will never forget it in a millenium. Longer even than the Hussite tradition, the humiliation and deep sense of outrage left by Munich will remain. Nations had often been conquered by their enemies, but never before had a proud and worthy people been bludgeoned into submission by its sworn allies and alleged democratic friends. The welshing of the French and the iron determination of the British to accomplish their downfall were betrayals too deep to be forgotten.

It never occurred to Chamberlain and Daladier that after it was all over the Czechs would be virtually unanimous in looking to Moscow for their security and in agreement that there was nothing in the West which could be trusted.

For the Sudeten Germans Munich was also decisive. It meant that for a few years the Nazi element among them could lord it over the Czechs, haughtily and with every refinement of cruelty. Then these Germans would really have to go “home to the Reich,” shattered and ruined by Hitler’s mad Götterdämmerung. By then even the democratic Sudetens would choose to go with them. Thereafter no claim of “self determination” for Germans would hang over the future of the Czechs.

For France, Munich was decisive, for two reasons. First, her last chance of fighting Germany with an effective ally in the East was gone. At the climax of the Munich crisis the French Army was keyed up to advance and face the inevitable with courage. On the day of the surrender a French officer in tears told an American military observer in Alsace: “This means that we have lost the war before it ever begins.” He and most of his colleagues knew that an unimpeded German onslaught could not be defeated.

Munich doomed France also because the moral rot which was so evident while Spain was being crucified had now spread too deeply to be stopped by anything less than the torture of German occupation. The delirious welcome to Daladier as he came home from Munich and the feasting and dancing which followed could not be atoned for by any future “phony war.”

For world politics, above all, the Munich Conference was decisive for a long period. In this global sphere the exclusion of Russia from Munich was the fact of towering importance. For five years the Soviet Government had tried to work with the Western democracies through the League of Nations to stop the fascist aggressors. At every stage their cooperation had been rejected in favor of appeasing the aggressors.

Litvinov’s Valedictory. While the death of the Czech Republic was being arranged elsewhere, Litvinov was left to plead alone in Geneva.

On September 21, the day British and French were dragooning Benes in Prague, Litvinov spoke to the League Assembly in Geneva, reminding it that “the League was created as a reaction to the world war and its countless horrors; that its object was to make that the last war, to safeguard all the nations against aggression, and to replace the system of military alliances by the „collective organization of assistance to the victim of aggression.” In this all-important sphere the League had failed. To Ethiopia, Austria, China and Spain, Czechoslovakia was now added and on the Assembly’s agenda Czechoslovakia was not even mentioned.

Instead the Assembly was debating proposals to water down the Covenant, taking all force out of Articles 10 and 16. It was argued, said Litvinov, that the League could not function because it was not universal, yet it had always had enough members to deal with the aggressors, and still had. It was contended that aggression had now raised its head too high to be controlled and it was true that the aggressor States had “formed a bloc in order to defend the principle of aggression,” but, he said, the responsibility for this regrettable fact lies with “those States which restrained the League from resistance to the aggressors when they were still weak and divided, and were still making only their first timid attempts to break the peace. They have grown stronger, thanks to the fact that these attempts were allowed to reach a successful conclusion; thanks to the tolerance, and indeed immunity, of one breach of international treaty after another, and of the propaganda of aggression; thanks to the policy of concessions, fruitless negotiations and backstairs intrigues with them. They are still weaker, even yet, than the possible bloc of peaceable States.”

Litvinov condemned the conception that the aggressor be treated with consideration and his vanity not wounded, “that conversations and negotiations be carried on with him, that he be assured that no collective action will be undertaken against him, and no groups or blocs formed against him—even though he himself enters into aggressive blocs with other aggressors—that compromise agreements be concluded with him, and breaches of those very agreements overlooked; that his demands, even the most illegal, be fulfilled; that journeys be undertaken, if necessary, to receive his dictates and ultimatums; that the vital interests of one state or another be sacrificed to him; and that, if possible, no question of his activity be raised at the League of Nations—because the aggressor does not like that, takes offense, sulks.”

It remained only for Litvinov to state his own position and the position of his government.

“At a moment when the mines are being laid to blow up at the organization on which were fixed the great hopes of our generation, and which stamped a definite character on the international relations of our epoch; at a moment when, by no accidental coincidence, decisions are being taken outside the League which recall to us the international transactions of pre-war days, and which are bound to overturn all present conceptions of international morality and treaty obligations; at a moment when there is being drawn up a further list of sacrifices to the god of aggression, and a line is being drawn under the annals of all post-war international history, with the sole conclusion that nothing succeeds like aggression—at such a moment, every State must define its role and its responsibility before its contemporaries and before history. That is why I must plainly declare here that the Soviet Government bears no responsibility whatsoever for the events now taking place, and for the fatal consequences which may inexorably ensue.”

