The Munich Crisis, politics and the people: International, transnational and comparative perspectives 9781526138095

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The Munich Crisis, politics and the people

Cultural History of Modern War

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Series editors  Ana Carden-Coyne, Peter Gatrell, Max Jones, Penny Summerfield and Bertrand Taithe Already published Carol Acton and Jane Potter  Working in a world of hurt: Trauma and resilience in the narratives of medical personnel in warzones Michael Brown, Anna Maria Barry and Joanne Begiato (eds)  Martial masculinities: Experiencing and imagining the military in the long nineteenth century Quintin Colville and James Davey (eds)  A new naval history James E. Connolly  The experience of occupation in the Nord, 1914–18: Living with the enemy in First World War France Lindsey Dodd  French children under the Allied bombs, 1940–45: An oral history Peter Gatrell and Liubov Zhvanko (eds)  Europe on the move: Refugees in the era of the Great War Grace Huxford  The Korean War in Britain: Citizenship, selfhood and forgetting Linda Maynard  Brothers in the Great War: Siblings, masculinity and emotions Duy Lap Nguyen  The unimagined community: Imperialism and culture in South Vietnam Lucy Noakes  Dying for the nation: Death, grief and bereavement in Second World War Britain Juliette Pattinson, Arthur McIvor and Linsey Robb  Men in reserve: British civilian ­masculinities in the Second World War Spyros Tsoutsoumpis  A history of the Greek resistance in the Second World War: The people’s armies

https://www.alc.manchester.ac.uk/history/research/centres/cultural-history-of-war//

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The Munich Crisis, politics and the people International, transnational and comparative perspectives • EDITED BY JULIE V. GOTTLIEB, DANIEL HUCKER AND RICHARD TOYE

Manchester University Press

Copyright © Manchester University Press 2021

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While copyright in the volume as a whole is vested in Manchester University Press, ­copyright in individual chapters belongs to their respective authors, and no chapter may be reproduced wholly or in part without the express permission in writing of both author and publisher. Published by Manchester University Press Altrincham Street, Manchester M1 7JA www.manchesteruniversitypress.co.uk British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN  978 1 5261 3808 8  hardback First published 2021 The publisher has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of URLs for any ­external or third-party internet websites referred to in this book, and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate. Cover image: (c) Benjamin Dickson, reproduced by kind permission of the artist

Typeset by Servis Filmsetting Ltd, Stockport, Cheshire

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Contents

List of figures List of contributors

vii viii

Introduction Julie V. Gottlieb, Daniel Hucker and Richard Toye 1 Czechoslovakia, Czecho-Slovakia and the Munich Agreement Mary Heimann 2 A very long shadow: the Munich Agreement in post-war Czechoslovak communist propaganda, ideology and historiography, 1948–89 Jakub Drábik 3 ‘Curs yapping round the dying stag’, or the rituals of fractured societies: Hungary and Poland in the vortex of the Munich Crisis of 1938 Miklos Lojko 4 ‘What, no chair for me?’ Russia’s conspicuous absence from the Munich Conference Gabriel Gorodetsky

1 19

44

66

90

5 Churchill, Munich and the origins of the Grand Alliance Richard Toye

112

6 Munich and the unexpected rise of American power Andrew Preston

133

vvv

Contents

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7 Mussolini, Munich and the Italian people Christian Goeschel

153

8 ‘England is pro-Hitler’: German popular opinion during the Czechoslovakian crisis, 1938 Karina Urbach

171

9 Munich and the masses: emotional inflammation, mental health and shame in Britain during the September crisis Julie V. Gottlieb

192

10 Melanie Klein and the coming of the Second World War: a clinical archive, 1938 Michal Shapira

213

11 The poet’s perspective on the Munich Crisis: ‘news that STAYS news’? Helen Goethals

234

12 Public opinion, policy makers and the Munich Crisis: adding emotion to international history Daniel Hucker

251

13 France in the ‘blue light’ of Munich: popular agency, activity and the reframing of history Jessica Wardhaugh

273

Index

296

v vi v

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Figures

  2.1 ‘Podobnost čistě náhodná: kdo ohrožuje světový mír?’, in Dikobraz, 6 August 1948 (vol. IV, no. 23). 49   2.2 ‘Mnichov’, in Dikobraz, 25 September 1958 (vol. XIV, no. 39). 54   2.3 ‘Mníchov, 1938–1958’, in Roháč, 26 September 1958. 55   3.1 Photograph created by the studio of the well-known local photographic artist Jenő Zsabokorszky, June 1935. (From the author’s own collection). 69   3.2 The government of Gyula Gömbös after their swearingin ceremony, 1932 (© Metropolitan Ervin Szabó Library, Budapest, Budapest Collection, PAZ021958).72   3.3 Edwin Landseer, The Monarch of the Glen (1851), Wikimedia Commons: https://commons.wikimedia.org/ wiki/File:Monarch_of_the_Glen,_Edwin_Landseer,_1851.jpg.84   8.1 Friedrich Torberg’s diagram, 7 October 1938. 184 13.1 ‘M. Reynaud (Union des Syndicats), in charge of the ­delegation, signs the register’ (© Le Petit Parisien, courtesy of the Archives Nationales, France, 11 AR/758). 282 13.2 ‘Hitler, defender of oppressed minorities!’, R. Dubosc, L’Humanité, 14 September 1938 (courtesy of the Bibliothèque nationale de France). 286

v vii v

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Contributors

Jakub Drábik works at the Institute of History within the Slovak Academy of Sciences, and teaches at the Masaryk University in Brno. He is an expert on the history of fascism, particularly British and Czech fascism, and his research also touches on aspects of post-1945 Czechoslovak history. He is the author of two books in Czech and one in Slovak about the history of fascism. Christian Goeschel is a senior lecturer in modern European history at the University of Manchester and a former visiting fellow at the European University Institute in Florence. His publications include Suicide in Nazi Germany (Oxford University Press, 2009; German translation Suhrkamp, 2011), and Mussolini and Hitler: The Forging of the Fascist Alliance (Yale University Press, 2018; with Italian, German and Danish editions published in 2019). Helen Goethals is Professor of Commonwealth Studies at the University of Toulouse 2 – Jean Jaurès. She has published widely on the links between poetry and politics, and is currently preparing an anthology of poems written in response to the Munich Crisis.  Gabriel Gorodetsky is a Quondam Fellow of All Souls College, Oxford, and Professor Emeritus at Tel Aviv University. He has published widely on the history of Soviet foreign policy. Most recently, he edited and annotated The Complete Maisky Diaries, 3 volumes (Yale University Press, 2018). A compendium volume, The Maisky Diaries: Red Ambassador to the Court of St. James’s, was published by Yale University Press in 2015. v viii v

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List of contributors Julie V. Gottlieb is Professor of Modern History at the University of Sheffield. She has published extensively on politics, gender and culture in interwar Britain, including two monographs: Feminine Fascism: Women in Britain’s Fascist Movement 1923–1945 (I.B. Tauris, 2000) and Guilty Women, Foreign Policy and Appeasement in Interwar Britain (Palgrave Macmillan, 2015). This is her third collaboration as editor with Richard Toye. Her chapter in this collection draws on research for her project ‘Suicide, Society and Crisis’, supported by a Wellcome Seed Award (2017–19). With the assistance of Liam Liburd and funding from the Max Batley Legacy, she hosted the conference, from which this collection emerged, in June 2018, at the University of Sheffield. Mary Heimann is Chair of Modern History at Cardiff University. She is an expert in both Czechoslovak and British history and is best known as the author of Czechoslovakia: The State That Failed (Yale University Press, 2009), Československo – stát, který zklamal (Petrkov, 2020) and Catholic Devotion in Victorian England (Oxford University Press, 1995). Daniel Hucker is Assistant Professor of History at the University of Nottingham. He is the author of numerous articles, as well as Public Opinion and the End of Appeasement in Britain and France (Ashgate, 2011) and, most recently, Public Opinion and Twentieth-Century Diplomacy (Bloomsbury, 2020). Miklos Lojko is Associate Professor of Modern History at Eotvos Lorand University, Budapest and visiting faculty member at the Central European University. His publications include Meddling in Middle Europe: Britain and the ‘Lands Between’, 1919–1925 (CEU Press, 2006); ‘Retrenchment at Home and Abroad: The Political, Economic and Intellectual Background to the British Retreat from Central Europe and the Balkans in the Early Interwar Years’, European Journal of English Studies, 14:3 (2010), and ‘The Age of Illusion? The Department of Overseas Trade Between the Two World Wars: Three Case Studies’, in John Fisher, Effie G.H. Pedaliu and Richard Smith (eds), The Foreign Office, Commerce and British Foreign Policy in the Twentieth Century (Palgrave Macmillan, 2016). Andrew Preston is Professor of American History and a Fellow of Clare College at Cambridge University. He is the author or editor of v ix v

List of contributors

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seven books, including Sword of the Spirit, Shield of Faith: Religion in American War and Diplomacy (Alfred A. Knopf, 2012) and, most recently, American Foreign Relations: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford University Press, 2019). Michal Shapira is Associate Professor in the History Department at Tel Aviv University, and visiting Professor at Columbia University in 2020. Her research deals with the legacies of the Second World War and the history of psychology in Europe and beyond. She focuses on total war, gender, and the development of expert culture in twentieth-century Britain. She has authored many articles and chapters, and her monograph The War Inside: Psychoanalysis, Total War and the Making of the Democratic Self in Postwar Britain (Cambridge University Press, 2015) was shortlisted for the Royal Historical Society Whitfield Prize and for the Gradiva Book Award, National Association for the Advancement of Psychoanalysis. Richard Toye is Professor of Modern History at the University of Exeter. He is a specialist in the history of rhetoric and is the author of numerous articles and several books, including Rhetoric: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford University Press, 2013) and The Roar of the Lion: The Untold Story of Churchill’s World War II Speeches (Oxford University Press, 2013). His most recent monograph is Winston Churchill: A Life in the News (Oxford University Press, 2020). Karina Urbach has been, since 2015, a member at the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton. She is also a fellow at the Institute of Historical Research at the University of London. In 2015 she published Go-Betweens for Hitler (Oxford University Press), in 2017 the historical novel Cambridge 5 and, in 2020, Das Buch Alice (The Book of Alice). It shows how Nazi publishing houses erased their Jewish authors. Jessica Wardhaugh is Associate Professor in French Studies at the University of Warwick. She has published widely on street politics, popular theatre, and ideas of local, national and European communities, and is currently researching the importance of play in modern French politics. Recent publications include an edited volume, Politics and the Individual in France, 1930–50 (Legenda, 2015), and a monograph, Popular Theatre and Political Utopia in France, 1870–1940: Active Citizens (Palgrave Macmillan, 2017). vxv

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Julie V. Gottlieb, Daniel Hucker and Richard Toye

In his 1945 world-federalist manifesto, The Anatomy of Peace, the writer, publicist and literary agent Emery Reves described the events of the interwar years from the perspective of each of the major powers. His purpose was to show how viewing one’s own country as the centre of the universe created a distorted picture of reality, and his ingenious sketch illustrated how each nation self-righteously perceived its own actions as morally justified. For the USA, virtuously keeping itself out of ‘senseless internecine old-world fights’, it was obvious where the blame for failure lay: ‘Thanks to the weakness of the appeasement policy and the blindness of Britain, France and Soviet Russia, the totalitarian powers succeeded in conquering the entire European continent.’ For Britain, acting as ‘the moderator in Europe’ in line with its traditional balance-of-power policy, it was natural to seek territorial adjustments. ‘At Munich, British diplomacy was taxed to the utmost to obtain the transfer of Germaninhabited Czechoslovak territories to the Reich without a violent conflict. Once again England had saved the peace.’ Meanwhile the French had staked their all on friendship with the unreliable British, but many of them realised that singlehanded opposition to a resurgent Germany was suicidal. In spite of her many internal difficulties, ‘France kept faith with her British ally and continued to follow her lead. She accepted Munich, sacrificing Czechoslovakia, her most faithful friend on the Continent.’ Germany, for its part, had arisen from defeat, and ‘Relying on the righteousness of her cause, she claimed incorporation of the Sudeten German territories in the Reich which the former enemies of Germany were made to accept without force.’ Finally, the peace-loving Soviet government was aghast at the calamitous policies of the Western democracies, and v1v

The Munich Crisis, politics and the people

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was horrified ‘when Munich came and Britain and France, without even consulting the Soviet Union, sacrificed Czechoslovakia on the altar of appeasement’. Reves concluded: The dramatic and strange events between the two world wars could be just as well described from the point of view of any other nation, large or small. From Tokyo or Warsaw, from Riga or Rome, from Prague or Budapest, each picture will be entirely different and, from the fixed national point of observation, it will always be indisputably and unchallengeably correct. And the citizens of every country will be at all times convinced and rightly so of the infallibility of their views and the objectivity of their conclusions.1

In many ways, Reves’s assessment was astute. Today, national memories of the World War II era remain highly ethnocentric.2 Yet the 1938 Munich Agreement, the apogee of the Western powers’ appeasement of Adolf Hitler, does not quite fit the pattern. True, there is an important strand of opinion in Russia which views Munich as an attempted encirclement of the USSR, which justified Stalin’s defensive accession to the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact the following year.3 But few modern Germans regard Hitler’s claim to the Sudetenland as legitimate. In post-war France, the ‘Munich syndrome’ was something to be determinedly avoided.4 In the United States too it became a byword for political weakness. In Britain, many at the time felt that the Munich settlement was ‘needlessly dishonourable’, even if their feelings of shame were tinged with relief that war had been averted.5 There persists to this day a sense that Munich was a national humiliation (albeit one that was subsequently expiated by the sacrifices of 1940). Hence, during a special edition of the BBC’s Question Time during the Brexit referendum campaign of 2016, one audience member criticised Prime Minister David Cameron to his face: ‘Mr. Cameron, you say that your policy that you’ve negotiated with Europe cannot be overruled – it can. So are you really the  twenty-first-century Neville Chamberlain, waving a piece of paper in the air, saying to the public “This is what I have, I have this promise” where a dictatorship in Europe can overrule it?’6 As Tim Bouverie has remarked recently, ‘Munich was – and remains – one of the most controversial agreements ever negotiated’, establishing a debate that ‘has raged for over eighty years’.7 Though fierce and divisive, this debate has taken place predominantly within well-established parameters. Most analyses focus on the policy makers, those politicians and diplomats (chiefly in Britain and France) who opted to appease. Within this framework, different stories can be woven depending on the v2v

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Introduction answers provided to certain overarching questions. Were the decisions taken right or wrong? Were the policies pursued justified or unjustified? Was there a viable alternative? These questions encourage either/ or responses, cultivating a binary debate that is both compelling and seductive. Although the allure of ‘taking sides’ in a clearly demarcated controversy is hard to resist, it produces a scholarship that is voluminous but one-dimensional. The patterning of this debate is not only to be detected in the scholarship, but in fiction too, with the most vivid recent example being best-selling historical fiction author Robert Harris’s novel Munich (2017). There are signs, however, that the debate is beginning to change. Recent events in international politics have highlighted the intricate interconnectedness between diplomatic crises and public opinion, notably public expressions of emotion. An ‘emotional turn’ compels historians to attend to the role of emotions when explaining and recreating past events, just as a previous ‘cultural turn’ focused attention on factors such as (amongst others) gender, race, religion and ethnicity.8 Yet international (or diplomatic) history has often resisted these developments, revealing what David Reynolds has termed a ‘diplomatic twitch’,9 whereby scholars eschew cultural approaches in favour of a more traditional focus on the ‘high’ politics of peace and war. Thus, the events of September 1938 aroused an unprecedented degree of public excitement and anxiety, yet the ‘public’, the ‘people’, the ‘material’ and the ‘popular’ remain peripheral within the existing literature. Bouverie’s book follows the same contours, castigating ‘Chamberlain’s defenders’ for insisting that Munich bought much-needed time for Britain to rearm, insisting instead that ‘Germany outarmed Britain in the period between Munich and the outbreak of war.’10 The many reviews of Bouverie’s book also embrace the existing historiographical framework. The Daily Telegraph’s review commends Bouverie for exposing the fallacies of ‘the standard defence of Munich’, whilst David Aaronovitch in The Times praised Bouverie for criticising Britain’s political classes who lacked the ‘honest, clear-sighted’ professionalism that was required.11 Robert Crowcroft takes a rather different line in The End is Nigh (2019). He argues that it was Britain’s failure to stay clear of European entanglements, rather than its failure to take a sufficiently firm line against Hitler, that was responsible for the decline in her power. Yet he still blames politicians for their lack of statesmanship: ‘They lacked the capacity to think the unthinkable, they lacked the sheer ruthlessness that the situation demanded; and they lacked a language to tell the public the truth.’12 v3v

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The Munich Crisis, politics and the people Therein lies the recurring motif of appeasement scholarship. The ­ ecisions taken by a handful of policy makers (especially in Britain) d are repeatedly unpicked, refashioned and repurposed to suit arguments that fit an existing historiographical debate. A re-evaluation is thus long overdue,  and this collection exploits the potential that rests in cross-disciplinary approaches and comparative frameworks. Indeed, the most neglected aspects of this ‘model’ crisis – despite the abundance of sources – are the social, cultural, material and emotional ones, as well as public opinion. The book will also internationalise the original ‘Munich moment’, as existing studies are overwhelmingly Anglo- and Westerncentric. Above all, it will provide a corrective to the long-standing proclivity to consider the Munich Crisis almost exclusively from the viewpoint of politicians and diplomats (a proclivity reflected here in the well-known image of the four Munich signatories represented in the cover illustration). To be sure, things have moved on from the days of fifty years ago, when many scholars of diplomacy believed that ‘historians should not deal with the issue of public opinion’.13 Popular responses to the crisis, both individual and collective, will be prominent, teasing out  the psychological and emotional ramifications, allowing a more holistic and ‘emotional’ history to emerge. In so doing, the ­collection showcases the possibilities of approaching a much-scrutinised historical episode through more imaginative and diverse lenses. Contextualising the ‘crisis’ The term ‘Munich Crisis’ is used here to encapsulate both the particular diplomatic events of late September 1938, but also how this episode was reflected upon, internalised and used in its aftermath (both short and long term). The word ‘crisis’, therefore, has many meanings. Even before the 1938 Munich Conference, ‘crisis’ was used to describe the escalating tensions arising from the alleged mistreatment of the Sudetendeutsche minority in Czechoslovakia. On 20 September, the Daily Mail reported on the Czechoslovakian government’s response to Anglo-French initiatives ‘for solving the Sudeten crisis peacefully’.14 Despite these initiatives, the crisis only intensified over the next week, and the spectre of a European conflict loomed large before an international audience. Cinema newsreels and radio now accompanied newspapers as mechanisms for transmitting international news on a genuinely global scale. Throughout September 1938, notes Gerd Horten, ‘Americans became glued to their radios for daily and sometimes hourly updates and v4v

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Introduction i­ nterpretations of the latest developments of the crisis’.15 This was a very ‘modern’ crisis, and one that, from the start, affected the ‘people’ directly. The crisis assumed a new moniker courtesy of it being resolved at the Munich Conference of 29–30 September, and the term ‘Munich crisis’ began to appear in newspapers within weeks. The New York Times carried a story about Roosevelt’s ‘Timetable in the Munich Crisis’ on 31 October, while the Paris-Midi evoked the ‘crise de Munich’ on 5 November.16 In British newspapers, the ‘Munich crisis’ label appeared a little later. The Times first used the phrase on 27 December, whilst the Manchester Guardian, at the start of January 1939, remarked how the whole of Europe ‘had a really good look at war at the time of the Munich crisis’, concluding that ‘none of them liked it’.17 Although never used particularly widely at the time, the term ‘Munich crisis’ demonstrates how the threat of war in September 1938 was, even as it was being experienced and lived through, understood in these terms. In Britain, the Mass-Observation (M-O) organisation certainly framed it as such; an entire chapter of the Britain by Mass-Observation book, compiled by Tom Harrisson and Charles Madge in the immediate aftermath of Munich, was entitled ‘Crisis’. Noting that the ‘idea of a national or international crisis’ was an increasingly common ‘feature’ of their times, Harrisson and Madge defined a crisis as ‘a kind of melting-point for boundaries, institutions, opinions’, a time when ‘public opinion, which at other times is largely inert, becomes a real factor’.18 Public interest in foreign affairs was not, however, particularly new or unprecedented. The role of the ‘people’ had grown in prominence earlier in the twentieth century, especially when embedded as a crucial component of the ‘new’ and ‘open’ diplomacy that many hoped would become the norm after the Great War. Although an ‘open’ diplomacy subsequently failed to transpire, there was, by the 1930s, more consistent and critical public scrutiny of foreign policy making. Public interest was roused repeatedly by a cascade of newsworthy diplomatic events, including Japanese expansionism in Manchuria, Hitler’s ascent to power in Germany, Mussolini’s adventurism in Abyssinia, the Nazis’ repeated violations of the Versailles Treaty, and the vicious civil war in Spain. Anxieties were heightened further in 1938, first with the Anschluss between Germany and Austria and then with the amplified tensions stemming from the Sudeten German controversy. Meanwhile, the aspirations of the 1920s – that disarmament would flourish while Leaguebased collective security rendered war obsolete – had begun to unravel. Instead, nationalism and militarism re-emerged, and with it disturbing v5v

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The Munich Crisis, politics and the people echoes of the pre-1914 era. The threat of a European war, even a global war, was real and growing by summer 1938. The Sudeten crisis unfolded rapidly after Hitler again violated the Versailles terms by incorporating his Austrian homeland into the German Reich in March 1938. The influence of Nazism within the German-speaking areas of Czechoslovakia had been growing for some time, Konrad Henlein’s Sudeten German Party having been subsidised by Berlin since 1935. On German instructions, local Nazi agitation for Sudeten self-determination increased after the Anschluss, always asking of the Czechs more than Prague could feasibly deliver.19 Henlein’s 24  April Carlsbad speech outlined a set of demands that Prague could never countenance, including the complete reorientation of Czechoslovak foreign policy. At the same time, the Wehrmacht worked on ‘Case Green’, revisiting plans for an invasion of Czechoslovakia in light of the altered strategic s­ ituation post-Anschluss. False rumours of an incipient German move led to a mobilisation of Czechoslovak forces on 20 May, the resultant ‘war scare’ providing a brief but panicky foretaste of the crisis that would engulf Europe in September. Although this ‘crisis’ was resolved without war, it was clear that the Sudetenland issue would likely resurface. The international response to Hitler’s growing belligerence was compromised from the start. Czechoslovakia had two key allies, France and the Soviet Union, but both were preoccupied with internal unrest. Édouard Daladier’s new French administration, having come to power in April, struggled to overcome the domestic fissures that were the chief legacy of the Popular Front. In Soviet Russia, Stalin’s recent purges had weakened that country militarily whilst further alienating potential collaborators in an anti-Nazi ‘grand alliance’. Meanwhile, the United States was committed to a strategy of isolation, Italy and Japan had moved inexorably into Hitler’s orbit, and various other European countries were either complicit in the territorial adjustments that followed or simply sceptical about the prospects of co-ordinated international action. Most importantly, perhaps, the British government, led since May 1937 by Neville Chamberlain, was determined to avoid war. Lord Runciman, a former Cabinet minister, was despatched to Prague on 3 August to seek a peaceful resolution to the Sudeten crisis. By the start of September, however, it was clear that Runciman’s mission had failed and it was therefore believed that a more energetic and direct form of appeasement was needed. Chamberlain’s unilateral decision to implement ‘Plan Z’, meeting Hitler face to face in an effort to save the peace, was certainly a­ udacious. v6v

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Introduction The first meeting, at Berchtesgaden on 15 September, augured well, at least in Chamberlain’s mind. On his return to London, he declared himself satisfied with his ‘frank’ and ‘friendly’ talks with Hitler, noting that further discussions would follow. As a BBC written report from the time commented, the prime minister’s words were met with ‘laughter and cheers’ from the assembled crowd.20 The next meeting took place at Bad Godesberg on 22 September, but this time the Führer adopted  a more uncompromising stance that made war appear inevitable and shook Chamberlain’s confidence. This marked the crystallisation of the crisis, and much of what follows in this book focuses on this period and its immediate aftermath. At this moment of acute emotional stress and  anxiety, it is no exaggeration to say that the future of the entire world hinged on the outcomes of increasingly frantic diplomatic­ manoeuvrings. As diplomatic efforts to preserve the peace faltered, Europe geared for war. Czechoslovakia mobilised on 23 September, the French began to call up reservists the following day, and Soviet Russia too girded for conflict. In numerous countries, including Britain, gas masks were distributed and air raid shelters dug; even the Channel offered little protection to civilians given the new realities of modern aerial warfare. Few ordinary people wanted war, but most accepted that it might be unavoidable. Chamberlain, however, did not give up, sending his special adviser Horace Wilson to Germany in a last-minute effort to avert the calamity. Despite his efforts, Wilson was frustrated and felt compelled to warn Hitler that Britain would have no choice but to go to war should he refuse to compromise. In Rome, however, Mussolini proved receptive to pleas from Britain’s ambassador, Lord Perth, to stage an intervention. The Duce’s efforts resulted in the Munich Conference, where Italy, Germany, Great Britain and France, in Czechoslovakia’s absence, agreed to cede the Sudetenland to Germany. Although, as Steiner notes, Hitler ‘got the substance of his Godesberg demands’, he had not got his war.21 This, in itself, was (if only superficially) a triumph for Chamberlain. A further success was the Anglo-German declaration, the piece of paper that Chamberlain famously brandished above his head on his return to London. The promise of ‘peace for our time’ was a pledge signed by both Chamberlain and Hitler positioning the 1935 Anglo-German Naval Agreement as symbolic of the wishes of the German and British people ‘never to go to war with one another again’. Given the inexorable build-up of tension in the prelude to Munich, it is unsurprising that ordinary people everywhere expressed unbridled relief and thankfulness. v7v

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The Munich Crisis, politics and the people The reactions of ‘the people’ during the crisis and afterwards mattered, because, as will be shown, the ‘crisis’ was not played out in an exclusively diplomatic arena. Similarly, the crisis itself, and its repercussions, affected more than the four countries represented at Munich. In all countries, the people were more than passive participants, conscious that any resultant conflict would expose them to harm. It is imperative, therefore, that the role of ‘the people’, the significance of emotions, and the wider international aspects of the crisis be attended to in more depth than the existing historiography allows. Historiography Scholarship regarding the Munich crisis has been largely subsumed within an overarching appeasement framework, dominated by ‘topdown’ diplomatic approaches, with side orders of analyses rooted in political science, strategic studies, and assessments of relative military and intelligence capabilities.22 Lewis Namier’s Diplomatic Prelude (1948), which in spite of its analytical limitations should be recognised as an innovative contribution to contemporary history, helped set the tone.23 ‘Munich’ and ‘appeasement’ thus became indelibly linked; as Zara Steiner has commented, ‘Munich’ has assumed ‘a permanent place in the vocabulary of modern diplomacy’, providing a ‘new and pejorative dimension to definitions of the word “appeasement”’.24 (It must be remembered that although ‘appeasement’ is now generally viewed negatively, even Churchill, as late as 1950, favoured ‘appeasement from strength’.)25 Its permanence is evident in the persistent use of the ‘Munich analogy’, a common feature of diplomacy throughout the Cold War and beyond, a weaponised term used to legitimise the use of pre-emptive force and condemn those who temporise in the face of aggression.26 These legacies of appeasement – and Munich in particular – do not only affect professional politicians and diplomats. As Gerry Hughes has shown, Munich has, from the start, ‘represented a contested and highly politicized area of dispute in debates about Britain’s recent past’, a dispute played out amongst ‘professional historians, policy makers and the general public’.27 More recently, ‘Brexit’ has prompted an intensification of debates about British national identity and memory.28 And, as several of the following contributions demonstrate, the ‘Munich’ legacy has been used and abused in many other countries too, not least Czechoslovakia. In spite of this, the overarching contours of the debate remain framed around the familiar dualistic arguments as to appeasement’s v8v

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Introduction r­ ighteousness. This is unsurprising; after all, the appeasement at Munich was divisive from the start. As the following pages will show, initial responses to the saved peace were near unanimous in expressing thankfulness and relief, but it was not long before people began to question whether the price paid for peace had been worth it. After all, some observers (and not just Czechoslovakians) had maintained from the outset that the price had been too great, symbolic of the ultimate surrender of the diplomatic initiative to the fascist dictators. This was certainly how many in Spain interpreted the Munich settlement. As Helen Graham has noted, Munich represented not only the sacrifice of Czechoslovakia at ‘the altar of appeasement’, but the abandonment of the Spanish Republic too.29 For those less directly affected by Munich (other than benefiting from the saved peace), the conviction that appeasement was a prudent strategy persisted for longer. In Britain and France, appeasement retained a considerable degree of public support at least until Hitler made a mockery of the Munich accords by marching German troops into Prague. As P.M.H. Bell has noted, the Prague ‘coup’ of 15 March 1939 was a watershed moment, exposing ‘as a lie’ Hitler’s earlier claims that he sought only the incorporation of German-speaking peoples into the Reich.30 It suggested further that appeasement was doomed to fail from the start, and that Hitler had hoodwinked Chamberlain with his Munich promises. These arguments were prevalent at the time, but would become more pronounced as the historiography of appeasement took shape in the months and years that followed. Although the peaceful resolution of the ‘Munich Crisis’ had won Chamberlain many plaudits, his reputation soon became defined and indelibly tarnished by his association with a policy that had, by September 1939 (if not sooner), failed so spectacularly.31 An early and influential salvo in what Steiner has labelled the ‘battle of the history books’ came in 1940 with the publication of Cato’s Guilty Men.32 The narrative presented was crude but compelling, a cast list headed by Neville Chamberlain presented as the key actor in a dismal story with a catastrophic denouement.33 Similar condemnations of the leaders of France’s Third Republic soon appeared, reflecting the emotional circumstances of the time.34 As Anthony Adamthwaite notes, the ‘shock and humiliation of 1940 framed perceptions of war origins’, and a restitution of national honour and prestige demanded the identification of ‘scapegoats’.35 The scapegoating of politicians and diplomats might have deflected responsibility for democratic weakness and ­passivity away from the people, but there was always a tendency to emphasise the role of a decadent, pacifist and apathetic populace. This was, perhaps, more v9v

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The Munich Crisis, politics and the people true for France (seeking to explain away that country’s ignominious defeat) than for Britain, but even for the latter the need to re-energise the country under Churchill’s leadership in 1940 implied a certain malaise. As Patrick Finney maintains, in both France and Great Britain the orthodox reading of appeasement provided ‘an ideological foundation for the war effort and then for post-war reconstruction and renewal’.36 This orthodoxy was challenged in the 1960s and into the 1970s as better access to the archival records allowed historians to identify broader structural constraints (economic, strategic, military, imperial, etc.) that made viable alternatives to appeasement either unsuitable or impossible.37 Revisionism became the new orthodoxy; John Charmley even claimed in 1989 that ‘[t]he “Guilty Men” syndrome has run its course, and Chamberlain’s reputation stands better now than it has ever done’.38 Revisionist interpretations held firm until the 1990s when a post-revisionist synthesis emerged. This synthesis welded elements of the revisionist case with some of the orthodox arguments, concluding that whilst there were constraints, individual policy makers could have made different choices. As R.A.C. Parker put it, ‘Chamberlain and his colleagues made choices among alternative policies.’39 This focus on key decision makers has continued to dominate the more recent historiography. Some, like Robert Self and Andrew Stedman, defend Chamberlain by emphasising the structural constraints.40 Others, including most recently Tim Bouverie, return to the orthodox charge. ‘[I]t is hard’, concludes Bouverie, ‘to extenuate the actions of the appeasers and, especially, Neville Chamberlain.’41 It is equally hard to deny that the overwhelming majority of historical studies of Munich and appeasement remain wedded to this traditional debate, with a concomitant focus on just a handful of actors within a handful of countries.42 Recent incursions into the debate have made progress by experimenting with different methodologies, conceptual frameworks, and a greater plurality of sources, yet there has been a noticeable stagnation in original research.43 This tendency is not confined to the English-language literature; a recent German collection edited by Jürgen Zarusky and Martin Zückert also employs this more conventional approach.44 Whilst ‘the people’ do feature in the historiography of appeasement, it is usually as one of several background influences affecting the realm of ‘high’ politics. This collection offers a more diverse and imaginative array of approaches to the Munich Crisis. Several chapters will foreground ‘the people’, whilst specific contributions focusing on (amongst others) Czechoslovak, Hungarian and Soviet responses to Munich provide a v 10 v

Introduction more ‘international’ appreciation of the crisis than has been provided in a single volume hitherto.

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The chapters The following pages are intended, without claiming to be definitive, to broaden the scope of existing studies of the Munich ‘moment’ whilst also showcasing the possibilities for future research. The assembled contributions provide a selection of fresh and innovative discussions of the Munich Crisis that endeavour to invigorate the field and demonstrate how historians can benefit from being less straitjacketed by the narrow parameters of the debates that dominated hitherto. The chapters are intentionally diverse but connected by some underpinning themes. Some do, necessarily, focus on the established ‘players’. Hence Britain, Germany and France, as well as prominent diplomats like Chamberlain, Mussolini, Churchill, Maisky and Daladier, feature prominently, albeit in the context of the emotional side of the crisis and the role of ‘the people’. Other chapters, meanwhile, shift the geographical focus to other countries, showing how the Munich Crisis (and its legacies) reverberated far and wide. The first two chapters focus on Czechoslovakia itself, so often portrayed as the innocent and helpless victim of the entire affair. Mary Heimann challenges this narrative, interrogating interwar Czechoslovakia’s attitude towards its non-Czech citizens, as well as providing a more detailed analysis of contemporary responses to Munich. In so doing, she presents a rather different and more troubling picture of Czechoslovakia’s role. Jakub Drábik then takes the story further, evaluating the ‘long shadow’ that Munich cast over the post-war Czechoslovak state, specifically how it was used in communist propaganda, ideology and historiography until the collapse of the communist regime in 1989. Drábik contends that the Communists used Munich to legitimise their rule, the abandonment of Czechoslovakia in 1938 used to illustrate the corruptness of the capitalist democracies. Like Heimann, Drábik teases out the differences between the Czech and Slovak responses to (and uses of) the Munich episode. Miklos Lojko switches attention to the Hungarian aspect, noting how that country was, like Germany, both a vanquished power in 1918 but a beneficiary of the Munich Agreement twenty years later. Using a fusion of primary source materials, Lojko’s chapter sheds light on more popular and widespread responses to the Munich Crisis, contending that the relative quiescence, even complicity, with which Hungarians accepted v 11 v

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The Munich Crisis, politics and the people the settlement was symptomatic of a deeper political and cultural crisis afflicting interwar Hungary. Along the way, a number of synergies and contrasts with the situation in Poland are brought into focus. Gabriel Gorodetsky then considers Soviet Russia’s ‘conspicuous absence’ from the Munich deliberations, teasing out the links between this and the final decision by Stalin to secure a pact with Nazi Germany in August 1939. His chapter takes its title (‘What, no chair for me?’) from a cartoon by David Low, published in the Evening Standard on 30 September 1938, in which Stalin wryly notes his exclusion from the Great Power deliberations at Munich. Using an array of Russian sources, notably the diaries of Russia’s ambassador to London, Ivan Maisky, Gorodetsky argues that a viable Soviet alternative to appeasement was in place at the time of Munich, and that the West’s decision to eschew Soviet support at that juncture was crucial in encouraging Stalin to contemplate an accommodation with Berlin. The chapter also speaks to the cultural dimension of diplomacy, emphasising the importance of personal relations between diplomats and politicians. One of Maisky’s prominent points of contact in London was Winston Churchill, the man frequently held up as being a lone voice of wisdom struggling to make himself heard from the political wilderness. Richard Toye’s chapter charts Churchill’s evolving attitude towards the Soviet Union, explaining how and why a man who had been virulently anticommunist in the aftermath of the Russian Revolution (sponsoring Western intervention in the subsequent civil war) emerged as such a prominent supporter of a Soviet alliance at the time of Munich and after. Churchill was also a friend of America, and the United States was, despite its avowed isolationism, an interested party as the Munich Crisis unfolded in Europe. Andrew Preston assesses the impact of a far-flung crisis on an American society that was becoming increasingly aware of its place in a shrinking world, in so doing encouraging the repudiation of isolationism and consolidating a conception of an ‘American century’. The book then turns to the more well-known participants in the Munich drama, notably the four Powers that signed the agreement at the Führerbau. Beginning with Italy, Christian Goeschel considers the responses of the Italian people to Mussolini’s role during the crisis, comparing and contrasting ‘real’ and ‘imagined’ responses in the context of the fascist regime’s fixation with the maintenance of popular support. Karina Urbach then switches attention to Germany, using the underscrutinised reports emanating from the exiled Social Democratic Party of Germany (the Sopade reports) to illustrate how the average German v 12 v

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Introduction experienced and understood the crisis. These documents, Urbach suggests, portray a German population that was circumspect throughout the crisis, relieved at avoiding war but hardly elated at the outcome. For Urbach, this shows that Nazi propaganda efforts were, at the time of Munich, less successful in engineering public enthusiasm than they had been at the time of Hitler’s earlier diplomatic coups. The next three chapters all explore responses to Munich in Great Britain, but in ways that shift the focus away from the realm of ‘high’ politics and the rather stagnant debates about Neville Chamberlain’s appeasement strategy. First, Julie Gottlieb presents a reconfiguration of the crisis as an emotional, psychological and visceral experience, both individually and collectively, affecting British people of all hues. In particular, Gottlieb assesses how the crisis was internalised and ‘lived through’ by a silent majority that has largely been marginalised within the existing literature. Gottlieb also considers the impact of the crisis on people’s mental health, an issue explored more closely by Michal Shapira. Focusing on the notes kept by the Austrian-born British psychoanalyst Melanie Klein, Shapira recreates the reactions and responses to the Munich crisis of some of Klein’s patients. The result is an innovative emotional and intellectual history of the crisis that reveals much about the fears and anxieties prompted by the likelihood of an unimaginably catastrophic future war. Another chapter with a British focus is Helen Goethals’ exploration of the poetry of Timothy Corsellis, who, as a seventeen-year-old schoolboy in autumn 1938, penned some eighteen poems that related in some way to the Munich Crisis and its legacy. Goethals focuses particularly on the poem ‘News of Munich’, written on 28 September 1938, an emotionally charged response to the promise of a reprieve that reveals much about the fraught and volatile atmosphere in which the Munich Crisis was experienced. Emotions feature too in Daniel Hucker’s chapter that, superficially at least, return the focus to the diplomats, and in particular Neville Chamberlain and Édouard Daladier. The focus on the diplomats is, however, far from conventional, instead framing the chapter within a more recent literature that strives to ‘emotionalise’ international history, seeing the practitioners not as dispassionate realists but as human beings, influenced by emotions and indelibly affected by manifestations of the ‘will of the people’. ‘The people’ feature prominently in the final chapter, where Jessica Wardhaugh talks us through the lived experience of the ‘Blue Light of Munich’ in France, foregrounding the ‘masses’ by showing v 13 v

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The Munich Crisis, politics and the people how the crisis afforded unprecedented opportunities for popular agency and the expression of opinions. In so doing, Wardhaugh compels us to view the French experience of Munich in ways that transcend the previously dominant perception of a passive and pacifist population divided between those in favour of appeasement (the munichois) and those opposed (the anti-munichoise). The entire collection emanates from a conference held at the University of Sheffield in 2018, marking the eightieth anniversary of the Munich Agreement. This book, like the conference that inspired it, is intended to demonstrate the benefits of revisiting the crisis of 1938 from new and innovative angles that transcend the restrictive parameters of the debates that have shaped Munich scholarship for the past several decades. The events of 1938, especially the point of acute crisis in September that year, provide fertile ground for historical experimentation, reframing what has previously been treated as an almost uniquely political and diplomatic episode as something considerably more farreaching and inclusive. Similarly, a more comprehensive and international appreciation of the legacies of the crisis illustrates its longer-term ramifications, not only in the political and diplomatic sphere, but socially and culturally as well. The net result will, it is hoped, demonstrate the benefits of exploring some of the hitherto under-scrutinised aspects of the Munich Crisis, moving beyond the formulaic and Anglo-centric analyses that fixate on positioning the (overwhelmingly male) practitioners of ‘high’ politics as either ‘appeasers’ or ‘anti-appeasers’. A decade has passed since Keith Neilson posited that ‘some analytical tool more precise and sophisticated than the crude division of people into “appeasers” and “anti-appeasers” must be employed if we are to appreciate the range and nature of the debate on how to deal with the revisionist powers’.45 Neilson’s focus was on the British policy-making machine, and if, as he contended, this reductive binary is an ‘inadequate’ mechanism for assessing official positions, its crudeness and lack of sophistication is even more pronounced when one’s focus shifts not just beyond Britain but towards an approach that foregrounds ‘the people’. This volume offers a preliminary effort to embrace the opportunities provided by employing a broader array of analytical tools. The Munich settlement may have been reached by politicians above the heads of the people, yet it caused an earthquake of mass emotions, ranging from euphoria to despair – and the aftershocks are still being felt. v 14 v

Introduction

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Notes   1 Emery Reves, The Anatomy of Peace, 8th edition (New York and London: Harper & Brothers, 1946), pp. 3, 7, 12, 15, 19–22.   2 Henry L. Roediger, Magdalena Abel, Sharda Umanath, Ruth A. Shaffer, Beth Fairfield, Masanobu Takahashi and James V. Wertsch, ‘Competing National Memories of World War II’, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 116:34 (August 2019), pp. 16678–86. See also Patrick Finney, Remembering the Road to World War Two: International History, National Identity, Collective Memory (London: Routledge, 2011).  3 Richard Toye, ‘Why Do We Still Fight Over the World War?’ Western Morning News, 3 September 2009; Andrew Roth, ‘Molotov–Ribbentrop: Why Is Moscow Trying to Justify the Nazi Pact?’, The Guardian, 23 August 2019, www.theguardian.com/world/2019/aug/23/moscow-campaign-to-justify-mo​l otov-ribbentrop-pact-sparks-outcry (accessed 24 September 2019).   4 Martin Thomas and Richard Toye, Arguing about Empire: Imperial Rhetoric in Britain and France, 1882–1956 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017), p. 213.  5 Mary Agnes Hamilton diary, 30 September 1938: Mary Agnes Hamilton Papers, HMTN 1/1, Churchill Archives Centre, Cambridge.  6 Tim Shipman, All Out War: The Full Story of Brexit (London: William Collins, 2017), p. 395.   7 Tim Bouverie, Appeasing Hitler: Chamberlain, Churchill and the Road to War (London: The Bodley Head, 2019), p. 293.   8 A recent roundtable at the 2017 annual conference of the British International History Group tackled the topic ‘Emotions and International History’, featuring contributions from Patrick Finney, John Young and Helen Parr. The impact of the ‘cultural turn’ on international history has been scrutinised widely, a good example being Peter Jackson, ‘Pierre Bourdieu, the “Cultural Turn” and the Practice of International History’, Review of International Studies, 34:1 (2008), pp. 155–81.  9 David Reynolds  (2006)  ‘International History, the Cultural Turn and the Diplomatic Twitch’, Cultural and Social History, 3:1 (2006), pp. 75–91. 10 Bouverie, Appeasing Hitler, p. 420. 11 Lewis Jones, ‘Appeasing Hitler by Tim Bouverie’, Daily Telegraph, 7 April 2019; David Aaronovitch, ‘Appeasing Hitler by Tim Bouverie’, The Times, 12 April 2019. 12 Robert Crowcroft, The End is Nigh: British Politics, Power, and the Road to the Second World War (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2019), p. 237. 13 Zara Steiner, ‘Views of War, 1914 and 1939: Second Thoughts’, in T.G. Otte (ed.), British World Policy and the Projection of Global Power, c. 1830–1960 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2019), pp. 174–200. Quotation at 174. v 15 v

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The Munich Crisis, politics and the people 14 Ralph W.B. Izzard, ‘Czechs Accept Peace Plan But Ask for More Details’, Daily Mail, 20 September 1938. 15 Gerd Horten, Radio Goes to War: The Cultural Politics of Propaganda during World War II (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2002), p. 22. 16 Anne O’Hare McCormick, ‘The President’s Timetable in the Munich Crisis’, New York Times, 31 October 1938; ‘Le parti socialiste va “repenser” sa politique extérieure’, Paris-Midi, 5 November 1938. 17 ‘French Socialist Cleavage’, The Times, 27 December 1938; ‘National Service for Youth’, Manchester Guardian, 5 January 1939. 18 Charles Madge and Tom Harrisson, Britain by Mass-Observation (London: Penguin, 1939), p. 30. 19 D.C. Watt, How War Came: The Immediate Origins of the Second World War, 1938–1939 (London: Heinemann, 1989), p. 26. 20 David Faber, Munich: The 1938 Appeasement Crisis (London: Pocket Books, 2008), p. 296. 21 Zara Steiner, The Triumph of the Dark: European International History, 1933–1939 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), p. 639. 22 Examples include Peter Trubowitz and Peter Harris, ‘Why States Appease: British Appeasement in the 1930s’, Review of International Studies, 41:2 (2015); Stacie E. Goddard, ‘The Rhetoric of Appeasement: Hitler’s Legitimation and British Foreign Policy, 1938–39’, Security Studies, 24:1 (2015); P.E. Caquet, ‘The Balance of Forces on the Eve of Munich’, The International History Review, 40:1 (2018); Yvon Lacaze, ‘Daladier, Bonnet and the Decision-Making Process during the Munich Crisis, 1938’, in Robert Boyce (ed.), French Foreign and Defence Policy, 1918–1940: The Decline and Fall of a Great Power (London: Routledge, 1998); Martin Thomas, ‘France and the Czechoslovak Crisis’, Diplomacy & Statecraft 10:2–3 (1999); Peter Jackson, ‘French Military Intelligence and Czechoslovakia, 1938’, Diplomacy & Statecraft, 5:1 (1994); and John Ferris, ‘“Now that the Milk is Spilt”: Appeasement and the Archive on Intelligence’, Diplomacy & Statecraft, 19:3 (2008). 23 See D.W. Hayton, Conservative Revolutionary: The Lives of Lewis Namier (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2019), pp. 290–2. 24 Steiner, Triumph of the Dark, p. 646. 25 Parliamentary Debates, House of Commons, Fifth Series, Vol. 482, 14 December 1950, col. 1367. 26 For a thoughtful discussion of the use of Munich (as well as other historical analogies), see Jeffrey Record, Making War, Thinking History: Munich, Vietnam, and Presidential Uses of Force from Korea to Kosovo (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 2002). 27 R. Gerald Hughes, The Postwar Legacy of Appeasement: British Foreign Policy Since 1945 (London: Bloomsbury, 2014), p. 11. 28 See, for example, Edward Lucas, ‘Forget Fairytales and Learn Some Real History’, The Times, 27 January 2020, and Jeremy Black, ‘How to Get History v 16 v

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Introduction Wrong: A Case Study’, 28 January 2020, https://thecritic.co.uk/how-to-gethistory-wrong-a-case-study/ (accessed 29 January 2020). David Reynolds’s Island Stories: Britain and Its History in the Age of Brexit (London: William Collins, 2019), also speaks to these issues. 29 Helen Graham, ‘The Spanish Popular Front and the Civil War’, in Paul Preston and Helen Graham (eds), The Popular Front in Europe (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1987), p. 126. 30 P.M.H. Bell, France and Britain, 1900–1940: Entente and Estrangement (London: Longman, 1996), p. 223. 31 David Dutton, Neville Chamberlain (London: Arnold, 2001). Similarly, see Philip Williamson, ‘Baldwin’s Reputation: Politics and History, 1937–1967’, Historical Journal, 47:1 (2004), pp. 127–68. 32 Steiner, Triumph of the Dark, p. 646. 33 Cato (being a pseudonym for three journalists, Michael Foot, Peter Howard and Frank Owen), Guilty Men (London: Victor Gollancz, 1940). 34 For example, Cecil Melville, Guilty Frenchmen (London: Jarrolds, 1940), and Pertinax [André Géraud], Les Fossoyeurs: défaite militaire de la France, 2 vols (New York: Éditions de la Maison Française, 1943). 35 Anthony Adamthwaite, ‘Historians at War’, in Frank McDonough (ed.), The Origins of the Second World War: An International Perspective (London: Continuum, 2011), p. 516. 36 Finney, Remembering the Road to World War Two, p. 199. 37 A key catalyst of revisionism in Britain was D.C. Watt, ‘Appeasement: The Rise of a Revisionist School?’ Political Quarterly, 36:2 (1965), pp. 191–213. In France, revisionism took hold in the 1970s, notably with the publication of papers arising from two conferences in collections edited by René Rémond and Janine Bourdin, Édouard Daladier, chef de gouvernement (Paris: Presses de la Fondation Nationale des Sciences Politiques, 1977), and la France et les  Français en 1938–1939 (Paris: Presses de la Fondation Nationale des Sciences Politiques, 1978). 38 John Charmley, Chamberlain and the Lost Peace (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1989), p. 212. 39 R.A.C. Parker, Chamberlain and Appeasement: British Policy and the Coming of the Second World War (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1993), p. 347. 40 Robert Self, Neville Chamberlain: A Biography (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2005); Andrew David Stedman, Alternatives to Appeasement: Neville Chamberlain and Hitler’s Germany (London: I.B. Tauris, 2011). 41 Bouverie, Appeasing Hitler, p. 418. 42 Some relatively recent examples include the works of Faber, Goddard, Steiner, Stedman, Self, and Trubowitz and Harris that have been cited previously. Other examples include David Gillard, Appeasement in Crisis: From Munich to Prague, October 1938–March 1939 (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007); Norrin M. Ripsman and Jack S. Levy, ‘Wishful Thinking or v 17 v

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The Munich Crisis, politics and the people Buying Time? The Logic of British Appeasement in the 1930s’, International Security, 33:2 (2008); and Stella Rudman, Lloyd George and the Appeasement of Germany (Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars, 2011). 43 See, for example, Julie V. Gottlieb, ‘Guilty Women’, Foreign Policy, and Appeasement in Inter-War Britain (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015); Finney, Remembering the Road to World War Two; Daniel Hucker, Public Opinion and the End of Appeasement in Britain and France (Farnham: Ashgate, 2011); Kate McLoughlin, ‘Voices of the Munich Pact’, Critical Inquiry, 34:3 (2008); Steve Ellis, ‘Literature and the Munich Crisis’, Literature & History, 22:2 (2013); Juliet Gardiner, The Thirties: An Intimate History (London: HarperPress, 2010); Susan Grayzel, At Home and Under Fire: Air Raids and Culture in Britain from the Great War to the Blitz (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2012); Susan D. Pennybacker, From Scottsboro to Munich: Race and Political Culture in 1930s Britain (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2009). 44 Jürgen Zarusky and Martin Zückert (eds), Das Münchener Abkommen von 1938 europäischer Perspektive (Munich: Oldenbourg Verlag, 2013). This ‘top down’ focus is also true of the last significant edited collection on Munich available in English, being Igor Lukes and Erik Goldstein (eds), The Munich Crisis, 1938: Prelude to World War II (London: Frank Cass, 1999). 45 Keith Neilson, ‘Orme Sargent, Appeasement and British Policy in Europe, 1933–39’, Twentieth Century British History, 21:1 (2010), pp. 27–8.

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Czechoslovakia, Czecho-Slovakia and the Munich Agreement Mary Heimann

In Czech – which is not the same thing as Slovak – popular memory, the agreement that was signed at Munich in the small hours of the night 29–30 September 1938 was a national catastrophe, a disaster comparable to the loss of Bohemian independence in 1620 or the crushing of the Prague Spring in 1968. The infamous document, signed by Hitler for Germany, Mussolini for Italy, Daladier for France and Chamberlain for Britain – but, crucially, not Beneš for Czechoslovakia – is seldom mentioned in neutral terms. The treaty is referred to, with irony, as the ‘Mnichovská “dohoda”’ (Munich ‘Agreement’), the scare quotes used to indicate that there was no ‘agreement’ from the country whose territory was being decided. Or it is described, with bitterness, as the Munich ‘diktát’, the foreign loanword used to show what language the dictator spoke and to trump Germanophile notions of a ‘Versailles diktát’. In the equally common formulation ‘Mnichovská zrada’ (Munich betrayal),1 the invisible finger of blame is pointed at the British and French, the  turncoat allies, rather than at the Czechs’ traditional enemies, the Germans. The expression ‘O nás, bez nás’ (About us, without us), which is understood to refer specifically to the Munich Agreement, a­ ccentuates the injustice of Czechoslovakia having been left out of the deliberations.2 The intended moral is clear: they, not we, were responsible for this terrible episode. The notion that Czechoslovakia was sacrificed, martyred, even crucified, has particular resonance across Central Europe, where an originally Catholic trope became a nationalist commonplace. The poignant, recurrent refrain in František Halas’s 1938 poem ‘Zpěv úzkosti’ (Song of Anxiety), ‘Zvoní, zvoní zrady zvon / čí ruce ho rozhoupaly / Francie v 19 v

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The Munich Crisis, politics and the people sladká hrdý Albion / A my jsme je milovali’ (the bell of betrayal tolls / whose hands swung the bell? / sweet France, proud Albion / and we had loved them), evokes indignation at the Allies’ treachery and pity at Czechoslovakia’s plight: to have been betrayed by those it had loved and trusted, but could trust no more. Halas’s mournful verses, memorised by generations of Czech schoolchildren, also refers to ‘clenched fists’, an allusion to mobilisation and the widespread perception that the Czechoslovak people, prepared to fight for their country, were denied that satisfaction by President Beneš’s acquiescence.3 In Czech especially, the words ‘Munich’ and ‘betrayal’ go together, almost like synonyms. The associations are so entrenched that the Czech Wikipedia dictionary-style entry (which is translated into Slovak word for word) gives three alternative names for the four-power pact signed at Munich in September 1938: dohoda, zrada, diktát (agreement, betrayal, diktat).4 Unsurprisingly, Czech and Slovak accounts agree that Munich was a disaster. What came next is more contentious, since Fr Jozef Tiso’s Slovak Republic of 1939–45, which was closely allied to Nazi Germany, was the first ever Slovak state. In Czech newspapers, magazines and television and film documentaries, as well as in popular histories and school textbooks, the events of September 1938 are endlessly rehearsed. The question as to whether or not it would have been better to refuse to accept the Munich diktát and fight alone, holding out long enough to be joined by the Soviet Union, is perpetually debated: not only in books, magazines and documentaries, but also in pubs and around dinner tables. What if things had turned out differently? is the title of both a popular Czech counterfactual paperback and a prime-time Czech Television TV series.5 One of the most lavishly funded recent portrayals of this moment of truth appeared in the 2013 TV documentary-drama series České století (The Czech Century). In the episode called ‘The Day after Munich’, a rather wooden Czechoslovak President Edvard Beneš is shown having to cope with the outrage brought to him by his chiefs of staff. ‘I tried everything’, the president explains, ‘I kept offering different solutions. One plan after another. A third plan. A fourth. Autonomy. Then I offered a fifth plan. But they kept wanting more …’. General Vojtěch Luža interjects: ‘the British gave us hope. They kept winking at us as if to say that you had everything under control’. General Lev Prchala bursts out at Beneš: ‘You need to name a new government – a military government – and mobilise. We need to show the world – they are testing our strength, don’t you understand?’ Beneš: ‘But we are weak. Without France and Poland, we v 20 v

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Czechoslovakia and Czecho-Slovakia are weak.’ Prchala responds: ‘You are weak! We can’t just accept this. If we don’t want to be slaves, we have to defend our honour.’6 But Beneš, pale and drawn, refuses to give the order. Instead, he accepts the loss of the Sudetenland and prescribed ‘settlement’ of Hungarian and Polish ­grievances as a fait accompli. Czechoslovakia’s reputation as an ‘island of democracy’ in a hostile, totalitarian sea, a stalwart nation whose interests were shamefully betrayed by its would-be protectors – the story that was to become such an important trope in Allied wartime propaganda and beyond – began to be fixed as early as 1938.7 In now familiar documentaries, compilations of newsreel and voice-overs with titles like ‘the Road to War’ or ‘the Price of Appeasement’, the signing of the Munich Agreement at the end of September 1938 is invariably followed by images of German troops marching into Prague in mid-March 1939, as if one act immediately ­followed the other, without the intervening months. The implied or stated connections between the signing of the Munich Agreement and the collapse of the Czechoslovak state have come to be popularly linked roughly as follows. After Munich, Hitler promised that he had no further territorial demands to make. Chamberlain returned to Britain in triumph, claiming to have preserved peace. On 15 March 1939, German troops marched into Prague while France and Britain – signatories to the Munich Agreement and Czechoslovakia’s closest allies – stood by. The implication is that Hitler had broken the terms of the Munich Agreement, and the other signatories should therefore have defended Czecho-Slovakia’s post-Munich borders. Only after Hitler attacked Poland, on 1 September 1939, did France and Britain finally declare war on Germany. Czechoslovakia, so the familiar moral of the story goes, had been sacrificed in vain, made to pay for the Allies’ naive trust in Hitler’s promises and policy of appeasement. Those who sought to evade war inadvertently helped to bring it about. Worst of all, because Germany was simply handed over the strategically and militarily important parts of the Bohemian Crown Lands, the war lasted longer, and was even more horrifying, than necessary. In Czech, the notions that Munich was a terrible wrong inflicted by the French and British, that the Czech people were ready to fight but prevented from doing so by Beneš’s acceptance of the Munich diktát, and that this humiliation had serious consequences for the Czech nation’s  self-belief and self-respect, have a particular salience. This is because the so-called Munich Complex has been used widely to explain the Czechs’ subsequent acceptance of authoritarian regimes, first of the v 21 v

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The Munich Crisis, politics and the people extreme political right and later of the extreme political left. The rapidity with which democracy was abandoned after Munich, the extent of wartime collaboration with the Nazis, the brutality with which Germanspeakers were expelled after the Second World War, the ease with which the Communists came to power in 1948, and the speed with which ‘normalisation’ was reimposed by the Czechoslovak Communist Party after the Prague Spring: all these sensitive topics have been excused or explained as indirect consequences of Munich. Those dark chapters which cannot so easily be made to fit the Munich narrative – for example, the post-war expulsion (‘exchange’) of Hungarians, the pre-war persecution of Roma (gypsies) or the state-sponsored discrimination against Jews by Slovak and Czech authorities before 15 March 1939 – remain largely absent from both public discourse and official memory.8 The Munich Agreement was interpreted differently under the varied Czecho-Slovak, Czech, Slovak and Czechoslovak regimes which followed the fall of the First Czechoslovak Republic at the end of September 1938. Two underlying meta-narratives continue to dominate. The first metanarrative, which dates from the Second World War, was consciously developed and promoted by ex-Czechoslovak President Beneš, as part of his tireless wartime campaign, as a voluntary exile in the USA and in Britain, to restore the Czechoslovak state to its pre-Munich borders, annul the Munich Agreement, return to power, realign the country’s security alliances, and remove the non-Slav minorities (above all Germans, but also Hungarians and remaining Jews) from a reunited Czech and Slovak post-war state.9 This wartime narrative was itself built on what Andrea Orzoff has aptly termed the modern ‘myth of Czechoslovakia in Europe’ as put forward during the First Republic by the Castle Group (a close circle of advisers, intellectuals and politicians surrounding founding father and first Czechoslovak president T.G. Masaryk and his disciple Edvard Beneš), according to which Czechoslovakia was ‘one of the most enlightened, developed and progressive democracies east of the Rhine’ and T.G. Masaryk a great humanist and democrat.10 The second meta-narrative, developed during the socialist/communist period after the Second World War, built on pre-existing Castle narratives of Czechoslovak exceptionalism and post-Munich disenchantment with multi-party democracy, but introduced new criticism of the ‘bourgeois’ aspects of the First Czechoslovak Republic. ‘The Communist version of the Munich story’, as Karel Bartošek observed during what turned out to be the Czechoslovak Communist regime’s last year in power (1989), ‘practically never wavered from the single theme that v 22 v

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Czechoslovakia and Czecho-Slovakia Czechoslovakia was betrayed, not only by “the western bourgeoisie” but also by “domestic reactionaries” such as the “traitors among the rightwing socialist leaders and the Castle bourgeoisie.”’11 This device enabled Czech patriotism, nationalism and disillusionment with Munich all to seem supported by communism. Although many communist set interpretations were discredited and overturned after the 1989 revolution, removing symbols of the Soviet liberation of Prague proved controversial. In the end, some – most notably Tank 23, which once stood on a concrete plinth in the middle of ‘Tank-Drivers’ Square’ in Prague – were removed; while others remain, undisturbed, such as the statue Brotherhood, depicting a feminised Czech soldier embracing and presenting a bouquet of lilies to a manly Soviet liberator, outside Prague’s main railway station. Similarly, while some Czech scholars cast doubt on the Soviet Union’s genuine readiness to intervene on Czechoslovakia’s behalf in 1938, most reproduce, unchallenged, the Communist-era interpretation in which the bourgeois, Western allies (France and Britain) betrayed Czechoslovakia whereas the Soviet Union – alone of all the state’s allies – remained true.12 In 2015, in anticipation of the eightieth anniversary of the signing of the Munich Agreement, the Czech film director Petr Zelenka released a semi-comedy, Ztraceni v Mnichově (Lost in Munich). The film opens with familiar newsreel images from 1938 of demonstrations outside the Czechoslovak parliament, mobilisation, and the signing of the four-power pact. These well-known images are accompanied by highly emotive orchestral music, all racing strings and thundering timpani, with a grim voice-over. ‘Munich, 1938’, begins the narrative. ‘A stirring drama of betrayal. The event that led directly to the unleashing of the Second World War. Ten days that decided the fate of the Czechoslovak nation for long years to come.’13 After an hour and a half of post-modernist romp, centred around the making of a film within a film featuring Eduard Daladier’s talking parrot, ‘Lost in Munich’ ends with another few minutes of archive footage, this time without voice-over, allowing us silently to witness the Czech government’s sycophantic welcome, on 15 March 1939, to Konstantin von Neurath, the first German Reichsprotektor of the so-called Protectorate of Bohemia-Moravia. Cringing, we hear Adolf Hitler fulsomely praised and the newly established German ‘Protectorate of Bohemia-Moravia’ welcomed by the Czech cabinet as guaranteeing the nation ‘a happier future’. We are released from our embarrassment only after watching the diminutive Czech prime minister give the new German Reichsprotektor a deep bow. v 23 v

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The Munich Crisis, politics and the people The Czech national myth which ‘Lost in Munich’ unpicks is the same one which Jan Tesař, the essayist and historian to whom Zelenka dedicated his film, declared to rest on a ‘pseudo-problem’.14 The question of whether or not Czechoslovakia ‘could have fought’ in September 1938, argues Tesař, was never the real problem. In contrast to official memory, in 1938 the vast majority of the Czechoslovak population was anti-war; the army was in any case unprepared; and the strength of the alliance with France, let alone the Soviet Union, exaggerated. The ‘real trauma [bold in original],’ argues Tesař, ‘which was carefully concealed in myth and cloaked in a pseudo-problem’,15 was not that Czechoslovakia was prevented from using its excellent army to resist the German fascist oppressor. Rather, it was that the Czech weapons used by the Nazis were manufactured after Munich, not before. It was this voluntary ­collaboration, after Munich but before the German takeover of Bohemia-Moravia, which constituted the Czech nation’s real shame and ‘failure’ (selhání).16 When historians and journalists write of the Munich Crisis, they nearly always telescope the five and a half months between the signing of the Munich Agreement on the night of 29–30 September 1938 and the establishment of the German Protectorate of Bohemia-Moravia on 15–16 March 1939 as if one event automatically followed from the other. If we want to understand what really happened to Czechoslovakia after Munich, and to chart how democracy ended in authoritarianism and quasi-fascism, paving the way for both wartime fascism and post-war communism, we need to rewind, so to speak, and pay attention to the fine detail, played in slow motion, of the events which actually connected the Munich Agreement (September 1938) and the collapse of the Czechoslovak state (March 1939). This period, known as the Second Czecho-Slovak Republic, when the state’s regions began seriously to challenge the central government, also requires that we look beyond Prague and the Czech-dominated historic Bohemian Crown Lands (Bohemia, Moravia and part of Silesia) and pay due attention to the other regions (Slovakia and Subcarpathian Ruthenia) that made up the state. The classic presentation of Czechoslovakia at the time of Munich as sacrificial lamb in a drama orchestrated by a bullying Germany, spineless Britain and immoral France was not accidental but the result of intense diplomatic and propaganda effort. Debate over whether or not Czechoslovakia ‘ought’ to have refused to accept the terms of the Munich Agreement and fought, rather than hand over its most heavily militarised zone intact, began immediately, with press and media c­overage v 24 v

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Czechoslovakia and Czecho-Slovakia of the four-power meeting in Munich.17 From the first, the Munich Complex was used to deflect at least some attention from the rapidly escalating domestic crisis which followed the signing of the Agreement. President Beneš, who had remained in office throughout the build-up to the Munich Crisis, did not resign immediately but hung on for nearly a week, by which point Poland had begun occupying Teschen, Hungary had demanded the whole of Subcarpathian Ruthenia and a strip of southern Slovakia, negotiations over the Sudetenland had descended into shouting-matches, Hitler refused point-blank to negotiate with Beneš, and the Slovak cabinet minister Matúš Černák, having threatened on 3 October to resign if autonomy were not granted to Slovakia within twenty-four hours, did in fact resign on 4 October, bringing down the entire Czechoslovak government with him. The coup de grâce for Beneš came not from Hitler, but from the Slovak People’s Party, at the time the single strongest party in Slovakia. On 5 October 1938, the Slovak People’s Party announced that, as a consequence of the crisis, it would be making a public declaration, the next day, ‘concerning the right of self-determination for the Slovak nation’. Beneš took to the airwaves that night to resign as president and bid farewell to the nation. In his broadcast, Beneš blamed the crisis in which the country found itself on vague, impersonal forces such as ‘the whole system of the balance of power in Europe’, ‘European development’ and ‘influences from abroad’. Avoiding any references to structural flaws within the state or mistakes in his own foreign policy decisions over the previous twenty years, Beneš stressed the immediate responsibility of ‘four Great Powers’ who ‘met and agreed among themselves’ the ‘sacrifices which they asked from us in the name of world peace’. These sacrifices, he went on, ‘which we were asked to accept and which were then forced upon us’ were ‘out of all proportion and unjust’. On the brighter side, he reminded his Czech and Slovak listeners, there were some advantages to losing those parts of the republic which were mainly inhabited by linguistic minorities.18 Although the Czechoslovak state, which had lost the Sudetenland, along with some Hungarian and Polish-speaking territory, had had ‘some branches’ lopped off, the roots of ‘the nation’ (in other words, the Czech/Slovak people) remained ‘firm in the earth’ and would one day ‘put forth new shoots’. It was imperative, Beneš stressed, that the Czechs and Slovaks, the two state-forming peoples, should stick together at this moment of crisis, not worrying about ‘this or that concession’, but give way to each other in ‘small things’ to prevent an even worse calamity: the collapse of the post-Munich Czechoslovak state.19 v 25 v

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The Munich Crisis, politics and the people In blaming Munich for the constitutional crisis which was unfolding in front of his eyes, Beneš was able to deflect at least some attention from his own part in the tragedy. It was, after all, Beneš who (as part of the Czecho-Slovak delegation to the Paris Peace Conference which won approval for the creation of the state in 1919) had publicly estimated the German-speaking population at ‘approximately 800,000’ (privately, he and Masaryk had been working with a more plausible figure of 2.5 million). It was also Beneš who had repeatedly promised the Allies that Czechoslovakia would become ‘a sort of Switzerland’ with an ‘extremely liberal’ minorities policy, implying that autonomy would be granted to the most important non-Czech populations through something like the Swiss canton system. Instead, Masaryk and Beneš, far from setting up a canton system, had repeatedly delayed implementing autonomy even in Subcarpathian Ruthenia, the region which was described as ‘autonomous’ in the Czechoslovak Constitution – but was in practice treated like a colony.20 Nor did they fulfil expectations raised for Slovak autonomy by the controversial 1918 Pittsburgh Agreement whose implementation became the interwar Slovak People’s Party’s cause célèbre. Beneš, who had served the Czechoslovak state as Foreign Minister for seventeen years and President for three, was particularly vulnerable to criticism that the crisis of 1938, although provoked by Germany, was also the culmination of years of misguided Czechoslovak domestic and foreign policy. On 19 September 1938, after it had been agreed between Hitler and Chamberlain at Berchtesgaden that Czechoslovak districts which were more than half German population should be ceded to Germany, their decision was conveyed to Beneš via the French and British ministers in Prague. On 20 September, Kamil Krofta, the Czechoslovak Foreign Minister, told the heads of the British and French legations that his government was prepared to accept these terms.21 Beneš, although he spent the next few days looking feverishly at alternatives – including resisting a German attack and holding out for three weeks until Soviet and French troops could come to the rescue – did not publicly reject the AngloFrench note and – according to the Czechoslovak press – conveyed his agreement before the Munich Conference met.22 In exchange for his cooperation, Beneš presumably asked to be spared the political suicide of formally signing his acceptance of the Munich Agreement. Beneš understood the crucial importance of ensuring that no Czechoslovak representative be physically present in the room at the Munich Conference where the document was signed, and that Czechoslovak representatives there be described, in all press statements, as ‘advisers’ or ‘observers’, v 26 v

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Czechoslovakia and Czecho-Slovakia rather than ‘representatives’ or ‘participants’.23 This would encourage the world press to present Czechoslovakia as the passive victim of German brutality and allied treachery, and help to bury rival headlines about the Czech oppression of minorities which could be used to support German, Hungarian, Slovak and other hostile, counter-narratives.24 On 6 October 1938, the morning after Beneš’s resignation as president, the expected Manifesto of the Slovak People’s Party was proclaimed in the Slovak Catholic and nationalist heartland of Žilina. ‘We Slovaks’, began the Žilina Manifesto, ‘as an independent nation which has inhabited the territory of Slovakia since time immemorial, hereby put into effect our right to self-determination.’ Vowing to remain ‘at the side’ of ‘all nations fighting against Jewish Marxism’, and to contribute to ‘a Christian disposition of affairs in Central Europe’, the manifesto demanded that legislative and executive powers be immediately devolved to ‘Slovaks in Slovakia’.25 The manifesto was endorsed on the spot by all Slovak political parties present. This deliberately excluded the Jewish, Social Democratic and Communist parties, who were not informed about the meeting. On 10 October 1938, the Catholic priest Fr Jozef Tiso, leader of the anti-Semitic and anti-Bolshevik Hlinka’s Slovak People’s Party, declared himself Prime Minister and Minister of the Interior of a newly autonomous (devolved) Slovakia. To the east of Slovakia, in Subcarpathian Ruthenia, a copycat, similarly extreme right-wing ‘Ukrainian Central National Council’ was called in Užhorod, the regional capital, by the freshly appointed Minister for Ruthenia. This gathering announced that it demanded ‘the same rights’ for Ruthenia ‘as have been or will be granted to Slovakia’.26 Slovakia and Ruthenia, meeting no resistance from the helpless central government in Prague, seized the autonomy which had been promised, but never delivered. Constitutional Laws on Slovak and Ruthenian autonomy were passed on 22 November 1938, turning the previously ‘Czechoslovak’ state into the emphatically hyphenated second ‘Czecho-Slovak’ republic. From the American Embassy in Prague, US diplomat George Kennan observed the autonomous regions with wry amusement. Both the Slovak and Ruthenian political leaders, he judged, were ‘making awful fools of themselves; dressing up in magnificent fascist uniforms, flying to and fro in airplanes, drilling comic-opera S.A. units and dreaming of the future grandeur of the Slovak or Ukrainian nations’.27 The shift to the political right had not come out of the blue. As throughout the rest of Central Europe, almost every part of Czechoslovakia was moving ever further to the political right in the second half of the 1930s. v 27 v

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The Munich Crisis, politics and the people Warning lights in the 1935 Czechoslovak general election had come not only in the landslide victory for the Sudeten German party (which polled more votes than any other single party), but also in the strong regional showing by the Slovak, Ruthenian and Polish autonomist parties, each of which was becoming steadily more radical, nationalist and anti-Czech. George Kennan, who took up his post as US chargé d’affaires in Prague on the day the Munich Agreement was signed, was taken aback by the cynical, bitter atmosphere he found in post-Munich Czecho-Slovakia. ‘Every feature of liberalism and democracy’, he confided to Washington in early December 1938, is ‘hopelessly and irretrievably discredited.’ During weekend visits in the country ‘the guests did nothing but toss down brandy after brandy in an atmosphere of total gloom and repeat countless times: “How was it possible that any people could allow itself to be led for twenty years by such a Sauhund – such an international, democratic Sauhund as Beneš? Such a people doesn’t deserve to exist.”’28 As portraits and statues of Masaryk and Beneš began to be removed or defaced, sometimes with anti-Semitic slogans, Beneš was adamant that the blame should be laid firmly at the door of the British and French: ‘We were not defeated by Hitler’, he insisted, ‘but by our friends.’29 The Czech-speaking territories of Bohemia and Moravia were not immune from the wave of contempt for liberalism and democracy and thirst for ‘strong’ leaders. Rudolf Beran, the leader of the Agrarian Party (the rough equivalent of the Conservative Party in Britain or the Republican Party in the USA, and the most important interwar Czech political party), seized the opportunity to promote an ‘authoritarian and disciplined democracy’ which would put ‘state’ before ‘party’ interests and radically ‘simplify’ the parliamentary system.30 On 18 November 1938, all right-wing and centrist Czech parties were forcibly merged with the Agrarian Party into a single mass political organisation, the Czech party of ‘National Unity’ (Národní jednota).31 On 30 November 1938, Emil Hácha, a Catholic and conservative, was elected Czechoslovakia’s third president while Beran, as the leader of Czech National Unity, took over as Prime Minister. Czechs were henceforward given the choice of voting for just two political parties: the ruling right-wing National Unity or the left-wing Party of Labour. All other political parties were outlawed. In Czech-speaking regions, there was still at least the choice of voting for one out of two parties – even if only one stood a realistic chance of being elected. Elsewhere in the Second Czecho-Slovak Republic, there was no longer even the pretence of democratic choice. In autonomous Slovakia, the communist, left-wing and Jewish parties were outlawed v 28 v

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Czechoslovakia and Czecho-Slovakia and the remaining Slovak parties merged into a single ‘Hlinka Slovak People’s Party – the Party of Slovak National Unity’ (hereafter referred to as ‘Slovak National Unity’). Slovakia was left with three token political parties but no actual political choice: Fr Jozef Tiso’s Slovak National Unity Party was the only permitted political party for Slovak speakers; the Deutsche Partei (German Party) the only permitted party for German speakers; and Egyesült Magyar Párt (United Hungarian Party) the only permitted party for Hungarian speakers. Slovakia’s Ruthenian, Jewish and Roma minorities, who had no ‘mother country’ to lobby for them, were left without even nominal political representation. The merging of all centrist and right-wing Slovak parties into a single bloc supposed to represent the Slovak ‘nation’ (in the Central European sense of a people, usually an ethno-linguistic group, rather than a territory or a polity) corresponded well to the fascistic outlook of its new leadership. As was by then the fashion throughout Central Europe, politics as a means of resolving conflict through compromise was disdained. The state was seen as the vehicle through which the united ‘will’ of the ‘nation’ (as defined principally by maternal language, but in the case of Jews also by religion) could be expressed and implemented, not debated. Slovak National Unity, which claimed to defend ‘Christian’ (as opposed to ‘Judeo-Bolshevik’) values, set up its own version of the Hitler Jugend, known as ‘Hlinka Youth’, to press for ever-more radical ‘reforms’. It also established the paramilitary organisation known as the ‘Hlinka Guard’ whose brief was to help Slovak National Unity maintain ‘public order’ and ‘public security’ and defend ‘the state’.32 This pre-military ‘corps’, one of whose duties was to send ‘appropriate reports and proposals’ to the Party, took on the voluntary task, for example, of monitoring who shopped in ‘Jewish stores’.33 On 12 December 1938, arrangements were made to remove 9,000 Czechs from Slovakia so that their jobs could be taken over by Slovaks. On 23 January 1939, the autonomous Slovak government set up a parliamentary subcommittee to look into a range of possible ‘solutions’ to the ‘Jewish Question’ in Slovakia. It was announced, in advance of the committee’s findings, that Jews in Slovakia would be entitled only to those ‘rights’ that were ‘appropriate’ to a people who held a ‘disproportionate’ share of the country’s wealth.34 It would further, Tiso maintained, demonstrate the ‘maturity’ of the Slovak nation that it would take what it called a ‘legal approach’ to the Jewish ‘problem’ and find a Christian (in other words, a confessional rather than a racial) ‘solution’ distinct from that being taken by Germany. Meanwhile, radio broadcasting from v 29 v

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The Munich Crisis, politics and the people Vienna sought to up the ante by ending its regular Slovak broadcasts with the catchphrases ‘A new Slovakia without the Jews’ and ‘Slovaks do not forget the Jew was, is, and will be the greatest enemy of the Slovak nation and of the Slovak state.’35 Later, during the Second World War, Slovakia tried for as long as possible not only to cling to its own, distinctly Slovak definition of who was or was not a Jew, but also to ensure that the profits from dispossessing and deporting Jews, normally to Nazi-run camps, went to the Slovak state rather than to Germany.36 The central Czecho-Slovak government did not lag far behind the regions. On 15 December 1938, the central parliament in Prague passed a special Enabling Act, reminiscent of Hitler’s, which entitled the central government to amend constitutional laws and, in case of ‘emergency’, to rule by decree. Because the central government needed the support of the ministers in Slovakia to pass the act in the National Assembly, it agreed that all members of the autonomous Slovak government would automatically also become members of the state-wide Czecho-Slovak Council of Ministers. According to the amendment that had established Slovak autonomy, elections to the first Slovak diet or parliament (Snem) had to be held according to the same procedures that had prevailed in the First Czechoslovak Republic. In order to circumvent this complication, Slovak Prime Minister Tiso invited candidates wishing to stand for election in the usual way – except that he gave such short notice that only those he had forewarned were able to register in time to stand in the elections.37 On 18 December 1938, the farce of Slovak ‘elections’ to the autonomous Slovak Snem took place. Voters were presented with a single sheet of candidates approved in advance by the leadership of Slovak National Unity. All candidates on the list were deemed to have been elected if the voter assented to the proposition that they supported ‘a free, new Slovakia’. At the polling booths, manned by uniformed Hlinka Guards, voters were theoretically free to reply that they did not want ‘a free, new Slovakia’ and to reject the entire list of candidates; but they were hardly likely to do so, as they were discouraged from pulling the curtain for privacy while they voted and asked to hand over their ballot papers directly to the officiating officer. As a result of these tactics, the Hlinka People’s Party – the Party of Slovak National Unity won 97.5 per cent of the Slovak vote.38 It also set a precedent, later used by the Communists, as to how to fix elections. The central Czecho-Slovak government, which was anxious not to jeopardise British and other foreign loans, tried not to make its undoubted shift towards state-sponsored anti-Semitism too overt.39 It was left to the Czech National Unity’s youth wing Mladá Národní v 30 v

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Czechoslovakia and Czecho-Slovakia jednota (Young National Unity), which had its own uniformed paramilitary force, to issue a pamphlet explaining that Jews, a ‘foreign’ minority, would soon have their legal position ‘regulated’ so that they could be ‘removed’ from state employment and prevented from ‘influencing education’ and ‘dominating’ in such fields as medicine and law ‘out of proportion to their numbers’.40 On 27 January 1939, Czecho-Slovak Decrees 14 and 15 announced that any persons who had been naturalised as Czechoslovak citizens at any point between 1918 and 1938, unless they could be readily identified as ‘Czech’, ‘Slovak’ or ‘Carpatho-Rusyn’, would have their citizenship removed and be deported from CzechoSlovakia.41 Although the law did not specify who would be affected, it was obvious in the general climate, as the British minister in Prague had no difficulty in understanding, that it was designed to be ‘against the Jews’.42 By late February 1939, there were increasingly insistent calls from the government-approved right-wing Czech press for the political system in Bohemia and Moravia to be ‘further simplified’. Czech National Unity recommended the ‘reorganisation’ of ‘public life’ in accordance with the ‘corporate’ (fascist) model.43 It can only have been a matter of weeks before the central Czecho-Slovak government followed the example of the regions and went all the way to one-party rule. The familiar story of Munich notwithstanding, it was not Hitler but rather the Czecho-Slovak central government which inadvertently precipitated the crisis that brought the Second Czecho-Slovak Republic to an end. By late February 1939, regional tensions within Czecho-Slovakia were almost at breaking point. A French correspondent, having experienced the tense and gloomy atmosphere of post-Munich Prague, was astonished to find in Slovakia an atmosphere of ‘juvenile exuberance and total jauntiness’.44 In the new regional capital of Khust in Ruthenia (Užhorod having by then been taken by Hungary), as well as in Bratislava in Slovakia, there were public demonstrations against both Czechs and Jews. To Prague’s considerable annoyance, anti-Czech rallies and propaganda were in effect being subsidised by Prague, which was where the autonomous regions’ money came from. In early March 1939, amid further requests from Slovakia for more funding for Hlinka Guard and Slovak generals, and the first public statement by a Slovak minister that ‘We want and will get our independent Slovak state’,45 tensions were mounting and Vienna reported that ‘rumours are flying and fortune-tellers are lately in great demand in Prague’.46 The Prague government, which had just about had enough, demanded that the Slovak autonomous government proclaim its loyalty to the Czecho-Slovak state. The autonomous Slovak administration and v 31 v

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The Munich Crisis, politics and the people leadership of the Hlinka Guard, sensing a sudden change of mood in Prague, judged that a plot to reassert Czech dominance over Slovakia was being hatched. They flew to Berlin for consultations, and began to hint that they could always secede from Czecho-Slovakia altogether.47 Veiled threats further inflamed already strained nerves in Prague, and on 6 March 1939, in order to calm the situation, the Slovak cabinet gave a formal assurance that, whatever happened, Slovakia would, as had been declared at Žilina on 6 October 1938, remain ‘within the framework’ of a Czecho-Slovak state. Since Slovak National Unity’s daily newspaper Slovák continued nevertheless to write about building a ‘new independent home in a free Slovakia’, Prague began to suspect Slovak National Unity of planning to replace the central Czecho-Slovak government with a Czech diet or Snem, so that Czechs, Slovaks and Ruthenians/Ukrainians would be represented in mathematically exact proportions.48 Rather than wait for Slovakia and Ruthenia to insist that the Czecho-Slovak central government be replaced by a Czech diet, or regional parliament, the authorities in Prague decided to strike first. On 6 March 1939, President Hácha dismissed the Ukrainian-oriented members of the autonomous government in Ruthenia. The leadership of the Slovak National Unity party, shocked that the government in Prague could so blithely disregard its own law on Ruthenian autonomy, concluded that the only realistic long-term option for Slovakia was to become fully independent. The next step, from autonomy to independence, however, would need to wait until Slovakia had the personnel and financial backing to go it alone. In the meantime, local Nazi authorities in Vienna, who were quicker than those in Berlin to see the potential benefits to the Third Reich of playing off the Czechs against the Slovaks, began to urge the Slovak government to follow the urgings of its own radicals within Slovak National Unity and take the full leap to independence. When, three days after Prague had sacked the autonomous government in Ruthenia, there was still no reaction from Berlin, the central government in Prague decided to strike again, this time in Slovakia. On 9  March 1939, President Hácha dismissed all members of the autonomous Slovak government, with one exception; announced a new government led by Jozef Sivák, and declared martial law.49 When Prime Minister Tiso protested at being deprived of his office, he was locked up in a m ­ onastery – albeit briefly. (This was the same fate that had befallen Fr Andrej Hlinka, the founder of the Slovak People’s Party, when he tried to undermine Beneš at the Paris Peace Conference in 1919.) About 250 Slovaks from the radical wing of Slovak National Unity, who were v 32 v

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Czechoslovakia and Czecho-Slovakia known to favour the cause of Slovak independence, were arrested and sent to prison in Moravia. The Slovak deputy prime minister and the head of the Hlinka Guard, who had managed to evade capture by the Czech authorities, fled to Vienna where, in cooperation with local Nazis, they continued broadcasting anti-Czech and pro-Slovak independence propaganda to Slovakia.50 It was Sivák, in Rome, who put a spanner in the works of the would-be Prague coup by refusing to accept the post of Slovak prime minister. Another Slovak government was named, this time led by Karol Sidor, leaving rival Slovak nationalist groups in Bratislava and Vienna to argue over the airwaves about which of them was the real ‘traitor’ to the ‘Slovak nation’. Behind the scenes, meanwhile, rival German groups in Berlin and Vienna debated whether or not to support the Slovak separatists.51 In Slovakia itself, the Deutsche Partei urged a ‘common front of Slovaks and Germans’ to defend what it referred to as a ‘free Slovak state’. The constitutional crisis that the central government in Prague provoked in March 1939, breaking its own laws on the formal autonomy of Ruthenia and Slovakia, gave the Third Reich its first pretext – since the manufactured Sudeten German crisis leading up to Munich – openly to intervene in Czecho-Slovak affairs. On 10 March, Ferdinand Ďurčanský took to Radio Vienna to condemn the ‘illegal’ action of the Prague government, ‘wait for further instructions’ and suggest that the Hlinka Guard ‘gradually take over power’ where it was not already ‘in reliable Slovak hands’.52 Nevile Henderson, the British ambassador to Germany, who could see that Prague was ‘playing Hitler’s game for him’, remembered how, on 11 March 1939, it was suddenly announced in Berlin that Tiso (not Sidor, who had just been named head of the Slovak autonomous government) had appealed to the German government for protection. The German press, which had up to that point devoted ‘little space’ to the Czecho-Slovak constitutional dispute, suddenly adopted a ‘violently pro-Slovak attitude’.53 By the next morning, 12 March, it was full of ‘wild tales of Czech atrocities’ and of ‘Germans flying for refuge’. On the same day, 12 March 1939, Hitler phoned Döme Sztójay, the Hungarian minister to Germany, to inform him that he had decided to withdraw his protection from Czecho-Slovakia and to recognise the independence of Slovakia. Out of ‘friendship’ to Hungary, as he put it, he would ‘hold up for 24 hours the decision whether to grant similar recognition to Ruthenia’.54 Hitler then invited Tiso, who had just suffered the twin shocks of being deposed as autonomous leader of Slovakia and imprisoned, to meet with him in Berlin. v 33 v

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The Munich Crisis, politics and the people Tiso, who had just lost his position as prime minister to his rival, Sidor, and who might just as easily have ended up on trial for treason in a Prague courtroom, was naturally delighted to find, upon his arrival in Berlin on 13 March 1939, that he was accorded all the honours usually reserved for a head of state. Accounts of the famous meeting that followed between Tiso and Hitler differ as to whether the leader of Slovak National Unity was bullied or tempted into declaring Slovak independence. Even Tiso later told two versions of the story: in one, the Führer had generously warned him that the Slovaks would have to act quickly if they wished to decide their own destiny; in the other, Slovakia would not have opted for independence had it not been for the pressure under which it was placed at that critical moment.55 It is true that Hitler could indeed have dispensed with Slovakia as carelessly as he had just disposed of Subcarpathian Ruthenia (Carpatho-Ukraine). On the other hand, Prague had just forced Tiso to face the fact that Slovakia was not yet in a position to finance a separate state. This made the prospect of German support at once attractive and risky, since Slovakia – should it be granted German backing for independence – would not be allowed to maintain a defence or foreign policy separate from that of Hitler. At the end of the meeting, which lasted thirty-five minutes, Tiso assured Hitler that ‘the Slovak nation’ would give him ‘no cause’ to regret what he had done on its behalf. At about midnight the same night, 13–14 March, the leader of autonomous Ruthenia sent a request to Hitler – a request which was never answered – that its own territory be taken under German p ­ rotection. At the end of his meeting with Hitler, Tiso went directly to the CzechoSlovak delegation in Berlin. He used the phone to speak to Sidor, who he asked to request an emergency session of the Slovak Snem for the next day. Sidor passed on the request to Czecho-Slovak President Hácha, who in turn consulted Prime Minister Beran, the leader of Czech National Unity. Permission was granted. Sidor then put a call out on Slovak radio for all Slovak deputies to turn up for an ‘historic’ session of the Slovak National Assembly the following day. On the morning of 14 March 1939, the Slovak diet went into emergency session, with Tiso in attendance. When the first news bulletin appeared, at lunchtime, it was to announce that the Slovak Parliament had unanimously voted to bring into being an independent Slovak state. ‘Slovaks of the entire world listen!’ announced the Slovak broadcast from Vienna at 1.10 p.m. ‘Today at twelve o’clock noon the independent Slovak state was proclaimed.’ At 2 p.m., a second announcement came: ‘Ring Slovak bells! Announce the joyous news of v 34 v

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Czechoslovakia and Czecho-Slovakia the birth of the Slovak state.’56 Tiso was restored as Prime Minister and Sidor made Minister of Interior. After a decent interval of a few weeks, Sidor was sent to Rome as envoy to the Vatican, leaving Tiso as the unchallenged dictator of independent, clerical-fascist Slovakia. Later, following the Führer principle, Tiso was to take on the role of President as well as Prime Minister, and formally declare himself Vůdce (leader). The autonomous Carpatho-Ukrainian government in Khust, the capital of Ruthenia, found out about the declaration of Slovak independence from the one o’clock news. Having still received no reply to its telegram to Hitler, the Council of Ministers went into an emergency session for the rest of the afternoon. At about 6.30 p.m., a slightly reshuffled cabinet – in which the pro-Ukrainian priest Fr Voloshyn remained leader – emerged from Government House. A Proclamation of Carpatho-Ukrainian Independence was read out to the small crowd that had gathered outside the building to see what was going on. The next morning, the blue and yellow flag was flying from Government House and the regime’s own uniformed paramilitary Sich guards, just released from prison, were marching through town, terrorising Jews and warning Czechs to pack up their things and leave the newly independent country at once.57 Czecho-Slovak President Hácha, whose country was breaking into separate fascist pieces, was immediately granted the audience he requested with Hitler in Berlin. Contrary to the impression given in most accounts, that the meeting was arranged solely to belittle and humiliate Hácha (as if he had been a second Beneš rather than an already compliant ally of Germany), the Czecho-Slovak president was received with full honours. Even Hácha’s daughter, who accompanied him on the trip, was welcomed with a bouquet of flowers from Ribbentrop and a box of chocolates from Hitler.58 They nevertheless then had to endure hours of suspense while Hitler and his entourage watched a film. This sort of unorthodox behaviour was fully in keeping with the German dictator’s high-handed disregard for protocol. The Czecho-Slovak delegation was finally admitted into Hitler’s presence at about midnight. According to anecdotal accounts of the meeting, Hitler – who later claimed to have been taken aback by Hácha’s submissiveness – pressed his advantage, announcing that within six hours German forces would enter Czecho-Slovakia from three sides and ruthlessly crush any attempt at resistance. Göring, according to the same sources, backed up Hitler’s threats with the insistence that the German air force would reduce Prague to rubble if the slightest resistance were v 35 v