In the current crisis the Soviet Government had abstained from all advice to the Czechoslovak Government, “considering quite inadmissible that it should be asked to make concessions to the Germans, to the detriment of its interests as a State in order that we should be set free from the necessity of fulfilling our obligations under the treaty bearing our signature. Neither did we offer any advice in the contrary direction.” A few days before he left for Geneva the French Government had for the first time asked what the attitude of the Soviet Government would be in the event of an attack on Czechoslovakia and had received the following perfectly clear and unambiguous reply:

“We intend to fulfill our obligations under the pact and, together with France to afford assistance to Czechoslovakia by the ways open to us. Our War Department is ready immediately to participate in a conference with representatives of the French and Czechoslovak War Departments, in order to discuss the measures appropriate to the moment. Independently of this, we should consider desirable that the question be raised at the League of Nations if only as yet under Article XI, with the object, first, of mobilizing public opinion and, secondly, of ascertaining the position of certain other States, whose passive aid might be extremely valuable. It was necessary, however, to exhaust all means of averting an armed conflict, and we considered one such method to be an immediate consultation between the Great Powers of Europe and other interested States, in order if possible to decide on the terms of a collective démarche.”

Only two days before he spoke, the Czechoslovak Government had addressed a formal inquiry of the same character and had received “a clear answer in the affirmative.” He believed it would be admitted that both were the replies of “a loyal signatory of an international agreement and of a faithful servant of the League.” Unfortunately, other steps were taken “which could not but lead to such a capitulation as is bound sooner or later to have quite incalculable and disastrous consequences. The Covenant could be nullified by “the destruction or mutilation of Sovereign States” in an effort to assuage “the appetites of insatiable aggressors”; the Briand-Kellogg Pact could be vitiated by granting “bonuses for saber-rattling and recourse to arms,” by rewarding and encouraging “aggressive super-imperialism,” but the end of this process was clear in Litvinov’s mind. Its practitioners would “avoid a problematic war today and receive in return a certain and large scale war tomorrow.”

No truer prediction of the results of British-French appeasement was ever uttered, even by Winston Churchill, who was doing his best to arouse Britain to the folly of appeasing the unappeasable. Ending his last speech in Geneva Litvinov took somber pride in the fact that his government had “no part in such policy” and no intention of abandoning the principles of the Covenant and the Briand-Kellogg Pact. He called “upon other governments likewise to return to this path.”⁶²

But Litvinov knew that his own role was finished, that his great speech had been his valedictory. His address had moved the newspaper men deeply and when he left Geneva, five days later, only they went to see him off. Back in Moscow nothing that he tried succeeded and on May 3, 1939, he resigned, advising Stalin to appoint Molotov as his successor. “The last great friend of collective security is gone,” said Edouard Herriot.⁶³

Russia Ejected from Europe’s Politics. Unquestionably, Litvinov’s policy had failed. For at least five years he had toiled to breathe life and vitality into the collective security system, only to be defeated at every turn. In each crisis—Ethiopia, Spain, the Rhineland, Austria and Czechoslovakia—the collaboration of the Soviet Union had been spurned. Either she had been ignored, left on one side, or her efforts positively rejected. Compelled by the British National Declaration to make a show of saving the League in the case of Ethiopia, the appeasement governments had thereafter avoided Geneva as the plague, leaving the U.S.S.R. to operate in a vacuum. Almost as soon as Moscow came to Geneva, London and Paris left. London resolutely went back to power politics, operated always at Russia’s expense.

Finally, at Munich, Russia was thrown out bodily from any voice in European affairs. She was consigned to Asia, to survive as best she could. This was the deepest meaning of Munich.

Munich was also the culmination of much resolute planning in London and Paris toward that end. In his thorough analysis, Prelude to World War II, the great Italian historian Gaetano Salvemini concludes that “the leaders of the Conservative Party and of the British Foreign Office deceived the English people throughout 1935,” by making them believe that they wished to resist Mussolini’s invasion of Ethiopia. He adds that by 1936 the British leaders “had reached an understanding with Hitler which allowed him a free hand toward Russia,” thus “making World War II inevitable.”⁶⁴

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