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The Munich Crisis, politics and the people shown. Dr Morrell, Hitler’s private physician, is then supposed to have given the Czecho-Slovak president an injection to prevent him from fainting. Hitler later enjoyed telling his inner circle how, had Hácha called his bluff, he would have lost face completely, since ‘at the hour mentioned fog was so thick over our airfields that none of our aircraft could have made its sortie’.59 The anecdote, which has the false ring of one of Hitler’s boasts, is likely to have been further exaggerated through many retellings before being set down in 1942 for Hitler’s Table Talk. Whether or not he did so out of weakness or realpolitik, by 3.00 a.m. on the night of 14–15 March, Hácha had signed a declaration stating that the Czecho-Slovak president ‘confidently placed the fate of the Czech people and country in the hands of the Führer of the German Reich’ in order to guarantee the Czechs ‘autonomous development of their ethnic life as suited to their character’.60 Legally speaking, this was not a breach of the terms of the Munich Agreement, since – on paper at least – the government in Prague had requested intervention from Germany, one of the Agreement’s signatories, after its own regions had begun to desert the very state that the Munich Agreement was supposed to protect. The Munich myth notwithstanding, there would have been no legal justification for France or Britain to intervene in Czecho-Slovak affairs. The postMunich state was not destroyed because Nazi Germany invaded. The country fell apart after Prague tried to take back devolution, causing so dramatic a backlash from its own regions that it was left with little option but to go to Germany, the regional superpower, for help. At 4.30 a.m. on 15 March 1939, Radio Prague announced that German troops would begin to occupy the country at 6.00 a.m. At 5.00  a.m., Berlin radio broadcast a special announcement from Goebbels, who read out Hitler’s ‘Proclamation to the German People’, justifying the impending occupation on the grounds of Slovakia’s secession the day before; Czech maltreatment of minorities; and the Lands of the Bohemian Crown having belonged to the ‘Reich’ for over a thousand years. From 6.00 a.m., Hácha’s declaration, entrusting the Czech people to German rule, was added to the broadcast as a further justification.61 Despite a number of hitches on the German side, including problems with vehicles and the issuing of placards in the correct language, troops began arriving in Prague at about 9.00 a.m., just as most people were on their way to work, following their government’s instructions to go about their ordinary business. The whole country was occupied by afternoon, the source of some bitterly self-deprecating Czech jokes. On the same day, 15 March 1939, Hungarian troops captured Khust, putting an end to v 36 v

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Czechoslovakia and Czecho-Slovakia the independent republic of Carpatho-Ukraine, which had lasted only twenty-four hours. The image of a single Czech leader, upon whom the entire nation’s future depends, weak and humiliated, was crystallised first in the person of President Edvard Beneš the day after Munich, when he refused to mobilise. It returned, five and a half months later, in the shape of Beneš’s immediate successor, President Emil Hácha, when he went to Berlin to beg Hitler’s protection for what remained of his state. Once again, in February 1948, President Edvard Beneš, under organised pressure from a popular domestic communist movement, accepted rather than rejected the resignations of a group of anti-communist ministers, thus enabling the Czechoslovak Communist Party to win a controlling monopoly in the cabinet.62 The next Munich moment came in 1968, when the Dubček leadership, returned safely to Czechoslovakia from Moscow, began to reverse the Prague Spring reforms, thus ushering in the bleak era afterwards known as ‘Normalisation’. At each of these moments of political humiliation, pity is evoked – usually through references to tears, illness and other reminders of human frailty – to tug at the heartstrings. When the terrible terms of the Munich Agreement were confirmed, in the small hours of 30 September 1938, we are told that Vojtěch Mastný, one of two Czechoslovak ‘observers’ at the Munich Conference, dissolved into tears.63 CzechoSlovak President Hácha, when he met Hitler in Berlin on 14 March 1939, is described as ‘a desperately sick man who had to be given several injections to keep him conscious’ before he ‘finally signed the infamous paper’.64 Beneš, alone to face the pressure of communist populism, day after stressful day in February 1948, is described as gravely ill, an old man, broken by Munich.65 In his published memoirs, Dubček stated that, during negotiations with the Soviets in Moscow, Josef Smrkovský, Chairman of the Federal Assembly, ‘brought up the parallel to 1939, when President Hácha returned to Berlin’.66 Zdeněk Mlynář, the main author of the political reforms known collectively as Socialism with a Human Face, similarly recalled how ‘one unexpected consequence’ of the Moscow negotiations was ‘coming to understand Emil Hácha’, since ‘we had no choice but simply to sign the Soviet ultimatum’.67 Josef Korbel, a member of Beneš’s entourage until he fled communist Czechoslovakia, and one of the most important promoters of the Munich Complex in the English-speaking world – not least because he fathered one US Secretary of State (Madeleine Albright) and was PhD supervisor to another (Condoleezza Rice) – claims that in Moscow ‘the v 37 v

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The Munich Crisis, politics and the people Czechoslovaks were presented with a document of capitulation’, over which ‘most of them wept at one time or another, some fell ill, and Dubček suffered recurring heart trouble’.68 Through a combination of pity and compassion, we are repeatedly invited to see Czechoslovakia as a martyred nation, an essentially virtuous victim to whom bad things happen. This common Central European nationalist trope – to have suffered much, and thus to be justified in all one does – serves more than one purpose. Empathy, understanding and pity, although important and necessary to historical understanding, can also obscure, or appear to make irrelevant, such cold facts as constitutional clauses, internationally ratified agreements and legal statutes, even when these include provisions for excluding, deporting or imprisoning rival ethnic, religious, economic or linguistic groups. By focusing attention on tragic victimhood, national misfortunes come to seem inevitable, unavoidable: the moments when Beneš, or Hácha, or Dubček, might have made different choices, leading to different outcomes, are all too easily forgotten. There is of course nothing unique to Czechoslovakia, or for that matter, Central Europe, in viewing its history in a selectively and selfserving way. This is what states, what nations, tend to do. The particular danger for Czechoslovakia’s successor states, the Czech and Slovak republics, however, lies in the potential consequences – both for its relations with its Central European neighbours and especially for its few remaining minorities – of misremembering the past and forgetting that Czechs and Slovaks, too, had agency and Czechs and Slovaks, too, committed atrocities. It is not enough to dismiss the hateful xenophobic policies and authoritarian tendencies of the Second Czecho-Slovak Republic as a ‘disorientation’ brought about Munich.69 The dangers to which all democracies are vulnerable were also present in interwar Czechoslovakia, where individual human beings were as responsible for their actions as they are anywhere else. Czechoslovakia is remembered as the last democracy in Central Europe and a bastion of decent, humane values. Taking a closer look at the widely neglected Second Czecho-Slovak Republic suggests that Czechoslovakia was not, in fact, quite so different from its Central European neighbours, not such an exception to the authoritarian, xenophobic and extreme nationalist trends of its time and place. According to Jan Tesař, post-Munich Czech collaboration with the Nazis was the real failure that led the nation to cloak its shame in the ‘pseudo-problem’ of the Munich Complex. Later humanitarian failures, most notably the v 38 v

Czechoslovakia and Czecho-Slovakia

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post-war German and Hungarian expulsions, Czech and Slovak antiSemitic legislation, complicity with the Stalinist purges, tacit support for the post-1968 Normalisation regime, and discrimination against the Roma, continue to make the ‘pseudo-problem’ of Munich nearly as salient and resonant for Czechs and Slovaks today as it was in 1938. Notes   1 See, for example, the headline in the evening edition of České Slovo on 2 October 1938. https://aukro.cz/ceske-slovo-1–10-a-30–9-1938-mnichovskazrada-orig-noviny-2-kusy-6934307573.10.   2 The motto ‘nothing about us, without us’ is a political slogan with extensive Central European, especially Polish and Hungarian, roots. The 1505 Polish constitution which first transferred governing authority from the monarch to parliament, given in Latin as ‘nihil novi nisi commune consensu’, and colloquially known as ‘nothing about us without us’, is probably the most direct allusion. The expression is still widely used in Czech, eighty years after Munich. See, for example, https://tn.nova.cz/clanek/sobota-o-nas-beznas-pripominame-si-80-let-od-mnichovske-dohody.html (accessed 24 July 2019).   3 František Halas, ‘Zpěv úzkosti’.  4 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Munich_Agreement; https://cs.wikipedia.org/ wiki/Mnichovsk%C3%A1_dohoda; https://sk.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mn%C3% ADchovsk%C3%A1_dohoda (all accessed 24 July 2019).  5 Jiří Rak, Ivana Čornejová, Vít Vlnas et al., Co kdyby to dopadlo jinak? Křižovatky českých dějin (Prague: Dokořán, 2007). The relevant episode of the Czech Television series ‘Kdyby …’ (What if …), directed by Michal Najbrt, itself part of the larger series Osudové osmičky v našich dějinách, was first broadcast on České televize 2 in 2008 and subsequently replayed on anniversaries of Munich, including on the centenary, 30 September 2018. www.ceskatelevize.cz/porady/10169695354-kdyby/408235100021009/ (accessed 24 July 2019).  6 www.ceskatelevize.cz/porady/10362011008-ceske-stoleti/21251212007-denpo-mnichovu-1938/ (accessed 24 July 2019).   7 Brackett Lewis, Facts about Democracy in Czechoslovakia (Prague: American Institute in Czechoslovakia/Orbis Publishing Company, 1938), p. 7.   8 See, for example, the oral history exhibition Paměť národa on Letná hill in Prague, which seeks to take a more inclusive, balanced look at the nation’s past, but has some clear omissions. See www.pametnaroda.cz/cs and https:// stalin.pametnaroda.cz/english.htm (both accessed 24 July 2019).   9 See especially Jan Lániček, Arnošt Frischer and the Jewish Politics of Early Twentieth-Century Europe (London: Bloomsbury, 2017). v 39 v

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The Munich Crisis, politics and the people 10 Edvard Beneš, Šest let exilu a druhé světové války: Řeči, projevy a dokumenty z r. 1938–45 (Prague: Orbis, 1946), pp. 39–43; Andrea Orzoff, The Battle for the Castle (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), p. 198. 11 Karel Bartošek, ‘Could We Have Fought? The “Munich Complex” in Czech Policies and Czech Thinking’, in N. Stone and E. Strouhal (eds), Czechoslovakia: Crossroads and Crises, 1928–88 (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1989), p. 104. 12 See, for example, Robert Kvaček’s recently republished Poslední den. Mnichov-Praha, 1938 (Prague: Pražská vydavatelská společnost: Epocha, 2011). 13 Ztraceni v Mnichově, directed by Petr Zelenka. Barrandov studios and Česká televize, Prague: Lucky Man Films, 2015. 14 Jan Tesař, Mnichovský komplex. Jeho příčiny a důsledky (Prague: Prostor 2014 [2000]), p. 11. 15 Ibid., pp. 107–8. 16 Ibid., pp. 107, 119. 17 See, for example, Eduard Bass, ‘Věc velmoci a věc naše’, Lidové noviny, 30 September 1938, p. 2. 18 This speech is reproduced, in the original Czech with some Slovak sections, as ‘Rozhlasová řeč prezidenta Beneše’ in Edvard Beneš, Mnichovské dny. Paměti (Prague: Svoboda, 1968), pp. 484–91. 19 Ibid. 20 Geoffrey Brown, ‘The Czechoslovak Orient: Carpathian Ruthenia as an Imagined Colonial Space’ (PhD dissertation, Victorian University of Wellington, 2017). 21 Z. Zeman and A. Klímek, The Life of Edvard Beneš 1884–1948: Czechoslovakia in Peace and War (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1997), p. 126. 22 Anon., ‘Postupný převod území. Návrh britstké vlády, přijatý s výhradami vládou naší’, Lidové noviny, 30 September 1938, p. 3. 23 ‘Českoslovenští poradci v Mnichově’, Lidové noviny, 30 September 1938, p. 3. 24 See, for example, Bertram De Colonna, Czecho-Slovakia Within (London: Thornton Butterworth, 1938) or the collection of Daily Mail articles brought together in Lord Rothermere’s My Campaign for Hungary (London: Eyre & Spottiswoode, 1939). Both were viciously anti-Czech. 25 ‘Manifest slovenského národa (6. októbra 1938)’, Dokumenty slovenskej národnej identity a štátnost ii (Bratislava: Národné literárne centrum, 1998), pp. 179–83. 26 Paul Magocsi, The Shaping of a National Identity: Subcarpathian Rus’ ­1848–1948 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1978), p. 237. 27 George Kennan, excerpts from a personal letter (8 December 1938), as reproduced in George Kennan, From Prague after Munich: Diplomatic Papers 1938–1940 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1968), p. 9. 28 Ibid., pp. 7, 9. v 40 v

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Czechoslovakia and Czecho-Slovakia 29 Míla Lvová, Mnichov a Edvard Beneš (Prague: Svoboda, 1968), p. 180. 30 B.C. Newton to Lord Halifax, ‘Annual report for 1938’ (14 January 1939), as reproduced in B. Vago, Shadow of the Swastika: The Rise of Fascism and Anti-Semitism in the Danube Basin, 1936–1939 (London: Institute of Jewish Affairs, 1975), p. 368. 31 Pavel Bělina et al. (eds), Kronika Českých zemí (Prague: Fortuna, 1999), p. 695. 32 See Laws 220 and 311, Sbírka zákonů (Prague, 1939). 33 H. Delfiner, Vienna Broadcasts to Slovakia 1938–1939: A Case Study in Subversion (Boulder, CO: East European Quarterly, distributed by Columbia University Press, 1974), p. 88. 34 Jozef Tiso, Dr. Jozef Tiso o sebe: Obhajobná reč pred tzv. Národným súdom v Bratislave, dňa 17. a 18. marca 1947 (Passaic, NJ: Slovak Catholic Sokol, 1952), pp. 315–17. 35 František Vnuk, ‘Slovakia’s Six Eventful Months (October 1938–March 1939)’, Slovak Studies, 4 (1964), p. 96. 36 Slovák (3 February 1939) and speeches (27 January and 22 February 1939) as cited in Tiso, Dr. Jozef Tiso o sebe, pp. 315–17. See also ‘Report on Conditions in Slovakia, written in January 1939’, in Kennan, From Prague after Munich, pp. 23–4. 37 Jozef Lettrich, History of Modern Slovakia (London: Atlantic Press, 1956), p. 119. 38 Yeshayahu Jelinek, The Parish Republic: Hlinka’s Slovak People’s Party ­1939–1945 (Boulder, CO: East European Quarterly, 1976), p. 25. 39 Foreign Office memorandum (by J. K. Roberts), ‘Concerning the Position of Jews in Czechoslovakia since Munich’ (4 January 1939), as reproduced in Vago, Shadow of the Swastika, pp. 350, 374. 40 Ibid. 41 Decree 14 ‘Vládní nařízení ze dne 27. ledna 1939, jímž se doplňují předpisy o pobytu cizinců, pokud jsou emigranty’ and Decree 15 ‘Vládní nařízení. ze dne 27. ledna 1939 o přezkoumání česko-slovenského státního občanství některých osob’, Sbírky zákonů a nařízení státu česko-slovenského (Prague, 1939), pp. 39–42. 42 J.M. Troutbeck to Lord Halifax (9 February 1939), in Vago, Shadow of the Swastika, pp. 387–8. 43 Theodore Procházka, The Second Republic: The Disintegration of Post-Munich Czechoslovakia (October 1938–March 1939) (Boulder, CO: East European Monographs, 1981), p. 59. 44 G. Luciani, ‘La Tchécoslovaquie après Munich’, Le Temps (2 March 1939), cited in Procházka, The Second Republic, p. 63. 45 Henry Delfiner, Vienna Broadcasts to Slovakia 1938–1939: A Case Study in Subversion (Boulder, CO: East European Quarterly, distributed by Columbia University Press, 1974), p. 106. v 41 v

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The Munich Crisis, politics and the people 46 Ibid., p. 108. 47 George Kennan, ‘Excerpts from Despatch of March 9, 1939, from Minister Carr to the Department of State, on Czech–Slovak Relations’ (portion drafted by Kennan); ‘Despatch on Slovak–Czech Relations (9 March 1939) and ‘Report on Conditions in Ruthenia’, in Kennan, From Prague after Munich, pp. 75, 69; Vnuk, ‘Slovakia’s Six Eventful Months’, p. 106. 48 Despatch on Slovak–Czech relations’, as cited in Kennan, From Prague after Munich, pp. 78–9; Hubert Ripka, Munich: Before and After, trans. I. Šindelková and E. Young (London: Victor Gollancz, 1939), pp. 363–4. 49 George Kennan, ‘Personal Notes, dated 21 March 1939, on the March Crisis and the Final Occupation of Prague by the Germans’, in Kennan, From Prague after Munich, pp. 81–2. 50 See Delfiner, ‘Radio Wars’, Vienna Broadcasts to Slovakia, pp. 114–31. 51 Július Bartl et al. (eds), Slovak History: Chronology & Lexicon (Wauconda, IL: Bolchazy-Carducci, 2002), p. 138; Lettrich, History of Modern Slovakia, pp. 124–6; Ripka, Munich, pp. 368–9. 52 Delfiner, Vienna Broadcasts to Slovakia, pp. 114, 117. 53 Nevile Henderson, Failure of a Mission: Berlin, 1937–1939 (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1941), p. 202; Kennan, ‘Personal Notes (21 March 1939)’, in Kennan, From Prague after Munich, p. 81; Vojtech Mastny, Czechs under Nazi Rule: The Failure of National Resistance, 1939–1942 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1971), pp. 35–6. 54 Vnuk, ‘Slovakia’s Six Eventful Months’, p. 115. 55 Tiso, Dr. Jozef Tiso o sebe, p. 186; Jozef Tiso, ‘Dr Tiso’s report to the Slovak Parliament’, as reproduced in Charles Murin, Remembrances and Testimony, trans. V. Cincík (Montreal: RealTime Publishing, 1992), pp. 233–9. 56 As reported in Delfiner, Vienna Broadcasts to Slovakia, p. 128. 57 Michael Winch, Republic for a Day: An Eye-Witness Account of the CarpathoUkraine Incident (London: Robert Hale, 1939), pp. 280–3. 58 Henderson, Failure of a Mission, pp. 207–8. 59 Adolf Hitler, 13 January 1942, as reported in Hitler’s Table Talk, 1941–1944, trans. Norman Cameron and R.H. Stevens, ed. H. Trevor-Roper (London: Phoenix, 2000 [1953]), p. 204; Mastny, Czechs under Nazi Rule, p. 51. 60 Lidové noviny, vol. 47, no. 137 (16 March 1939), morning edition, p. 1. 61 Mastny, Czechs under Nazi Rule, p. 41. 62 Josef Korbel, Twentieth-Century Czechoslovakia: The Meanings of Its History (New York: Columbia University Press, 1977), pp. 248–9. Condoleezza Rice’s PhD was published as C. Rice, The Soviet Union and the Czechoslovak Army, 1948–1983 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1984). Madeleine Albright refers to her father Josef Korbel’s influence on her thinking in her published memoirs Madam Secretary: A Memoir (London: Macmillan, 2003) and Prague Winter: A Personal Story of Remembrance and War, 1937–1948 (New York: HarperCollins, 2012). v 42 v

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Czechoslovakia and Czecho-Slovakia 63 Zbyněk Zeman and Antonín Klímek, The Life of Beneš 1884–1948: Czechoslovakia in Peace and War (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1997), p. 54. 64 Korbel, Twentieth-Century Czechoslovakia, p. 156. 65 Maria Dowling, for example, asserts that ‘one fatal event determined the greater part of the Czechoslovak electorate to vote Communist, namely, Munich’. She further comments that ‘both Benes [sic] and Jan Masaryk’, neither of whom stood up against the Communist Party, ‘were seriously ill during the various crises of 1947–48’. Maria Dowling, Czechoslovakia (London: Edward Arnold, 2002), pp. 83–4. 66 Alexander Dubček, Hope Dies Last: The Autobiography of Alexander Dubček, ed. and trans. J. Hochman (New York, Tokyo and London: Kodansha International, 1993), pp. 211–13. 67 Zdeněk Mlynář, Night Frost in Prague: The End of Humane Socialism, trans. P. Wilson (London: C. Hurst & Co. 1980), p. 229. The original was published in German as Nachfrost (Cologne: Europäische Verlagsanstalt, 1978). 68 Korbel, Twentieth-Century Czechoslovakia, p. 308. 69 Jan Rataj, O autoritativní národní stát (Prague: Karolinum, 1997).

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A very long shadow: the Munich Agreement in post-war Czechoslovak communist propaganda, ideology and historiography, 1948–89 Jakub Drábik When a trio of Czech historians wrote a volume about Munich, focusing on post-war negotiations concerning the repudiation and annulment of the agreement and on how the Munich question was reflected in the historiography, they called their book The Long Shadows of Munich.1 They demonstrated very convincingly that the shadow cast over Czechoslovakia and its people by the events that took place in Munich in 1938 was indeed a very long one. Even today, the notion of Western betrayal is deeplyrooted in the collective memory of Czechs and Slovaks. When Andrew Garth, the British ambassador to Slovakia, gave interviews in some of the Slovak media,2 indicating his surprise and disappointment concerning the Slovak reaction to Britain’s appeal to its allies in the Skripal case and the lack of solidarity it received from Slovak diplomats and authorities (Slovakia refused to expel a single Russian diplomat), his words provoked a very strong response from the general public. Not all comments on social media can be taken seriously, of course, but they do provide at least some insight. The overwhelming narrative in tweets and posts was something along the lines of, ‘Well, you let us down in 1938, so now you can mind your own business’ (although in slightly more colourful language!). Similar reactions are even more common in the Czech Republic. Polls taken in March 2018 suggest that 37 per cent of Slovaks and 69 per cent of Czechs view the Munich Agreement negatively, and only 16 per cent of Slovaks and 6 per cent of Czechs consider the signing of the Munich Agreement to have made a positive contribution to the nation’s history; the remainder were undecided or did not know.3 This stark difference between Czechs and Slovaks can be partially explained by historical developments following the agreement, particularly when the Czech v 44 v

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Czechoslovak communist propaganda, 1948–89 lands became part of the Nazi ‘Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia’, whilst Slovaks were able to create their own state. Despite its murderous and collaborationist nature, some 18 per cent of Slovaks today still consider it a positive chapter in their history. Only 46 per cent saw it as negative, while a mere 5 per cent of Czechs viewed the Protectorate positively and 74 per cent considered it negatively.4 What the discussions and polls clearly show is that the Munich Agreement affected not only the generation that lived through it but also Czechs and Slovaks today. The Munich Agreement is a highly emotional topic for the majority of Czechs and a considerable number of Slovaks. Our knowledge about Munich, however, is characterised by a lack of understanding of its history and by black-and-white thinking. One very clear reason for the strength of this emotional reaction from a significant proportion of the Czech and Slovak population is the forty years of use and misuse of the issue in communist propaganda and how the matter was treated in the mainstream media, in the historiography, and in politics and culture. Building on the previous historiography and using a wide range of primary sources, this chapter will thus offer a brief description and analysis of the communist regime’s use of Munich in its historiography, ideology and propaganda. The Munich Agreement was one of the arguments through which the communists sought to legitimise the regime, its foreign policy, and its orientation towards the USSR. I will concentrate especially on literature from the late 1940s and early 1950s, when the basic theses concerning the Munich Agreement were formulated. This literature then shifted its focus according to the changes that took place in Soviet foreign policy and ideology after Stalin’s death. These movements in the construction and use of Munich in propaganda (especially regarding the role of President Edvard Beneš, a fact now recognised by historians)5 were, however, of limited significance, and, as will be demonstrated, the central thrust of the argument remained unchanged. In the days and weeks prior to the Munich Conference, especially in Bohemia among the Czech soldiers and also the broader society, there was a great desire to fight for the state. The 23 September 1938 decree of general mobilisation was accepted by the public with great enthusiasm. However, once the Munich Conference happened and the territory was ceded, the atmosphere in Czechoslovakia changed very rapidly. Czechoslovak society felt betrayed, not only by the Great Powers, the United Kingdom and France (and by the Sudeten Germans), but also by their own political and democratic elite. v 45 v

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The Munich Crisis, politics and the people The Czechoslovak government accepted the Munich Agreement under protest since representatives were not invited to the conference and it was made ‘without and against us’. Thus the agreement was (and still is) usually described in Czechoslovakia as the ‘Munich Diktat’ (Mnichovský diktát) or – because of the unfulfilled military alliance with France – ‘Munich betrayal’ (Mnichovská zrada). The Czechs and Slovaks in general were dismayed by the Munich settlement and profoundly disillusioned and aggrieved by British and French reactions. As the Czech poet František Halas wrote shortly after the signing of the agreement: The bell of treachery is tolled, and whose hands rang the knell? La douce France and Albion the bold and yet we loved them well! (Zvoní zvoní zrady zvon zrady zvon Čí ruce ho rozhoupaly Francie sladká hrdý Albion a my jsme je milovali)6

For many, the British and French display of national egoism meant a loss of trust in Western democracy, and many turned in desperation to Soviet Russia.7 After the communist coup d’état in February 1948, the Munich question entered the mainstream Czechoslovak communist propaganda, both domestically and internationally.8 The narrative concerning the Munich Agreement was usually determined in Moscow, especially in the late 1940s and early 1950s, but was then taken over and developed by the national propaganda offices, politicians and media of Eastern Europe. This is especially true of Czechoslovak historiography and party propaganda, as the Munich Agreement was a highly emotional topic for the majority of the population and was thus ripe for exploitation. Some of the interpretations and explanations of the Munich Crisis in the communist bloc were genuine Marxist interpretations which sought to explain the events leading up to the Second World War through an ideological lens that considered fascism to be the vanguard of reactionary capitalism. In Marxist analysis – to this day – fascism is axiomatically capitalist in its very nature, counter-revolutionary, and usually controlled by the bourgeoisie;9 the same slant was used by Czechoslovak historians and subsequently by journalists, politicians and other influential figures and institutions. Communist interpretations of Munich were also pragmatic, dealing with the facts in a very specific way, omitting some and highlighting v 46 v

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Czechoslovak communist propaganda, 1948–89 others, or sometimes using straightforward lies or conspiracy theories, all under the umbrella of what they called ‘Marxist science’. This ‘scientific’ approach sometimes meant that the ‘Munich events’ could be significantly extended, both in time and in substance, according to the prevailing needs of propaganda. Events and personalities that were yet to be directly associated with Munich could also be included. An early example is the almost immediate incorporation into the invective of the new enemy of the United States of America. The trigger was the publication by the United States Department of State, in January 1948, of a collection of documents called Nazi–Soviet Relations 1939–1941.10 The work consisted of several documents from the archives of the German Foreign Office captured by Americans during and after the war, including the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact and its ‘Secret Additional Protocol’, which divided Eastern Europe and specifically Poland between the two dictatorships.11 The publication outraged Soviet leaders, who until then had avoided any discussion of the Nazi–Soviet pact.12 Barely a month later, the Sovinformburo (Советское информац­ ионное бюро – Soviet Information Bureau) published its response: a short, 65-page tract entitled Falsifiers of History. The book was originally to have been called Reply to Slanderers, but Stalin edited the work himself, changing the title.13 There was no attempt to actually prove that the documents published by the Americans were wrong or even to counter them; the focus rather was on a different interpretation of the events leading up to the war. The book argued that it was the Western powers, with help from American capital, bankers and powerful industrialists, who rearmed Germany and encouraged Hitler to expand into the East. The Soviet Union, on the other hand, tried to facilitate collective security, but their efforts failed because of a lack of will on the part of the French and British. The Munich Agreement was not, therefore, simply a result of Anglo-French appeasement, cowardice and stupidity. The real meaning of the agreement was that ‘the districts of Czechoslovakia were yielded to Germany as the price of undertaking to launch war on the Soviet Union’.14 The Soviet actions therefore represented a legitimate attempt to gain time in order to prepare for the aggression. Falsifiers was soon translated into several languages, including Czech,15 and hundreds of thousands of copies were distributed.16 The book was also partly reprinted, with a commentary, in Rudé Právo (Red Justice), the official newspaper of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia (KSČ), and in its Slovak equivalent, Pravda (The Truth). One Pravda journalist concluded in September 1948 that: v 47 v

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The Munich Crisis, politics and the people in 1938 there was a widespread belief that the Western powers had to sacrifice us because they did not feel strong enough to stand up to Hitler. That’s only half truth. The full truth is that they would not have defended us even if they had the power and means. The giving up of Czechoslovakia to Hitler was not just a matter of necessity, ‘in the interests of peace’, as was often emphasised here, but a deliberate action. The Western powers yielded Czechoslovakia to the mercy of Hitler in full consciousness of their betrayal. At the same time, however, they did so in the hope and false assumption that this betrayal would bear fruit in Hitler turning against the East, against the Soviet Union, and thus fulfilling the hopes they had held onto since the first day he appeared on the European stage.17

But Falsifiers was only the first contribution to a very long line of Munich propaganda published in the Soviet Union and followed up elsewhere in the Eastern bloc. Numerous other works were translated from Russian and circulated in Czechoslovakia.18 The most important of these were probably Ivan Fedorovich Ivashin’s Boj SSSR proti provokační mnichovské politice, boj za kolektivní odpor proti útočníkům (The USSR’s Fight against the Provocative Munich Policy, the Fight for the Collective Resistance Against The Invaders [1952]) and Mikhail Semenovich Gus’s Američtí imperialisté – inspirátoři mnichovské politiky (American Imperialists – Inspirers of the Munich Policies [1953]). Gus argued that the greatest enemy of the Soviet state was American imperialism, and that the real organisers of the Munich Agreement were the rich bankers of Wall Street, whose ultimate intention was to destroy the Soviet Union. It was they who motivated Germany to attack the USSR, and that aim, along with delaying the opening of the second front in Europe, was all part of the ‘grand strategy’, a plan to destroy the Soviet Union. Naturally, Gus concluded by suggesting that the American imperialists would fail because history was on the side of communism. As well as translations of key Soviet books, brochures and propaganda, a plethora of other books, articles and caricatures along the lines set out by the USSR were published in Czechoslovakia by domestic authors. In the August 1948 edition of the satirical weekly Dikobraz, for example, a cartoon drew a comparison between 1938 and 1948 (see Figure 2.1). While in 1938 it had been the Italian, German and British imperialists who threatened world peace (and who on the plate labelled ‘Munich’ point to the small figure of Czechoslovakia), in 1948 the threat came from British, American and, interestingly, Chilean imperialists, who on the plate labelled ‘Lake Success’ are again pointing to the small figure of Czechoslovakia.19 Two articles published in the magazine Tvorba v 48 v

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Czechoslovak communist propaganda, 1948–89

2.1  ‘Podobnost čistě náhodná: kdo ohrožuje světový mír?’, in Dikobraz, 6 August 1948 (vol. IV, no. 23).

in 1951 (‘American imperialists – initiators of the Munich Agreement’ by K. Bartoška, J. Kučera and J. Muška, and ‘American imperialists and Munich’ by O. Říha) drew on material from Gus’s book.20 Both articles argued that the Munich Agreement was in fact inspired, directed and controlled by American imperialism, that is, from Wall Street. The idea of American imperialists financing Munich was even served up to readers of the magazine for the Czechoslovak Union of Youth (Československý svaz mládeže). The January 1951 edition proclaimed: ‘September 38, that is how the words of betrayal sounded. That’s how the fascist tycoon dictated our small working man’s home … Never again Munich, never again war! … the rise of fascism was fast, and the gentlemen from Wall Street helped him get up on his feet.’21 While following the Soviet line, Czech and Slovak authors also developed their own interpretations of the Munich events. As early as 1948, the deputy prime minister and eminent Czech communist diplomat and politician Zdeněk Fierlinger published the second part of his memoirs, Ve službách ČSR,22 which signalled an interesting change in his thinking. In the first part of his memoirs, published just a year before,23 he had flatly denied any involvement of Beneš in the ultimatum. In part 2, however, Beneš suddenly appears as a direct agent of Western ­imperialism. Part 3, v 49 v

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The Munich Crisis, politics and the people from 1951, only confirms this.24 The change of Beneš’s role in the events of Munich (as portrayed in communist historiography and propaganda) is symptomatic of a more general change in appraisals of the Munich crisis during the late 1940s and early 1950s. In communist eyes, Beneš’s role evolved from ‘victim’ to ‘traitor’, an ‘agent of international imperialism’ and ‘head of the insidious plot against the people’.25 A similar change can be seen with respect to Winston Churchill, whose ‘role’ changed from ally in the common effort against fascism to agent of world imperialism.26 Fierlinger also wrote Zrada čs. buržoazie e jejich spojenců (The Betrayal of the Czechoslovak Bourgeoisie and Its Allies [1951]). Another important book was Rudolf Beckmann’s K diplomatickému pozadí Mnichova. Kapitoly o britské mnichovské politice (The Diplomatic Background to Munich. Chapters on British Munich Policy [1954]), which criticised Britain’s pre-war and post-war foreign policy and suggested that ‘the Munich crime was a result of the class struggle, at home and abroad. Domestically, it was the fruit of the rule of Czechoslovak financial capital … internationally it built on the imperialist policy of the war of intervention by 14 capitalist countries against the young Soviet Russia.’27 Many other articles, books, brochures and lectures repeated the same mantra.28 The theses and commentaries were distributed through all possible media from newspapers and magazines, books and brochures, to radio, canvassing, agitating and public lectures. The main initiator of all this activity was the chief party ideologue Václav Kopecký, who had set the tone in a key report to the meeting of the advisory board of the Czechoslovak Communist Party Central Committee in September 1948. In 1951 Kopecký published Třicet let KSČ (Thirty Years of the KSČ), in which he claimed that responsibility for Munich should be laid on the shoulders of Edvard Beneš and the Western powers. This was an ­important contribution, as Beneš’s role soon became one of the key components of Czechoslovak communist propaganda. Also of note are the works of the young historian Václav Král, whose role would become still more significant in the 1970s. In 1952 Král published, in Slovak, Beneš a obrana štátu (Beneš and the Defence of the State), based on his earlier articles published in Tvorba. Along with some of his other works from 1952 and 1953, the book marked the peak of the  ‘anti-Beneš campaign’.29 According to Král, the reactionary politics of the Czechoslovak bourgeoise was not just wrong but amoral, and President Beneš was an agent of Western imperialism and responsible for the collapse of Czechoslovakia. The only positive thing v 50 v

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Czechoslovak communist propaganda, 1948–89 about the First Republic was the workers’ movement and the undeniably beneficial, moral and correct policies of the Communist Party, which protested loudly against Munich and sought to encourage people to defend the country.30 With their pompous and overblown vocabulary and over-emphasis on the positive role of the Communists, Král’s works often ignored the basic facts or simply cherry-picked those which served his narrative. In his 1952 work, his storyline did not even follow events chronologically. This ‘anti-Beneš’ narrative was extended to the Slovak part of the republic by, for example, Jaromír Hořec in his work Cesty, ktoré viedli k Mníchovu (Roads That Led to Munich [1955]). The Czechoslovak historiography and the state propaganda of the late 1940s and the first half of the 1950s largely followed the main themes and arguments of the Soviet output with regard not only to the Munich question but politics and ideology in general.31 This was the era of the Stalininspired purge of ‘disloyal’ elements in the national communist parties throughout Central Europe. The Czechoslovak communist historiography and propaganda should therefore be put into proper perspective and considered in the context of the campaigns against ‘cosmopolitanism’, ‘bourgeois nationalism’ and the show trials that began in 1949 and continued into 1953 and 1954 despite General Secretary of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia and ardent Stalinist Klement Gottwald’s death in 1953.32 Many of the books mentioned above were presented as scientific, historical monographs, based on scientific analysis, and were referenced in propaganda and the media. They were simply instruments of politics, however, rather than genuine scholarly works, and the distorted interpretations they contained were full of illogicalities which became ever clearer with each new publication. More importantly, though, the works harmed the Communist Party itself; in some of the works, the communists even appeared naive in supporting Beneš or even in following bourgeois policies: the communists, for example, had supported Beneš in his presidential candidacy in 1935. Similarly, after the war, in 1946, it was President Edvard Beneš, not himself a communist but nonetheless highly amenable to co-operation with the Soviets, who actually invited Gottwald to be prime minister after the elections. In February 1948, fearful of a civil war and of Soviet intervention during the coup d’état, it was again Beneš who appointed a new government in accordance with the demands of the KSČ.33 How, then, could someone who was supported by the communists, someone to whom the communists should be grateful for helping v 51 v

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The Munich Crisis, politics and the people them take power, become such a negative and treacherous figure? The contradiction is explained by noting that it was not official communist policy, but rather certain elements of party that betrayed the party line by following and supporting Beneš. The head of this conspiracy was said to be Rudolf Slánský, who ultimately paid for it with his own life in the infamous Slanský trial of 1952 and was hanged in December the same year.34 The claims of Král, Kopecký and others were often unsupported by documents and were contradictory and illogical. In the second half of the 1950s, several historical works appeared which sought to correct the narrative, especially with respect to the role of Edvard Beneš. One of the first of these accounts appeared in 1954, when historian Věra Olivová reviewed and criticised Václav Král’s book,35 highlighting some of its irregularities (although in general she was complimentary of the book). Probably the most important of these revisionist works were Jiří Hájek’s Mnichov (Munich) and Robert Kvaček’s Osudná mise (Fateful Mission), both published in 1958, a year that became highly significant with regard to discussions concerning interpretations of the Munich Agreement. Both authors sought to justify the policies of the Czechoslovak political elites and specially to justify the role of President Beneš. They rejected the idea of the ‘agent theory’,36 and claimed that Beneš accepted Munich against his will. They concluded that it was not so much the domestic bourgeoisie that was responsible for Munich, but the Western powers. Being academic works, and not commissioned by the party, they were not automatically translated into political propaganda. In fact, quite the opposite. Before the publication of Kvaček’s book, which focused on Runciman’s mission in Czechoslovakia in August and September 1938, an anonymous editor added an extra page to the conclusion in which it was stated that although the book clearly showed the guilt of the Western powers, the reader should bear in mind that the domestic bourgeoisie was equally responsible for Munich.37 The official party line had not changed. As much as the year 1958 is noteworthy regarding discussions about interpretations of Munich, it is equally significant with respect to the use of the Munich question in Czechoslovak propaganda and diplomacy. In September, on the twentieth anniversary of the Munich Agreement, the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia organised a huge international conference attended by delegates from all the Eastern bloc countries and some historians from the West. Until then, the media had paid little attention to academic conferences, but the Munich conference of 25–27 September 1958 was an exception and was given full coverage v 52 v

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Czechoslovak communist propaganda, 1948–89 in the Czechoslovak state media. For example, the Slovak newspaper Pravda prepared extensive reports from each day of the conference, quoting participants and summing up their presentations. The edition on 30  September also contained a supplement featuring the complete text of the Munich Agreement, and quotations from Lenin’s works and from Dějiny Československa (The History of Czechoslovakia), the official university textbook written by Václav Husa.38 The conference was opened by Husa himself, but the two keynote papers were presented by Isaak Israelewitsch Minz, a Soviet historian and one of the principal ideologues of Stalinism, and Jiří Hájek, the Czech historian who shortly before the conference had published his book, Mnichov. The book was comparatively moderate, but at the conference he confirmed the narrative from the early 1950s concerning the treachery of both the Western imperialists and the domestic bourgeoisie. The main arguments from the conference confirmed the party-approved narrative and ignored the new approaches of historians such as Kvaček and Olivová. Minz stressed the positive role of the Soviet Union, which had been willing to fight but was not allowed to by the Czechoslovak bourgeoisie. He also claimed that Western historiography and the Western media had lied about the events. Interestingly, one of the participants was Andrew Rothstein, a British journalist and member of the Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB) and one of the leading public faces of the British communist movement. In his paper, Rothstein criticised the policy of the British government and insisted that it was determined by capitalist interests. Other interesting papers were presented by three Czech economic historians (among them Václav Král), who argued that the Munich Agreement had been deemed necessary because capitalism was collapsing, and it needed to wage war and expand in order to survive. Pravda and other newspapers also quoted Antonín Šnejdárek, the director of the Institute of History of the Czechoslovak Academy of Sciences, who said that the conference ‘safely concluded that Munich was not an historical necessity and that it could have been stopped if all the peace-loving and progressive forces of the world had united to stop the aggressors’.39 He also added that similar forces were at that moment preparing a fresh aggression and the old mistakes must be avoided the second time around. This remark signalled a new line in party policy and the beginning of the Munich question being used to change attitudes in foreign diplomatic circles. Among the condemnations of ‘Western imperialists’, attacks on West Germany started to appear prominently. Pravda published, in full, the joint statement from the Czechoslovak and v 53 v

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The Munich Crisis, politics and the people East German governments that condemned the Munich Agreement and advocated a rigorous struggle to ‘combat the modern appeasement’.40 This was hailed as evidence that East Germany was the good, anti-fascist Germany, whereas West Germany was following in the footsteps of Adolf Hitler and was controlled by American capital. Indeed, as one journalist put it, ‘Adenauer today is working in accordance with Hitler’s policy of anti-Soviet politics. In this, he has the full support of the Western imperialists. On the other hand, the GDR is showing to the whole German nation that Germany does not need to expand and that it is peace which is necessary for prosperity and economic wellbeing.’41 The September 1958 edition of Dikobraz carried a cartoon of a figure in a Nazi uniform, apparently representing West Germany, shouting ‘Repeat, repeat’, with a thought bubble containing a picture of Munich (Figure 2.2). In the same collage, however, there was also a soldier of the Red Army raising the Soviet flag over the Reichstag and a photograph from the Nuremburg trials with the question ‘Do you really want a repeat?’42 Another cartoon, this time in the Slovak equivalent of Dikobraz, the satirical weekly Roháč, in September 1958, depicted a fat figure in a suit, representing the capitalists, laying a wreath on the grave of the ‘Munich Agreement’, while buried beneath lie the skeletons of

2.2  ‘Mnichov’, in Dikobraz, 25 September 1958 (vol. XIV, no. 39). v 54 v

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Czechoslovak communist propaganda, 1948–89

2.3  ‘Mníchov, 1938–1958’, in Roháč, 26 September 1958.

Hitler, Mussolini, Chamberlain and Daladier (Figure 2.3). Even though all the signatories were dead, the ‘global imperialists’ are still mourning Nazi Germany and the Munich Agreement.43 In the context of this ‘new diplomatic offensive’ in 1958, several publications also appeared in English.44 The conference papers were published v 55 v

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The Munich Crisis, politics and the people in three languages: the Czech title was Kdo zavinil Mnichov? (Who was responsible for Munich?), but the English translation of the papers was published under the far more moderate title of ‘Lectures on the history of Munich’.45 Other works included Pavel Eisler’s Munich: A Retrospect (1959). While still arguing that the actions of the Western powers represented a betrayal, and still attacking contemporary German revanchism and militarism, it was written in more moderate language and used quotations from British newspapers and other publications. Eisler’s narrative followed that of the latter half of the 1950s historiography and almost completely ignored domestic policy and the supposed treachery of the Czech and Slovak bourgeoisie. As a rule, works in English, French and German tended to emphasise German expansionism and imperialism and the West’s betrayal of Czechoslovakia. All were published with the approval of or directly by the Czechoslovak Ministry of Foreign Affairs, with the aim of influencing public opinion abroad, changing attitudes in foreign diplomatic circles (especially in Britain and Germany) and admitting no discussion whatsoever about Czechoslovak guilt. In the 1960s, a gradual liberalisation finally began to take place in Czechoslovak society. The Czechoslovak Communist Party was slow to implement a programme of de-Stalinisation, largely because the party leadership had been so intimately involved with the practices of the Stalinist era, especially the show trials of the early 1950s (most notably the Slánský trial).46 However, after pressure from Moscow and from within, the party precipitated a movement for reform and reformminded communist intellectuals produced a proliferation of critical articles. Criticism of economic planning merged with more general protests against KSČ bureaucratic control and ideological conformity.47 The concomitant change in the narrative concerning the Munich Agreement, begun already in the late 1950s, now gained significant momentum. An easing of the rules and a slow process of democratisation prompted a new wave of serious historical research which was as ideologically free as was possible for the time. One of the most important authors of this period was Míla Lvová, who published several articles and a book in the 1960s. Lvová refuted the thesis concerning the ultimatum of 21 September 1938 from the Czechoslovak government – an argument much used in anti-Beneš propaganda.48 Lvová and others would eventually go so far as to question whether the Soviet Union could in fact have been of any real assistance to Czechoslovakia in 1938. Such a discussion would have been impossible to imagine in the 1950s. No conclusions were drawn, but simply questioning the Soviet desire and ability to provide v 56 v

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Czechoslovak communist propaganda, 1948–89 military assistance was something that had previously been unconscionable. In connection with this discussion, a minor brouhaha was created by General Ludvík Krejčí, chief of the general staff until 23 September 1938, who appeared in a television discussion in September 1967. Until then prevented from speaking freely about the events of 1938, Krejčí stated on live TV that ‘the successful defence of the state in 1938 was not possible’, and also indicated that assisting Czechoslovakia had not even been considered by the Soviet Army at the time.49 Lvová also prepared a historiographical essay criticising previous works and setting them in a wider perspective.50 There were other historians with ‘reformist’ views, notably Alena Gajanová, Robert Kvaček, Věra Olivová and Jan Křen.51 Some important documents were also published, for example, Edvard Beneš’s extended memoirs,52 which also contained chapters on domestic policy during the Munich Crisis and provided a new perspective on the role of the bourgeoisie and their supposed treachery.53 This change and easing of strict regime rules should not be over-emphasised, however. The main arguments concerning the crisis in capitalism, the betrayal, and the intention to attack the USSR through Czechoslovakia were still to be found in virtually all Munichrelated publications, and although numerous books were available on the subject, very little serious historical research permeated state propaganda. The more moderate approach came to an abrupt end, however, with the Soviet invasion of August 1968.54 Communist propaganda very quickly reverted to its original narrative, describing Munich as an act of treachery by the Czech and Slovak bourgeoisie (often with an emphasis on the negative role of Beneš) and the Western imperialists, and insisting that the ultimate goal had been the destruction of the USSR and communism. After the invasion, the Munich question became a significant legitimising factor; in fact, it remained one of the very few convincing arguments the regime possessed, and it used it widely, especially on every anniversary. In September 1968, just a month after the invasion, an editorial in (the Slovak) Pravda stated that: The Czech and Slovak people have drawn their lessons from the Munich experience. They freely decided to build the Socialist Social Order … They have firmly incorporated themselves into the bundle of communist socialist states and see in this bundle the guarantee of their security for the future. They never changed this direction and continue to follow this path … They will work earnestly … so that other Munichs – attacks on territorial integrity, sovereignty, the right of nations to self-determination v 57 v

The Munich Crisis, politics and the people

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and ­fundamental human rights – were not only lawfully banned but also ­virtually removed from international life.55

Indeed, Pravda ran several articles about Munich over several days around the thirtieth anniversary in September, gradually reiterating all the arguments used during the 1950s, including those concerning the imperialists of Wall Street. The latter were naturally also responsible for the counter-revolution from which Czechs and Slovaks were saved by the armed forces of their communist friends and brothers. Ignoring pages dedicated to sport, the greater part of the content in Pravda between 28 and 30 September 1968 concerned Munich. It nonetheless provides an extremely dull read. The articles used different words but made all the same arguments and used a type of ‘communist slang’ – ‘class struggle’, ‘imperialist bestiality’ and so on – that is almost unreadable today. The Munich argument should also be considered in the context of Czechoslovak–West German relations. The two states did not recognise one another diplomatically or declare the Munich Agreements null and void until as late as 1973 (Treaty of Prague). Communist ideologues were thus freely able to exploit fears of further German aggression in the years following the 1968 invasion. At a meeting of the Foreign Committee, the MP Andrej Žiak stated: even today, 30 years later, the Munich Agreement and its spirit present a significant danger to peace in Europe and in the world. Although most states have condemned the Munich Agreement and declared it void from the beginning, up until today one of the successor states of the fascist Germany – Federal Republic of Germany – did not. It is there, where the forces and organisations that refuse to reject Munich and still consider the Munich Agreement valid can freely operate and actually base their claims. But the situation today is different from 30 years ago: Czechoslovakia has become a member of the socialist community and the Warsaw Pact, where it sees the best and true guarantee of its safety.56

But the most prominent ideologue concerning the Munich question after 1968 was Václav Král, who was at the forefront of the ‘normalisation’ of Czeschoslovak historiography and enjoyed Soviet backing, even to the extent of removing several pro-reform and liberal historians, including Jan Křen, who had to emigrate.57 Král sought to return the discourse on Munich, as far as was possible, to the rigid schematics of the 1950s.58 In Spojenectví československo–sovětské v evropské politice 1935–1939 (The Czechoslovak–Soviet Alliance in European Politics 1935–1939), published in 1970, he outlined the main arguments for the absolute necessity v 58 v

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Czechoslovak communist propaganda, 1948–89 for Czechoslovakia to orient its foreign policy towards the USSR, arguments he based on the country’s historical experience. The presence of Soviet troops in Czechoslovakia after 1968 was also a necessity if another Munich was to be avoided. More books followed; he published Plán Zet in 1973 and Dny, které otřásly Československem (Days Which Shook Czechoslovakia) in 1975. He explained the Munich Agreement in terms of ‘a huge collusion of opposing classes’, claiming that Beneš’s ‘orientation was primarily a matter of the class-based character of his foreign policy’, and, despite the argument having been seriously contested in the 1960s, contended that it was primarily Beneš and the Western imperialists who had been responsible for Munich.59 Král’s polemics were very much the driving force behind the discourse on Munich, not only in academic and diplomatic circles,60 but also in the rhetoric aimed at the masses. One of the most significant pieces of propaganda from the early 1970s was the two-part film Dny zrady (Days of Betrayal), released in 1973 and hugely popular at the time. Although an interesting piece of cinematography, the film portrayed the Munich Crisis exactly as the Communist Party wanted it portrayed: as an act of treachery and betrayal by the evil imperialist West who allowed Czechoslovakia to be destroyed by the Nazis and pushed Hitler further East to destroy communism and the Soviet Union. The only force that refused to submit to Nazi Germany was the Czechoslovak Communist Party. The people, led by the Communist Party, wanted to defend themselves, but the wicked bourgeoisie, led by Beneš, betrayed it. The portrait of the defeatist Beneš, the country’s president, stands in stark contrast to that of the warlike Klement Gottwald, the leader of the Communist Party. The narrative changed very little through the 1980s. In his 1987 work on the concept of collective security, the historian Ladislav Deák claimed that the Czechoslovak government had been wrong when ‘in the new situation, instead of relying more on the USSR, the main supporter of peace and international security, [it] deviated from the policy of collective security and strengthen[ed] its orientation on Western democracies’.61 According to Deák, although the vast majority of the people wanted to fight, the governing bourgeoisie (led by Beneš) capitulated: ‘The reason for this capitulation was rooted in class differences. The Czechoslovak bourgeoisie was closely allied to Western imperialistic policies, promoted anticommunism … [and] submitted itself to the strategic plans of imperialism. By sacrificing the republic, it helped to create a platform for German imperialism in Central Europe against the USSR and towards its isolation.’62 v 59 v

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The Munich Crisis, politics and the people In 1988, on the fiftieth anniversary of the Munich Agreement, Pravda published another series of articles which largely repeated the age-old narrative. Historian Valerian Bystrický suggested that apart from the betrayal of the Western imperial powers, something that had never been in doubt, ‘from the domestic perspective, the responsibility for the Munich Agreement lies with the governing bourgeois garniture represented by E. Beneš. At the critical moment it did not want to lead the nation into the battle and subordinated national interests to its own class interests.’63 Naturally, the Communist Party had been the only power to recognise the danger of such policies way back in 1930s and the USSR had been the only reliable ally ready to come to the aid of Czechoslovakia. Of all the newly ‘absorbed’ states of Eastern Europe which became the Soviet ‘sphere of influence’ and created what was called the Eastern bloc, Czechoslovakia provided the most fertile ground for genuinely positive reactions to Soviet propaganda. There were many reasons for this. Czechs and Slovaks had had a long tradition of sympathy towards tsarist Russia before the First World War, and the ideas of pan-Slavism had been widely disseminated across the Slavic regions of the Habsburg Empire.64 Similarly, the ideas of socialism and communism were well known in interwar Czechoslovakia, which was one of the very few countries during that time to allow the Communist Party to operate without hindrance. In general, Czechs and Slovaks welcomed the Red Army when they came as liberators in 1944 and 1945; indeed, the Soviet Union enjoyed considerable credit as ‘Liberator’ and had a profound influence on Czechoslovak foreign policy (despite the fact that the easternmost region of pre-Munich Czechoslovak territory, Carpathian Ruthenia, was annexed by the USSR shortly after being liberated). Czechoslovakia was the only country the Red Army troops had left by the end of 1945. The Czechoslovak Communist Party won over 30 per cent of the vote in 1946 in a free election.65 Nonetheless, arguably one of the most significant reasons for the genuinely positive reactions to the USSR was the widespread feeling of having been betrayed by the Western powers – a betrayal which allowed Hitler’s Third Reich to swallow a large chunk of Czechoslovak territory and eventually led to the country being effectively dissolved. Even before the communist takeover in February 1948, the Czechoslovak government strived to maintain positive relations with the Soviet Union, which was widely regarded as the only barrier to future German aggression. As demonstrated in public opinion polls, the Munich Agreement remains, even after eighty years, a very emotional topic for the majority v 60 v

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Czechoslovak communist propaganda, 1948–89 of ‘Czechoslovaks’, and we must assume, even in the absence of precise data, that this feeling was even stronger in the period immediately following the war and that this emotional response gave the Communists the perfect platform for their propaganda. The Munich question became an important component of communist propaganda for both domestic and foreign audiences. This was especially true on each anniversary of the signing of the Munich Agreement, when the media ran extensive campaigns sometimes lasting several days. The main argument was consistent throughout the forty years of the communist regime and can be summarised as follows: France and the United Kingdom were responsible for the Munich disaster, and the reason for their treachery was that the imperialists wanted to push Hitler against the Soviet Union and let him destroy communism. They were helped in this by the Czechoslovak bourgeoisie who colluded with the foreign capitalists and imperialists and so made Munich possible. And all of this was in line with the Marxist interpretation of fascism as the final stage of capitalism. A further and major emphasis in all propaganda throughout the forty years of communism was that in 1938 the Communist Party alone opposed and criticised the Munich Agreement, organised demonstrations, and sought to defend the republic against invasion. Emphasis was also laid on the Czechoslovak–Soviet Treaty of Alliance of 1935. According to the communist propagandists, the Soviet Union was willing, able and ready to help, but assistance was declined by President Beneš and his bourgeois cronies because they were afraid of communism. This was the ‘scientific evidence’ which proved that Czechoslovak foreign policy must look towards the USSR, the country’s only trusted ally in the 1930s and beyond. The Munich Agreement served as a legitimising tool through four decades of communist rule, right up until the end of the regime in 1989. Acknowledgement This chapter is a partial result of the project VEGA – 2/0140/18 (Institute of History, Slovak Academy of Sciences). Notes  1 Jan Kuklík, Jan Němeček and Jaroslav Šebek, Dlouhé stíny Mnichova: Mnichovská dohoda očima signatářů a její dopady na Československo (Prague: Auditorium, 2011). v 61 v

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The Munich Crisis, politics and the people  2 See Mirek Tóda, ‘Prekvapili a sklamali ste nás, stále sa však môžete pridať do klubu, hovorí britský veľvyslanec na Slovensku’, Denník N, 14 April 2018.  https://dennikn.sk/1095532/prekvapili-a-sklamali-ste-nasstale-sa-vsak-mozete-pridat-do-klubu-hovori-britsky-velvyslanec-na-sloven sku/?ref=list (accessed 18 July 2019).   3 Zora Bútorová and Grigorij Mesežnikov, Osudové osmičky vo vedomí slovenskej spolčonosti (Bratislava: Inštitút pre verejné otázky, 2018), p. 39. www.ivo. sk/buxus/docs//publikacie/subory/Osudove_osmicky.pdf (accessed 18 July 2019).  4 Ibid.  5 Josef Nožička, ‘Proměna presidenta o dvou jednáních. Z kampaně proti buržoasním padělatelům dějin 1948–1953’, Historie – Otázky – Problémy (History, Issues, Problems), 9:2 (2017), 81–102.   6 František Halas, Torso naděje (Prague: Melantrich, 1938).  7 For more details on public and popular responses to Munich in Czechoslovakia, see Jan Kuklík and Jan Gebhart, Velké dějiny zemí koruny české, sv. XVa (Prague: Paseka 2006), passim.  8 On the problems of research of totalitarian communist propaganda, with a special focus on Czechoslovakia, see Marína Zavacká, ‘K problematike výskumu totalitnej komunistickej propagandy: vybrané pojmy, mechanizmy, obsahy’, Historický časopis, 50:3 (2002), pp. 439–56.  9 A fine account of Marxist theories (also providing an important critique of non-Marxist definitions and interpretations of fascism) is Dave Renton, Fascism: Theory and Practice (London: Pimlico, 1999). 10 Raymond J. Sontag and James S. Beddie (eds), Nazi–Soviet Relations, 1939–1941: Documents from the Archives of the German Foreign Office (Washington, DC: Department of State, 1948). See also Ruth Henig, The Origins of the Second World War, 1933–41 (London: Routledge, 2005), p. 67. 11 Sontag and Beddie (eds), Nazi–Soviet Relations. See also Geoffrey Roberts, ‘Stalin, the Pact with Nazi Germany, and the Origins of Postwar Soviet Diplomatic Historiography’, Cold War Studies, 4:4 (2002), pp. 93–103. 12 Roberts, ‘Stalin, the Pact with Nazi Germany’, p. 97. 13 Ibid., p. 98. 14 Joseph Stalin, Falsifiers of History: An Historical Note (Moscow: Soviet Information Bureau, 1948), p. 24. 15 Josif Stalin, Padělatelé dějin. Historický dokumentární přehled (Prague: Světové rozhledy, 1948). 16 Nožička, ‘Proměna presidenta o dvou jednáních’, pp. 83–4. 17 Pravda (Slovak), 28 September 1948, p. 1. 18 For more examples, see Kuklík, Němeček and Šebek, Dlouhé stíny Mnichova, p. 244; Míla Lvová, ‘Dvacet let o Mnichovu v naší ideologii a propaganda’, Revue dějin socialismu, 9:3 (1969), pp. 323–61. v 62 v

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Czechoslovak communist propaganda, 1948–89 19 At Lake Success in 1947–48 the United Nations discussed the adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The Czechoslovak delegation criticised several points of the draft declaration and abstained in the vote. 20 Kuklík, Němeček and Šebek, Dlouhé stíny Mnichova, p. 244. 21 Za radostnejší život [For a happier life]. Kulturní materiál ČSM (Bratislava: Smena, 1/1951), p. 55. 22 Zdeněk Fierlinger, Ve službách ČSR [In the Service of Czechsolovakia]. Paměti z druhého zahraničního odboje. Díl druhý (Prague: Svoboda, 1948). 23 Zdeněk Fierlinger, Ve službách ČSR. Paměti z druhého zahraničního odboje. Díl první (Prague: Dělnické nakladatelství, 1947). 24 Zdeněk Fierlinger, Ve službách ČSR. Paměti z druhého zahraničního odboje (Prague: Svoboda, 1951). See also Lvová, ‘Dvacet let o Mnichovu v naší ideologii a propaganda’, p. 326. 25 The most detailed study of the influence of the Soviet campaign against the ‘bourgeois falsifiers of history’ on the development and transformation of the image of President Beneš in Czechoslovak historiography can be found in Nožička, ‘Proměna presidenta o dvou jednáních’; see also Věra Olivová, Manipulace s dějinami první republiky (Prague: Společnost Edvarda Beneše, 1998), p. 9. 26 See particularly Rudolf Beckmann, K  diplomatickému pozadí Mnichova. Kapitoly o britské mnichovské politice (Prague: Státní nakladatelství politické literatury, 1954). 27 Beckmann, K diplomatickému pozadí Mnichova, p. 3. 28 For more examples, see Kuklík, Němeček and Šebek, Dlouhé stíny Mnichova, p. 244; Lvová, ‘Dvacet let o Mnichovu v naší ideologii a propaganda’, pp. 323–31. 29 Nožička, ‘Proměna presidenta o dvou jednáních’, pp. 96–7. 30 Ibid. 31 Rachel Applebaum, ‘The Friendship Project: Socialist Internationalism in the Soviet Union and Czechoslovakia in the 1950s and 1960s’, Slavic Review, 74:3 (2015), pp. 484–507. 32 Galia Golan, The Czechoslovak Reform Movement: Communism in Crisis 1962–1968 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1971), p. 2. 33 Lvová, ‘Dvacet let o Mnichovu v naší ideologii a propaganda’, pp. 332–3. 34 Igor Lukes, ‘The Rudolf Slánský Affair: New Evidence’, Slavic Review, 58:1 (1999), pp. 160–87. 35 Věra Olivová, ‘O Masarykově a Benešově kontrarevoluční protisovětské politice’, Československý časopis historický, 2:2 (1954), pp. 313–19. 36 See David Beetham, Marxists in the Face of Fascism (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1983), pp. 150–8. 37 Jiří Kvaček, Osudná mise (Prague: Naše vojsko, 1958), pp. 227–8. 38 Pravda (Slovak), 30 September 1958, p. 6. 39 Pravda (Slovak), 28 September 1958, p. 3. v 63 v

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The Munich Crisis, politics and the people 40 The term used was ‘Mnichovanstvo’, a derisive expression for appeasement made from the word ‘Munich’. 41 Pravda (Slovak), 28 September 1958, p. 1. 42 Dikobraz, vol. XIV, no. 39 (25 September 1958), p. 1. 43 Roháč (26 September 1958), p. 1. 44 Kuklík, Němeček and Šebek, Dlouhé stíny Mnichova, p. 246. 45 Institute of International Politics and Economics (ed.), Lectures on the History of Munich (Prague: Orbis, 1959). 46 See Karel Kaplan, Report on the Murder of the General Secretary (London: I.B. Tauris, 1990); Lukes, ‘The Rudolf Slánský Affair’. 47 Kieran Williams, The Prague Spring and its Aftermath: Czechoslovak Politics, 1968–1970 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997); Golan, The Czechoslovak Reform Movement; H. Gordon Skilling, Czechoslovakia’s Interrupted Revolution (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1976). 48 Míla Lvová, ‘Jak to bylo 21. září 1938’, Příspěvky k dějinám KSČ: Časopis pro dějiny KSČ a mezinárodního dělnického a komunistického hnutí, 4:6 (1964), pp. 862–87; ‘K otázce tzv. objednaného ultimáta’, Československý časopis historický, 63:3 (1965), pp. 333–49; ‘Dvacet let o Mnichovu v naší ideologii a propaganda’, pp. 323–61. 49 Beseda o Mnichovské dohodě, Československá televise, 30 September 1967. www.ceskatelevize.cz/porady/1064346238-beseda-o-mnichovske-dohode/ 26753117055/ (accessed 15 May 2020). 50 Lvová, ‘Dvacet let o Mnichovu v naší ideologii a propaganda’. 51 Alena Gajanová, Československo a středoevropská politiká velmocí (Prague: Academia, 1967); Věra Olivová and Robert Kvaček, Dějiny československa/4, Od roku 1918 do roku 1945 (Prague: Státní pedagogické nakladatelství, 1967); Jan Křen, Do emigrace. Buržoazní zahraniční odboj 1938–1939 (Prague: Naše vojsko, 1969). 52 Edvard Beneš, Mnichovské dny (Prague: Svoboda, 1968). 53 Kuklík, Němeček and Šebek, Dlouhé stíny Mnichova, pp. 246–7. 54 B. Günter et al. (eds), The Prague Spring and the Warsaw Pact Invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968 (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2010); Skilling, Czechoslovakia’s Interrupted Revolution; Williams, The Prague Spring and its Aftermath. 55 Pravda (Slovak), 28 September 1968, p. 1. 56 Rudé Právo, 28 September 1968, p. 1. 57 Roman Šperňák, ‘Se soudružským pozdravem zůstávám dál. Rok 1968 v životě a díle Václava Krále’, in Bohumil Jiroušek et al. (eds), Proměny diskursu české marxistické historiografie (České Budějovice: Jihočeská univerzita v Českých Budějovicích, 2008), pp. 403–11. 58 Kuklík, Němeček and Šebek, Dlouhé stíny Mnichova, p. 247. 59 Václav Král, Dny, které otřásly Československem (Prague: Naše vojsko, 1975). v 64 v

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Czechoslovak communist propaganda, 1948–89 60 Some of his works had a direct impact on Czechoslovak–West German negotiations; see Kuklík, Nemeček and Šebek, Dlouhé stíny Mnichova, pp. 27–248. 61 Ladislav Deák, ‘Kolektívna bezpečnosť a  boj čs. ľudu proti fašizmu do Mníchova’, Sborník k problematice dějin imeprialismu, 22 (1987), p. 118. 62 Ibid., p. 124. 63 Pravda (Slovak), 30 September 1988, p. 3. 64 Hans Kohn, ‘The Impact of Pan-Slavism on Central Europe’, The Review of Politics, 23:3 (1961), pp. 323–33; Paul Vyšný, Neo-Slavism and the Czechs, 1898–1914 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977). 65 Jiří Friedl, Blanka Jedličková, Jana Škerlová et. al., Parlamentní volby 1946 a Československo (Prague: Historický ústav ČAV, 2017); Bradley F. Abrams, The Struggle for the Soul of the Nation: Czech Culture and the Rise of Communism (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2004).

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‘Curs yapping round the dying stag’, or the rituals of fractured societies: Hungary and Poland in the vortex of the Munich Crisis of 1938 Miklos Lojko From the moment the Munich summit ruptured the European international order in September 1938, its defenders and critics clashed in ideological and political battles that have lasted to the present day. This chapter does not necessarily intend to reopen these debates, though its position vis-à-vis the battle lines will be clear. The focus is not on Germany or the Sudetenland but on Hungary and, to a lesser extent, Poland, whose involvement in the Munich Crisis has received only limited attention in Western historiography. Poland and Hungary’s complicity in the German Nazi expansionist ambitions formed the less visible hinterland to the Munich Crisis in the autumn of 1938. In delving into the deeper layers of the rationale behind this complicity, this chapter attempts to blend the traditional political and the alternative social, psychological and narrative routes to examining the events and the political cultures that lie behind them. In particular, it suggests a link between the social milieu of a nation, its degree of democratic deficit, and its propensity to abandon the international legal norms. Converging on three vignettes (glimpses of contemporary life) at the end of the paper from the penumbra of 1938 – two from Budapest, one from Oxford – the study intends to add to the tapestry of unfolding images that make up our mental map of Europe in turmoil in 1938 – the year when, using a metaphor suggested by the contemporary British writer Margaret Storm Jameson, Europe fainted due to a ‘syncope’, a missed beat in the c­ ontinent’s heart.1

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Fractured societies: Hungary and Poland

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Political background Hungary and Poland were direct beneficiaries of the final protocol of the Munich Agreement. Especially in the case of Hungary, the very essence of the agreement, territorial revision, had been the country’s sole defining policy in the previous eighteen years. In Thomas Sakmyster’s words, this policy ‘connoted a deep, passionate nationalism and a firm commitment to the restoration of Greater Hungary. Rarely has a society been so thoroughly and fanatically dedicated to one single national goal.’2 There is little doubt, therefore, that insofar as the Hungarian territorial gains from the Munich process resulted in the return of former Hungarian lands, this would have been welcomed by the vast majority of the Hungarian public, even if large sections of the population were likely to be politically either inactive or indeed disenfranchised. But how did Hungary’s interwar society emerge from the turmoil of the post-war years? The disintegration in 1918 of the imperial-dynastic regimes of the preceding centuries brought extraordinary changes to East-Central European societies. In Hungary, while members of the high aristocracy emigrated or moved to the background, the disgruntled middle and lower gentry jostled into positions of control. Yet, it was this same broadbased gentry class that had taken the most severe hit from the war and its aftermath: thousands of civil servants, teachers and non-commissioned army officers became destitute, uprooted individuals, often refugees in their own country. They may well have lost their jobs to the Slavs and Romanians who had now taken possession of the former Hungarian lands. To boot, the gentry were also at the butt end of the edicts of the communist Kun regime (March–August 1919), most of whose commissars were leftist radicals of Jewish origin. It is not difficult to see why many of the new discontents crystallised into militant, often brazenly anti-Semitic, groups. Their organisations initially converged on the south-eastern town of Szeged, where many morphed into the crack troops of the new radical right that recognised Admiral Horthy as their protector, offering hope of political emancipation and salvation.3 In its foreign relations, before Nazi Germany erupted onto the political landscape, Hungary had faced isolation, ringed by the Little Entente countries (Czechoslovakia, Romania and Yugoslavia) who relied on France for patronage. Therefore, in this late revival of balance-of-power politics, revisionist Hungary developed an unlikely limited partnership of convenience with Great Britain, a country increasingly at odds with its v 67 v

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The Munich Crisis, politics and the people erstwhile ally France, stricken by doubts about the justness of the peace settlement and looking for willing associates in the financial revival of Europe.4 Several social aspects of Poland’s interwar history and its position in 1938 vis-à-vis the Czechoslovak crisis were remarkably similar to those of Hungary. Its early post-war history, however, was significantly different. Poland, a ‘winner’ of the First World War, was re-established as a democratic republic in 1918. Its constitution of March 1921 accorded freedom of speech, assembly, conscience and equality before the law to every citizen ‘regardless of heritage, nationality, language, race or religion’.5 Yet, because of the gargantuan task of reuniting the partitioned country from three disparate territories that had grown entirely apart over the previous 123 years, the bitter political differences between the socialists and the nationalist right (National Democrats or Endecja), deep ethnic divisions, and above all, perhaps, because of the recurrent failure of the economy, by the middle of the decade, parliamentary democracy was deemed to have failed in the country. In May 1926, Poland’s national-spiritual leader, Marshal Józef Piłsudski, instigated a coup d’état (in which around 600 people died) and instituted an authoritarian ‘national clean-up’ system called Sanacja. In the marshal’s own words: ‘Democratic freedoms were abused so that it became possible to hate democracy altogether.’6 The radical intervention was styled at the time as a socialist-backed coup, yet there was little or nothing socialist about the ensuing Sanacja regime. Piłsudski, who refused to wear formal titles, personally appointed the next president, Ignacy Mościcki, a loosely left-of-centre politician, who remained in his post until the end of September 1939, just days before Poland’s defeat at the start of the Second World War. Like Horthy in Hungary, the Sanacja leaders tried to steer a conservative middle path, equally repressive towards the hard left (Communists) and the hard right (the National-Radical Camp formed in 1934). In this endeavour, especially after Piłsudski’s death in 1935, the governing party, as in Hungary, shifted indisputably to the right. By 1938, without wielding precisely defined constitutional authority, yet, in accordance with the late Piłsudski’s wishes, bearing the title of ‘Second Man in the State after the President’, Marshal Edward Rydz-Śmigły had gained significant sway over the government. Marshal Rydz-Śmigły, President Ignacy Mościcki and Colonel Józef Beck as Foreign Minister effectively governed Poland until the outbreak of the Second World War, lending some legitimacy, in spite of the military overtones, to the civilian administration of a nation mired in internal and external conflicts. v 68 v

Fractured societies: Hungary and Poland

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Hungary and Poland in the late 1930s: the social milieu of Hungary On assuming power in 1920, Admiral Horthy and his prime ministers annulled the social, cultural, educational, health and economic reforms of the two post-war republican and revolutionary governments7 and reinstated the semi-feudal structures, titles and rituals of the pre-war Hungarian monarchy. The sizable urban working-class movement, stigmatised by involvement in the revolutionary republics, was politically silenced, many imprisoned for decades; dozens died in prison due to the dire conditions and maltreatment. As mentioned in the introduction, the ideology of territorial revision consumed the whole gamut of Hungarian society, especially in institutional life. Figure 3.1, a photograph taken in 1935 in a co-educational kindergarten in the southern city of Pécs where children aged as young as five (some clearly feeling uneasy in the enactment) were made to pose in uniforms with mock rifles, demonstrates the militant spirit that permeated a society in permanent resistance to the status quo. The enforcement of deference to authoritarian rule was buttressed by the prohibition of lèse-régent, the offence of insulting the person of the Regent Horthy. Manifestations of verbal disrespect for Miklós Horthy constituted a crime. More than a hundred prosecutions,

3.1  Photograph created by the studio of the well-known local photographic artist Jenő Zsabokorszky, June 1935. v 69 v

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The Munich Crisis, politics and the people some resulting in year-long prison sentences, took place in pursuance of this law until 1944, the end of the Horthy era.8 Hungary’s social fabric suffered from an even deeper malaise that outsiders would have found difficult to understand or even discern. This was due to the rural/agricultural (peasant) origins of the so-called country towns (more like overgrown villages than urban centres)9 and the dominantly non-Hungarian base of the middle class in the only true conurbation, the capital Budapest. Ferenc Erdei, the Hungarian contrarian social writer and activist, pointed out in his panoramic sociological survey Parasztok (Peasants, 1938) that the desperate attempts of the millions trapped halfway between a quasi-medieval peasant life and transition to urban living in Hungary, Poland and northern Croatia made for impatient aggressiveness in large parts of these societies, which defined the invisible mood of the countries concerned. In Erdei’s words, ‘[t]he repressed state of being gushes out of [the unwilling peasants] with untold force as they want to break free from their allotted fate at all costs’.10 Another writer in 1937 from the same mould did not mince his words: ‘Social classes in Hungary have never been so distant from each other as they are today, the idea of reconciliation has never been so hopeless [and] in their bitter struggle … for livelihood they show no mercy towards each other.’ And when peasants did break free of their bondage in rural poverty, instead of the lower middle class they found themselves among the urban proletariat.11 In the spring of 1937, the Hungarian ‘people’s writer’ Géza Féja, portrayed in his sociometric study Viharsarok (Storm Corner) the hopeless poverty and state of oppression of the Hungarian countryside (especially the south-eastern borderlands). He described the rigid social hierarchy as a survival of the Ottoman caste system of pashas, beys and janissaries12 and went on to explain how, with legalistic ingenuity, the Horthy regime ‘deprived very significant [working class] segments [of Hungarian society] of the right to vote’.13 In an even more stirring comment, Féja observed that in some parts of half-rural, half-urban Hungary,14 the ethnic German population was making headway in spreading the German racial ideology among the Hungarian peasantry and lower-middle-class citizenry, ‘skilfully connecting’ their own ‘racial aversion’ to the established but narrow middle classes with the traditional ‘social aversion’ felt by both the German and the Hungarian (ex-)peasantry towards the middle class.15 The exposure of this corrosive and anachronistic social deadlock led to serious consequences for the ‘sociographic writers’. Féja was prosecuted v 70 v

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Fractured societies: Hungary and Poland for his Viharsarok under Hungary’s draconian laws for ‘agitation against a political class’ and ‘infringing the esteem of the Hungarian state and the Hungarian nation’.16 For his Silent Revolution, Imre Kovács was charged in October 1937 with agitation and slandering the nation.17 Féja’s protracted court case (which triggered animated reactions in the Czechoslovak and Romanian press, while the Hungarian national patriotic club, the National Casino, sent a delegation to discuss the matter with Regent Horthy) lasted throughout 1938, reaching the Supreme Court of Hungary in 1939 where the author was sentenced to one month’s imprisonment (quashing the original sentence of five months’ imprisonment)18 and the suspension of his political rights. Eventually, in May 1940, Féja received a pardon and the abrogation of the custodial sentence, without explanation.19 But the executive-judicial interventions did not silence the March Front writers, whose publications reached a widening audience via the Athenaeum and Cserépfalvi publishing companies. In a book published in 1937, Ferenc Erdei bluntly pronounced a part of the petty bourgeois lower middle class of Hungary as having become ‘fascist’ under the influence of the national peasant movements.20 Few outward signs illustrated Hungary’s interwar entrapment in pre-modern symbolism better than the use of the so-called díszmagyar, an artificially archaic national dress invented in the early nineteenth century, imitating the fur-lined mantles and feathered ornamental hats of the sixteenth-century voivode princes of Transylvania combined with elements of the Hussar uniform (Figure 3.2). The díszmagyar was worn by the titled dignitaries especially if they held public office. For many, especially in the country, these social airs symbolised a return to normalcy after the ravages of war and the disruptive post-war revolutions. For the angry members of the socialist left (such as the authors of the March Front), such externalities embodied the bizarrely anachronistic nature of the political system. There were four official honorific titles of address in Hungarian public life adopted from pre-war times, creating a quasi-caste system. The title of tekintetes (‘person in high regard’, roughly ‘squire’) was due to low-ranking civil servants or secretaries of high-ranking officials. Nagyságos (approximately, ‘greatly respected sir’) was due to middleranking civil servants, middle- or small-size landowners, counsellors of middle rank, doctors, lawyers, engineers and well-placed ­schoolteachers. Méltóságos (Eminence) was accorded to top civil servants, counts, barons of the realm, ministerial counsellors, deputy ministers, members of parliament; directors, owners of large companies, of law firms; leading v 71 v

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The Munich Crisis, politics and the people

3.2  The government of Gyula Gömbös after their swearing-in ceremony, 1932.

lawyers, doctors, university professors, high-ranking officers below general, bishops. Finally, kegyelmes, or more formally nagyméltóságú (Excellency), was the form of address for ministers of the crown, princes, generals of the army and archbishops. Writing in 1942, the journalist and right-wing government party politician János Makkai found these titles ‘distasteful’, especially kegyelmes, because it ‘humiliated’ those who had to use it, was dishonest, strictly speaking unofficial and ‘overly pompous’.21 Women were entitled to be addressed according to the honorific title of their husbands. Unmarried women could be addressed according to the station of the father. If a woman married below her social rank, she was entitled to be addressed in accordance with the honorific title of her birth.22 Makkai pointed out that no other country in Europe applied such titles to their citizenry in everyday life.23 ‘Political nationhood’ in Hungary had, before 1918, been based principally on institutional cohesion rather than ethnic purity. This did not change officially with the onset of the Horthy regime, but the framework of perception in which nation, country, homeland and race were conceived altered during the 1920s and 1930s. The ‘collective crises of identity and political ordeal were the most important catalysts of the new discourses. This feeling of rupture was often couched in a generational v 72 v

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Fractured societies: Hungary and Poland discourse that contrasted the pre-1918 generations to the new cohort shaped by the experience of the First World War and its aftermath.’24 Therefore, acceptance of upward social mobility by social outsiders became ever dependent on assimilation to the Hungarian ‘military and spiritual type’, and to a common history. To find out what the true national type was, various discourses of ‘national essence’ were devised, stressing that the ‘nation had preceded all others in inventing most civilizational goods’. The national-­ generational ideology of the 1920s and 1930s was thus marked by an amorphous ethnic and social radicalism, often challenging the conservative mainstream of István Bethlen (prime minister 1921–31).25 Most notable among the ‘national essence’ discourses was a collection of essays published in 1939 by the leading ideologue historian of the period, Gyula Szekfű, entitled What is the Hungarian? The editor introduced the book with this admonition: ‘We intended this book as something like a norm, to make the Hungarianness of the people self-conscious, to save them from errors and illusions, and from sinking into the swamp.’26 This brings us to the question of official and unofficial anti-Semitism in Hungary at the time of the Munich Crisis. The earliest anti-Jewish law  – the so-called numerus clausus (or closed numbers) – had been passed as far back as 1920. This law restricted the number of Jewish students in higher education to the proportion of Jews in society. The antiJewish legislation, known as the First Jewish Law, passed in March 1938, extended numerus clausus, restricting the number of Jewish employees in the learned professions to 20 per cent, but still defining Jewishness by religion.27 In trying to justify the 1938 legislation in an English-language ‘liberal’ journal, the law professor and sociologist László Ottlik argued: Whether anti-Semitism is simply a regrettable prejudice or not, it is definitely a potent current in public opinion which is exceptionally strong to-day in Central Europe. Since however its roots lie in a popular instinct, successfully repressed in more liberal times, but re-emerging irresistibly since the War, it is the duty of a modern statesman to control it by trying to remove the main causes of its tremendous progress.28

In Ottlik’s rather cynical view, the Hungarian minorities of the neighbouring countries ‘would gladly welcome legislation [of this ­ nature] which would assure them of participation in economic and intellectual positions to the extent of four times their relative numerical strength’.29 v 73 v

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The Munich Crisis, politics and the people While acknowledging that any summary in a nutshell of this fraught question will fall short of proper scholarly scrutiny, it is important to add  that social radicalism (such as that of the sociographic writers discussed above) directed against the feudal aspects of the regime in Hungary could often blend with varying degrees of anti-Semitism. The pre-1914 image of the urban Jewish elite in cahoots with other oppressors of the peasants and workers was still alive and well in 1938. Neither were members of the social radical movement likely be unaffected by the revisionist ethos that had consumed Hungarian society and prevented even the fiercest critics of German Nazism from mounting a public defence of the integrity of the Czechoslovak state at the time of the Munich Crisis. Poland’s fragmented society In the parlance of the contemporary economists and sociologists, even decades after the rebirth of Poland, it continued to be two countries: Poland A (roughly, the former German-occupied western territories), with an economy and society that was little different from those of Germany and the Czech lands; and Poland B, east of the River Vistula, in Polesie and Volhyna, where, as in Hungary, the ‘second serfdom’ of peasants in a dominantly agricultural society dragged on, with 45.5 per cent illiteracy among the rural population and life expectancy under fifty years.30 It was largely in Poland B that the landed classes, the ziemiaństwo, descending from the old historic aristocracy and corresponding roughly to the position of the Hungarian gentry, retained a culturally, if not always politically, dominant position. Their self-glorification in the role of ‘defending the country in ancient times … preserving Polishness during the partitions [and] helping “our people” (the peasants)’ made them into role models for the relatively weak Polish urban middle class.31 It did not help that in south-eastern Poland, nearly all the big l­ andowners were Polish and most of the impoverished peasants were Ukrainian. ‘Title mania’ also reigned in Poland, ‘tell[ing] a lot about the postfeudal nature Polish society’,32 but the distinctions seem far less acutely detailed and obsessive than in Hungary. The ethnic cleavages of the Second Republic were equally complex and ultimately destabilising. In the census of 1931, only 63.8 per cent of the population identified themselves as native Polish speakers. Of its 35 million inhabitants in 1938, 14 per cent were Ukrainians, 10 per cent Jewish (30–40 per cent in some cities), 3.1 per cent Belarusians, 3.4 per cent Czechs and Lithuanians, 2.3 per cent Germans and 0.4 per  cent v 74 v

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Fractured societies: Hungary and Poland Russians. While the Socialists saw this as an opportunity to forge a new multi-ethnic and multicultural sense of Polishness, the National Democrats would not give up the exclusiveness of a Catholic ‘true’ Polish identity and demanded forced assimilation. Attitudes hardened towards the end of the 1930s. For example, the Prosvita Society, founded in 1868 for the promotion of Ukrainian language and culture, was banned in 1938.33 While, unlike Hungary, the Polish state never enacted antiJewish legislation, the situation of the sizable Jewish minority became progressively fraught, as, for instance, some universities imposed their own unofficial numerus clausus on Jewish students and (unsuccessful) attempts were made by the National Democrats to stage boycotts of Jewish businesses.34 We now turn to our three life vignettes which, with a detailed historical prelude to the third image, provide psychological facets to the sociopolitical environment outlined above. The first of these sketches takes us to Hungary in 1936. First vignette: the moral tale of Professor László Kétly and his student assistant. Professor Dr Baron László Kétly de Csurgó (1873–1936), a distinguished professor of internal medicine and diagnostics at the medical faculty of Pázmány Péter University in Budapest, and an unnamed medical student, his assistant at the faculty, are the protagonists of this short glimpse into the microcosm of contemporary life in Hungary’s capital, Budapest. It was reported from memory in an oral interview conducted by Tibor Frank35 with his uncle Dr Peter Flesch36 in 1965. The date of the original event was early 1936. Professor Baron László Kétly had received his baronial title together with his father, Professor Dr Baron Károly Kétly de Csurgó (1839–1927), who had also been a distinguished professor of medicine, a pioneer in neurology and electrotherapy, but also a prominent public dignitary of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy. Károly Kétly had been elevated to the baronage of Hungary (together with the rest of his family) by the Emperor-King Francis Joseph in 1913. The family had received the honorific noble title of ‘de Csurgó’ before the barony, but without an actual feudal estate at Fehérvárcsurgó in north-western Hungary from which the Csurgó title derived. Károly was Rector of the University of Budapest as well as a member of the mostly aristocratic upper house of parliament. No wonder, therefore, that his son, Baron László Kétly, proudly and anxiously clung to the prestige and privileges that his father had acquired and which were revived in the quasi-feudal twilight zone of the Horthy era. v 75 v

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The Munich Crisis, politics and the people Professor Baron László Kétly de Csurgó (an Eminence) started his workdays at the medical faculty with a quaint ritual. On arrival, his assistant, called gyakornok in Hungarian, opened the sliding grille door of the ornate elevator for him. Nothing too unusual about that, perhaps. But then, while the elevator ascended to the third floor of the medical faculty, the gyakornok had to keep pace with the lift, running as fast as he could on the surrounding staircase, to arrive just in time for the elevator to stop with its distinguished passenger and be able to open the grille door for him: Professor Dr Baron Kétly, being an eminence and a baron of the realm, could not be expected to open the door for himself. Kétly, who wielded considerable power at the university, always insisted that the same person who opened the door for him on the ground floor also opened it on the upper floor of his destination. Panting from the uphill forced march but with bated breath on arrival and standing to attention on the third floor, the gyakornok performed the ritual every morning five or six days a week. There seemed nothing or little objectionable about the obsequious ceremony in the eyes of the university community at the time. Yet, this authoritarian ritual epitomised some of the most ­unsettling anomalies that characterised interwar Hungary. To our eyewitness, Peter Flesch, looking back from the United States in 1965, it was bewildering to think that this had ever happened. Second vignette: the story of the four-year-old girl. We are in 1938, in a respectable, mainly Jewish, middle-class neighbourhood of Budapest, in the central-eastern side of Pest. The address is 3 Bethlen Gábor tér (square). My mother, born in 1934, is four years old. Like other children of her age, she was playing with kids from the neighbourhood in the spacious inner courtyard of one of the generously designed late nineteenthcentury tenement buildings of the city. Housewives kept an eye on the children. It is the early afternoon of a sunny but somewhat chilly spring day in 1938. An erect, dapper, grey moustachioed and bearded gentleman wearing a black trilby hat and an off-grey overcoat lined with what was called a black Persian wool collar entered the courtyard from the arched gateway. The little girl had been instructed by her mother (my grandmother) in the strictest terms that this particular gentleman must always be shown particular respect. He was a rich and powerful civic dignitary who, unlike my mother’s family, owned his own apartment in the building. As the gentleman was approaching, my mother plucked up her courage and volubly greeted him with these words: ‘Good afternoon Greatly Respected, Sir!’ (nagyságos úr). The problem was that the v 76 v

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Fractured societies: Hungary and Poland dignitary was not a Greatly Respected but an Eminence (méltóságos). The Eminence, thus insulted to the bone, grabbed my mother by the ear and pulled her along by his side until they stopped in the middle of the courtyard, whereupon the Eminence roared into the air through the spacious opening overhung by the decorated iron-fenced corridors that characterised these houses: ‘Whose child is this? Whose damned good-for-nothing child is this?’ People looked down, saying nothing. The Eminence would not let go of my mother until she was spoken for. My grandmother, immediately grasping the situation, answered meekly from the fourth floor: ‘She is my daughter.’ Wheezing with indignation, the Eminence gestured to my grandmother to come down to the courtyard. On arrival, she was admonished by the Eminence, who did not mince his words: ‘If you don’t bring up your child properly,’ he hissed, ‘you will be in trouble in a place like this, I can tell you. Understand? Woman? If anything like this happens again, you will be in trouble. Remember, you are tenants here.’ My mother has retained these images, words, tones and atmosphere in her memory to this day (reinforced, no doubt, by her mother retelling it to her later) – not as the most damaging incident (soon much worse was to come to Hungary), but as something humiliating, menacing and inauspicious. The first two vignettes tell the tale of the feudal hierarchy that lay at the heart of Hungary’s deeply conservative social milieu, in stark contrast to the sporadic modernist tendencies that began to appear from the mid1920s. Behind the facade of the decaying Gemütlichkeit37 of the AustroHungarian heritage hid these instances of workaday inhumanity. They also tell the tale of anxiety, born out of the permanent fear of humiliation, well documented by the contemporary social commentators Féja, Erdei, Kovács and Makkai (the first three prosecuted for their efforts). This trepidation morphed into an underlying state of mind that could define a personality without being understood and recognised for what it was. In assessing the emotional or psychological history of Hungary in this period (on which little work has been done recently), it is important to note that it was not just the unprivileged classes but the whole social pyramid that suffered from this affliction of fear and emotional stress. Those in the middle feared those above them, and those in the upper echelons feared those at the very top. T.S. Eliot’s line in The Waste Land (1922), ‘I will show you fear in a handful of dust’, perfectly encapsulates the collective psychology of interwar Europe, and of Central Europe in particular. Perhaps Margaret Storm Jameson, the Yorkshire-born v 77 v

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The Munich Crisis, politics and the people author-traveller-diarist, president of the English Pen Club from 1939 to 1944, who spent a few days in Budapest on the eve of Munich, came closest to describing the local atmosphere in her autobiography as ‘bitter, rough, puckering the mouth like a green fruit, and as indigestible’.38 Many may argue that this is a lop-sided representation of interwar Hungary, that it keeps silent about successful financial reconstruction, the various feats of engineering and of the efforts of the urban intelligentsia to rid the country of its feudal image and adopt Western liberal ways. That is true. But this is a story of what went wrong, not of what did not. Hungary, Poland and Munich On 20 September 1938, Dr Béla Imrédy, the Hungarian Prime Minister, and Kálmán Kánya, his Foreign Secretary, flew to Berchtesgaden (on Hitler’s aeroplane), informing the British and the French governments at the same time that they demanded the same rights for the Hungarian minority in Czechoslovakia as would eventually be accorded to the Sudeten Germans.39 Following the most intense horse trading during the next eight days with German, Italian, Polish, British, Yugoslav, Romanian and Czechoslovak interlocutors, including Slovak nationalists, on 28 September, one day after an almost identical note in relation to the Polish minorities had been communicated by the Polish president to the Czechoslovak government, the Hungarian leaders warned President Edvard Beneš that they would regard any discrimination against the  Hungarian minority in Slovakia as a hostile act perpetrated against the Kingdom of Hungary. While this sounded like sabre rattling, the great concern that Kánya and Imrédy felt during these critical days was that war could break out between Germany and Czechoslovakia, in which case they might not be able to restrain the radical right-wing elements within the Horthy establishment who wanted to strike Czechoslovakia – that aircraft carrier of Bolshevism40 – in alliance with Nazi Germany.41 Count István Csáky, Chef du Cabinet in the Hungarian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, was an invited observer at the Munich Conference. While it is often claimed that at the conference itself neither Germany nor Great Britain showed the slightest interest in Hungary’s or Poland’s aspirations,42 the Polish and Hungarian designs on Czechoslovakia had already been incorporated into the agreement during the afternoon talks of 29 September: while, according to the terms, Britain and France were to undertake to guarantee the post-Munich frontiers of Czechoslovakia immediately, Germany and Italy only agreed to join this guarantee once v 78 v

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Fractured societies: Hungary and Poland the question of the Polish and Hungarian demands had been settled.43 While Daladier and the French political elite in general may have been reluctant to dilate on the Polish and Hungarian ramifications of Munich, because the agreement had ‘shattered the French security system’44 in the east, and Chamberlain probably did not care, the Protocol – a supplement to the Agreement – dealt in precise details with the Polish and Hungarian claims on Czechoslovakia. The Hungarian demands, based on the Austro-Hungarian census of 1910, for roughly 14,000 square kilometres of Slovak and Subcarpathian territory including 1,346,000 inhabitants (about half of whom had declared themselves Hungarian in the 1930 census)45 were submitted to Axis arbitration only, since Chamberlain and Daladier had already washed their hands of the Hungarian and Polish claims. Before the arbitration, the Hungarians, like the Poles, tried negotiation, menace and even armed guerrilla tactics to obtain territorial changes. András Frey, a columnist of the – in the contemporary Hungarian sense – liberal English-language periodical The Hungarian Quarterly, had this rather tongue-in-cheek comment to make about the unfolding events: There is no doubt that a redrawing of European frontiers on ethnographic lines is on the way, at least in the regions lying to the east of the Berlin–Rome axis. It is a curious turn of fate that it should be owing to the armed forces of Germany that frontiers begin to adjust themselves to the Wilsonian principles.46

The arbitration itself was carried out in accordance with the provisions of the Munich Protocol on 2 November by the German and Italian foreign ministers, Joachim von Ribbentrop and Galeazzo Ciano, at the Belvedere Palace in Vienna. Ribbentrop announced the results in the evening whereby Hungary acquired some 12,000 square kilometres of land in southern Slovakia and Carpathian Ruthenia, with about 1,060,000 inhabitants.47 Even the pro-German Slovak delegates in the Czechoslovak delegation were so shocked by the one-sidedness of the decision that they had to be coerced into signing the document by Ribbentrop and Ciano. The awarded territories were occupied by the Hungarian army between 5 and 10 November, and the Hungarian Parliament enacted their incorporation into the Kingdom of Hungary on 12 November 1938. It has received little attention in the literature on the Munich Crisis that since these territorial changes occurred in full compliance with the Munich Agreement to which the United Kingdom had been a signatory, Great Britain automatically recognised the altered map of Hungary and v 79 v

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The Munich Crisis, politics and the people accepted the amended territorial validity of the exequatur (extraterritorial privileges) granted by Hungary to the British minister (head of mission) in the Kingdom of Hungary. The British Foreign Office took scant notice of this at the time but later during the war the legal position caused embarrassment when dealing with maps of the Central European region. Only in 1947 did the Treaty of Paris declare the Vienna Award null and void. Poland had inherited territorial disputes with Czechoslovakia from the time of the Paris Peace Conference in the Teschen (Těšín, Cieszyn), Javorina (Jaworzyna), Spiš and Orava regions along its southern border. Of these, the former Austrian Duchy of Teschen represented the most significant conflict of interest where, in two (Český Těšín and Fryštát) of its four districts, Poles constituted a majority of the population.48 The districts contained vital railways, high-quality coal deposits and steel mills. Polish leaders had long regarded the expansion of either the Soviet Union or Germany into territories south of Poland as an intolerable threat to their security. In their subsequent explanation of Poland’s behaviour at the time of Munich, it was argued that they had intended to parry both of these dangers by pressing their claim. The situation was further complicated by strong Polish objections to Soviet influence in Czechoslovakia reinforced by the Soviet–Czechoslovak Pact of Mutual Assistance of 1935. As tension between Germany and Czechoslovakia increased during the summer of 1938, so did that between Hungary and Czechoslovakia, on the one hand, and Poland and Czechoslovakia, on the other, with both Poland and Hungary supporting each other’s diplomatic positions and claims. Poland’s relationship with Germany rested on the terms of the non-aggression pact of 1934 which had provided it with a false sense of security that only began to weaken when the whirlwind of Munich triggered the concatenation of events exposing Western disloyalties and German–Italian unscrupulousness in their naked forms. Colonel Beck had apparently made up his mind, after the Western powers had done nothing to prevent the Anschluss of Austria, that Czechoslovakia was ‘indefensible’.49 The Polish leaders were initially keen to co-ordinate their moves with the British to whom Warsaw attributed a key role in the settlement of the crisis. But when, on 21 September, Edward Raczyński, the Polish ambassador in London, inquired about the British attitude to the Polish claims, Halifax’s rebuff was resounding: ‘The United Kingdom [was] concentrating all their efforts on the Sudeten German problem.’ In closing remarks, the British Foreign v 80 v

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Fractured societies: Hungary and Poland Secretary reminded the Poles of the remedies available in Article 19 of the Covenant of the League of Nations.50 The latter admonition was seen as particularly cynical at a time when British diplomacy had already abandoned trust in the League procedure. The Czechoslovak government was ready to discuss the Polish claims which were practically identical with regard to the Polish minority in Czechoslovakia as the German and Hungarian demands were. Beneš accepted the principle of border rectification. Since, however, in Colonel Beck’s eyes, Beneš was a personal enemy, the diplomacy between the two had been doomed from the start. Ratcheting up the rhetoric, Marshal Rydz-Śmigły declared to the French ambassador in Warsaw: ‘The whole of Poland want[s] Teschen.’51 Chamberlain was still in Munich when, on 30 September, Beck’s sharply worded note arrived in Prague demanding acceptance within twenty-four hours of the démarche signed by President Mościcki three days previously that required immediate cession of the two Teschen territories.52 The Polish diplomatic strikes ran in clear parallel with the Nazi dictator’s own timetable in the Sudetenland. Under unendurable pressure, on 1 October the Czechoslovak government accepted all the Polish demands and the occupation of the two districts took place accordingly. Yet, on 31 October, in a de facto ultimatum, the Polish government presented a further set of demands for territories in the already fatally stricken rump of Czechoslovakia which now involved Slovakia as well. The subsequent creation of the Polish–Slovak Delimitation Commission was a token gesture. By 27 November 1938, in full alignment with German and Hungarian coercive diplomacy, Beck’s policy yielded the following territorial gains for Poland at the expense of Czechoslovakia: the Czech districts of Bohumín (Bogumin, Oderberg), Fryštát, Teschen and Jablunkov (Jabłonków, Jablunkau), containing 230,000 inhabitants with major industrial and communications assets; an area with an important railway line near the Slovak town of Čadca (Czadca); two territories in the Orava district; a game reserve in Javorina (Jaworzyna); as well as further areas in the eastern Carpathians. While these territories amounted only to pockets in size (the area of the whole Duchy of Teschen was 2,200 square kilometres) compared to what was ceded by Czechoslovakia to Germany and Hungary, Poland’s participation in the dismemberment of Czechoslovakia (soon to be eclipsed by the Nazi and Soviet occupations of Poland) constituted a strategically and psychologically significant part of the Munich process. Furthermore, the grabbing of the industrial town of Bohumín, site of one of the most important railway junctions in Central Europe and a pivotal geographic v 81 v

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The Munich Crisis, politics and the people stronghold between Bohemia and Slovakia, was carried out without Germany’s (or indeed any other third party’s) approval and also alienated Poland’s two democratic allies in the West. Significantly, Beck’s diplomacy also managed to render the Czechoslovak–Soviet alliance defunct, which he had regarded as one of his principal aims. Throughout the crisis, Beck encouraged the Hungarian government to act hand in hand with Poland in enforcing their claims on Czechoslovakia, with the declared objective of obtaining a common Polish–Hungarian frontier, an idea that particularly displeased Hitler. Beck was exasperated when the Hungarians recoiled at the last moment from seizing Ruthenia. He also wanted to be one of the arbitrators of the Hungarian claims, an ambition which, in a rare show of unity, was solidly resisted by the German, Czechoslovak and Romanian governments.53 Yet, in the final analysis, Colonel Beck did not unreservedly welcome the outcome of these developments. He expressed disappointment at Poland not having been invited to the conference at Munich as one of the arbitrating powers. Moreover, rather bizarrely in the circumstances, the Polish leaders regarded the final result as ‘fundamentally disadvantageous for Poland [in] that Germany was to establish her hegemony over Czecho-Slovakia’.54 This was the kind of outcome that Beck had hoped to avoid in the first place. In the view of British ambassador to Poland Howard Kennan, by steering Poland onto a path of acting as a great power without having the political, military or economic strength for such a role, the Polish leadership with Beck at the helm at the time of Munich ‘rendered Germany a great service by adding to the demoralisation of Czecho-Slovakia and by discouraging Soviet intervention’.55 Above all, it became acutely obvious to many observers that, after the destruction of Czechoslovakia, the Nazi steamroller would now head towards Poland. The third vignette: ‘Curs yapping round the dying stag’. Few in the West paid attention to the post-Munich squabbles besetting the three EastCentral European countries. Among the exceptions were Robert William Seton-Watson and C.A. Macartney, the two outstanding British experts on East-Central Europe, and Hungary in particular, in the Oxford of the 1930s. Their dramatic exchange of letters before the Vienna Award to Hungary was announced forms the centrepiece of the third vignette. Carlile Aylmer Macartney, whose family had originated in Northern Ireland, had been, in his early career, Seton-Watson’s protégé and retained deep professional respect for his mentor. During the 1920s and v 82 v

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Fractured societies: Hungary and Poland 1930s, Macartney grew into an outstanding authority on everything Hungarian. In 1936, he was elected to a Fellowship at All Souls, Oxford, the hotbed of appeasement politics. Among his closest friends and the living sources of his articles and historical works were those Hungarian gentry officials (nagyságos, méltóságos and a few kegyelmes) whom he had befriended during his diplomatic mission (probably an intelligence posting) in Vienna during the early 1920s – a time of backlash and retributions against liberals and the left in Hungary. Macartney co-opted the bitter hatred of Hungarian socialists and communists that the exiled Hungarian gentry had taken with them to Vienna.56 Seton-Watson’s political outlook was the diametrical opposite of Macartney’s. Of Scottish birth and inheriting significant wealth from which he could finance his education and travels in Europe, he would become closely involved in the life of Hungary before the First World War. While, in 1907, still arguing that by social and economic modernisation the old Kingdom of Hungary could fulfil a pivotal role in the European balance of powers,57 his experiences led him to distrust and dislike the Hungarian gentry. Shortly after the outbreak of the First World War, Seton-Watson ‘abandoned his belief in the Habsburg Monarchy as a European necessity’.58 He went on to advise the Paris Peace Conference on the break-up of both the Dual Monarchy and within it the Kingdom of Hungary in the hope that the independent nation states that would replace it would, under Western tutelage, adopt a modern democratic structure, thus becoming new bulwarks against instability in Europe. Showing that he was not simply anti-Hungarian, Seton-Watson remained in close touch throughout the interwar years with his Hungarian friends on the radical left, such as Mihály Károlyi and Oscar Jászi, thus maintaining associations and obtaining viewpoints that Macartney would not have had. At the time of the turbulent run-up to the Munich Conference, Macartney, a frequent visitor to Hungary during the 1930s, sent a letter to The Times, dated from Budapest on 19 September 1938. For some reason, the editors only published the letter on 7 October, by which time the Pact in Munich had been signed, the debate in its aftermath was raging in the columns of the British broadsheets, and the Hungarians and the Poles were pushing forward with their demands for further cessions of territory by Czechoslovakia. Macartney contended in the letter that dissenting from the Magyar claims on the Slovak and Ruthenian parts of Czechoslovakia was no longer a sensible course to follow now that the West had abandoned Czechoslovakia altogether. ‘A stronger Hungary’, buttressed by v 83 v

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The Munich Crisis, politics and the people the reattachment of these regions to it, ‘linked with a stronger Poland [also benefiting from Munich] would, I submit,’ Macartney proposed, ‘be a much sounder solution than a patchwork with a lot of ragged ends.’59 Seton-Watson’s reaction was immediate and unequivocal. On 8 October 1938, in a private letter, he declared to Macartney: ‘I never trusted your political judgement, but I did not till now imagine you to be capable of joining the pack of curs who are now yapping round the dying stag. I must ask you to regard our acquaintance as finally closed.’60 But who or what was the stag whose powerful symbol was evoked by Seton-Watson, a Scottish nationalist turned British communitarian liberal? It does not take much stretching of the imagination to ­associate the stag allegory with Sir Edwin Landseer’s romantic painting The Monarch of the Glen, the serene yet awesome figure of a stag, set against the violet hills and watery skies of an isolated Scottish wilderness (Figure  3.3).

3.3  Edwin Landseer, The Monarch of the Glen (1851). v 84 v

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Fractured societies: Hungary and Poland Neither is it an exaggeration to say that Czechoslovakia, the stag of the letter, had largely been Seton-Watson’s own proud political creation in 1918–19. The stag was his beloved Scotland and Czechoslovakia rolled into one. Who killed stags in brutally unequal rituals in Seton-Watson’s Scotland Forever!?61 English lords on Scottish lairds’ estates. Lands carved out in the wake of the infamous Highland clearances. It is not difficult to visualise Lord Halifax, seen at the time as an arch-appeaser but also as the archetypal English aristocratic hunter, who had just returned from an ‘unofficial’ visit to Germany in November 1937 where he had called on Hermann Göring at his hunting lodge in Brandenburg, as the killer or one of the killers of the stag. Also known as the Holy Fox (another hint at hunting), whose other sobriquet ‘Halalifax’ (after Halali!, the German word for Tally-ho!) was given to him by Göring during that recent visit to Carinhall in the Schorfheide forest. Macartney, the small gentry from Ulster, like his fellow petty gentry friends in Hungary, could only join the curs – not even the beagles – at the end of the hunt. In closing, let me quote Macartney’s rejoinder to his erstwhile mentor: Dear Seton-Watson, I received your letter with profound pain. An acquaintance cannot be onesided, and I can therefore do no more than express the hope that a day will come when you will be able to distinguish between intellectual dissent from yourself and moral obliquity. When that day comes I hope that we shall meet again. Yours truly, C.A. Macartney62

The distinction between intellectual argument and moral turpitude accentuated in Macartney’s letter is perhaps the crux of the whole debate about Munich. The sheer immorality of the pact with Hitler was what had shaken Seton-Watson and seems to have passed Macartney by. Notes   1 Margaret Storm Jameson, Autobiography of Storm Jameson: Journey from the North, vol.1 (London: Collins & Harvill Press, 1969), p. 406.   2 Thomas L. Sakmyster, Hungary, the Great Powers and the Danubian Crisis 1936–1939 (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1980), p. 11.  3 Sakmyster, Hungary, the Great Powers and the Danubian Crisis, p. 16. v 85 v

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The Munich Crisis, politics and the people   4 Miklós Lojkó, Meddling in Middle Europe: Britain and the ‘Lands Between’ 1919–1925 (Budapest and New York: Central European University Press, 2006), pp. 11–153, passim.  5 Brian Porter-Szűcs, Poland in the Modern World: Beyond Martyrdom (Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell, 2014), p. 91.   6 Józef Piłsudski, Pisma zbiorowe (Collected Works) (1937), vol. 9, pp. 30–3, in Porter-Szűcs, Poland in the Modern World, p. 96.  7 The People’s Republic of Hungary with Count Mihály Károlyi as prime minister and later president – November 1918 to March 1919; and the Soviet Republic or Räterepublik under the de facto leadership of Béla Kun from March to August 1919.   8 Jan Bröker, ‘“Horthy is a Nobody” – Trials of lèse régent in Hungary, ­1920–1944’ (unpublished MA thesis, Central European University, Budapest, 2011).  9 In Futóhomok Ferenc Erdei underlined the fact that the so-called country town (mezőváros) could only be found in Hungary, it would not qualify as a town elsewhere: Futóhomok: a Duna-Tiszaköz földje és népei (Loose Sands: The Land and the Peoples of the Country between the Danube and the Tisza) (Budapest: Athenaeum, 1937), p. 66. 10 Ferenc Erdei, Parasztok (Peasants) (Budapest: Athenaeum, 1938), pp. 163, 165–6. See particularly the chapter ‘A türelmetlenek’ (The impatient). 11 Imre Kovács, A  néma  forradalom (The Silent Revolution) (Budapest: Cserépfalvi-Gondolat-Tevan, 1989 [1937]), pp. 59–60. 12 Géza Féja, Viharsarok: az Alsó Tiszavidék földje és népe (Storm Corner: The Land and the People of the Lower Tisza Region) (Budapest: Athenaeum, 1937), pp. 50–6. The book’s original title implies that the south-eastern corner of Hungary was, both in a literal and a political sense, from the extreme right as well as the left, a source of storms. 13 Féja, Viharsarok, p. 73. 14 For instance, in Mezőberény (German: Maisbrünn, Slovak: Pol’ný Berinčok), a German-Slovak-Hungarian country town in south-east Hungary. 15 Féja, Viharsarok, pp. 147–8. 16 A “Viharsarok” a biróság előtt: Féja Géza pere (The Storm Corner on Trial: Géza Féja’s Lawsuit) (Budapest: March Front, 1937), p. 6. 17 See Zoltán Szabó et al., A  néma  forradalom  a biróság és a parlament előtt: Kovács Imre izgatási és nemzetgyalázási pere (The Silent Revolution before the Court and Parliament: The Lawsuit against Imre Kovács for Agitation and Slandering the Nation) (Budapest, 1937). 18 A “Viharsarok” a biróság előtt, p. 46. 19 Zoltán Zimonyi, ‘Vihar a Viharsarok körül’ (Storm around the Storm Corner). http://zimonyizoltan.hu/feja-geza/vihar-viharsarok-korul (accessed 22 May 2019). 20 Erdei, Futóhomok, p. 51. Erdei had also been tried in 1933, in a military court as a national serviceman, for subversion, citing ‘extreme left-leaning v 86 v

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Fractured societies: Hungary and Poland t­endencies’ that made him a ‘harmful and possibly dangerous’ person for the military. Ferenc Tóth, Erdei Ferenc hadbírósági pere (The Trial of Ferenc Erdei in a Court-Martial) (Makó: A Makói Múzeum Füzetei, no. 53), p. 16. 21 János Makkai, Urambátyám országa: középosztályunk i­llemrendszerének és társadalmi viselkedésének szociográfiája (The In-laws’ Country: The Sociography of the Etiquette and Social Manners of Our Middle Class) (Budapest: Singer és Wolfner Irodalmi Intézet Rt), p. 97. 22 Janka L. Wohl, Az illem: utmutató a művelt társaséletben (Etiquette: A Guide Through Educated Social Life) (Budapest: Athenaeum, 1880), pp. 80–1. 23 Makkai, Urambátyám országa, pp. 95–7. 24 Balázs Trencsényi, ‘“Imposed Authenticity”: Approaching Eastern European National Characterologies in the Inter-war Period’, Central Europe, 8:1 (May 2010), p. 34. 25 Trencsényi, ‘“Imposed Authenticity”’, pp. 30–7 passim. In an eloquent speech to the Hungarian parliament in February 1938, Count Bethlen, who had long been out of office by then, warned that ‘if our political system is subjected to Gleichanschaltung in the form of right-wing ideas, we will become Germany’s slaves, not her friends, and in that case an independent Hungarian foreign policy will be once and for all at an end’; Thomas Sakmyster, Hungary’s Admiral on Horseback: Miklós Horthy, 1918–1944 (Boulder, CO: East European Monographs; distributed by Columbia University Press, 1994), p. 206. 26 Gyula Szekfű (ed.), Mi a Magyar? (What is the Hungarian?) (Budapest, 1939), p. 7 (quoted in Trencsényi, ‘“Imposed Authenticity”’). 27 This law was to be followed by the second, third and fourth Jewish laws, each with increasing stringency, in 1939, 1941 and 1942 respectively. 28 László Ottlik, ‘The Hungarian Jewish Law’, The Hungarian Quarterly, 4:3 (Autumn 1938), p. 405, emphasis added. 29 Ottlik, ‘The Hungarian Jewish Law’, p. 402. 30 Porter-Szűcs, Poland in the Modern World, pp. 112–13. 31 Jacek Kochanowicz, ‘The Changing Landscape of Property: Land Ownership and Modernization in Poland in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries’, in Hannes Siegrist and Dietmar Müller (eds), Property in East Central Europe: Notions, Institutions and Practices of Landownership in the Twentieth Century (New York and Oxford: Berghahn Books, 2015), p. 37. 32 Wojciech Roszkowski, Landowners in Poland, 1918–1939 (Boulder, CO: East European Monographs, 1991), pp. 128–9. 33 Porter-Szűcs, Poland in the Modern World, pp. 126–39. 34 Ibid., pp. 136–7. 35 Professor Emeritus of modern history, director of the School of English and American Studies at Eötvös Loránd University in Budapest (1994–2001 and 2006–2014), specialist in European Jewish emigration to the United States during the interwar years. v 87 v

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The Munich Crisis, politics and the people 36 Peter Flesch (1915–69) was a medical student in Budapest in 1936. He emigrated to the United States in 1941, where he became a research professor of dermatology at the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia. 37 Translates roughly as ‘unhurried cosiness’. 38 Jameson, Journey from the North, p. 406. 39 András Frey, ‘Danubian Chronicle’, The Hungarian Quarterly, 4:4 (Winter 1938), pp. 771–2. 40 Expression attributed to Adolf Hitler. 41 Sakmyster, Hungary, the Great Powers and the Danubian Crisis, p. 185. Hitler later blamed Imrédy and Kánya’s dithering and pusillanimity for, as he put it, the failure of his Munich plans; that the crisis did not result in war. 42 Sakmyster, Hungary, the Great Powers and the Danubian Crisis, p. 207. 43 Memorandum, Berlin, 29 September 1938, Documents on German Foreign Policy, 1918–1945, Series D (1937–1945), vol. II, Germany and Czechoslovakia 1937–38, Department of State Publication 3548 (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1949), pp. 1014–16, quoted in William R. Rock, Appeasement on Trial: British Foreign Policy and Its Critics, 1938–1939, (Hamden, CT: Archon Books, 1966), p. 138. 44 Rock, Appeasement on Trial, p. 138. 45 Hungary also asked for the transfer of two border crossings (Slovenské Nové Mesto and Šáhy) from Czechoslovakia as a ‘goodwill gesture’. 46 András Frey, ‘Danubian Chronicle’, The Hungarian Quarterly, 4:4 (Winter 1938), p. 769. 47 World War II Database, First Vienna Arbitration. https://ww2db.com/ battle_spec.php?battle_id=255 (accessed on 28 January 2019). 48 Ellen L. Paul, ‘Czech Teschen Silesia and the Controversial Czechoslovak Census of 1921’, The Polish Review, 43:2 (1998), pp. 161–71, p. 161. 49 ‘Poland: Annual Report, 1938’, Sir Howard Kennard (Warsaw) to Viscount Halifax, 1 January 1939, The National Archives, Kew, UK, FO 417/59/ C522/522/55, p. 13. 50 ‘Poland: Annual Report, 1938’, p. 16. 51 Kennard to Halifax, 24 September 1938, FO 417/64 (Further Correspondence Respecting Poland, 1933–41) C10587/2319/12. 52 Kennard to Halifax, 30 September 1938, ‘By Telephone’, FO 417/64 (Further Correspondence Respecting Poland, 1933–41) C11292/2319/12. 53 ‘Poland: Annual Report, 1938,’ p. 20. 54 Ibid., p. 18. 55 Ibid., p. 21. 56 Miklós Lojkó, ‘C.A. Macartney and Central Europe’, European Review of History, 6:1 (1999), p. 38. 57 Scotus Viator [R.W. Seton-Watson’s pseudonym at the time], The Future of Austria-Hungary (London: Archibald Constable & Co.), pp. 4, 61.

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Fractured societies: Hungary and Poland 58 László Péter, ‘R.W. Seton-Watson’s Changing Views on the National Question of the Habsburg Monarchy and the European Balance of Power’, in Miklós Lojkó (ed.), Hungary’s Long Nineteenth Century: Constitutional and Democratic Traditions in a European Perspective. Collected Studies by László Péter, vol. 1 in the series Central and Eastern Europe. Regional Perspectives in Global Context, series editors Constantin Iordachi et al. (Leiden and Boston, MA: Brill, 2012), p. 462. 59 R.W. Seton-Watson’s Papers, General Correspondence, Archives of the School of Slavonic and East European Studies, quoted in Lojkó, ‘C.A. Macartney and Central Europe’, p. 43. 60 Ibid., p. 44. 61 Seton-Watson’s first publication was Scotland Forever! and Other Poems (1898), written, according to his sons’ biography of their father, ‘in a high Byronic style’. Hugh and Christopher Seton-Watson, The Making of a New Europe: R.W. Seton-Watson and the Last Years of Austria-Hungary (London: Methuen, 1981), p. 9. 62 Seton-Watson Papers in Lojkó, ‘C.A. Macartney and Central Europe’, p. 44.

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‘What, no chair for me?’ Russia’s conspicuous absence from the Munich Conference Gabriel Gorodetsky

British historiography of the Munich Agreement has undergone radical metamorphosis. The ‘Guilty Men’ verdict of contemporaries, pinning all the blame on Neville Chamberlain for his naivety, ignorance and arrogance in the pursuit of foreign policy, gave way to the revisionism of the 1970s which introduced the constraints on Chamberlain – economics, pacifist public opinion and the poor state of British armaments.1 Little attention was drawn to the Soviet Union’s pivotal role in Munich – a role which, by and large, sustains the counter-revisionist view, clearly expressed by Anthony Adamthwaite and others, that, although Britain’s position was fraught with exceptional difficulty, ‘the way in which issues were perceived and tackled reflected a priori principles and choices’.2 Chamberlain’s pessimistic assessments were raised in order to justify a preconceived policy. Indeed, Chamberlain boasted to his sister that he would resist the pressure exerted on him by Churchill to ‘make a grand alliance against Germany … Fortunately my nature is, as L[loyd] G[eorge] says, extremely “obstinate”, & I refuse to change’.3 Relations between the West and Russia have always been governed by perceptions, which gave birth to preconceived ideas and mutual suspicion. Those, in turn, shaped policies and were, I would argue, the single most important factor in the calamitous events leading to the  exclusion of the Soviet Union from the Munich Agreement and to the subsequent Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact. Suffice it to recall the warning in 1839 of the Marquis de Custine that the Russians were ‘were only “Chinese in disguise”’.4 A century later we find the diplomat, author and diarist Harold Nicolson describing in his diary a lunch at the ‘grim Victorian mansion’ of Ambassador Ivan Maisky in London, in a ‘room v 90 v

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Russia’s absence from the Munich Conference of u ­ nexampled horror’, ‘given corked sherry, during which time a man with a yellow moustache and a moujik’s unappetizing daughter, carried tableware and bananas into the room’. ‘Throughout the whole meal’, he sums up the horrifying experience, ‘I felt that there was something terribly familiar about it all and then, suddenly I realized it was the East. They were playing at being Europeans. They have gone oriental.’5 The ‘riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma’, to borrow Churchill’s famous quip, or his earlier far less flattering metaphors, comparing the Russians to ‘crocodiles’ and ‘bubonic plague’, have been descriptions all too common in Britain – not to mention his ‘iron curtain’ speech, paraphrasing the ‘cordon sanitaire’, coined by the French prime minister Clemenceau and echoed by Lord Curzon, aimed at isolating Western civilisation from the Russian plague. The existence of a viable Soviet alternative during the Munich Crisis is clearly validated by the diaries of Ivan Maisky6 and a stream of thoroughly documented works. They point to the tragic impact of a longue durée Russophobic legacy, imperial rivalry and embedded anti-communism on the attempts to erect an effective all-embracing anti-Hitler alliance in 1938–39.7 However, despite an undeniable ingrained ideological predilection, Soviet foreign policy pursued a highly rational approach to international affairs. It was nationalistic in its outlook and based on geopolitical premises of ‘balance of power’ and ‘spheres of influence’. And yet, the rational approach was by no means bereft of ‘emotions’ and the surprisingly vital human factor role, transcending controversies over policy and ideology. It revealed the immense impact of personal friendships, conflicts and rivalries within the Kremlin on the formulation of Soviet foreign policy – even under Stalin’s decapitating authoritarian regime. Unveiling the private sphere, both verbal and visual, is therefore indispensable for shedding fresh light on the well-trodden public sphere. More often than not, the Munich Agreement is regarded as the first shot in the chain of events leading to war, rather than the culmination of abortive Soviet efforts to forestall Nazi Germany, undertaken by Maksim Litvinov, the Soviet Commissar for Foreign Affairs, Ivan Maisky, his ambassador in London, and Yakov Zakharovich Surits, the Soviet ambassador in Berlin and then in Paris, in the previous four years. That period figures prominently in some 300 pages of Maisky’s complete diary. The hasty decision to appoint Maisky as ambassador to London, at the end of 1932, reflected Litvinov’s surprisingly early recognition that Weimar Germany was on her ‘last legs’, and that the advance of Nazism required a drastic turnabout in relations with Great Britain.8 v 91 v

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The Munich Crisis, politics and the people This shift facilitated the rapprochement with France, championed by Louis Barthou, French Foreign Minister in 1934, and the accession of the Soviet Union to the League of Nations. Like Churchill, Barthou had been a fierce enemy of the Bolshevik Revolution. However, now that the Nazis were firmly in power, he became an ardent supporter of an alliance with the USSR. In Geneva, he wasted little time in producing, together with Litvinov, a draft agreement for an Eastern Pact in June 1934. His efforts to enlist British support were cut short when he was killed in Marseilles by a Croatian terrorist, together with King Alexander of Yugoslavia. Prompted by Hitler’s decision to occupy the Saarland, to introduce conscriptions and rearm, Pierre Laval, Barthou’s successor, concluded a treaty of mutual assistance with the Soviet Union in May 1935, and a similar agreement between the Soviet Union, France and Czechoslovakia a few days later. Though the agreements were identical, there was one highly significant difference, which would render them ineffective in 1938. At the insistence of Edvard Beneš, the President of Czechoslovakia, the agreement included a stipulation that any Soviet assistance would be conditional on France rendering such aid first. Always suspicious about possible French connivance in a German expansion eastwards, the Russians were only too glad to accept the stipulation. The French position had therefore become crucial in 1938: were they not to trigger the agreement, Czechoslovakia could face Germany alone. Laval, who set the tone for French policy in the next four years, hoped to avoid such a situation. Like his British counterpart Sir John Simon, he championed an ‘Eastern Locarno’, which would be be endorsed by Germany and by implication exclude the Russians. The disastrous farreaching repercussions of such policy is reflected in Maisky’s clairvoyant rendering of the meeting Laval had in Moscow with Stalin in May 1935: Having exchanged greetings, Laval declared with the utmost French parliamentary courtesy that he was delighted about the very recent signing of the Franco-Soviet pact, which, he said, was not directed against any particular country. Stalin replied: ‘What do you mean? It is absolutely directed against one particular country – Germany.’ Laval was somewhat astonished, but he immediately tried to put it right himself and, with the same charming courtesy, expressed his pleasure at Stalin’s frankness. … Stalin interrupted Laval: … ‘You are a friend of the Poles, so try to persuade them that they are playing a game that will bring disaster on themselves. The Germans will trick them and sell them short. They will involve Poland in some adventure and when she weakens, they will either seize her or share her with another power.9 v 92 v

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Russia’s absence from the Munich Conference The growing social domestic strife in France throughout the 1930s raised justified fears in Moscow that the French elite was gradually drifting to the right, and might even turn fascist, particularly with the emergence of the ‘Front Populaire’. Likewise, Maisky remained frustrated throughout 1934–36 with the failure to bring about any change in the British attitude. ‘Europe’, he wrote to the press baron, Lord Beaverbrook, ‘is at the cross roads just now … and I am afraid that the eleventh hour chance of avoiding war will not be taken.’10 As early as the autumn of 1936, the Kremlin had become convinced that Germany was intent on breaking up Czechoslovakia and on bringing about an Anschluss with Austria. Maisky was particularly ‘perturbed’ to find Eden noncommittal and evasive, having practically dropped the demands for an Eastern Locarno in fresh approaches made to Hitler.11 An Anglo–Franco–German agreement ‘at the expense of Russia’ seemed to be in the offing. Counter clandestine diplomatic negotiations in Berlin to forestall Britain yielded no results.12 The Hoare–Laval peace plan at the expense of Ethiopia, lamented Maisky, ‘marks the most brazen, most impudent betrayal of the principles of the League of Nations!’13 Still worse, almost two years of efforts to implement the military agreement with France were in vain. ‘The greatest sin of modern statesmen’, Maisky wrote to Bernard Shaw, ‘is vacillation and ambiguity of thought and action. This is the weakness which before long may land us into war. Happily Stalin is possessed, in the highest degree, of the opposite qualities!’14 The appointment of Neville Chamberlain as prime minister in May 1937, introducing ‘appeasement’, coincided with the outbreak of the savage terror in Moscow. The coincidence of the purges and ‘appeasement’ proved to be lethal for Soviet foreign policy. Though the terror has been examined in depth in recent years, the devastating personal impact of the purges on Soviet diplomats, and the formulation and execution of Soviet foreign policy – particularly during the period leading to the Munich Agreement and its aftermath – cannot be overstated. The purges highlighted the long-standing conflict between Stalin’s Politburo and the elite of the Commissariat for Foreign Affairs, which was by no means a cohesive monolith, blindly following Stalin’s diktat. Stalin was determined to break up the old cliques and, above all, stamp out the prevailing dual allegiances – to him and to patrons in the various party and state institutions. The Commissariat for Foreign Affairs was especially vulnerable, as the recruitment of key personnel was conducted personally by Chicherin and Litvinov from a cosmopolitan, polyglot v 93 v

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The Munich Crisis, politics and the people and ­ independent-minded retinue – in many cases members of the ­revolutionary intelligentsia from the tsarist days.15 Shortly before Litvinov’s departure to Geneva, for the annual meeting of the League’s Assembly in September 1937, his deputy, Krestinsky, was shot and replaced by Potemkin, a cunning and ambitious diplomat busy spreading the word that Litvinov was getting ready to retire.16 Potemkin, as Alexandra Kollontai, the Soviet ambassador to Sweden, found out while on a stroll with him and Litvinov on the shores of Lake Geneva in September 1937, was also a watchdog of the Kremlin. After reprimanding Litvinov for not consulting the Kremlin about his speeches in Geneva, Potemkin addressed him with a blunt question: ‘But don’t you yourself think, Maksim Maksimovich, that your hostile attitude to Germany crossed the line?’ Litvinov suddenly stopped and looked carefully at Potemkin: ‘Are you under orders from Moscow? Come out with it, there’s no point messing around.’17

‘The past winter and the current summer’, Maisky lamented to his brother, ‘have been very agitated … With time this has had a significant effect on my nerves, my attention, and – taken together – my day-to-day work.’18 Indeed, two prominent members of his embassy, the military attaché Putna and Ozersky, the head of the trade delegation, were recalled and executed.19 Rumours were rife in the London press about Maisky’s own imminent withdrawal.20 Kollontai’s notebooks best capture the depressing and terrorising impact of the purges at the time of the Czechoslovak crisis. Like Litvinov, she was relieved by the ‘holiday mood’ over breakfast at the restaurant in the Palais de Nations in Geneva, ‘from which there is a long view out to the Alps’. She tried desperately ‘not to think about the troubling news from Moscow which Surits had shared with me that morning’. On her way back to Stockholm the following day, she could be found dejectedly sipping her coffee at the railway station in Basle and avoiding the newspapers, which contained rumours of her recall and even of her defection: ‘All the plots and intrigues of the papal court in old Rome,’ she lamented, ‘all the perfidy and hypocrisy of the Medici courts, with their poisoned gloves and daggers in the back … the work of the Jesuits at the courts of absolute monarchs in Renaissance Europe seems child’s play. Hypocrisy and perfidy are flourishing, schemes and conspiracies are afoot.’21 Litvinov, too, was cracking under the pressure. He relished the cures he took in Czechoslovakia and Italy, and even more so the five days he v 94 v

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Russia’s absence from the Munich Conference could spare before the Assembly met, touring Austria and Switzerland and trying to avoid thinking about the gathering clouds on the international scene ‘and other unpleasant things’. The spectacle of the most prominent politicians and diplomats being harassed and living under a constant threat of death was at times surreal. During the interrogation of Nikolai Ezhov, the former NKVD head, Ezhov recalled how he had unexpectedly found himself spending an evening with Litvinov at a sanatorium in Merano. After dancing a foxtrot, Litvinov teased him: Here we are relaxing, going to restaurants, dancing, but if they found out about it in the USSR they’d really kick up a fuss. Nothing particularly terrible is happening here, but, you see, we have no culture, our statesmen have absolutely no culture whatsoever … If our political leaders established personal relationships with European political figures, a lot of sharp corners in our relations with other countries could be smoothed off.22

Litvinov now protected his ambassadors by conferring with them in Geneva rather than in Moscow. His own personal life, however, was in turmoil as well. He was conducting an affair with Zina, an eighteenyear-old girl – described by Ivy, Litvinov’s bohemian British wife, as ‘nubile  … decidedly vulgar, very sexy, very sexy indeed’. ‘I used to go about the town,’ she recalled, ‘walking about the streets, and suddenly our enormous Cadillac would dash by with Zina sitting beside the chauffeur, she’d gone out shopping … she turned up at the Foreign Ministry to fetch Maxim in full riding kit.’ Heedless of Litvinov’s distraught entreaties, she left for Sverdlovsk where she taught schoolchildren English for three years, until Litvinov’s demotion in 1939.23 Much of Litvinov’s melancholy and resignation, if not depression – often ascribed to the failure of collective security, the Munich Agreement and the mortifying purges in his ministry – should be attributed to the personal aspects of his life. Likewise, Beatrice Webb was seriously concerned whether Maisky would last long as ambassador in England. ‘It must need strong nerves to be a Soviet diplomat even in a democratic country’, she noted in her diary. ‘Any intercourse with the rulers of the country, or even with any citizen might be interpreted as incipient treachery to their own government. The poor Maiskys, what a life they must be leading!’24 Chamberlain’s premiership indeed proved to be a severe blow to the ceaseless efforts of Maisky and Litvinov to pursue collective security. It added to the fear that Britain was seeking new allegiances. Lloyd George had warned Maisky that Chamberlain was ‘a provincial manufacturer of iron bedsteads … Yes, iron beds, and not very good beds at that! That is v 95 v

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The Munich Crisis, politics and the people his place in life and that is the range of his vision! And this man currently stands at the head of the British Empire! He will destroy the Empire!’25 He expected Chamberlain to conclude a pact of four with Germany, France and Italy while Russia would be ‘shut out of the European mix and be left to its own devices.’ Lloyd George’s assessment was spot on and led Maisky to argue hitherto that Chamberlain was bent on concluding a four-power pact without the Soviet Union and ultimately supporting direct German expansion eastwards.26 In their first meeting, Maisky was at pains to assure Chamberlain that the Soviet Union cherished no ideological wish of exploiting the international crisis to impose ‘a communist or any other system’ anywhere in Europe. All to no avail. Chamberlain emerged from the meeting fearing that the Russians were ‘stealthily and cunningly pulling all the strings behind the scenes to get us involved in war with Germany’, a war which for most Conservatives implied the expansion of communism. Impervious to warnings of saner voices in the Foreign Office, Chamberlain preferred to follow his inner emotional compass. His profound animosity towards the Soviet Union proved to be one of the most consistent features of his personal diplomacy.27 ‘I must confess to the most profound mistrust of Russia’, Chamberlain wrote to his sister. ‘I have no belief whatever in her ability to maintain an effective offensive even if she wanted to. And I distrust her motives, motives which seems to me to have little connection with our idea of liberty.’ His emotional disposition discarded any association with Russia, keeping her in the background ‘without antagonising her’.28 In Geneva, Leon Blum, the new French prime minister, gave Litvinov the impression of ‘weariness, fatalism, and doom…’. Litvinov informed Stalin that Blum admitted that the Franco-Soviet military talks, which had been put off constantly by the French since May 1935, were being ‘sabotaged’ not only by the generals, but also by Édouard Daladier, his powerful minister of defence.29 Litvinov resorted to the German card in press interviews, probably as means of exerting pressure on England and France. Maisky’s main concern, however, was that Chamberlain’s policies might enhance the Soviet tendency to retreat into isolation.30 With the ferocious purges always at the back of his mind, Maisky knew perfectly well that his own personal survival, like that of Litvinov, had become tied up with the success of collective security, for which the extraordinary connections he had cultivated in London were vital. He was forced to perform some delicate tightrope walking. He was hardly helped by the resignation of Eden as foreign secretary at the end of 1937. v 96 v

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Russia’s absence from the Munich Conference Maisky had succeeded in cultivating Eden, though aware he ‘was not made of iron, but rather of soft clay which yields easily to the fingers of a skilful artisan’.31 The laidback demeanour in the conduct of foreign affairs of Lord Halifax, Eden’s successor, enabled Chamberlain to bypass the Foreign Office and to call on his own advisers, particularly Horace Wilson. The Soviet position was further undermined by the muzzled reaction in Britain to Hitler’s annexation of Austria on 12 March 1938 – a precursor to the Czechoslovak debacle six months later. Maisky formed the impression that Chamberlain, guided exclusively by his ideological bent, would ‘throw overboard’ the League of Nations and try to resuscitate the four-power pact, ‘excluding the Soviet Union’.32 His observations were accurate. Chamberlain indeed confided to his sister on 18 March that he had ‘abandoned any idea of giving guarantees to Czecho-Slovakia or to France in connection with her obligations to that country’.33 Maisky now staked everything on the ‘Churchill card’. On 23 March Churchill summoned Maisky in a state of great agitation. The following day he intended to challenge Chamberlain in Parliament following the Prime Minister’s survey of foreign affairs. He needed Maisky to tell him ‘frankly’ what was going on in Moscow. This was an overture which Maisky was quick to exploit, to convince Moscow that Churchill still believed that ‘the only reliable means to restrain the Nazi beast could be a “grand alliance” of all peace-loving states within the framework of the League of Nations’. Maisky further used the meeting to convey to Stalin his own proposals by prodding Churchill to suggest that it would be most helpful if ‘Stalin were now to declare once again for the whole world to hear: We will help Czechoslovakia in earnest! I assure you it would be of great importance for both the USSR’s prestige and the cause of peace’.34 In his report home, Maisky, rather cunningly and with great circumspection, exploited Churchill in order to alert the Kremlin once again to the damage inflicted on Soviet interests by the show trials. At the same time, to make the message amenable to Stalin, he was quick to add Churchill’s praise of Stalin’s leadership. ‘I hate Trotsky!’, Churchill had told him, ‘He is Russia’s evil genius, and it is a very good thing that Stalin has got even with him … I am definitely in favour of Stalin’s policy. Stalin is creating a strong Russia. We need a strong Russia and I wish Stalin  every success.’35 As Richard Toye’s chapter in this volume shows, although Churchill was obviously attempting flattery, he was certainly sincere in his condemnation of Trotsky, and in general did perceive the USSR as a broadly rational actor in terms of foreign policy. v 97 v

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The Munich Crisis, politics and the people Maisky, for his part, was extremely well informed about the dismal state of Anglo-French relations. Masaryk disclosed to him that a summit meeting in London on 28–29 April36 had revealed the hegemony of the hosts. The British, Maisky was told, had been ‘highly defeatist’, arguing that ‘neither France, nor the USSR was in a position to render any ­effective help to Czechoslovakia’. He further revealed that on the eve of the talks, Leslie Hore-Belisha, the secretary of state for war, who was just back from Rome, had intimated that ‘the expansion of Germany in the direction of Czechoslovakia, Hungary and the Balkans was inevitable, that England was not prepared for war, that as long as Hitler’s actions were confined to Europe there would be no war’.37 Briefed by Halifax, Maisky was left in no doubt that Britain, determined not to get involved directly in the conflict, was at best prepared to act as a go-between, though only once Beneš had made further substantial concessions.38 With the threat of war becoming real in May 1938, Maisky was encouraged to hastily take an early summer holiday in Russia. He was aware, though, that while in Moscow he would be subjected to the newly instituted procedure of annual hearings for ambassadors at the ministry. Before leaving for Moscow he sought some assurances. On 10 May, over a tête-à-tête lunch with Horace Wilson, the person with the greatest knowledge of Chamberlain’s mind, Maisky was shocked to learn that the belief at 10 Downing Street was that Hitler’s next blow, after ‘Mitteleuropa’, would be directed eastward, against the USSR, and that this ‘would accord with British interests’.39 In a report to Narkomindel, before his departure, Maisky, however, chose to highlight what he called ‘the Soviet demonstration’ by Chamberlain, who, at the royal reception on 11 May, made a point of approaching him and of displaying interest in his vacation plans, allegedly eager to find out when he could be expected back in London. The unusual approach, Maisky hastened to add, was well covered by journalists, who had been ringing the embassy since the early hours of the morning.40 At the same time, Maisky had to project a sense of complacency in order to dispel rumours of his permanent recall, insisting that he was ‘on the best of terms with his own government’.41 Unlike his previous vacations, which had been spent in the Caucasus and travelling all over the country, this time Maisky was outside Moscow, surrounded, as he tried to impress his friends in England, by ‘beautiful and most invigorating pinewoods’. But in fact he was incarcerated in a sanatorium – from where he could obviously be summoned at any moment to the capital. Rather than discuss the broiling conflict in v 98 v

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Russia’s absence from the Munich Conference Czechoslovakia, Maisky was forced to compose a confessional autobiographical sketch in which he admitted to political short-sightedness and failure to recognise the ‘enemies of the people’ within his embassy. He was confronted with testimonies extracted from his former subordinates, Putna and Ozersky, both of whom had given compromising evidence against him before being shot. Together with Litvinov, he was then rushed to the Kremlin on 1 June, where Stalin urged both men to keep a low profile in the future and act prudently. Consequently, Maisky was let out and allowed to return to London ‘on probation’. His wide net of contacts there had become indispensable to the Kremlin with the Munich Crisis looming.42 Maisky and Agniya returned to London at the end of July. Maisky did not conceal from the Webbs, the only people he spoke candidly with, the Kremlin’s ‘coldness towards Great Britain, hatred of Chamberlain as their enemy, concern about Czech-Slovakia and coolness towards the present French Government’. While admitting that, given the international situation, the Soviet Union preferred to ‘keep out of a European war’, Maisky reaffirmed that it would remain ‘loyal to its pact’.43 Maisky was enticing the British to action, but his reports to Moscow, urgently seeking instructions concerning Soviet policy towards Czechoslovakia, indicate that, like Litvinov, he was still kept in the dark.44 With the General Assembly of the League of Nations about to convene, Maisky warned Halifax that while in Moscow he had gained the impression of the ‘great disappointment in the policies of Britain and France, which exposed the weakness of the Western Governments who would be held responsible for unleashing a new world war’. In his reports home, Maisky admitted that he expected Halifax to ‘forcefully deny it’, but he was pleasantly surprised when Halifax preferred not to defend British policy. In reality, Maisky was rebuffed by Halifax, who bluntly informed him that there was ‘no question’ of Britain shifting its policy. To facilitate Litvinov’s attendance in Geneva, which could no longer be taken for granted, Maisky did manoeuvre Halifax to express his great wish to meet Litvinov and exchange views on current affairs at the Assembly. Moreover, while he insisted in his report to Moscow that he had complied with the instructions given to him at the Kremlin not to initiate any move, the British records suggest that Maisky reasserted that if Germany attacked Czechoslovakia, the Soviet Government would ‘certainly do their bit’. Halifax’s whole bearing, ‘his gestures and rare remarks’, Maisky finally tried to convince Moscow, ‘showed quite clearly that a significant part, if not all, of what I had said met with his approval’.45 v 99 v

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The Munich Crisis, politics and the people Meanwhile, reports from Paris were just as discouraging. Bonnet, the new French foreign minister, did ask Moscow about its intentions to assist Czechoslovakia. But he told the British chargé d’affaires, in confidence, that if Czechoslovakia were to reject an arbitrated settlement, ‘that was their lookout, tant pis pour eux [too bad for them]’. He believed Russia’s ‘one wish is to stir up general war in the troubled waters of which she will fish’.46 Maisky continued his relentless crusade vis-à-vis both Moscow and London. Although discouraged from making any overtures, he dined with Churchill at his son’s apartment in London. Clearly manipulated by Maisky, Churchill-père, according to the ambassador, ‘took the bull by the horns right away’. The plan he proposed for preventing an inevitable war over Czechoslovakia was for Britain, France and the USSR to deliver a collective diplomatic note to Germany in protest against the threat of an attack on Czechoslovakia ‘before Hitler started rattling his sabre’.47 Maisky’s efforts dovetailed the views held by Litvinov, who had instructed his ambassador in Prague about the Soviet position: We are extraordinarily interested in the preservation of the independence of Czechoslovakia, in the blocking of Hitlerite ambitions toward the southeast, but without the western powers we cannot do anything substantial, while they do not consider it necessary to obtain our assistance, they ignore us and between themselves decide everything concerning the German– Czechoslovak conflict.48

On 2 September, as part of his preparations for the Assembly meeting at the League of Nations, Litvinov summoned Payart, the French chargé d’affaires in Moscow. To defuse the uncertainty surrounding the Soviet position, he wanted to convey to Bonnet that the Soviet Union stood steadfastly by its contractual commitments to Czechoslovakia in the event of an attack on her by Germany. He repeated the call he had made after the Anschluss with Austria for an immediate conference between Great Britain, France and the USSR to coincide with consultations between the representatives of the Soviet, French and Czech armed forces. He further urged for the crisis to be placed on the agenda of the Assembly of the League of Nations. The same message was reiterated by his deputy, Potemkin, a couple of days later. Aware of the Quai d’Orsay’s position, Payart played down the essence of the message, suggesting that the approach was not sincere, as Litvinov assumed Russia would not be called upon to fulfil its obligations.49 What is most illuminating for historians is the unequivocal conclusion which Maisky drew for himself from the report: v 100 v

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So, our position in the Czechoslovak crisis has been set out with absolute clarity. We are ready to offer armed assistance to Czechoslovakia, if the others are ready to fulfil their duty. Will they rise to the demands of this terribly serious historical moment? We’ll see.50

This is vital information, confirming a clear decision taken in support of fulfilling the commitments to Czechoslovakia under the Franco-Soviet Pact. It was indeed corroborated in Litvinov’s report to Alexandrovsky about his conversations with Payart.51 The decision was sufficiently unequivocal and decisive for Maisky to feel confident in pursuing unauthorised initiatives. The approach to Payart was most certainly sanctioned by Stalin, vacationing in the Caucasus, who had been sounded by Litvinov a day earlier.52 On 4 September, Maisky made his maiden trip to Churchill’s country home. His diary conceals the main purpose of this second meeting with Churchill in two days: to disclose to him ‘in detail’ Payart’s statement to Litvinov and to prod him to relay the information to Halifax. Churchill recalls how Maisky asked to come down to Chartwell to see him ‘at once upon a matter of urgency’. Churchill attached such significance to the meeting that a whole chapter – ‘The Maisky Incident’ – appeared in an early draft version of his memoirs. The intimacy and collusion between the two, so vividly described by Maisky in his long and colourful entrance, was hardly an asset with the Cold War picking up momentum, and it was removed from the memoirs at the eleventh hour. Here is just a short, but most revealing, excerpt from Maisky’s diary, describing the intimacy established between the two men by now: … Then the three of us had tea – Churchill, his wife and I. On the table, apart from the tea, lay a whole battery of diverse alcoholic drinks. Why, could Churchill ever do without them? He drank a whisky-soda and offered me a Russian vodka from before the war. He has somehow managed to preserve this rarity. I expressed my sincere astonishment, but Churchill interrupted me: ‘That’s far from being all! In my cellar I have a bottle of wine from 1793! Not bad, eh? I’m keeping it for a very special, truly exceptional occasion.’ ‘Which exactly, may I ask you?’ Churchill grinned cunningly, paused, then suddenly declared: ‘We’ll drink this bottle together when Great Britain and Russia beat Hitler’s Germany!’53

But when Maisky met the French ambassador the following day, he was infuriated to find out that Corbin still knew nothing about Litvinov’s conversation with Payart on 2 September: v 101 v

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I had to relate it to him in its every detail. Strange! Such an important talk at such a crucial moment should, it seems, have been conveyed to the French ambassador in London right away and yet… Something is wrong here! Equally strange is the fact that, despite the talkative nature of the French, not a word has been written about the Moscow conversation in the French press. Bonnet, it seems, is trying to hush up the news …

On 7 September, The Times leader, which was appended to the diary, floated a ballon d’essai on behalf of the inner Cabinet. It urged the Czechoslovak government to cede the Sudetenland, as ‘the advantages to Czechoslovakia of becoming a homogeneous state might conceivably outweigh the obvious disadvantages of losing the Sudeten German districts of the borderland’. ‘Vile betrayal not only of Czechoslovakia but of the whole European world!’ was Maisky’s verdict, ‘a stab in Czechoslovakia’s back at the most critical moment in her history! That’s English politics. Why should Hitler put himself out? Why risk a war? The English and the French will do the dirty work for him.’54 To add insult to injury, Halifax summoned Maisky on 8 September to convey to Litvinov his apologies that the looming crisis in Czechoslovakia ruled out his presence in Geneva. In their previous conversations, Maisky had diligently prepared the ground for a summit meeting, which he hoped would lay the foundation for co-operation. Now it turned out that Halifax was obviously eager not to provoke Hitler by being engaged with the ‘Reds’. Maisky further gleaned that Britain was ‘first and foremost interested in the peaceful resolution of the dispute. The rest was of secondary importance … the price was determined by the circumstances.’ As concerning was the rather indifferent reaction of the Foreign Secretary to Maisky’s detailed account of Litvinov’s undertakings to Payart, to fulfil Russian contractual obligations.55 The session of the morally bankrupt League, which practically ignored the Czech crisis, coincided with Chamberlain’s announcement on the evening of 14 September of his decision to meet Hitler in Berchtesgaden, leading to the Munich Conference. ‘Incredible!’ exclaimed Maisky in his diary, ‘The leader of the British Empire goes to Canossa, cap in hand, to the German “Führer”. This is how low the British bourgeoisie have fallen!’ At teatime, the delegate from Czechoslovakia, after a firm handshake, looked at Maisky ‘like a wounded doe, and almost pleaded: “You’re our only hope … Please, don’t betray us”’.56 Like the British, the French delegation was low key. Bonnet made a brief appearance in Geneva on 11 September, but his meeting with v 102 v

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Russia’s absence from the Munich Conference Litvinov lasted only ‘for a moment and did not go beyond generalities’.57 Kollontai, who happened to be on the same train to Geneva as Bonnet, was startled by the melancholic mood surrounding him. The following morning, she bumped into Litvinov as he emerged from his meeting with Bonnet, ‘waving his hand impatiently and with obvious irritation: “Results? None … The French don’t intend to fulfil their obligations to Czechoslovakia. When it comes to our Soviet proposal, Bonnet dodges and prevaricates, claiming he needs to consult London first. A delaying tactic, in other words. And right now every hour counts.”’58 There was little left for Litvinov but to give vent to his frustration in a fierce speech to the Assembly in which he criticised the Anglo-French attempts, at such a crucial moment, to water down the Covenant of the League and make collective action voluntary. He went on to reiterate the Soviet commitment to Czechoslovakia and France, and to reassert Soviet loyalty to the League, ending with an ominous warning that AngloFrench ‘capitulation’ was bound to have ‘incalculable and disastrous consequences’.59 The only flickering ray of light appeared when negotiations temporarily broke down after Chamberlain’s talks with Hitler at Bad Godesberg. At a meeting convened by the British delegation on 23 September, Litvinov ‘reiterated the firm resolve of the Soviet Government to fulfil all her obligations under the Soviet-Czech Pact … and in turn suggested certain measures which in his opinion it would be necessary to take forthwith’. However, his demand for an emergency meeting of the powers involved and their military advisers, either in Paris or London, to co-ordinate military plans against the backdrop of the collapse of the Godesberg talks, was dismissed out of hand by the Foreign Office as being ‘of little use’, since it was bound to ‘certainly provoke Germany’. The French were visibly surprised and embarrassed by the unexpectedly ‘firm position’ of the Soviet Union. They played down the significance of what they termed an insincere shift, mounting a rather successful disinformation campaign (which has subsequently misled and continues to mislead many historians). Likewise Rab Butler, then Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, who represented Halifax in Geneva and whose support for appeasement exceeded even that of Chamberlain, insisted in his memoirs that he ‘was left in no doubt that the Russians did not mean business’ and that ‘Litvinov had been deliberately evasive and vague’.60 Seen from the Russian point of view, the meeting ended with an alarming reminder by the head of the British delegation that the approach to Russia related only ‘to the unhappy eventualities that might v 103 v

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The Munich Crisis, politics and the people occur’ if the deadlock in the negotiations with Hitler at Godesberg was not resolved.61 Maisky returned from Geneva on 28 September just in time to witness Chamberlain announcing in Parliament Hitler’s invitation and his consent to fly to Munich the following day. The following morning, a despondent Maisky arrived at Whitehall to hear Halifax’s justifications. The British government, he impressed on Maisky, ‘did not raise the question of sending an invitation to the USSR because, firstly, time was terribly short, with not a minute to spare and, secondly and most ­importantly, it knew beforehand the reply that it would get to such a proposal from Hitler. The last chance to preserve peace could not be wasted because of an argument about the composition of the conference.’ The die had been cast. On 30 September 1938, Maisky confided in his diary: The gloomy forebodings … have materialized. Yesterday I didn’t go to bed until almost 4 a.m., and sat listening to the radio. At 2.45 it was finally announced that an agreement had been reached in Munich and the peace of Europe had been secured. But what an agreement! And what peace! Chamberlain and Daladier capitulated completely. The conference of the four essentially accepted the Godesberg ultimatum with minor and negligible adjustments. The one ‘victory’ won by the British and the French is that the transfer of the Sudetenland to Germany will take place not on the 1st but on the 10th of October. What a tremendous achievement! I paced the dining room for a long time, lost in thought. My thoughts were distressing. It is difficult to grasp at once the true meaning of all that had just happened, but I feel and understand that a landmark of enormous historical significance was passed last night. In one bound quantity became quality, and the world suddenly changed … I woke up in the morning with a headache and the first thing that occurred to me was that I should immediately visit Masaryk. When I entered his reception room there was no one there. A minute later I heard someone’s hurried steps on the stairs and the host sidled in. There was something strange and unnatural about his tall, strong figure. As if it had suddenly iced over and lost its habitual agility. Masaryk threw a passing glance at me and tried to make polite conversation in the usual manner: ‘What fine weather we are having today, aren’t we?’ ‘Forget the weather,’ I said with an involuntary wave of my hand. ‘I have not come here for that. I have come to express my deep compassion for your people at this exceptionally hard moment and also my strong indignation at the shameful behaviour of Britain and France!’ A kind of current seemed to pass through Masaryk’s tall figure. The ice melted at once. Immobility gave way to quivering. He rocked rather v 104 v

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c­ omically on his feet and fell all of a sudden on my breast, sobbing bitterly. I was taken aback and somewhat bewildered. Kissing me, Masaryk mumbled through his tears: ‘They’ve sold me into slavery to the Germans, like they used to sell Negroes into slavery in America.’

For the Soviet Union (and for Litvinov and Maisky personally), the Munich Agreement was a horrific setback. Litvinov’s ‘year-long and untiring efforts to realize his policy of collective security against Germany’, reported the British ambassador from Moscow, ‘would appear … to have fallen into the water’; he ‘has scarcely been visible since his arrival’ from Geneva.62 Increasingly identified with isolationist tendencies, Litvinov’s deputy, Potemkin, was little impressed by Maisky’s attempts to assure Narkomindel that the situation ‘was slowly beginning to change’.63 Maisky was severely reproached for the failure to respond critically to the ‘deceitful inventions’ of Halifax and others regarding presumed ‘cooperation’ and ‘consultation’ with the Soviet Union prior to the Munich Agreement. Their objective, it was implied, had been to exonerate themselves and pin the blame on Moscow.64 It is hardly surprising that Maisky appeared henceforth to be ‘vague, mordant, and ominous’, barely concealing his ‘unutterable disgust with the Chamberlain policy’, which he feared would spawn a four-power pact leading to the institutionalised isolation of Russia.65 He now regarded Chamberlain as ‘The Enemy’, while he nicknamed Halifax ‘The Bishop’ who ‘retires to pray and comes out a worse hypocrite than before’.66 The Soviet Union’s raging denunciation of the Munich Agreement should have alerted Chamberlain to the likelihood of Soviet reclusion and possibly its corollary, an accommodation with Hitler. Spending a leisurely weekend with his intimate friends, the Webbs, Maisky revealed his cards: ‘he thought that the U.S.S.R. would be cautious and discreet in her policy: she would tend to withdraw from world affairs in effect; meanwhile staying at Geneva awaiting a “change of heart” in the democratic powers’.67 But in the absence of an alternative policy, Stalin was, for a while, dissuaded by Litvinov from withdrawing into complete isolation, particularly after Hitler’s repudiation of the agreement and seizure of Prague in March 1939. Both the French and the British governments wasted little time in providing a false and deliberately misleading narrative, which would be reinforced by the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact a year later, that the USSR never intended to fulfil its obligations under the Soviet–Czechoslovak pact and that the USSR could not possibly fulfil its obligations owing to the weakness of the Red Army. v 105 v

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Notes   1 A most exhaustive and comprehensive review of the debate on appeasement is to be found in Sidney Aster, ‘Appeasement: Before and After Revisionism’, Diplomacy & Statecraft, 19:3 (2008), pp. 443–80.  2 Anthony Adamthwaite, ‘War Origins Again’, Journal of Modern History, 56:1 (1984), p. 106. See also Robert J. Beck, ‘Munich’s Lessons Reconsidered’, International Security, 14:2 (1989), pp. 161–91, and Daniel Hucker, ‘The Unending Debate: Appeasement, Chamberlain and the Origins of the Second World War’, Intelligence and National Security, 23:4 (2008), pp. 536–51.  3 Robert Self (ed.), Chamberlain Diary Letters: The Downing Street Years, 1934–40, vol. 4 (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2005), p. 373.   4 Marquis de Custine, Lettres de Russie (Paris: Le Livre club de libraire, 1960), p. 222.   5 Harold Nicolson, Diaries and Letters, 1939–1945, ed. Nigel Nicolson (London: Collins, 1967), pp. 255–6. Reading these memoirs years later, Maisky thought the ‘references to me and Soviet Embassy are not very profound but at times very amusing. I didn’t realise being in London that he is such a “gourmand” – always writing about food which he is offered’; Archives of the Russian Academy of Sciences (hereafter RAN), f.1702 op. 4 d.1031 l.26, Maisky to Montagu, 2 March 1967.   6 Gabriel Gorodetsky, The Complete Maisky Diaries, 3 vols (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2018).  7 Michael J. Carley, 1939: The Alliance that Never Was and the Coming of World War II (Chicago: I. R. Dee, 1999), and ‘“Only the USSR has … Clean Hands”: The Soviet Perspective on the Failure of Collective Security and the Collapse of Czechoslovakia, 1934–1938 (Part 1)’, Diplomacy & Statecraft, 21:3 (2010), pp. 202–25, as well as the earlier perceptive piece by Sidney Aster, ‘Ivan Maisky and Parliamentary Anti-appeasement 1938–1939’, in A.J.P. Taylor (ed.), Lloyd George: Twelve Essays (London: Hamish Hamilton, 1971), pp. 326–35.  8 Michael J. Carley, ‘Down a Blind-Alley: Anglo–Franco–Soviet Relations, 1920–39’, Canadian Journal of History, 29:1 (1994), pp. 147–72, p. 157.  9 Gorodetsky, The Complete Maisky Diaries, vol. 1, p. 127 (entry for 19 June 1935). 10 RAN, f.1702 op. 4 d.854 l.1, 4 May, 1936. 11 The National Archives, London (hereafter TNA), FO 371/19904 C3231/4/18, and Dokumenty vneshnei politiki SSSR [hereafter DVP] (Moscow 1958–2000) 1936, XIX, No. 142, 28 April 1938. See also Corbin to Flandin, in Documents diplomatiques francais (hereafter DDF), 2 Série, II, Doc. 125. 12 TNA, FO 371/18851 C7596/55/18, C7730/55/18, 9 and 18 November 1935; London School of Economics, Beatrice Webb diary, p. 6092, 18 November 1935. v 106 v

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Russia’s absence from the Munich Conference 13 Gorodetsky, The Complete Maisky Diaries, vol. 1, p. 145 (entry for 14 December 1935). 14 RAN, f.1702 op. 4 d.1184 l.5, 4 May, 1936. 15 See Geoffrey Roberts, ‘The Fascist War Threat and Soviet Politics in the 1930s’, and Oleg Khlevniuk, ‘The Reasons for the “Great Terror”: The Foreign-Political Aspect’, in Silvio Pons and A. Romano (eds), Russia in the Age of Wars, 1914–1945 (Milan: Fondazione Giangiacomo Feltrinelli, 2000), pp. 147–58, 159–69. 16 See Jonathan Haslam, The Soviet Union and the Struggle for Collective Security in Europe (London: Macmillan, 1984) p. 132. 17 Aleksandra Kollontai, Diplomaticheskie dnevniki, 1922–1940 (Moscow: Academia, 2001), pp. 356–7. Back in Moscow, Potemkin was scathing of the British and particularly the French, who were ‘slavishly following London’s orders’ and whose country was being led ‘to the complete loss of its independence’. Quoted in Michael J. Carley, ‘Caught in a Cleft-Stick: Soviet Diplomacy and the Spanish Civil War’, in Gaynor Johnson (ed.), The International Context of the Spanish Civil War (Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars, 2009), p. 171. On the rivalry between Potemkin and Litvinov, see Sabine Dullin, Men of Influence: Stalin’s Diplomats in Europe, 1930–1939 (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2008), pp. 218–19. On Litvinov’s independence, see Teddy J. Uldricks, ‘The Impact of the Great Purges on the People’s Commissariat of Foreign Affairs’, Slavic Review, 6:2 (1977), p. 197. 18 RAN f.1702 op. 4 d.152 l.50, 27 August 1937. 19 Beatrice Webb diary, p. 6393, 27 October 1937. 20 George Bilainkin, Maisky: Ten Years Ambassador (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1944), pp. 160–21. 21 Kollontai, Diplomaticheskie Dnevniki, II, pp. 389 and 391, 29 and 30 September 1937. 22 V.N. Khaustov, V.P. Naumov and N.S. Plotnikov (eds), Lubyanka: Stalin i NKVD-NKGB-GUKR ‘Smersh’, 1939–1946 (Moscow: Materik, 2006), doc. 37. See also Sabine Dullin, ‘Litvinov and the People’s Commissariat of Foreign Affairs: The Fate of an Administration under Stalin, 1930–39’, in Pons and Romano (eds), Russia in the Age of Wars, pp. 121–46, and Evgenii Gnedin, Vykhod iz labirinta (Moscow: Memorial, 1994), pp. 25, 28 and 35. 23 Ivy Litvinov’s papers, Hoover Institute, Stanford, draft memoirs. Litvinov was crushed by her decision to leave. This European bohemian way of life could hardly endear Litvinov to the puritanical Stalin. There is nothing to suggest, as Dullin does in Men of Influence, pp. 216–17, that Litvinov deliberately encouraged her to depart to protect her from the Stalinist carnage. 24 Webb, diary, pp. 6358–92, 5 July 1937, p. 6431, 23 January, 8 March 1938; Norman and Jeanne MacKenzie (eds), The Diary of Beatrice Webb, vol. 4: 1924–1943 (London: Virago, 1985), pp. 398–9, 12 December 1937. v 107 v

25 Ivan Maisky, Who Helped Hitler? (London: Hutchinson, 1964), p. 68. 26 Aster, ‘Ivan Maisky and Parliamentary Anti-Appeasement’, pp. 320–2. 27 Silvio Pons, Stalin and the Inevitable War (London: Frank Cass, 2002), pp.  95–6 and 103–8; Lloyd George Papers, LG/G/14/1/4, 10 February. See also Maisky to Kollontai, 6 February 1938, RAN, f.1702 op. 4 d.111 l.15–16. 28 Self, Chamberlain, Diary Letters, 28 May 1939, p. 418. 29 Pons, Stalin and the Inevitable War, pp. 95–6 and 103–8. 30 Parliamentary Archives, London, Lloyd George Papers, LG/G/14/1/4, 10 February. See also Maisky to Kollontai, 6 February 1938, RAN, f.1702 op. 4 d.111 l.15–16. 31 Gorodetsky, The Complete Maisky Diaries, vol. 1, p. 235 (entry for 17 November 1937). 32 DDF, 2 Serie, VIII, Doc. 254. Identical words were used by Maisky over lunch à deux with Harold Nicolson, Diaries, p. 238. On his pessimism, see telegram to NKID, 17 March 1938, in DVP 1938, XXI, No. 88. 33 Self, Chamberlain, Diary Letters, 20 March 1938, p. 307. Self dismisses out of hand the story spread by ‘the less than reliable Maisky’ as a ‘slip of the tongue’ by Chamberlain, p. 18. 34 Gorodetsky, The Complete Maisky Diaries, vol. 1, pp. 275–6 (entry for 23 March 1938). 35 DVP 1938, XXI, No. 103, 23 March 1938. 36 This episode is covered by Zara Steiner, The Triumph of the Dark: European International History, 1933–1939 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), pp. 564–7, who argues that the oratory was double-edged, aimed also at relieving France of its obligations, which the chiefs of staff did not believe she could assume. This should be borne in mind when considering the accusations in the same vein levelled against the Russians, who, as the diary and related material show, were extremely well informed about the state of the Anglo-French negotiations and their aftermath. 37 DVP 1938, XXI, No. 153, 30 April 1938. Confirmed by Alexandrovsky from Prague, see Lev Bezymenskii, Gitler i Stalin pered skhvatkoi (Moscow: ĖKSMO: IAuza, 2009), p. 141. 38 TNA, FO 371 21591 C3995/13/17, 5 May 1938, and Maisky’s version in DVP 1938, XXI, No. 163. 39 Gorodetsky, The Complete Maisky Diaries, vol. 1, p. 292 (entry for 10 May 1938). 40 DVP 1938, XXI, No. 174, 11 May 1938. 41 Conversations with Lloyd George and Beaverbrook on 9 and 12 May, ­respectively, quoted in DVP 1938, XXI, fn. 65. Webb, diary, p. 6478, 16 May 1938. 42 Bilainkin, Maisky, p. 204–5. V.S. Myasnikov, ‘Sud’ba intelligenta v Rossii’, in his Ivan Mikhailovich Maiskii: Izbrannaya perepiska s rossiiskimi ­korrespondentami (Moscow: Nauka, 2005), vol. 1, pp. 5–23. (

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Russia’s absence from the Munich Conference 43 TNA, FO 371/21731 C8433/1941/18, 17 August and Nicolson, Diaries, pp. 356 and 358 (entries for 22 and 26 July 1938). 44 DVP 1938, XXII, No. 318, 28 August 1938. 45 Gorodetsky, The Complete Maisky Diaries, vol. 1, p. 305 (entry for 17 August 1938); TNA, FO 371 21731 C8433/1941/18 and DVP 1938, XXI, No. 300, 17 August 1938. 46 Quoted by Carley, ‘“Only the USSR Has … Clean Hands”’, p. 378. 47 Gorodetsky, The Complete Maisky Diaries, vol. 1, p. 316 (entry for 1 September 1938). 48 Quoted by Carley, ‘“Only the USSR Has … Clean Hands”’, p. 376. 49 Zara Steiner, ‘The Soviet Commissariat of Foreign Affairs and the Czechoslovakian Crisis in 1938: New Material from the Soviet Archives’, The Historical Journal, 42:3 (1999), pp. 764–5. 50 Gorodetsky, The Complete Maisky Diaries, vol. 1, p. 320 (entry for 3 September 1938), emphasis added. 51 Dokumenty po istorii myunkhenskogo sgovora 1937–1939, ed. V.F. Maltsev et al. (Moscow, 1979), No. 108 and see also Nos 148 and 163. 52 See Steiner, ‘The Czechoslovakian Crisis in 1938’, p. 763. Indeed, Jonathan Haslam acutely observes that an article in Pravda during the crisis, which affirmed that Litvinov’s policy represented ‘the unanimous opinion of the whole Soviet people’, hinted that the opinion might not have been ‘unanimous’ earlier: ‘The Soviet Union and the Czechoslovakian Crisis of 1938’, Journal of Contemporary History, 14:3 (1979), pp. 441–61, p. 452. 53 Winston Churchill, The Second World War, vol. 1: The Gathering Storm (London: Cassell & Co., 1949), pp. 229–30, and The Complete Maisky Diaries, p. 321 (entry for 4 September 1938) and Who Helped Hitler? pp. 78–80; Ivan Maisky, The Munich Drama (Moscow: Novosti Press Agency, 1972), p. 38; D. Reynolds, ‘Churchill’s Writing of History: Appeasement, Autobiography and The Gathering Storm’, Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 11 (2001), pp. 221–47, p. 239. See also letter to Churchill, 22 December 1947, reproduced in Martin Gilbert (ed.), Winston Churchill and Emery Reves, Correspondence, 1937–1964 (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1997), pp. 279–80. 54 Richard Cockett, Twilight of Truth: Chamberlain, Appeasement, and the Manipulation of the Press (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1989), p.  72; Gorodetsky, The Complete Maisky Diaries, vol. 1, p. 322 (entry for 7 September 1938). 55 Gorodetsky, The Complete Maisky Diaries, vol. 1, p. 232 (entry for 8 September 1938). 56 Ibid., pp. 326, 328 (entries for 12 and 14 September 1938). 57 Maisky’s account of events is in his diary for 15 February 1939, Churchill Archives Centre, Cambridge: Amery Papers, AMEL 7/33. See also Peter J. Beck, ‘Searching for Peace in Munich, not Geneva: The British Government, v 109 v

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The Munich Crisis, politics and the people the League of Nations, and the Sudetenland Question’, Diplomacy & Statecraft, 10:2–3 (1999), pp. 236–57; David Dunn, ‘Maksim Litvinov: Commissar of Contradiction’, Journal of Contemporary History, 23:2 (1988), pp. 239–40; and P. Stegnii and V. Sokolov, ‘Eyewitness Testimony (Ivan Maiskii on the Origins of World War II)’, International Affairs, 154 (1999). Jiri Hochman’s misleading The Soviet Union and the Failure of Collective Security, 1934–1938 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1984), pp. 156–60, exculpates the French in a highly distorted account of the handling of the negotiations by Payart and Bonnet. 58 Kollontai, Diplomaticheskie dnevniki, II, pp. 396–8. A most convincing examination of the French attempts to shift responsibility onto the Russians is in Martin Thomas, ‘France and the Czechoslovak Crisis’, Diplomacy & Statecraft, 10:2–3 (1999), pp. 122–59. 59 Text of the speech provided by Maisky to Noel Baker: Churchill Archives Centre, Cambridge, Papers of Baron Noel-Baker, NBKR 4/639. Litvinov was overheard telling Négrin that ‘If we do not have a world war, you are damned.’ Sir Henry Channon’s diary entry for 13 September 1938, in ‘Chips’: The Diaries of Sir Henry Channon, ed. Robert Rhodes James (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1993), p. 165. 60 Lord Butler, The Art of the Possible (London: Hamilton, 1972), pp. 70–1 elicited a furious response from Maisky, The Times, 8 June, 1971. For a tarnishing revision of Butler’s image as a respected elder statesman, see Paul Stafford, ‘Political Autobiography and the Art of the Plausible: R.A. Butler at the Foreign Office, 1938–1939’, The Historical Journal, 28:4 (1985), pp. 901–22. 61 TNA, FO 371/21777 C10585/5302/18, record of the Geneva meeting and minutes, 24 September 1938. For an excellent (though somewhat overlooked) survey of the military measures taken by the Russians in anticipation of war, see G. Jukes, ‘The Red Army and the Munich Crisis’, Journal of Contemporary History, 26:2 (1991), pp. 195–214. 62 TNA, FO 371/N5164/97/38, Chilston to Halifax, 18 October 1938. 63 Soviet Peace Efforts on the Eve of World War II (September 1938–August 1939), vol. 2, ed. A.A. Gromyko et al. (Moscow, 1973), No. 10, 1 October 1938. 64 DVP 1938, XXI, No. 408, 3 October 1938. See also Haslam, The Struggle for Collective Security, pp. 195–7. 65 Report by Te Water, the South African high commissioner, from London, quoted in Michael Graham Fry, ‘Agents and Structures: The Dominions and the Czechoslovak Crisis, September 1938’, Diplomacy & Statecraft, 10:2–3 (1999), pp. 310, and Iverach McDonald, A Man of ‘The Times’ (London: Hamilton, 1976), p. 44. When he met Cadogan on 30 September, Maisky was ‘disgruntled and complaining’; David Dilks (ed.), The Diaries of Sir Alexander Cadogan, O.M., 1938–1945 (London: Cassell, 1972), p. 110. 66 Webb, diary, p. 6567, 31 October 1938. v 110 v

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67 Webb, diary, pp. 6566–7, 31 October 1938 (emphasis in original). In retrospect, Maisky indeed maintained that, in the wake of the Munich Agreement, the Soviet government decided ‘to have done with Geneva and retire into a well-protected isolation’. LSE Library Archives and Special Collections, Dalton Papers, II, 5/2, record of a meeting between Boothby and Maisky, 15 September 1939. Similar impression gained by Basil Liddell Hart, The Liddell Hart Memoirs (London: Cassell, 1965), pp. 167, 194–5.

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Churchill, Munich and the origins of the Grand Alliance Richard Toye

Speaking in the House of Commons on the Munich Agreement on 5 October 1938, Winston Churchill began by stating ‘what everybody would like to ignore or forget but which must nevertheless be stated, namely, that we have sustained a total and unmitigated defeat’. When Lady Astor interjected ‘Nonsense’, he responded that the most that Neville Chamberlain had been able to obtain through his ‘immense exertions’ was that Hitler, ‘instead of snatching his victuals from the table, has been content to have them served to him course by course’. It was one of Churchill’s most powerful speeches. His argument that Britain had taken the wrong road relied, of course, on the notion that there had been a viable alternative. He did not hesitate to spell it out. ‘France and Great Britain together, especially if they had maintained a close contact with Russia, which certainly was not done, would have been able in those days in the summer, when they had the prestige, to influence many of the smaller States of Europe, and I believe they could have determined the attitude of Poland’, he argued. ‘Such a combination, prepared at a time when the German dictator was not deeply and irrevocably committed to his new adventure, would, I believe, have given strength to all those forces in Germany which resisted this departure, this new design.’1 He was hinting, in other words, that an Anglo-French united front with the Soviet Union, presenting a firm line against Nazi ambitions, could have led the German military to topple Hitler. Churchill’s suggestion here was entirely in line with his public position during the crisis. He had not, in fact, said a great deal as it unfolded even though, anxious as he was, he was very busy behind the scenes. W.P. Crozier, the editor of the Manchester Guardian, informed one of v 112 v

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Churchill, Munich and the Grand Alliance his journalists on 14 September: ‘I spoke tonight with Winston Churchill, who is deeply perturbed but agreed that we ought not to criticise until we had some results.’2 Churchill did, however, make three interventions. The first was in his regular Daily Telegraph column, the article being published on 15 September, the day that Chamberlain flew to Berchtesgaden for the first time. It suggested that the UK, France and Russia should present ‘a joint or simultaneous note … setting forth that an attack on Czechoslovakia would immediately be followed by common action’.3 The second was on 21 September, in the form of a statement to the Press Association which declared: ‘If peace is to be preserved on a lasting basis it can only be by combination of all the Powers whose convictions and whose vital interests are opposed to Nazi domination.’4 Finally, on the 26th, he issued another statement which said that there was ‘still one good chance of preserving peace. A solemn warning should be presented to the German government in joint or simultaneous Notes by Great Britain, France and Russia’.5 He was not, it should be noted, arguing for war. Rather, he thought (or claimed) that a firm démarche could create the conditions in which war could be avoided.6 These September declarations were, in turn, all quite consistent with Churchill’s attitude at the time of the Anschluss that same spring. ‘As a matter of fact the plan of the “Grand Alliance” as Winston calls it had occurred to me long before he mentioned it’, wrote Chamberlain to his sister, with typical disdain, after the annexation of Austria. ‘It is a very attractive idea; indeed there is almost everything to be said for it until you come to examine its practicability.’7 It is not the primary purpose of this chapter, though, to assess how viable Churchill’s ideas actually were. (That task is carried out by Gabriel Gorodetsky in his contribution to this volume; he demonstrates that the USSR was potentially open to co-operation with Britain and France.) Rather, the aim is to show how he reached the conclusions and assumptions that underlaid his belief that it would be possible to work with the Soviet Union. This question has not previously been investigated sufficiently, in spite of the well-known and obvious contrast between his virulent anti-Bolshevism and support for British intervention in the Russian civil war and his advocacy of collaboration with Stalin in the later 1930s. Why was a man who in 1927 praised Mussolini for his ‘triumphant struggle against the bestial appetites and passions of Leninism’ willing to work with Stalin against Hitler at the time of Munich?8 After all, as late as 1937 Churchill remarked: ‘I will not pretend that, if I had to choose between Communism and Nazi-ism, I would choose Communism.’9 v 113 v

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The Munich Crisis, politics and the people A number of historians have taken Churchill’s willingness to work with the USSR after the rise of Hitler somewhat for granted. This is perhaps in part because the reasons for it seem obvious. Whether or not one accepts the view that he was uniquely far-sighted, it seems uncontentious to suggest that Churchill was correct in his perception that Nazi Germany posed a far greater risk to Britain and to European stability than the Soviet Union did. As Klaus Larres succinctly summarises, ‘Between 1933 and 1936 … Churchill became convinced that the greatest danger to world peace came not from the Soviet Union but from Hitler’s Germany. Thus he gradually began to dampen his criticism of Stalin as a person and international Communism as such.’10 Churchill, in this assessment, was fundamentally pragmatic. As Andrew Roberts has put it in his recent biography, his frequent shifts of position towards the USSR were explained not by ‘lack of consistency’ but rather by ‘a consideration of what was in “the historic life-interests” of the British Empire at each stage’.11 These explanations of course have merit, but they are insufficient. There were many other people, no less committed than Churchill to the defence of the British Empire, who took a very different view of the Soviet Union. Paradoxically, moreover, whereas Churchill had seen the nascent, weak USSR as an existential peril to the Empire, he became far less concerned about the new regime after it grew in strength. A more complex, challenging and provocative interpretation has been offered by David Carlton in his book Churchill and the Soviet Union (2000). Emphasising above all else Churchill’s identity as an ideological anti-communist, Carlton seeks, somewhat speculatively, to explain his subject’s changed attitude with reference to contingent factors and political opportunism. On the one hand, he suggests, Churchill may have ‘lost hope of being asked to serve under Chamberlain and accordingly decided to gamble all at the age of 63 on being catapulted into power on a wave of anti-German emotion’. On the other hand, developments in the Spanish Civil War were an influence on his thinking. When it broke out in July 1936 he had feared a Red victory, but by 1938 Franco had the upper hand and the communist tide in France had been reversed. ‘So now Churchill could return with relative safety to an unambiguous anti-German line and even contemplate a British alliance with the Soviets given that their influence was once again largely confined to the East.’ Carlton even goes so far as to argue that had the outcome in Spain favoured the Republicans, Churchill ‘might have supported Munich and might even have saluted Hitler as a bulwark against Bolshevism’.12 v 114 v

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Churchill, Munich and the Grand Alliance Although Carlton’s sensitivity to immediate context is helpful, he goes too far when he suggests that Churchill’s various divergences from anti-communist crusading – of which the Grand Alliance was surely the prime example – ‘were mere digressions and merely tactical in character’.13 What Carlton (like other historians) misses is the evolution of Churchill’s view of the USSR. Whereas it is quite true that his underlying opposition to communism never wavered, his understanding of the dynamics of the Soviet regime varied over time. Although he always stuck to his belief that it was extremely repressive, his view of how it operated internationally did undergo change. This evolution of his thinking was linked to the expulsion of Trotsky (the advocate of world revolution) and the triumph of Stalin (the pioneer of ‘socialism in one country’). From the later 1920s, Churchill gradually shifted towards the position that the Soviet Union would behave rationally and predictably in its own national interests. He also believed that these interests, in the face of the Nazi threat, coincided with those of the United Kingdom; and this assumption, therefore, helped determine his attitude and approach at the time of Munich. His opinions about the Soviets, moreover, can only be fully understood in the context of his evolving attitudes to diplomacy more generally. As a young man he had adhered to a brutally realist view of Great Power politics, but in the interwar years this was somewhat tempered by his promotion of ideas of ‘collective security’. Such rhetoric had an opportunistic aspect, as he sought to court progressive opinion in Britain; and it was jokingly said of him that he only became enthusiastic about the League of Nations when he thought it might lead to a war.14 At the same time, it is clear that he did genuinely value order and stability in international relations, albeit on a realist basis of the mutual recognition of spheres of influence. International rivalries remained an important part of the picture, but in Churchill’s world-view they could be contained by rational adjustments made by Great Men acting as national plenipotentiaries on the model of the Concert of Europe. Furthermore, in order to comprehend how the Soviet Union fitted into this picture, it is necessary to appreciate how Churchill’s view of the USSR intersected with his views of traditional Anglo-Russian tensions and the legacy of the Great Game. For it remains a paradox that, whereas we know a great deal about Churchill’s attitude to the Soviet Union, we know very little about his attitude to Russia. The two things are, of course, somewhat mixed up together. The problem of disentangling them is complicated by the fact that many v 115 v

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The Munich Crisis, politics and the people contemporaries used ‘Russia’ as a shorthand for ‘the USSR’, and plenty of historians have since followed suit. David Reynolds and Vladimir Pechatnov are unusual, in that in the introduction to their edition of Stalin’s correspondence with his fellow members of the ‘Big Three’, they explicitly address Churchill’s attitude to Russia as such. They offer the brief comment that he ‘shared the “orientalist” perceptions of Russia that were widespread among the British establishment, speaking of their “peasant” crudity and Asiatic “barbarism”, and likening them on occasions to “baboons”’.15 This is quite true, but it is by no means the full story. Although orientalist clichés slipped easily off his tongue, he often deployed them in a positive if patronising way. A frequent wartime technique, when faced with the necessity of commending Britain’s Soviet allies, was to lavish praise on Russia and Russians. In this way, he could subtly distance himself from the USSR and communism whilst fulfilling the diplomatic niceties. During the Cold War, he deployed a variant of the same tactic to achieve a different effect. A speech from March 1955 is worth quoting because it illustrates the conscious nature of his choice of terms: The House will perhaps note that I avoid using the word ‘Russia’ as much as possible in this discussion. I have a strong admiration for the Russian people – for their bravery, their many gifts, and their kindly nature. It is the Communist dictatorship and the declared ambition of the Communist Party and their proselytising activities that we are bound to resist ….16

There were other complexities too. Rather than viewing the tsars as benign in contrast to their tyrannical Bolshevik successors, Churchill actually saw the Soviets as continuing and further developing tsarist despotism.17 In the interwar years and after, he portrayed Soviet expansionism as the continuation of old-style Russian imperialism, albeit with a new, communist dimension. Nevertheless, he was also capable of portraying Soviet strength as a desirable contrast with the weakness of the old regime, at those points when it stood to benefit Britain. Furthermore, Russia held a liminal position in Churchill’s hierarchy of civilisations. If it sank into barbarism as a consequence of the 1917 revolution, it was also capable of being resurrected to its former national greatness and being integrated once again within the sphere of European advancement. As we will see, these various tropes and arguments provided him with a framework that allowed him to interpret Stalin as a viable foreign policy partner in spite of (and to a limited extent because of) the ruthless and repressive nature of his dictatorship. Churchill was thus able to integrate v 116 v

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Churchill, Munich and the Grand Alliance his anti-communism with a realpolitik commitment to working with the Soviets. Soviet ambassador Ivan Maisky once observed that the nineteenth century ‘undoubtedly left a burdensome legacy’ for Anglo-Soviet relations.18 The inheritance was certainly a complex one. Churchill was born towards the close of the era of Disraeli, whom he described as ‘a great and splendid Statesman, who loved our country and defied the Russians’.19 In 1889, when at Harrow School, he wrote an essay describing a British invasion of Russia that he imagined taking place in the year 1914. The tale illustrated ‘the superiority of John Bull over the Russian bear’. A poem he wrote after an outbreak of influenza in Europe in 1890 described the disease journeying ‘O’er miles of bleak Siberia’s plains / Where Russian exiles toil in chains’.20 As a young soldier-journalist at the end of the century, Churchill emerged as an advocate of the ­so-called ‘forward policy’, that is to say of British expansion on the North-West Frontier of India, in part to counter Russian aggression.21 ‘Finally I suppose we shall get the Afghan frontier line’, he wrote to his mother in 1897. ‘And even then, for in all human arrangements finality is only a comparative term, we shall be compelled to absorb – right up to the Russian frontier.’22 At this time he was committed to an extremely ­atavistic view of international relations. On the eve of his first election campaign, shortly prior to the Boer War, he deprecated the ongoing Hague peace conference and said that he was not interested in the improvement of the human race in general. Rather, ‘The supremacy of our own race was good enough for him.’23 There was a certain amount of posturing in all this. As an MP after 1900, though he continued to defend the territorial integrity of the Empire in the form that it already existed, he no longer advocated its further expansion. He also became friendlier to the notion of an international order bounded by rules or at least tempered by co-operation and the norms of diplomacy, provided that this posed no serious threat to British power. Yet when he switched from the Conservatives to the Liberals in 1904, some of his previous attitudes were adapted to new purposes. He emerged as an opponent of the Balfour government’s successive Aliens Bills, which were aimed at restricting immigration, in an atmosphere of hostility to Jewish migrants from Russia and Eastern Europe.24 He coupled his criticism of the 1905 bill with attacks on the government’s proposals for tariff reform and army reform. At the next election, he said, there was a risk that ‘by borrowing a tariff from the United States, a military system from Germany, and – when he thought v 117 v

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The Munich Crisis, politics and the people of the Aliens Bill – a system of police from Russia, we will change the free British Empire, which we have known and cherished, into a greedy, sordid, Jingo, profit-sharing domination’.25 In 1943, Maisky asked Churchill, as someone who had had dealings with Russia during the Great War, if he perceived any difference between the tsarist and Soviet governments. ‘Churchill replied: Of course I do. The main thing is that the Soviet Government is immeasurably stronger than the tsarist government was.’26 Clearly, there was an element of diplomatic flattery in this last remark, but he had never been a true enthusiast for the ancient regime. It is true that, in the interwar years, Churchill deprecated the tendency ‘to dismiss the Czarist régime as a purblind, corrupt, incompetent tyranny’.27 He credited Nicholas II with having tried to establish a parliamentary system.28 Yet in pre-1914 days, he himself had depicted tsarism as inherently illiberal. He had attributed Russia’s setbacks in her war with Japan partly to the latter’s superior development of civilisation and representative institutions: ‘in the essential principles of liberalism and moral force the advantage lay vastly’ with the Japanese.29 Warren Dockter has noted that Churchill held a (quite conventional) belief in the hierarchy of civilisations: ‘He placed Britain at the top of Europe, and Europe over Asiatic civilizations.’30 Russia, it seemed, held a somewhat ambiguous place in this hierarchy, or rather, like other countries, it was capable of moving up or down according to the political system that it adopted. For Churchill, then, the October revolution represented a decisive step backwards in this respect; even before it had taken place he had looked on Lenin as a ‘criminal agitator’ who had been responsible for causing ‘trouble, havoc and carnage among the brave Russian armies in the field’.31 It is not necessary here to retell the story of Churchill’s sustained and extensive efforts, as a minister in Lloyd George’s coalition government, to aid the anti-Bolshevik forces in the Russian civil war.32 Rather, it is worth dwelling on his description of how, as a consequence of the revolution, the ‘economic civilisation of these great regions’ was ‘sinking hopelessly into absolute stagnation’. He also drew a contrast with Russia’s former national greatness, now in his opinion sadly lost. Lenin, he argued, wanted to ‘create in Britain that enslaved, infected, starving and verminous Bedlam to which he has reduced the noble and mighty Russian state and nation’.33 To him, the Bolsheviks were ‘the avowed enemies of the existing civilization of the world’ who had ‘driven man from the civilization of the 20th century into a condition of barbarism worse than the Stone Age’.34 It is important to note also his belief that v 118 v

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Churchill, Munich and the Grand Alliance Lenin, Sinn Féin and the Indian and Egyptian nationalist extremists were all connected in a concerted collective effort to overthrow the British Empire. ‘It is becoming increasingly clear that all these factions are in touch with one another, and that they are acting in concert’, he claimed in 1920. ‘In fact there is developing a world-wide conspiracy against our country, designed to deprive us of our place in the world and to rob us of the fruits of victory.’35 His central objections to Bolshevism, therefore, were (a) that it involved a reversion to barbarism, and (b) that its proponents were attempting to spread its seditious principles globally. Even after the end of the civil war, Churchill’s anti-Bolshevism remained important to his domestic political identity. Yet his attitude to the Soviet Union showed some degree of nuance. As early as 1923 he suggested that the Soviets were ‘abandoning the principles of Communism, to establish which they killed so many people’.36 In The Aftermath (1929), he offered his famous comparison of Lenin to ‘a plague bacillus’. Yet he also showed some admiration for his mind and his will. He portrayed the New Economic Policy (NEP) as evidence that Lenin had seen the errors of his ways; tragically, Churchill suggested, his mind and body had failed before he could offer further remedies. ‘He alone could have led Russia into the enchanted quagmire; he alone could have found the way back to the causeway. He saw; he turned; he perished.’37 The communist Sunday Worker presented Churchill as an opportunist, ‘a man of changing mind. Even on Lenin and the Bolsheviks he has altered his opinion’.38 Churchill’s comments drew the ire of the exiled Trotsky, who replied to the book in an essay titled ‘On Churchill’ published in John O’London’s Weekly. Trotsky drew attention to factual errors, and alleged that ‘His lack of comprehension is at its worst when he attempts to deal with the inception of the New Economic Policy.’39 Churchill, a few months after he had lost office with the election defeat of Baldwin’s government, hit back with a striking piece published in Nash’s magazine. It was entitled ‘Trotsky: The Ogre of Europe’. It is notable – given that emotion is one of the key themes of this volume – that Churchill’s language in this article was the language of revulsion. He depicted Trotsky as someone committed to the destruction of Western civilisation. Communism, he argued, was not merely a creed but ‘a plan of campaign’, which exploited the language of liberty and democracy for its own ruthless ends. The Soviet system as it operated at this time appears to have triggered powerful feelings of disgust and aversion in him, and he certainly wanted to stimulate these feelings in others. One passage is particularly striking, not only for its filth/quarantine v 119 v

The Munich Crisis, politics and the people metaphor, but for its suggestion that Russia’s lapse into ‘Asiatic liquefaction’ could someday be reversed:

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The immense barbaric dunghill is turned over and over, fuming and oozing, while the civilised nations of the world move forward on their business behind a careful quarantine. Russia sinks back into a prolonged spell of barbarism from which some day the structure of a great nation will once again arise.40

There was a hint here that Russia had historically had the capacity to make a positive contribution to international relations, a suggestion that was also to be found in an article Churchill published in March 1931. ‘The modern world has the advantage of being able to watch and examine the results of the vast, terrible Russian experiment’, he wrote. ‘All nations are paying a heavy price in their prosperity for the elimination of Russia as a helpful healthy factor in the human commonwealth.’41 Moreover, even if the Soviet Union had been quarantined, this did not imply that it had ceased to be a threat. After the fall of the Spanish monarchy in April, he concluded that ‘Moscow’s influence has been active throughout Spain, and will be exerted to the utmost pitch in the next few months.’42 In an article later that same year, Churchill again warned of the dangers posed by ‘the ideas of Asiatic Communism’. The Five Year Plan, he suggested, was merely a cloak for the expansion of Soviet armaments. He now opted not to talk about Russia’s former greatness and potential future contribution to world order. Rather, he presented Soviet ambitions as a reworked and perhaps more dangerous version of traditional tsarist expansionism. He wrote of ‘the mountainous Russian power, Communist in principle, preaching the world revolution in policy and at the same time embodying all the old inherent imperialism of the pre-war Russia of the Czars’. To the Russians, the new states of Eastern Europe were ‘but revolted provinces, snatched from an empire founded by Peter the Great and languishing under the capitalistic system’. To retrieve these provinces and to ‘spread the light of communism’ were the twin objectives of Russia’s rulers and also of its youth.43 Coincidentally, the piece was published on 23 August, just at the point of the Labour government’s collapse. When it was replaced by a Conservative-dominated National Government, Churchill was not recalled to office. Continuing the campaign he had already begun against Labour’s Indian policy, he fought a long rearguard action against the new administration’s Government of India Bill. But although he was tacking to the right in that respect, further hard-line attacks by him on v 120 v

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Churchill, Munich and the Grand Alliance the Soviet Union were conspicuous by their absence. In fact, there was a significant period during which he said very little about the USSR at all. This could be seen as a sign of opportunism or lack of principle but it must be remembered that there was a limit to the number of fronts on which he could fight at a given time. When he at last returned to the issue he took a distinctly friendlier tone. It was of course important that, in the meantime, Hitler had come to power (in January 1933). In July 1934, by which time he had been warning of the Nazi danger for over a year, Churchill made a Commons speech praising the socalled Eastern Locarno. This was a proposed mutual-aid treaty (never implemented) between USSR, Czechoslovakia, Poland, Finland, Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania. It is uncertain how familiar Churchill was with the doctrine of ‘socialism in one country’, but it seems clear that by now he had ceased to regard Stalin himself as a promoter of global revolutionary expansionism. By his own account, he had been influenced towards the conclusion that Russia strongly wanted peace by the speeches of Soviet foreign minister Maxim Litvinov. The virtue of the proposed pact, Churchill said, was that it involved the reassociation of Soviet Russia with the Western European system. … Certainly, she has a great interest in maintaining peace. It is not enough to talk about her as ‘peace-loving’ because every Power is peace-loving always. One wants to see what is the interest of a particular Power and it is certainly the interest of Russia, even on grounds concerning her own internal arrangements, to preserve peace.44

The following month, making reference to this speech, the Sunday Express ran an article by Peter Howard headlined: ‘Mr. Churchill Changes His Mind: The Bogey Men of Moscow Are Now Quite Nice!’45 Other Conservatives (by no means all of them) were moving in this direction too. In his diary for 31 December 1934, Maisky reflected on how both Austen Chamberlain and Churchill had declared themselves ‘friends’ of the Soviet Union and demanded its admission to the League of Nations. This, he thought, signalled a new phase in Anglo-Soviet r­ elations: Not that the English lords have suddenly developed an affection for us, the unwashed Bolsheviks – no, this is not the case and never will be. It’s just that the moment arrived when the skill at ‘facing the facts’ (whether pleasant or unpleasant) which is so characteristic of British politicians finally overcame their enmity towards us on grounds of class and politics. We have now become such a major and stable international force that, willy-nilly, even v 121 v

The Munich Crisis, politics and the people

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the most incorrigible Conservative beasts can ignore us no longer and are forced to ‘acknowledge’ our existence and, as inveterate political operators, to derive from us whatever profit they can.46

From 1935, Churchill developed a personal relationship with Maisky that grew in intensity and intimacy towards the end of the decade. The ambassador made concerted efforts to persuade British politicians that the USSR had lost its revolutionary fervour, and Churchill told him that he did not believe that the country would pose a threat to Britain for at least ten years. Churchill also spoke to Maisky of his belief in collective security as the sole available means to frustrate the ambitions of the Nazis.47 R.A.C. Parker has written that ‘Churchill had not reconciled his understandable anti-communist emotions with the role he ascribed to Stalin’s Soviet Union in the anti-German alliance that he wished to develop from “collective security”.’48 Actually he went out of his way to outline his reasoning on this issue. Certainly, the onset of the civil war in Spain increased his suspicions of the Soviets. Yet, in an Evening Standard article published on 16 October 1936, he explained his belief that a schism had grown up within the communist world. ‘Put shortly, it is the quarrel between Stalin and Trotsky’, he wrote. ‘Stalin has now come to represent Russian nationalism in somewhat threadbare Communist trappings. Trotsky stands for the orthodox theory of international revolution.’ Although the USSR had not ceased to be a communist state, it was moving more in the direction of becoming a conventional military dictatorship as the influence of the ‘Communist priesthood’ waned. Accordingly: The external action of Moscow proceeds along two contradictory paths: the first tries to bring about the world revolution. It has played an all-important part in giving birth to the Spanish Horror. The second seeks to become a serviceable factor in European relationships, and is, whatever we may feel about it, an essential element in the balance of power.49

Soon after, Churchill made a Commons address in which he referred to the ‘imprudent and improvident action of Soviet Russia’ in creating revolutionary conditions in Spain. But although Carlton suggests that the speech was ‘highly critical’ of the USSR, Churchill simultaneously drew attention to ‘another Russia, which seems to be growing stronger as the years pass, which only wishes to be left alone in peace’. Whilst acknowledging that this other Russia did not presently fully exist, he nonetheless asserted that ‘such a Russia would be an indispensable element in the v 122 v

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Churchill, Munich and the Grand Alliance equipoise of peace both in the West and in the East’.50 Churchill’s 1937 remark about preferring Nazism to communism thus needs to be read in the light of his belief that Stalin was attempting to lead the Soviet Union in a much less ideological direction, which would help re-establish the European balance of power. This too is the context in which to read his comment to Maisky, less than a year before Munich: ‘That Trotsky, he is a perfect devil. He is a destructive, and not a creative force. I’m wholly for Stalin.’51 This in turn helps explain Churchill’s attitude to the Soviet show trials of the later 1930s, which he might have been expected to condemn as the ultimate manifestation of communist tyranny. In fact, he was conflicted. He already entertained doubts about the true strength of the Red Army, and, fearing that the purges might have weakened it, he sought reassurance from Maisky.52 He certainly realised that the trials themselves were ‘farcical’ and staged. At the same time, he thought they were intended as ‘signal proof that the Russian government was master in its own house and would have no truck with the Trotskyite schismatics’.53 He may even have regarded them as a form of rough justice. If he had believed after the First World War that Bolsheviks were involved in a global conspiracy against the British Empire, it was perhaps not too great a stretch to think that some of the same people had latterly been involved in a domestic plot against Stalin. Churchill later gave some credence to the existence of such an intrigue, and referred to ‘the merciless, but perhaps not needless, military and political purge’, which rid the Soviet army ‘of its pro-German elements at a heavy cost to its military efficiency’.54 When he republished his essay on Trotsky in his book Great Contemporaries, he removed the ‘dunghill’ passage quoted above. In its place he substituted another, lengthier, section which included the following sentences: ‘Russia is gaining in strength as the virulence of Communism abates in her blood. The process may be cruel but it is not morbid. It is a need of self-preservation which impels the Soviet Government to extrude Trotsky and his fresh-distilled poisons.’55 The USSR, in other words, was being purged not merely of disloyal or opposition elements, but of (Trotskyite) communism itself. By the eve of Munich, then, Churchill had reached the conclusion that internal changes since the late 1920s had made the Soviet Union a potentially dependable diplomatic collaborator, even if those changes were not wholly complete and if the Red Army’s capacity for battle remained in question. It is unsurprising, then, that Churchill invited Maisky for dinner on 1 September 1938 and discussed with him how to prevent war. v 123 v

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The Munich Crisis, politics and the people Churchill’s plan, according to Maisky’s diary, was that ‘when the Prague talks eventually reach a dead end and Hitler starts rattling his sabre, Britain, France, and the USSR should deliver a collective diplomatic note to Germany … It is the very fact of a joint move by the three powers that is crucial. A démarche of this kind, which would undoubtedly receive the moral support of Roosevelt, would scare Hitler and lay the foundations for a London–Paris–Moscow axis.’ Maisky thought that the idea was good in principle but did not believe that Chamberlain would agree to it. Nevertheless, three days later, Maisky visited Churchill at Chartwell. He told him that Litvinov had told the French chargé d’affaires in Moscow that the Soviets would meet their obligations to Czechoslovakia provided France did too.56 Without revealing the source, Churchill relayed this to Lord Halifax, the foreign secretary, but it was to no avail.57 In an unpublished section of his memoirs, Churchill stated: ‘I cannot doubt that it would have been possible at this juncture to bring Soviet Russia into a combination against Hitler’s impending aggression, and that the League of Nations would have invested the whole transaction with the sanction of International Law and collective security.’58 As noted above, during the Munich Crisis itself Churchill was essentially relegated to the position of bystander, though he made a visit to Paris on 20–21 September in an attempt to stiffen the French stance. Back in Britain, he stayed in touch with a conclave of sympathetic parliamentarians, whom he told that ‘the fundamental mistake the PM has made is his refusal to take Russia into his confidence’.59 Churchill later recalled the passion with which the MPs committed themselves to the proposition ‘We must get Russia in’. ‘I was impressed and indeed surprised by this intensity of view in Tory circles’, he wrote.60 But of course, many Conservatives took a different view. In the post-Munich Commons debate, R.A. Butler, Under-Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, offered a critique of Churchill’s own speech, in which he had said that ‘there can never be friendship between the British democracy and the Nazi Power, that Power which spurns Christian ethics’.61 If Britain was to pursue that philosophy, Butler argued, ‘we cannot have friendship with Russia any more than with Germany’ because the Soviet Union did not share Christian ethics either. It followed that there were two choices: ‘either to settle our differences with Germany by consultation, or to face the inevitability of a clash between the two systems of democracy and dictatorship’. Speaking as a member of the younger generation, Butler favoured the former.62 In the period up to the outbreak of war, though, Churchill continued to put significant faith in the power and influence of v 124 v

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Churchill, Munich and the Grand Alliance the USSR. As he wrote in March 1939: ‘The loyal attitude of the Soviets to the cause of peace, and their obvious interest in resisting the Nazi advance to the Black Sea, impart a feeling of encouragement to all the Eastern States now menaced by the maniacal dreams of Berlin.’63 What of the British public? Certainly, they were divided in their response to Churchill’s interventions. There was, for example, his constituent David C. D’Eath, who denounced him in the press: ‘When the crisis was at its height and when everything depended on the nation’s wholehearted support of the Prime Minister, Mr. Churchill issued a highly provocative statement to the Press. … It appeared to me to be a last desperate attempt to prevent a peaceful settlement of the dispute.’64 On the other hand, there was H.A.J. Silley, who responded praising Churchill’s ‘untiring insistence on Germany’s armed strength and our own weakness and the grave necessity for our rapid rearmament’.65 Quantifying support for Churchill is difficult, although the Joint Democrats Committee, which claimed to represent 350 electors of all views in his Epping constituency, advised him: ‘A census of popular opinion taken by us in this area, has shown that while your recent attitude has lost you a certain percentage of conservative support, it has gained for you a considerably greater support from the mass of electors.’66 Just as Chamberlain’s postbag bulged with letters, so too did Churchill’s, albeit seemingly not on the same scale.67 ‘Since letter writing by mothers is the fashion,’ wrote Margaret Gardiner of Hampstead, ‘and is being transformed into a formidable political weapon, I am impelled to write to you to express the gratitude and admiration, that I … feel for the clarity and sanity of your attitude in the present disasters.’68 Like Gardiner, many correspondents put great faith in Churchill, ‘the Last Great Englishman’.69 They frequently expressed approval of his postcrisis Commons speech, and sometimes cited his newspaper articles too. A fair number of sceptics and critics also got in touch. Edith Potterton of Wandsworth Common was unusually forthright: ‘For God’s sake, please be quiet & don’t make things more difficult for our Country.’70 More frequently, during the period before the settlement was reached, Churchill was urged to support Chamberlain or to use his influence for peace. For instance, Miss M. Akhurst and her sister, both of whom were Churchill’s constituents, begged him to consider their suggestion of ‘offering up some national or imperial interests’ in order that war might be avoided.71 Only a few of Churchill’s correspondents made substantive comment on the Soviet Union. Richard W. Bush of Chingford lamented the exclusion from the Munich Conference ‘of the one great State in Europe v 125 v

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The Munich Crisis, politics and the people which, whilst it has much more provocation than any other, is the most peaceable of them all – Russia’.72 A.R. Moulston of Theydon Bois, whilst disapproving of Churchill’s ‘general political outlook’, approved of his view ‘that a pact of Britain, France, and the USSR is essential to preserve us all against fascist aggressor powers’.73 Henry J.S. Sand of Woodford went further, blaming the government’s ‘unreasoning terror of communism’ for its failure to make a joint stand of that type, and commending Churchill for having ‘had the moral courage to free yourself from the obsession to which I believe the present appalling state of the world is directly traceable’.74 All this suggests that Churchill’s advocacy of a Grand Alliance may have helped him win over progressive opinion or blunt left-wing hostility, if only to a minor degree. Perhaps more striking is the fact that none of the critical letter-writers raised specific objection to his proposals for collaborating with the Soviet Union. Churchill’s anti-communist reputation may have reduced his vulnerability on this score. ‘I note that you are now said in Italy to “be under the influence of Moscow”!’, wrote Miss Elsie M. Platts of Derby. ‘How ridiculous! and how funny!’75 Although Munich provoked many dark emotions, it did not kill off everyone’s capacity for humour. This chapter has shown that Churchill’s attitude at the time of the Munich Agreement – the apotheosis of appeasement – cannot simply be taken for granted. The alternative he proposed rested upon his belief that Stalin’s Soviet Union could be a potentially reliable partner, a belief which in turn requires explanation. Within his own lifetime, Churchill had a reputation as a classical exponent of balance-of-power politics – an ‘equilibrium-juggler’ (Gleichgewichtsjongleur), as one West German commentator put it upon his retirement from Downing Street in 1955.76 Carlton, for his part, depicts a man for whom balance-of-power concerns were just sufficient to cause him to put his fervent anti-communism to one side while he pursued his battle against the Nazis, but who might have made a different calculation in altered circumstances. It is certainly right to see the balance of power as a vital issue for Churchill, yet, as we have seen, he did not regard Nazi Germany and Stalin’s Soviet Union merely as interchangeable pieces on the European chessboard. Rather, having reached the conclusion that the ‘fever’ of communism was abating in the USSR following the expulsion of Trotsky, he argued that the Soviets would act in the Russian national interest. At least for the time being, that interest coincided with the interests of the British Empire, which lay in the cause of collective security and peace. And v 126 v

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Churchill, Munich and the Grand Alliance whereas it is of course true that Churchill was trying to position himself to secure office, his apparent ideological switchback was less radical and opportunistic than appears at first sight. With hindsight, elements of Churchill’s view of developments within the USSR look, to say the least, eccentric. But the language of plague and poison that he applied to Lenin and Trotsky in the 1920s was easily adapted later on, hence his portrayal of Stalin as the admittedly ruthless perpetrator of a purge which cured the disease even as it left the Soviet body-politic and military weakened in the short term. Understanding this allows us to see that although Churchill stated his preference for Nazism over communism, he actually operated a more complex hierarchy. He may have preferred Nazism to post-1917-style Bolshevism/ Trotskyism, but he preferred (incipiently de-communised) Stalinist dictatorship to both. When all this is appreciated, R.A. Butler’s attempted rebuttal of Churchill appears less compelling. Although Churchill was not quite an atheist, neither was he a conventional religious believer.77 For him, the notion of ‘Christian ethics’ was largely coterminous with that of ‘civilisation’. The resurgent Russian nation that he believed was an essential element in the balance of power was now emerging from Stalin’s Soviet Union as it extracted itself from barbarism; and therefore, unlike Hitler’s Germany, it actually did have some claim to subscribe to Christian ethics, that is, to be civilised. It was no surprise, then, that when the Soviet Union eventually entered the Second World War in 1941, Churchill’s immediate rhetorical move was to invoke its pious peasantry as the guardians of an eternal Russia.78 Churchill’s changed attitude to the USSR, then, not only helped facilitate his opposition to the National Government’s version of appeasement, but also laid the groundwork for the Grand Alliance of the Second World War. (He naturally regretted the Nazi–Soviet Pact but was not discombobulated by it: in a famous broadcast of October 1939, he suggested that the key to the Soviet ‘enigma’ was the ‘Russian national interest’, which may have been a deep hint that one day British and Russian interests would align.)79And whereas some Conservatives moved in the same direction as him during the 1930s, the Soviet question was a point on which he and Chamberlain differed fundamentally. At the same time, it is important not to exaggerate the distance between them, at least when it came to diplomatic method. Like Chamberlain, Churchill had no fundamental objection to settling the fate of Eastern European peoples over their heads, in consultation with other heads of government. This would be amply demonstrated at the Yalta Conference in 1945. ‘Poor Neville v 127 v

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Chamberlain believed he could trust with Hitler’, he told ministers after his return on that occasion. ‘He was wrong. But I don’t think I’m wrong about Stalin.’80 This appears to have been an obvious misjudgement, but it was not based merely on his personal assessment of Stalin’s character. By the time of Munich, the ideological foundations of his later verdict had already been laid. Notes   1 Speech of 5 October 1938. Unless otherwise stated, all Churchill’s speeches cited are to be found in Robert Rhodes James (ed.), Winston S. Churchill: His Complete Speeches, 1897–1963, 8 vols (New York: Chelsea House, 1974).  2 W.P. Crozier to F.A. Voigt, 14 September 1938, Guardian Archive, John Rylands Library, Manchester, GB 133 GDN/220/143.  3 Winston S. Churchill, Step by Step 1936–1939 (London: Odhams, 1947 [1939]), p. 271.   4 Press statement, 21 September 1938, in Martin Gilbert (ed.), The Churchill Documents, vol. 13: The Coming of War 1936–1939 (Hillsdale, MI: Hillsdale College Press, 2009), pp. 1171–2.  5 Press statement, 26 September 1938, in Gilbert, Churchill Documents 13, p. 1177.   6 Here he may have been over-optimistic. See David Reynolds, In Command of History: Churchill Fighting and Writing the Second World War (London: Allen Lane, 2004), pp. 96–7.  7 Neville Chamberlain to Ida Chamberlain, 20 March 1938, in Robert Self (ed.), The Neville Chamberlain Diary Letters, vol. 4: The Downing Street Years, 1934–1940 (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2005), p. 307. This letter was first published (in part) in Keith Feiling, The Life of Neville Chamberlain (London: Macmillan, 1946), pp. 347–8. Churchill poured scorn upon it in The Second World War, vol. 1: The Gathering Storm (London: Reprint Society, 1950 [1948]), pp. 229–30.   8 ‘Mr. Churchill on Fascism’, The Times, 21 January 1927.   9 Speech of 14 April 1937. 10 Klaus Larres, Churchill’s Cold War: The Politics of Personal Diplomacy (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2002), p. 43. 11 Andrew Roberts, Churchill: Walking with Destiny (London: Allen Lane, 2018), p. 473. 12 David Carlton, Churchill and the Soviet Union (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2000), pp. 59–61. 13 Carlton, Churchill and the Soviet Union, p. 200. 14 Nick Smart (ed.), The Diaries and Letters of Robert Bernays, 1932–1939 (Lewiston, NY: Edwin Mellen, 1996), p. 253 (entry for 9 April 1936). v 128 v

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Churchill, Munich and the Grand Alliance 15 David Reynolds and Vladimir Pechatnov (eds), The Kremlin Letters: Stalin’s Wartime Correspondence with Churchill and Roosevelt (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2018), p. 14. 16 Speech of 1 March 1955. 17 Note his ironic comment in his 1947 essay ‘The Dream’, in which he converses with the ghost of his father, who asks him questions about the modern world, including if there is still a tsar. ‘Yes, but he is not a Romanoff’, Churchill replies. ‘It’s another family. He is much more powerful, and much more despotic.’ Martin Gilbert, Winston S. Churchill, vol. 8: “Never Despair”, 1945–1965 (London: Heinemann, 1988), p. 371. 18 Gabriel Gorodetsky (ed.), The Complete Maisky Diaries, vol. 1: The Rise of Hitler and the Gathering Clouds of War 1932–1938 (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2017), p. 13 (entry for 18 July 1934). 19 Winston Churchill, My Early Life: A Roving Commission (London: Macmillan, 1941 [1930]), p. 22. 20 Jim Golland, Not Winston, Just William? Winston Churchill at Harrow School (Harrow: The Herga Press, 1988), pp. 11, 13. 21 Richard Toye, ‘“The riddle of the frontier”: Winston Churchill, the Malakand Field Force and the Rhetoric of Imperial Expansion’, Historical Research, 84:225 (2011), pp. 493–512. 22 Winston S. Churchill to Lady Randolph Churchill, 21 October 1897, in Randolph S. Churchill (ed.), Winston S. Churchill: Volume I Companion Part 2, 1896–1900 (London: Heinemann, 1967), pp. 807–8. 23 ‘Midland Conservative Club: Mr Churchill’s Presidential Address’, Birmingham Daily Post, 2 June 1899. 24 Michael Cohen, Churchill and the Jews, 2nd edition (London: Frank Cass, 2003), pp. 17–25; Paul Addison, Churchill on the Home Front, 1900–1955 (London: Pimlico, 1993), pp. 43–4. 25 Speech of 14 April 1905, emphasis added. 26 Gorodetsky, Maisky Diaries, vol. 3, p. 1430 (entry for 23 April 1943). 27 Winston S. Churchill, The World Crisis 1911–1918, vol. 2 (New York: Barnes & Noble, 1993 [1923–31]), p. 1119. 28 Winston S. Churchill, ‘Monarchy versus Autocracy’, Illustrated Sunday Herald, 1 February 1920, in Michael Wolff (ed.), The Collected Essays of Sir Winston Churchill, vol. 2 (London: Library of Imperial History, 1976), pp. 63–6. 29 ‘The Cobden Centenary’, The Times, 4 June 1904. See also his speech of 25 January 1905. 30 Warren Dockter, Churchill and the Islamic World (London: I.B. Tauris, 2015), pp. 42–3. 31 ‘Mr. Churchill on his Opponent’, Observer, 29 July 1917. 32 See Clifford Kinvig, Churchill’s Crusade: The British Invasion of Russia ­1918–1920 (London: Hambledon Continuum, 2006). v 129 v

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The Munich Crisis, politics and the people 33 Winston S. Churchill, ‘Russia An Enslaved Bedlam’, Evening News, 14 June 1920, Churchill Press Cuttings (CHPC) 1, Churchill Archives Centre, Cambridge (henceforward CAC). Emphasis added. 34 Speech of 3 January 1920. 35 Speech of 4 November 1920. 36 Speech of 28 November 1923. 37 Winston S. Churchill, The World Crisis, vol. IV: 1918–1928: The Aftermath (London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2015 [1929]), pp. 39–41. 38 Ralph Fox, ‘A Real Bandit of Power’, Sunday Worker, 17 March 1929. 39 Leon Trotsky, ‘On Churchill’, John O’London’s Weekly, 20 April 1929, reproduced at www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1929/04/churchill.htm (accessed 19 November 2018). 40 Winston S. Churchill, ‘The Ogre of Europe’, Nash’s, December 1929. 41 Winston S. Churchill, ‘Private Enterprise Upheld as Better Than Socialism or Anti-Capitalistic Plans’, Montreal Daily Star, 7 March 1931, CAC, CHPC 11. This article is not listed in Ronald I. Cohen’s all-but-exhaustive Bibliography of the Writings of Sir Winston Churchill, vol. 2 (London: Thoemmes Continuum, 2006). 42 Winston Churchill, ‘Spanish Government Faces Trials with Subversive Elements in Population’, Montreal Daily Star, 2 May 1931, CAC, CHPC 12. Not listed by Cohen. 43 Winston S. Churchill, ‘Winston Churchill Sees Soviet Europe as Gigantic Menace to Peace of Europe’, New York American, 23 August 1931, CAC, CHPC 12. Not listed by Cohen. 44 Speech of 13 July 1934. 45 Sunday Express, 26 August 1934. Howard would become one of the three coauthors of the 1940 pamphlet Guilty Men (by ‘Cato’). 46 Gorodetsky, Maisky Diaries, vol. 1, pp. 58–9 (entry for 31 December 1934). 47 Gorodetsky, Maisky Diaries, vol. 1, pp. 16, 121. 48 R.A.C. Parker, Churchill and Appeasement (London: Macmillan, 2000), p. 120. 49 Churchill, Step by Step, pp. 58–9. 50 Speech of 5 November 1936; Carlton, Churchill and the Soviet Union, p. 60. 51 Gorodetsky, Maisky Diaries, vol. 1, p. 227 (entry for 16 November 1937). 52 Gorodetsky, Maisky Diaries, vol. 1, p. 168, and p. 227 (entry for 16 November 1937). 53 Churchill, Step by Step, p. 60. 54 Churchill, The Gathering Storm, p. 241. 55 Winston S. Churchill, Great Contemporaries (London: Odhams Press, 1949 [1937]), p. 158. 56 Gorodetsky, Maisky Diaries, vol. 1, pp. 316–17, 320–1 (entries for 1and 4 September 1938). v 130 v

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Churchill, Munich and the Grand Alliance 57 Churchill, The Gathering Storm, pp. 245–6. 58 Winston S. Churchill, unpublished section of memoirs, ‘BOOK? – CHAP. XII – The Maisky Incident’, Churchill Papers, CAC, CHUR 4/91/119. 59 Nigel Nicolson (ed.), Harold Nicolson: Diaries and Letters 1930–1939 (London: Fontana, 1969 [1966]), p. 361 (entry for 26 September 1938). 60 Churchill, The Gathering Storm, p. 257. 61 Speech of 5 October 1938. 62 Parliamentary Debates, House of Commons, Fifth Series, Vol. 339, 5 October 1938, col 453. 63 Churchill, Step by Step, p. 330. 64 David C. D’Eath to the editor of the Walthamstow, Lenton and Chingford Guardian, published 14 October 1938. Copy in Churchill Papers, CAC, CHAR 7/46/49. 65 H.A.J. Silley to the editor of the West Essex Gazette, published 22 October 1938. Copy in Churchill Papers, CAC, CHAR 7/46/61. 66 Henry Kahan to Churchill, 26 October 1938, Churchill Papers, CAC, CHAR 7/46/57. 67 On the ‘crisis letters’ sent to Chamberlain, see Julie V. Gottlieb, ‘Guilty Women’, Foreign Policy, and Appeasement in Inter-War Britain (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015). 68 Margaret Gardiner to Churchill, 10 October 1938, Churchill Papers, CAC, CHAR 2/604B/128. 69 Neville Moller to Churchill, 3 October 1938, Churchill Papers, CAC, CHAR 7/107A/90. 70 Edith Potterton to Churchill, 10 October 1938, Churchill Papers, CAC, CHAR 2/604B/131. 71 M. Akhurst to Churchill, 27 September 1938, Churchill Papers, CAC, CHAR 7/107A/38. 72 Richard W. Bush to Churchill, 30 September 1938, Churchill Papers, CAC, CHAR 7/107A/59. 73 A.R. Moulston to Churchill, 1 October 1938, Churchill Papers, CAC, CHAR 7/107A/63. 74 Henry J.S. Sand to Churchill, 1 October 1938, Churchill Papers, CAC, CHAR 7/107A/67. 75 Elsie M. Platts to Churchill, 13 October 1938, Churchill Papers, CAC, CHAR 2/604B/169. 76 Matthias Zeller, ‘Rechenfehler in Europas Gleichgewicht’, Die Deutsche Zukunft, 14 April 1955, copy in Churchill Papers, CAC, CHUR 2/482A/15. 77 Paul Addison, ‘Destiny, History and Providence: The Religion of Winston Churchill’, in Michael Bentley (ed.), Private and Public Doctrine: Essays in British History Presented to Maurice Cowling (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), pp. 236–50. See also Addison’s essay ‘How Churchill’s Mind Worked’, in Wm. Roger Louis (ed.), Serendipitous Adventures with v 131 v

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Britannia: Personalities, Politics and Culture in Britain (London: I.B. Tauris, 2019), pp. 17–27. 78 Broadcast of 22 June 1941. 79 Broadcast of 1 October 1939. 80 Ben Pimlott (ed.), The Second World War Diary of Hugh Dalton, 1940–1945 (London: Jonathan Cape, 1986), p. 836 (entry for 23 February 1945).

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Munich and the unexpected rise of American power Andrew Preston

Few Americans were as intimately involved in their nation’s emergence as a superpower as George F. Kennan. As the author of the strategy of containment, Kennan has gone down in history as the ‘intellectual godfather’ of US foreign policy in the Cold War.1 Later, he took part in national debates over intervention in Vietnam, nuclear-arms control, and the 2003 war in Iraq. No one person can capture the complexities and contradictions of American foreign relations, but if we had to single someone out it would probably be Kennan.2 In 1938, Kennan was a foreign-service officer with the State Department. He had been posted to Berlin, but earlier that year he was recalled to Washington to prepare for his next assignment: Prague. In September, he and his wife, Annelise, and their children sailed from New York, bound for Hamburg, the first leg of a journey that would eventually take them to the Czech capital. When they left America, the Czech crisis was gathering. The day they left, the Washington Post featured a photo of the Kennans, with the accompanying caption explaining that the family was ‘Headed for Danger Zone’; a few pages later, the Post’s editorial cartoonist drew a bony finger turning the world clock back from 1938 to 1914.3 The Czech crisis escalated further while the Kennans were en route, and the ship’s captain was told the port of Hamburg was now closed and was instructed to set a new course for France. The journey itself was uneventful, but by the time the ship reached the coast of Normandy the continent was in an anxious state. When ‘the gangway dropped into place at Le Havre’, Kennan wrote in his diary, ‘a panicky and seething Europe burst upon us in a second’. A US consular official met the Kennan family and told them that, with war imminent, Annelise v 133 v

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The Munich Crisis, politics and the people and the children would not be allowed to travel to Prague; they would wait out the crisis in Norway instead.4 Kennan made his way to Paris, where he caught a flight to Prague on 29 September; his flight departed Le Bourget airfield just ahead of the plane that carried Edouard Daladier to Munich for his fateful meeting with Adolf Hitler, Benito Mussolini and Neville Chamberlain.5 From Prague, Kennan had a somewhat different perspective on the drama unfolding in Munich. If people in London, Paris and Berlin awaited the outbreak of war with uncertainty and anxiety and hoped for a peaceful settlement to the crisis, the people of Prague were both defiant and desperate. Kennan found the locals deeply resentful of the British and French, and he was careful not to speak two of his three languages, English or German, around strangers lest they berate him for sealing the fate of their country; his third language, Russian, came in handy as he began to pick up rudimentary but passable knowledge of both Czech and Slovakian. Wandering Americans passed through the embassy, including the intrepid journalist Martha Gellhorn – who beseeched Kennan to do more for the oncoming flow of refugees from the Sudetenland – and a young Harvard graduate named John F. Kennedy. In his first observations, Kennan tried to be hopeful yet sounded ominous: ‘The story of Czechoslovakia is not yet ended.’6 Despite the gloom, Kennan’s initial reaction to the Munich Conference was one of relief. War had been averted. It seemed the Washington Post’s cartoonist had got it wrong and that 1938 was a year of new possibilities, not a repeat of the carnage of the Great War. Kennan believed that Munich provided an opportunity to correct the mistakes of the 1919 settlement, especially the dissolution of the Austro-Hungarian Empire and the creation of a number of weak and unstable independent states in its place. Moreover, he told the State Department that Czechoslovakia was not itself entirely blameless; the government in Prague had treated the Hungarians along the southern border poorly, and the new country’s ethnic mix of Czechs, Slovaks, Sudeten Germans and Ruthenians was never going to be a happy one. But as fear and anger in Prague deepened, and as it became clear that Germany’s intentions did not stop with the Sudetenland, Kennan quickly revised his initial optimism. In the months after his arrival in the country, he travelled throughout Czechoslovakia, encountering fear and growing persecution – especially of Jews – ­wherever he went. He picked up his family in Denmark, but even though they returned to Prague with him Kennan could not escape the gloom. ‘I wonder whether it is possible for anyone who has not been here to v 134 v

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The unexpected rise of American power conceive of the chaos which the Munich catastrophe created’, he noted in December: ‘Everything which had any powers of cohesion went by the boards. Nothing was left in the popular mind but bitterness, bewilderment, and skepticism.’7 By March 1939, Kennan no longer saw any cause to rejoice at Munich’s preservation of peace. With the Nazis bearing down on Prague, he found himself the focus of desperate requests for asylum. Still, despite being the official representative of a country that had not taken part in the dismemberment of Czechoslovakia and which had been the haven for generations of destitute Europeans, Kennan had to abide by the dictates of American neutrality and turn away everyone who was not a US citizen. Two Social Democrats from Germany, trying to keep one step ahead of the Gestapo, pleaded for shelter to no avail. Kennan gave local Jews the same response. Across the city, people went into hiding. At breakfast one morning, shortly before the Nazis reached Prague, Kennan ‘found that I myself had a refugee, a Jewish acquaintance who had worked many years for American interests’. Kennan told him that he could not offer permanent asylum, but so long as nobody asked for him the man could stay. ‘For twenty-four hours he haunted the house’, Kennan noted, a pitiful figure of horror and despair, moving uneasily around the drawingroom, smoking one cigarette after another, too unstrung to eat or think of anything but his plight. His brother and sister-in-law had committed suicide together after Munich, and he had a strong inclination to follow suit. Annelise pleaded with him at intervals throughout the coming hours not to choose this way out, not because she or I had any great optimism with respect to his chances for future happiness but partly on general Anglo-Saxon principles and partly to preserve our home from this sort of unpleasantness.

When the Germans marched into Prague, it was, Kennan recalled, ‘a harrowing experience’.8 Kennan’s reading of the situation in Czechoslovakia was insightful and, for the most part, accurate. But the conclusions he reached were not solely the result of his formidable intellect and legendary international-relations realism. As the historian Frank Costigliola has shown, Kennan was a highly emotional person despite his self-styled reputation as a hard-headed realist, and his powers of perception were highest when they drew from intimate observation and personal experience.9 Emotions, Costigliola notes, are not in competition with or in contrast to reason, and they do not cloud judgement or cognition; rather, emotions v 135 v

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The Munich Crisis, politics and the people are integral to thought, and reason cannot function without emotional input.10 Kennan’s thought process was no different. From Prague, and from his travels throughout Czechoslovakia in 1938–39, he was able to appreciate widespread feelings of fear, betrayal and anger that grew in the months following the Munich Conference. Ironically for a man so disdainful of his native land, Kennan’s reaction to Munich and its aftermath also perfectly captured the mood back in the United States.11 Americans viewed the events in Munich with an uneasy ambivalence, intuitively aware of an impending disaster but unable to foresee exactly how that disaster would affect them. The emotions Kennan detected in Czechoslovakia – fear, betrayal and anger – also became key drivers of US foreign policy. Building slowly from the Munich Crisis, these three emotions reinterpreted abstract and geographically distant threats as clear and present dangers to the United States and fuelled America’s mission in the Second World War and the Cold War. Ultimately, then, Munich became a pivotal moment for the United States, an important threshold for the transition from ­implacable neutrality to anti-German belligerence and from non-­ interventionist neutrality to superpower hegemony. Historians have frequently, but briefly, noted Munich’s effects in Washington, especially how heightened expectations for peace gave way to an acceptance that perhaps war was the only answer to Nazi aggression.12 And there is little to dispute in this overall assessment: for the Americans as for their future British and French allies, Munich – or, more specifically, the failure of Munich – was a key turning point. Still, important questions remain: Why should Munich have been so important to the United States? Why was it so key to the shifting American world-view? The answers are not obvious. For one thing, continental Europe was nearly 4,000 miles from the US east coast, and as non-interventionists frequently pointed out, there was no conceivable way Germany could attack the United States. Whatever happened, the conflict would remain far from American shores, and at the height of the Munich Crisis there was no mass panic at the imminence of war that gripped Britain and France. For another, after the Great War the vast majority of Americans were determined never again to become embroiled in Europe’s troubles. By the mid-1930s, the consensus was that intervention in 1917 had been a mistake, and that the British and French had manipulated the United States into war for their own narrow interests, in secret partnership with Wall Street banks and US arms manufacturers who stood to v 136 v

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The unexpected rise of American power profit from American participation in the war.13 Under the banner of ­neutrality  – not, as Brooke L. Blower has pointed out, ‘isolationism’, because the  United States was in fact deeply interconnected with the rest of the world – Congress rode a wave of popular opposition to intervention in Great Power politics and passed a series of bills designed to prevent the  nation from getting sucked into another European war.14 Perhaps, on the day the Kennans sailed for Europe, the Washington Post cartoonist was right, and that Europe was turning back the clock to 1914, but Americans were more concerned with ensuring that their own clock would not be reset to 1917. The conference in Munich should therefore have reinforced this policy of neutrality, first by preserving the fragile European peace, and then, once it was clear Munich had failed, by illustrating to Americans the intractable, warlike nature of European geopolitics. And indeed, this was how Americans first reacted to Munich. As William C. Bullitt, the US ambassador to Paris, bluntly told French foreign minister Georges Bonnet when the Czech crisis was beginning to escalate, ‘this was precisely the sort of European dispute in which the United States would desire to avoid involvement’.15 When Bullitt got word that some officials back in Washington – including President Franklin D. Roosevelt himself – were giving signals that France should stand fast and not give in to Hitler’s demands, he fired off a stern warning to Secretary of State Cordell Hull. ‘It is entirely honorable to urge another nation to go to war if one is prepared to go to war at once on the side of that nation’, Bullitt wrote in an unusually direct rebuke to the president, ‘but I know nothing more dishonorable than to urge another nation to go to war if one is determined not to go to war on the side of that nation, and I believe that the people of the United States are determined not to go to war against Germany.’16 US ambassador to London Joseph P. Kennedy, whose son would soon pay Kennan a visit in Prague, had a similar message for British foreign secretary Lord Halifax. When Halifax asked what the United States would do if Germany invaded Czechoslovakia, Kennedy replied that he ‘had not the slightest idea; except that we want to keep out of war’. Halifax then asked Kennedy ‘why I thought Great Britain should be the defender of the ideals and morals of the democracies rather than the United States … and I told him that they had made the Czechoslovak incident part of their business, their allies were connected to the whole affair, and our people just failed to see where we should be involved’.17 As Hull observed throughout 1938, official US policy was based on the fact that signatories to the 1928 Kellogg–Briand Pact – including v 137 v

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The Munich Crisis, politics and the people Germany, Britain, France and Czechoslovakia – were legally prohibited from advancing their interests by force of arms.18 Roosevelt pointed this out in a letter to Hitler as the crisis peaked in late September.19 Hitler replied that surely, of all people, an American president should recognise that the Sudeten Germans had a legitimate claim to an international right ‘proclaimed by President [Woodrow] Wilson as the most important basis of national life’: national self-determination.20 Roosevelt did not escalate matters with Hitler but instead responded carefully with a call for an international peace conference to settle the dispute.21 Americans wanted to remain neutral, and they encouraged Europeans to settle their differences peacefully. The United States stood apart, politically and geographically, but American fears grew that another European conflict would become another world war and eventually draw in the United States. Washington may have rebuffed calls from Prague, Warsaw and Belgrade to act as a neutral mediator between the Czechs and Germans, but, as Roosevelt told Hitler, the primary US objective was a diplomatic solution.22 Bullitt urged FDR and Hull to call for a peace conference at The Hague, which the president approved despite his secretary of state’s objections. ‘It can’t do any harm’, Roosevelt told Hull. ‘It’s safe to urge peace until the last moment.’23 When word emerged that Hitler agreed to host talks in Munich, US officials breathed a sigh of relief. When Chamberlain informed Washington that he had accepted Hitler’s invitation, FDR famously sent a two-word reply: ‘Good man.’24 This sense of relief was widely shared in the United States. Gallup polling around the time of the Munich Conference showed that, in a year when the Czech crisis and the Munich settlement were by far the most closely followed news story in the United States, solid majorities of people approved of the policy of appeasement (59 per cent) and did not believe that, even if appeasement was unsuccessful, war would involve the United States (57 per cent).25 The interwar period marked a surge in pacifist activism – a high point the American peace movement would not reach again until the anti-Vietnam War protests three decades later – as peace crusaders marched against the legacy of the Great War and the prospect of its sequel.26 Unexpected support for British policy also came from normally Anglophobic quarters. In a pointed criticism of the Treaty of Versailles, the American Fellowship Forum (AFF), a group of German-Americans who advocated for mutual understanding between Berlin and Washington, hailed Munich as ‘the most hopeful beginning of the New Europe that should have come twenty years ago’. From his studio in Detroit, Father Charles Coughlin, the Catholic ‘radio v 138 v

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The unexpected rise of American power priest’ who boasted one of the largest audiences in the nation, praised Chamberlain as ‘one of the most outstanding statesmen in the history of the British Empire’.27 Overall, then, there seemed to be cause for quiet celebration. Europe had avoided war, and even though Roosevelt had become involved in the diplomatic manoeuvring, the United States had been able to preserve its neutrality. The settlement at Munich would hopefully be a cornerstone for peace in Europe – potentially peace in Asia too, if it became the first of a series of international conferences to settle outstanding territorial disputes.28 Ambassador Kennedy thought the United States had achieved its core objectives: peace without entanglement. Normally averse to ‘all that God stuff’ in public life, but wanting to flatter a man who often embedded political expression in religious faith, Kennedy held nothing back in celebrating the occasion. FDR had helped keep the peace, he wrote from London, and should take pride in what he had accomplished: ‘The President can feel that God was on his side and that he was on God’s side.’29 Yet as Kennan recognised from Prague, Munich also catalysed a number of American fears about the modern world, above all the fear that global interconnectedness and industrial warfare would create problems too great for America to handle even from its geographical remove. Although the United States was nowhere near continental Europe, and although most Americans had wanted to avoid becoming entangled in Europe’s fate, the crisis over Czechoslovakia was the turning point in a process that would eventually result in full American participation in the world crisis. Partly this unease was caused by the nature of the Nazi regime, which regularly broke established international norms. While the United States did not hold formal membership in the League of Nations and other institutions that generated and safeguarded these norms, America still largely observed and respected them, at least in its relations with Europe, and felt uneasy at states that had little hesitation in breaking the rules for their own self-interest. Related was the sense that Nazi methods were dishonourable and not the way a civilised nation should behave. Roosevelt distrusted Nazi Germany even before Hitler violated the Munich Agreement, and much of the rest of the country followed suit once it was clear that Germany had further designs on small, democratic Czechoslovakia. Senator William Borah, who had been one of the leading anti-interventionists since his opposition to US membership in the League, perhaps captured this complex set of emotions best v 139 v

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The Munich Crisis, politics and the people when he grieved over ‘the dismembered body of Czechoslovakia, the only real republic in that portion of the world’.30 That a long-standing anti-­interventionist and peace activist like Borah could be so critical of a major milestone in the avoidance of war spoke volumes about the growing uneasiness of American neutrality. And anger, too – a significant number of Americans saw appeasement as an ignoble compromise that would only postpone an eventual war. As early as May, FDR’s vacillating response to the onset of the Czech crisis prompted the Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Anne O’Hare McCormick to lament ‘the confusion of the American attitude toward foreign affairs’. The Roosevelt administration, McCormick charged, ‘cannot bear to stand silent and aloof while world-shaking events take place, and at the same time it is uncertain and divided as to how far it should go … Every crisis makes more evident that we are neither neutral nor unneutral.’31 Popular opinion supported appeasement, but many of the nation’s newspapers did not, prompting the French ambassador to Washington to complain to the State Department over the ‘many editorials that were wounding him as well as a large number of letters, more or less insulting’.32 When the Great Powers had first shown their willingness to abandon Czechoslovakia, the Washington Post published a stinging editorial cartoon depicting Britain and France literally throwing the Czechs to the wolves while riding over the snow in a sled; holding the reins, and driving on the horses, was the familiar figure of Uncle Sam.33 The New York Times editorialised that appeasement ‘is a surrender to evil made by the democratic powers to save themselves from what they consider a greater evil. … The world cries, Peace, peace; when there is no peace.’34 Christian Century, the nation’s largest religious magazine and normally a bastion of pacifism, concluded that, like the Versailles Treaty two decades before, the peace of Munich was ‘bought at a moral price which it may take generations of human misery to pay’.35 The US embassy in Berlin reported that it was besieged by American reporters who were ‘visibly shaken and many of them enraged by the events of Munich. Each and every one of them were secretly hoping for a new German push which would permit Democratic world opinion to rally against Hitler.’36 When the Munich agreement was announced, McCormick wrote that Czechoslovakia ‘has been offered up as a whole burnt-offering on the altar of peace. She is the sacrifice [while] Hitler marches with the consent of the architects of the system he has destroyed.’37 In private, Roosevelt compared Chamberlain to Judas Iscariot and branded Hitler a ‘wild man’ who believed himself to be ‘a reincarnation of Julius Caesar and Jesus v 140 v

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The unexpected rise of American power Christ’.38 The United States could take no comfort in the fact that the fate of Europe was in the hands of such unreliable people. Others decried Munich, but not on grounds of morality. Despite having a repressive racial order that was strikingly similar to Nazi Germany’s, the American South turned sharply anti-German after Munich. As the historian Ira Katznelson notes, by 1938 the South had mounting surpluses of cotton due to German disruption of the world economy and the increasing strains on US–German trade. Czechoslovakia was a significant importer of Southern cotton, but that trade essentially stopped after Munich because two-thirds of Czech cotton mills were in the Sudetenland. Southern tobacco exports to Europe were also affected. By contrast, the South experienced an economic boost as the US began preparing for war after the German seizure of the rest of Czechoslovakia in 1939, starting with the expansion of military bases found disproportionately in the South.39 Understandably, as Kennan observed firsthand in Prague, few felt greater anxiety about Munich than Jews. There was never any hope among Jews, certainly in Europe but also in the United States, that Nazi ambitions were limited or peaceful. On hearing that the British were not prepared to guarantee Czech sovereignty but were instead open to negotiating the cession of the Sudetenland, Rabbi Louis Newman of Manhattan decried ‘the surrender of the Czech Republic to Nazi terrorism’, for it would lead even further to ‘the surrender of minority after minority to the whim and will of the new race of Vandals and Visigoths’.40 ‘You may not feel as I do’, Rabbi Stephen Wise wrote to his friend, the Christian pacifist John Haynes Holmes, shortly after the Munich Agreement was announced, ‘but to me this is one of the saddest days of history.’ Wise was a pillar of the Jewish establishment in New York, and he had been a counsellor to internationalist Democrats, including presidents Woodrow Wilson and Franklin Roosevelt, and he lamented that American politicians and diplomats had embraced such a sordid compromise by which the Great Powers saved themselves by sacrificing their smaller allies. ‘Human liberties are fled, democracy is a sham, standards have gone, the moral realm of mankind is laid waste. God help us!’ Munich was still on Wise’s mind the next day, so he wrote Holmes, one of the most respected anti-war activists in the country, another letter. ‘I know you will feel that we have been saved from the horror of horrors which is war’, he wrote. ‘But the evil day has only been put off.’ Czechoslovakia had been betrayed without even being included. ‘Jesus at least had the dignity of being crucified in his own presence.’ Wise admonished his pacifist friend v 141 v

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The Munich Crisis, politics and the people not to ­celebrate: ‘Don’t think we have escaped war. We have war without sacrifice. We have victory with shame!’41 Wise was aghast at British and French – and American – betrayal of democracy in Europe, but he was also terrified at the fate that would surely befall Europe’s Jews if Germany kept expanding unchecked. Wise naturally felt such anxiety, but his fears were shared widely, and not just by his fellow Jews. With the exception of hard-core isolationists who travelled in the extremist fringes of American fascism and anti-Semitism, such as Senator Gerald Nye or the aviator and public face of the America First movement, Charles Lindbergh, most Americans expressed concern for the fate of European Jewry. They were not only well aware of the persecution of European Jews (among others, including Christians) by the time of the Munich Conference, they were disgusted by it.42 It was particularly important for the development of American public opinion that the appeasement at Munich was followed not long after by the vicious Nazi pogrom commonly known as Kristallnacht. This spasm of anti-Semitic violence, which erupted across Germany and was followed closely by people back in the United States, broke out only six weeks after the Munich Agreement and did much to erode what was left of Americans’ trust in Germany’s capacity for peaceful coexistence with anyone. ‘I myself could scarcely believe that such things could occur in a twentieth-century civilization’, Roosevelt gasped at hearing the news, and he recalled the US ambassador from Berlin in protest.43 Two weeks after Kristallnacht, 94 per cent of Americans said they disapproved of ‘Nazi treatment of Jews in Germany’ – a remarkable figure given the rise of anti-Semitism in the United States during the 1930s – while 61 per cent said they would participate in a boycott of German goods. Perhaps most surprisingly, given the depths of anti-communist ideology throughout the country, 83 per cent of people said they would rather see the Soviet Union win a hypothetical war with Nazi Germany.44 As a banner at one anti-German protest put it, the struggle was not so much between Christians and Jews but one of ‘Nazis vs. Civilization’.45 Events in Germany such as Kristallnacht had a profound effect on the political culture and social norms of the United States. Historians have long observed that the United States became a ‘tri-faith’ nation in the 1950s – Protestant-Catholic-Jew, in Will Herberg’s famous 1955 formulation – when the global fight against ‘godless’ communism led Americans to value religious faith over materialistic ideologies like communism.46 Religion thus came to represent the essence of Americanism in its battle with Soviet-inspired communism. While there is no doubting v 142 v

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The unexpected rise of American power that the 1950s marked the zenith of this ecumenical faith in faith, the era was not the first to witness it. Rather, Roosevelt and other pluralistically minded American elites fashioned a tri-faith society in the late 1930s explicitly in response to the emergence of totalitarianism in Europe, including Soviet communism but more acutely German Nazism.47 This religious refashioning of democratic norms dovetailed with the strategic refashioning of threat perception, so that American security could now be threatened if its principles were under attack virtually anywhere in the world. Religion did not cause particular foreign policies, but it did provide the context in which Americans devised and implemented those policies. In other words, religious values, particularly the freedoms of conscience and worship, helped determine how Americans decided what exactly was in the national interest.48 To Roosevelt, the Nazi assault on Jews, and by extension on all religions, that followed in the wake of the Munich Agreement was not simply a moral outrage but a threat to America’s security. In an increasingly interdependent world, even an officially neutral United States could not escape the spread of danger from elsewhere. As FDR put it in his January 1939 State of the Union address, ‘Where freedom of religion has been attacked, the attack has come from sources opposed to democracy. Where democracy has been overthrown, the spirit of free worship has disappeared. And where religion and democracy have vanished, good faith and reason in international affairs have given way to strident ambition and brute force.’49 On its own, Roosevelt claimed, the Nazi threat to religion was appalling; but, tied to the growing strength of the Nazi military and driven by an insatiably aggressive Nazi ideology of expansion, the assault on Europe’s Jews signalled that another world war was in the offing, one which Americans could not avoid even if they refused to play a full part. Couched as a call for peace, Roosevelt’s State of the Union address was instead a call to arms. The president’s diagnosis matched that of his diplomatic corps. Only two weeks after the Munich Conference, the US representative to the League of Nations in Geneva reported that while nobody had wanted war over the Sudetenland, neither did anyone believe that the peace would hold.50 A few months after that, the embassy in Tokyo reported that the ‘results of the Munich Conference were interpreted by Japan as an admission by the democratic states of their inability to match the strength of the Berlin–Rome axis, and this gave further impetus to the policy of strengthening Japan’s ties with that axis’. What remained of Japanese liberalism and democracy was now in full retreat, and the v 143 v

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The Munich Crisis, politics and the people Imperial Japanese Army was using Munich to prosecute its war in China more ruthlessly because appeasement had convinced Tokyo that Britain, France and the United States would do nothing to resist Japan’s advance.51 When Hitler announced, only two weeks after Munich, that Germany was fortifying its western frontier, Roosevelt countered with his own announcement two days later that the US defence budget was increasing that year by $300 million and that he would seek another $500 million from Congress.52 Before long, the expansionist policies of Germany and Japan reacted with American sensitivities to an interconnected world to produce a new element in American foreign relations: the doctrine of ‘national security’. The phrase itself, now ubiquitous, had rarely been used before 1938; indeed, between Munich and the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, FDR invoked the term more often than had all of his predecessors, combined. Previously, American conceptions of self-defence had been limited to traditional concepts of defending against physical encroachments upon territorial sovereignty. National security literally meant the physical security of the nation. In his 1939 State of the Union address, and elsewhere, Roosevelt changed that by highlighting new threats that were geographically distant and ideological in character. Rhetorically, the much more capacious notion of ‘national security’, which could perceive mortal threats to the United States emanating from virtually anywhere in the world, replaced the more limited idea of territorial selfdefence. Roosevelt began this conceptual shift following the Japanese invasion of China in July 1937, but the real catalyst in this reaction was Munich. The rapid realisation in the autumn of 1938 that appeasement would not satisfy Hitler, and that the normal bounds of civilised diplomacy would not constrain Nazi Germany, led FDR and other interventionists to expand the very notions of what constituted national self-defence.53 To Roosevelt, the failure of appeasement and the ambitions of the dictators meant that the United States could no longer take its safety for granted. Geographic isolation could no longer offer protection. When declaring an unlimited national emergency in May 1941 – a full six months before the United States actually entered the war – Roosevelt explained the new nature of threat to the American people. ‘Your Government knows what terms Hitler, if victorious, would impose’, he warned over a national radio address. ‘They are, indeed, the only terms on which he would accept a so-called “negotiated” peace.’ Until recently, the nations of the western hemisphere could assume that the oceans v 144 v

The unexpected rise of American power

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could keep them removed from foreign conflicts. But those days were over. To the people of the Americas, a triumphant Hitler would say, as he said after the seizure of Austria, and as he said after Munich, and as he said after the seizure of Czechoslovakia: ‘I am now completely satisfied. This is the last territorial readjustment I will seek.’ And he would of course add: ‘All we want is peace, friendship, and profitable trade relations with you in the New World.’ Were any of us in the Americas so incredibly simple and forgetful as to accept those honeyed words, what would then happen?

As Roosevelt’s listeners well knew, there were plenty of Americans who still believed in the wisdom of appeasement and the folly of ­intervention – Roosevelt himself, after all, had encouraged the convening of the Munich Conference in the first place. But here he was referring to his partisan enemies at home – so-called isolationists, many of them anti-New Deal Republicans – who continued to resist becoming more involved in Europe and Asia.54 This was the basis for Roosevelt’s strategy for ‘hemispheric defense’, which he had already announced in principle in a major address in Kingston, Ontario, a few months before and began planning in earnest in the weeks following Munich.55 In essence, his plan was a revival of the original purpose of the Monroe Doctrine of 1823, which had intended to keep the newly independent American republics throughout the western hemisphere from being recolonised by the European powers. In the intervening century, the Monroe Doctrine had also become a justification for the imposition of American hegemony in the Americas, particularly in Central America and the Caribbean, but Roosevelt had repudiated that imperial past with his Good Neighbor Policy of 1933. The rise of Nazi Germany returned hemispheric defence to the heart of American strategy and led Roosevelt to warn of Nazi global conquest once Germany had finished with Europe, even though, as his critics pointed out, the logistics of a transoceanic invasion were implausible to the point of impossible. FDR was undeterred, and on Christmas Eve 1938, twenty western-hemisphere nations joined the United States in signing the Declaration of Lima, which pledged mutual assistance in the defence of hemispheric security.56 The Lima declaration was not a treaty, and so was not legally binding, but it was nonetheless a significant step made possible by the spectre of Munich. ‘We have learned the lessons of recent years. We know now that if we seek to appease’ the Germans, FDR said later in a radio address to the people of the Americas, ‘we only v 145 v

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The Munich Crisis, politics and the people hasten the day of their attack upon us.’57 He reinforced this message in another address not long after. ‘In September, 1938, came the Munich crisis’, Roosevelt recounted: ‘German, French and Czech armies were mobilized. The result was only an abortive armistice. That declaration at Lima was a great step toward peace. For unless the Hemisphere is safe, we are not safe. Matters in Europe grew steadily worse. Czecho-Slovakia was overrun by the Nazis.’58 Roosevelt vowed nobody in the western hemisphere would make that mistake again. This new threat, made possible by the combined power of industrialisation and totalitarian ideology deployed on a mass scale, presented something new in the American world-view. Threats to US national security could now emanate from anywhere, at any time, and had to be confronted as soon as they took shape. Appeasement might seem like the most prudent course, but the consequences of Munich showed other­ wise. In what was possibly his most famous foreign-policy address, the ‘arsenal of democracy’ speech of December 1940 which laid the groundwork for Lend–Lease by committing the United States to the defence of Britain and other democracies a full year before American entry into the war, Roosevelt explained: ‘This is not a fireside chat on war. It is a talk on national security.’ The talk was made necessary because the ‘experience of the past two years has proven beyond doubt that no nation can appease the Nazis. No man can tame a tiger into a kitten by stroking it. There can be no appeasement with ruthlessness. There can be no reasoning with an incendiary bomb. We know now that a nation can have peace with the Nazis only at the price of total surrender.’ But the Nazis were not Roosevelt’s only target that evening. ‘American appeasers’, who failed to realise that ‘shootings and chains and concentration camps are not simply the transient tools but the very altars of modern dictatorships’, were just as dangerous because they prevented the United States from exercising its power to fulfil its proper mission.59 Powerful though it was, Roosevelt’s rhetoric had limited impact in the three years after the conference in Munich. Officials may have looked back in hindsight to identify, as Adolf Berle recalled in 1946, that the ‘date when war was considered probable rather than remotely possible was shortly after the Munich conferences’, but that view was in fact slow to form at the time.60 Americans on the whole may have agreed with FDR’s increasingly alarming warnings about the untrustworthiness of Nazi promises, but that new perspective did not lead them to support entry into the war, and the United States did not become a belligerent until the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor and the German declaration v 146 v

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The unexpected rise of American power of war in December 1941. Those twin events then apparently vindicated the anti-appeasement message FDR and other interventionists had been issuing since the failure of Munich had become apparent in the autumn of 1938. This crystallisation of the lessons of Munich had a transformative effect on the American approach to the world, one that would condition US post-war relations. It is no exaggeration to argue that the origins of America’s Cold War can be found in the ruins of the appeasement at Munich. The theory, seemingly confirmed by the failed experiment at Munich, that dictators would only halt their insatiable expansionism if they were met with firm resistance became accepted as fact by American foreign policy makers – and none more so than George F. Kennan. His posting to Prague in 1938, right as the Munich Conference was unfolding, made him an eyewitness to the Czechs’ bitterness at being abandoned by the Great Powers, the Jews’ increasingly desperate plight, and the Nazis’ conquest of the rest of Czechoslovakia. Later, first as deputy chief of mission at the US embassy in Moscow and then as director of the State Department’s Policy Planning Staff, Kennan applied his insights from his time in Prague to a powerful explanation of the conduct of the Soviet Union.61 As he put it in his famous 1947 ‘X’ article in Foreign Affairs, the United States had to adopt ‘a policy of firm containment, designed to confront the Russians with unalterable counter-force at every point where they show signs of encroaching upon the interests of a peaceful and stable world’.62 Containment was Kennan’s response to appeasement, a decade in the making. As the Cold War unfolded, the shadow of Munich continued to hang over US national security.63 For ‘a generation seared by the memory of Munich’, writes John Lewis Gaddis, appeasement was intolerable ‘however unpleasant the alternatives might be’, even in the nuclear age.64 Avoiding another Munich provided the conceptual foundation for the domino theory, first iterated in 1954, which in turn stimulated US intervention in Vietnam in order to stop the spread of communism in Southeast Asia at its source.65 When President Lyndon B. Johnson and his advisers deliberated in 1964–65 over whether to Americanise the war in South Vietnam, they turned frequently to the Munich analogy to explain why they could not simply negotiate their way out of supporting a smaller, weaker ally facing imminent conquest by a totalitarian opponent.66 Unlike many other countries in the 1930s and 1940s, the United States never faced a direct threat from Nazi Germany or the Soviet Union; it was never bombed, invaded or occupied by a foreign power. v 147 v

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The Munich Crisis, politics and the people Yet Americans reacted as if the danger they faced was imminent and real, leading to a new concept of self-defence known as ‘national security’. Perceiving the world through this new lens was not a response to a real threat but rather an act of imagination. The failure of appeasement did not immediately cause this new line of thinking, but once events seemed to confirm its lessons the power of the Munich analogy was almost unstoppable. The folly of appeasement, and the need to maintain vigilance against expansionist dictators and terrorists, is still a powerful watchword for American national security.67 Avoiding another Munich, an initiative President Franklin D. Roosevelt initially supported, remains one of the lodestars for America’s global mission. Notes   1 George C. Herring, From Colony to Superpower: U.S. Foreign Relations since 1776 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2008), p. 612.   2 The best account of Kennan and his doctrine that would guide American strategy through the Cold War is John Lewis Gaddis’s Strategies of Containment: A Critical Appraisal of American National Security Policy during the Cold War (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005).  3 John Lewis Gaddis, George F. Kennan: An American Life (New York: Penguin, 2011), p. 120.   4 George F. Kennan, The Kennan Diaries, ed. Frank Costigliola (New York: Norton, 2014), p. 130 (entry for 28 September 1938).  5 Gaddis, George F. Kennan, p. 121.  6 ‘Personal notes on the Munich crisis, written in early October 1938’, George F. Kennan, From Prague After Munich: Diplomatic Papers, 1938–1940 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1968), p. 6. For Gellhorn and Kennedy, see Gaddis, George F. Kennan, pp. 122–3.   7 ‘Excerpts from a personal letter’, 8 December 1938, in Kennan, From Prague After Munich, p. 7.   8 George F. Kennan, Memoirs, 1925–1950 (Boston: Little, Brown, 1967), 97.   9 Frank Costigliola, ‘“I React Intensely to Everything”: Russia and the Frustrated Emotions of George F. Kennan, 1933–1958’, Journal of American History, 102 (March 2016), pp. 1076–8. See also the portrayal of Kennan in Frank Costigliola, Roosevelt’s Lost Alliances: How Personal Politics Helped Start the Cold War (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2012). 10 Frank Costigliola, ‘Reading for Emotion’, in Frank Costigliola and Michael J. Hogan (eds), Explaining the History of American Foreign Relations, 3rd edition (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016), pp. 356–73. 11 On Kennan’s ambivalence towards his native country, especially its mass consumerism and democratic individualism, see Anders Stephanson, Kennan v 148 v

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The unexpected rise of American power and the Art of Foreign Policy (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1989). 12 The most thorough treatment is Barbara Rearden Farnham, Roosevelt and the Munich Crisis: A Study of Political Decision-Making (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1997). But excellent, concise accounts are also found in Robert Dallek, Franklin D. Roosevelt and American Foreign Policy, 1932–1945 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1979), pp. 161–6; David Reynolds, The Creation of the Anglo-American Alliance 1937–1941: A Study in Competitive Co-operation (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1981), pp. 33–6; and David Reynolds, From Munich to Pearl Harbor: Roosevelt’s America and the Origins of the Second World War (Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, 2001), pp. 38–42. 13 See, for example, H.C. Engelbracht and F.C. Hanighen, Merchants of Death: A Study of the International Armament Industry (New York: Dodd, Mead & Co., 1934); and Report of the Special Committee on Investigation of the Munitions Industry, United States Senate, pursuant to S.Res. 206 (73d Congress), a resolution to make certain investigations concerning the manufacture and sale of arms and other war munitions (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1936). 14 Brooke L. Blower, ‘From Isolationism to Neutrality: A New Framework for Understanding American Political Culture, 1919–1941’, Diplomatic History, 38 (April 2014), pp. 345–76. 15 William C. Bullitt (Paris) to Cordell Hull, 13 July 1938, Foreign Relations of the United States: Diplomatic Papers, 1938, vol. I (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1955), p. 531 (hereafter FRUS). 16 Bullitt to Hull, 19 September 1938, FRUS, vol. I, p. 618. For Roosevelt’s apparent attempts to stiffen French resolve, see Dallek, Franklin D. Roosevelt and American Foreign Policy, p. 164. 17 Joseph P. Kennedy (London) to Hull, 10 September 1938, FRUS, vol. I, p. 586. 18 ‘Hull Urges Peace in Central Europe’, New York Times, 29 May 1938, p. 1 (hereafter NYT); Cordell Hull, speech to the Bar Association of Tennessee, ‘The Spirit of International Law’, Nashville, 3 June 1938, World Affairs, 101 (September 1938), 143–50; ‘Hull Tells Nations War Has No Victor’, NYT, 28 August 1938, p. 1. 19 Roosevelt to Hitler, 26 September 1938, The Public Papers and Addresses of Franklin D. Roosevelt, 13 vols, vol. 7 (New York: Random House, 1938–50), p. 531 (hereafter PPAFDR). 20 Hitler to Roosevelt, 27 September 1938, ibid., p. 533. 21 Roosevelt to Hitler, 27 September 1938, ibid., pp. 535–7. 22 Memo of conversation, drafted by Pierrepont Moffat, 5 August 1938, FRUS, vol. I, p. 539. 23 Bullitt to Hull, 24 September 1938, FRUS, vol. I, pp. 641–2; Cordell Hull, The Memoirs of Cordell Hull, vol. 1 (New York: Macmillan, 1948), p. 591. v 149 v

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The Munich Crisis, politics and the people 24 Hull to Kennedy, 28 September 1938, FRUS, vol. I, p. 688. 25 Polling results: ‘The Munich Agreement’, 14 October 1938, and ‘European War’, 2 October 1938, in The Gallup Poll: Public Opinion, 1935–1971, vol. 1 (New York: Random House, 1972), pp. 121, 120. For the interest in the Czech crisis as the year’s dominant news story, see ‘Most Interesting New Story’, 25 December 1938, ibid., p. 131. 26 See Charles Chatfield, For Peace and Justice: Pacifism in America, 1914–1941 (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1971); and Michael G. Thompson, For God and Globe: Christian Internationalism in the United States between the Great War and the Cold War (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2015). 27 AFF and Coughlin quoted in Geoffrey S. Smith, To Save a Nation: American “Extremism,” the New Deal, and the Coming of World War II, revised edition (Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, 1992), pp. 166, 126. 28 Joseph Grew (Tokyo) to Hull, 10 October 1938, FRUS, vol. III, pp. 314–15. 29 Kennedy to Hull, 28 September 1938, FRUS, vol. I, p. 693. ‘God stuff’ quoted in Andrew Roberts, The Holy Fox: The Life of Lord Halifax (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1991), p. 192. On FDR’s religion and its political uses, see Andrew Preston, Sword of the Spirit, Shield of Faith: Religion in American War and Diplomacy (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2012), pp. 315–64. 30 Quoted in Justus D. Doenecke, Storm on the Horizon: The Challenge to American Intervention, 1939–1941 (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2000), p. 12. 31 Anne O’Hare McCormick, ‘Europe: The United States Seconds the Motion for Peace’, NYT, 30 May 1938, p. 10. A similar criticism of US passivity was levelled in the autumn in a Washington Post editorial: ‘A Breathing Spell’, Washington Post, 20 September 1938, p. 8 (hereafter WP). 32 Memo of conversation, drafted by Moffat, 20 September 1938, FRUS, vol. I, p. 625. See also memo of conversation, drafted by Hull, 23 September 1938, ibid., pp. 638–9. 33 ‘To the Wolves’, WP, 20 September 1938, p. 8. 34 ‘The End of an Epoch’, NYT, 20 September 1938, p. 22. 35 Quoted in Donald Meyer, The Protestant Search for Political Realism, ­1919–1941, 2nd edition (Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 1988), p. 378. 36 Report by the US Military Attaché in Berlin, 5 October 1938, FRUS, vol. I, p. 716. 37 Anne O’Hare McCormick, ‘Europe: Thoughts as Germans March into Czechoslovakia’, NYT, 1 October 1938, p. 16. 38 David M. Kennedy, Freedom from Fear: The American People in Depression and War, 1929–1945 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999), p. 419; quoted in Reynolds, From Munich to Pearl Harbor, pp. 42–3. 39 Ira Katznelson, Fear Itself: The New Deal and the Origins of Our Time (New York: Liveright, 2013), pp. 288–9. v 150 v

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The unexpected rise of American power 40 ‘Crisis in Europe Decried by Rabbis’, NYT, 18 September 1938, p. 32. 41 Stephen Wise to John Haynes Holmes, October 1938, The Personal Letters of Stephen Wise, ed. Justine Wise Polier and James Waterman Wise (Boston: Beacon Press, 1956), pp. 250–1. 42 See Preston, Sword of the Spirit, pp. 328–33. 43 Quoted in John A. Thompson, A Sense of Power: The Roots of America’s Global Role (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2015), p. 156. 44 Polling data from, respectively, ‘Nazi Persecutions’, 9 December 1938, ‘Boycott of German Goods’, 18 December 1938, and ‘War Between Germany and Russia’, 11 December 1938, in Gallup Poll, vol. 1, pp. 128, 130, 128–9. 45 Quoted in Wendy L. Wall, Inventing the “American Way”: The Politics of Consensus from the New Deal to the Civil Rights Movement (New York: Oxford University Press, 2008), p. 84. 46 Will Herberg, Protestant, Catholic, Jew: An Essay in Religious Sociology (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1955). For historical analysis of this important development, see Mark Silk, Spiritual Politics: Religion and America Since World War II (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1988); Jonathan P. Herzog, The Spiritual-Industrial Complex: America’s Religious Battle against Communism in the Early Cold War (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011); and Kevin M. Schultz, Tri-Faith America: How Catholics and Jews Held Postwar America to Its Protestant Promise (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011). 47 Wall, Inventing the “American Way”, pp. 15–100; Preston, Sword of the Spirit, 315–41. 48 See Andrew Preston, ‘The Religious Turn in Diplomatic History’, in Costigliola and Hogan (eds), Explaining, pp. 291–5. 49 Franklin D. Roosevelt, ‘Annual Message to Congress’, 4 January 1939, PPAFDR, vol. 8, pp. 1–2. 50 Howard Bucknell, Jr (Geneva) to Hull, 12 October 1938, FRUS, vol. I, p. 87. 51 Grew to Hull, 2 December 1938, FRUS, vol. III, p. 405; Grew to Hull, 13 January 1939, FRUS, 1939, vol. III (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1955), p. 2. 52 William O’Neill, A Democracy at War: America’s Fight at Home and Abroad in World War II (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1993), p. 16. 53 Andrew Preston, ‘Monsters Everywhere: A Genealogy of National Security’, Diplomatic History, 38 (June 2014), pp. 477–500; Thompson, Sense of Power. 54 ‘A Radio Address Announcing the Proclamation of an Unlimited National Emergency’, 27 May 1941, PPAFDR, vol. 10, p. 183. For the political fight over foreign policy Roosevelt had with Republicans, see Steven Casey, Cautious Crusade: Franklin D. Roosevelt, American Public Opinion, and the War against Nazi Germany (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), pp. 3–45; and Julian E. Zelizer, Arsenal of Democracy: The Politics of National Security – From World War II to the War on Terrorism (New York: Basic Books, 2010), pp. 39–51. v 151 v

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The Munich Crisis, politics and the people 55 ‘Address at Queen’s University, Kingston, Ontario’, 18 August 1938, PPAFDR, vol. 7, pp. 491–4. See also David G. Haglund, Latin America and the Transformation of U.S. Strategic Thought, 1936–1940 (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1984). 56 International Conference of American States, ‘Declaration of Lima’, 24 December 1938, Department of State, Peace and War: United States Foreign Policy, 1931–1941 (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1942), pp. 438–9. 57 ‘Address on Hemisphere Defense’, 12 October 1940, PPAFDR, vol. 9, p. 466. 58 ‘Campaign Address at Madison Square Garden’, 28 October 1940, ibid., p. 508. 59 ‘Fireside Chat on National Security’, 29 December 1940, ibid., pp. 633, 638–9. 60 Quoted in Charles A. Beard, President Roosevelt and the Coming of the War, 1941: A Study in Appearances and Realities (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1948), p. 409. 61 Gaddis, George F. Kennan, p. 129. 62 X [George F. Kennan], ‘The Sources of Soviet Conduct’, Foreign Affairs, 25 (July 1947), p. 581. 63 Jeffrey Record, Making War, Thinking History: Munich, Vietnam, and Presidential Uses of Force from Korea to Kosovo (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 2002). 64 John Lewis Gaddis, The United States and the Origins of the Cold War ­1941–1947 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1972), p. 356. 65 Frank Ninkovich, Modernity and Power: A History of the Domino Theory in the Twentieth Century (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994). 66 For the most thorough analysis, see Yuen Fong Khong, Analogies at War: Korea, Munich, Dien Bien Phu, and the Vietnam Decisions of 1965 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1992). But see also Record, Making War, Thinking History, pp. 45–78. 67 Invocations of Munich and appeasement in American political discourse are virtually unlimited, but for a recent example see Antony J. Blinken and Robert Kagan, ‘“America First” is only making the world worse. Here’s a better approach’, WP, 1 January 2019.

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Mussolini, Munich and the Italian people Downloaded from manchesterhive.com © Copyright protected it is illegal to copy or distribute this document

Christian Goeschel

For Benito Mussolini, Munich was one of the greatest triumphs of his career. Italians celebrated the Duce as the saviour of peace in Europe in the piazze of Italy. Fascist propaganda boasted that Mussolini had effectively determined Europe’s fate, not least because he, like Hitler, appeared to be in control of his nation, unlike the leaders of the purportedly decadent liberal democracies France and Britain. Yet, Mussolini’s proposal for the Munich settlement had, in fact, been drafted by German officials.1 The propagandistic claim about Italy’s preponderant influence at Munich reflected the long-standing craving of Italian nationalists for Italy to be a Great Power and boosted Mussolini’s prestige. Emblematic in this respect was an article by the leading journalist Giorgio Pini, published in Il Popolo d’Italia, the Fascist flagship paper. For Pini, Mussolini was no less than the arbiter of war and peace in Europe.2 Il Popolo d’Italia declared on its cover on 30 September 1938 that ‘the errors of Versailles have in part been repaired without bloodshed’ and gave Mussolini credit for this major accomplishment that was a step on the path towards ‘a new Europe’ which would be dominated by Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany rather than France and Britain. Another article on the same cover celebrated the ‘triumph of the principle of nationality’, a reference to the Wilsonian principle of national self-determination, which Mussolini and Hitler, in a cynical variation of the former US President’s liberalinternationalist agenda, had used to justify their demands for a German annexation of the Sudetenland.3 Relief that war had been averted was not restricted to the statecensored Italian media. A broadcast was aired by Vatican Radio in the evening of 30 September 1938. In it, Pius XI implored the leaders v 153 v

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The Munich Crisis, politics and the people at Munich to maintain peace. This message had a powerful impact on Catholics all over the world, especially, of course, in Italy, where the papacy retained a strong influence over the lives and minds of Italians. In this sense, many Catholic believers across Europe, regardless of whether they lived under a fascist or a liberal-democratic regime, were united in their opposition to war over Czechoslovakia.4 On 2 October 1938, days after the conclusion of the Munich Agreement, Benito Mussolini received a letter from one Licia Bertolini from Pisa. She was a member of the Fascist youth organisation Gioventù Italiana del Littorio and praised Mussolini as the ‘saviour of Italy’ and ‘the defender of European peace, the victor of a war without bloodshed’.5 Bertolini’s letter is one of thousands penned by Italian men and women from all classes and generations whose role in the foreign and domestic policies of Mussolini’s government has not yet received systematic scrutiny. The leaders of the other nations represented at Munich also received large amounts of letters, as the other contributions to this book demonstrate. The prospect of another European war, twenty years after the end of the Great War, seemed so profound that individual correspondents across the four nations thought that politicians must at least listen to the ‘voice of the people’ which was overwhelmingly in favour of peace. Yet letters such as this one, largely unexplored, suggest an alternative history of Italy’s role in the Munich Crisis, shifting the focus from high politics to the role of ordinary people in the domestic and foreign policy dynamics of Fascist rule. I unfold my argument in three steps. First, I explain the background to Italian foreign policy during the Munich Crisis. Second, through a closer examination of popular reactions to the Munich Crisis in Italy, I ask how Mussolini’s dictatorship used imagined and real expressions of popular opinion in its foreign policy. Finally, I conclude with an evaluation of the impact of perceived or real popular opinion in Fascist Italy on Italian domestic and foreign policy at the time of the Munich Crisis. Key to my interpretation is the insight that in Fascist Italy, foreign policy was closely entangled with domestic policy, including the passing of racial legislation that is often studied in isolation from Munich. I therefore offer an alternative account of Italy’s role during the Munich Crisis, putting the ‘people’ at the centre of the analysis and thereby taking a different approach to recent contributions on Italy’s role in the crisis, including those by G. Bruce Strang, Hans Woller and Patrizia Dogliani, which all adopt a more or less conventional top-down perspective. I examine the impact of imagined and real attitudes of ordinary Italians v 154 v

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Mussolini, Munich and the Italian people on Italian decision making during the Munich Crisis. In his work on the nexus between public opinion and foreign policy, Daniel Hucker, focusing on France and Britain, two liberal democracies, usefully distinguishes between what the people thought and what political elites thought the ‘people’ believed. There is an important caveat, however. In Fascist Italy, a repressive dictatorship without a free press in which people were unable to express what they believed without facing potentially severe consequences, including arrest, the public sphere had been largely destroyed by the regime and replaced by an atmosphere of superficial consensus and conformity. Analysis of opinion, then, requires particularly careful handling, and the notion of ‘public opinion’ is not applicable to dictatorships. Here, the notion of ‘popular opinion’, a term put to systematic use by Ian Kershaw in his 1980s studies of Bavaria under Nazism, is particularly useful. ‘Popular opinion’ is a notion that forces an engagement in this essay with the everyday lives of Italians, not only with top-level diplomacy. Furthermore, the focus on popular opinion in Italy during the Munich Crisis reveals more clearly the complexity of Fascist rule and the limitations placed on foreign policy by the real or imagined views of ‘the people’.6 Probing beyond the macro level (the role of ‘the people’, a broad category used by Fascist and state officials to justify their policies), I bring in the micro level by contrasting official popular opinion reports to the large body of letters sent by ordinary Italians to the Duce around the time of the Munich Conference. Duly archived by Mussolini’s secretariat, these letters shed light on how Italians presented themselves to the Fascist authorities. In this regard, Stephen Kotkin’s concept of ‘speaking Bolshevism’, that is, how ordinary people adopted a collectivist language to make sense of their everyday lives under Stalin’s dictatorship, is helpful, although the ‘revolutionary’ intervention of Fascism into the lives of ordinary Italians was much more limited than that of Bolshevism. I question Christopher Duggan’s interpretation of these letters as direct representations of the emotions of ordinary Italians and their alleged displaying of consent to the Duce’s rule.7 Before tackling the letters to Mussolini, some context on the Duce’s role in the Munich Crisis is necessary. After the conclusion of the Munich Agreement, Mussolini returned triumphantly to Rome. Italians expressed their gratefulness to Mussolini just as the people of France and Britain thanked their leaders. In the case of Fascist Italy, it is difficult to gauge which expressions of thanks to Mussolini were genuine v 155 v

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The Munich Crisis, politics and the people and which ones were orchestrated by the regime. People congregated near the railway, and some were allegedly on their knees paying homage to the dictator. At Verona, Bologna and Florence stations, the Fascist Party (Partito Nazionale Fascista) organised rallies for the Duce which projected an image of national unity and reinforced Mussolini’s cult. These events had been carefully stage-managed by the Fascist Party and the Ministry of Popular Culture. King Victor Emmanuel III, in order to demonstrate the closing of ranks between Mussolini and the Italian nation as well as between Fascism and the monarchy, travelled to Florence to thank Mussolini for preserving peace.8 At Bologna station, a voice from the crowd was supposedly overheard shouting: ‘Duce, you are great!’ Immediately after arriving in Rome, Mussolini went to the Palazzo Venezia, his office in the centre of the capital. From his iconic balcony, he addressed the crowds in the piazza below. He bellowed into the microphone: ‘Comrades, you have lived through memorable hours! At Munich, we have worked for peace according to justice.’ After his brief speech, Mussolini went inside his office. According to Fascist propaganda, the crowds in the square called Mussolini back ‘two, […] three, […] five, […] ten times’, thereby following the typical choreography of a Fascist mass rally.9 These episodes paint an image of a peace-minded Mussolini. Needless to say, Fascist propaganda had emphasised this view in order to show to domestic and international audiences that the Fascist regime was completely united with the Italian people. This view of a relatively peace-minded regime, supported by a peace-loving Italian people, was reinforced after the Second World War when Italian diplomats, intellectuals and officials from across the political spectrum were keen to portray Fascist Italy as a benign dictatorship when compared to the Third Reich, and the Italian people as good-natured, again when compared to the ‘evil German’. This reading of Italian history soon turned into a popular myth; Mussolini, allegedly opposed to war (as the scenes after Munich had shown), was dragged into the Second World War by Hitler. Such views, while critically torn apart by a number of Italian historians, dominated popular interpretations of Italy’s role in the Munich Crisis for decades after 1945 and, among the Italian populist right, still resonate today.10 In reality, behind the scenes of Fascist spectacle, the Munich Crisis laid bare a rift between a regime gearing towards war and an Italian people increasingly disillusioned with the regime’s war-mongering. Mussolini had considered going to war, and his demarche to Hitler of 28 September v 156 v

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Mussolini, Munich and the Italian people 1938 included the possibility of Italy’s fighting alongside Nazi Germany if France and Britain did not give in to Hitler’s territorial demands.11 War remained at the centre of the Fascist project, but large-scale armed conflict over Czechoslovakia was at odds with Italian popular opinion. This increasing division between the regime and the Italian people did more than show ‘cracks in the facade’ of totalitarianism, as the historian Alexander De Grand, in a 1991 article, has argued, pointing to the increasing divide between Fascist evocation of an enthusiastic totalitarian society and state on the one hand and a passive population best characterised as ‘conformity without conviction’ on the other. For De Grand, adopting a blunt, bifurcated approach, Fascism was a failure, as it did not manage to pull off its desired totalitarian state and was unsuccessful in abolishing deep divisions within Italian society. Above all, Fascism did not succeed in eliminating the conservative forces of the Italian state, including the monarchy. Mussolini was therefore unable to put his totalitarian schemes and ideas into practice. While not entirely unpersuasive, De Grand’s argument lacks an explicit engagement with popular opinion. This essay, informed by more recent work on everyday life in Fascist Italy, goes beyond De Grand’s verdict that Fascism was a failure and asks instead how popular opinion influenced political decision making at the top at the time of the Munich Crisis.12 The rift between a war-loving regime and a population increasingly dissatisfied with going to war explains why Mussolini, at least in public, appeared to be ­ambiguous – both warlike and guardian of peace. Yet, the question remains, how, if at all, did Mussolini reconcile those two claims? Mussolini’s successful performance at Munich strengthened his selfconfidence and his conviction that his future would be with Nazi Germany. Back in Italy, the Duce told his mistress Clara Petacci that the Fascist and Nazi dictatorships, led by Hitler in his ‘brown shirt’ and himself in his ‘black shirt’, had defeated the liberal democracies of France and Britain. Europe’s future would be fascist. It seemed as if the liberal-internationalist system established in 1919 and represented by the League of Nations would soon be replaced by a New Order, pursued aggressively by Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy.13 In a pep talk to Fascist Party officials on 25 October 1938, the Duce even boasted that Italy, for the first time since the unification of the peninsula in 1861, had played ‘a preponderant and decisive part’ in reshaping the map of Europe. Mussolini was exaggerating for effect; if anything, Munich was a political, not a military triumph. The Duce knew that Italy’s army and economy were not prepared for a major conflagration.14 v 157 v

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The Munich Crisis, politics and the people Yet, peace in Europe was certainly at stake. Mussolini had encouraged Hitler to increase his claims for Czechoslovak territories, as the Duce was progressively aligning Fascist Italy with the Third Reich. Siding with Nazi Germany was a strategy for Mussolini to increase Italy’s domestic and international power. At home, an alliance with the more powerful and more radical Third Reich would underwrite the totalitarian project, while on an international level, closer links with Nazi Germany would help destroy the Versailles settlement and lay the ground for further territorial acquisitions for the Italian Empire in the Mediterranean.15 To what extent the views of the people had mattered in Mussolini’s diplomatic tactics has not received much explicit reflection. For the Duce, as for other Fascist leaders, popular opinion was central to the regime. Even more, the Fascist dictatorship sought to rest upon unanimous popular support as part of its agenda to create a totalitarian society, a trend that intensified in the mid- to late 1930s in the context of the attack on Ethiopia and closer links with Nazi Germany. Part of this imperialist dynamic was the introduction of racial legislation, as discussed earlier. At the same time, the regime started a campaign against the bourgeoisie, accusing it of being stuck in the past and thus standing in the way of creating a totalitarian society. Yet such actions did not resonate widely, given the persistence of class and religious traditions and identities.16 For the Fascist regime, war was a means to unite the masses. Armed conflict would consolidate the grip of the dictatorship on the Italian people. In turn, a more totalitarian society would be able to fight harder and seize more territories for Italy. War was thus an instrument of both domestic and foreign conquest for the regime. Moreover, it was a virtue in itself. War would transform the Italian people into a nation of warriors, an idea that had resonated amongst Italian nationalists since the Risorgimento.17 Yet, by the mid-1930s, the consequences of Italian belligerency began to have negative effects on the everyday lives of ordinary Italians, with food shortages hitting living standards. Furthermore, the regime found it increasingly difficult to communicate its core messages to the Italian people, above all that war was good. Italy’s wars, including the ongoing involvement in the Spanish Civil War, were costly and thus destabilised Fascist authority. At a local level, many Italians blamed corrupt and inefficient Fascist officials for these shortcomings. At the same time, Mussolini’s cult continued to resonate and helped keep the increasingly fragile Fascist state together.18 v 158 v

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Mussolini, Munich and the Italian people While popular opinion was unlikely to have a direct impact on the Fascist regime’s policy decisions, Mussolini used displays of popular backing for his regime as a tool of his aggressive foreign policy. This strategy of performative politics had served his regime well during the Ethiopian war when, in the face of flagging popular support, the government resorted to displays of ostensible popular enthusiasm. This included the General Rally (adunata generale) and the Giornata della Fede, a day in late 1935 on which Italians were prompted to donate precious metals, including wedding rings, to the nation in defiance of the League of Nations sanctions. Such nation-wide performances represented Fascism as a regime backed by the people.19 How the Fascist regime used displays of stage-managed popular opinion during the Munich Crisis becomes clearer through an analysis of Mussolini’s public speeches in September 1938, four months after Hitler’s triumphant visit to Italy that had created an image of tightening bonds between the two dictatorships.20 As the Czechoslovak crisis escalated, Mussolini gave speeches across Italy in which he expressed his support for Nazi Germany’s claims for the Sudetenland. In Trieste, the Duce insisted ‘Italy’s position is already chosen’ on the side of Germany. Mussolini’s speech was replete with anti-Semitic remarks. It was not a coincidence that the Sudeten crisis coincided with the passing of racial legislation in Italy. Many at the time and subsequently saw this as a manifestation of the Axis with Germany. Yet, Italian racial legislation was anything but a mere reaction to Nazi lobbying. Instead, viewed in a long-term perspective, it originated ‘domestically’ from the apartheidtype racism practised in Italy’s African colonies. The anti-Semitic legislation was part of the totalitarian drive of the regime, a dynamic that was in itself, as we have seen, closely related to the foreign expansionism of the regime. The timing of the legislation was, nevertheless, a clear indicator of Italy’s alignment with the Third Reich.21 Throughout September 1938, as the Sudeten crisis unfolded, Mussolini delivered more pro-German and anti-Semitic speeches. These were staged as Fascist mass rallies (adunate), broadcast on the radio across Italy. The location of the Duce’s speeches was noteworthy, as they were held in regions of Italy that had, either until 1866 or 1918, belonged to the Habsburg Empire. Mussolini, a master of posturing, also visited some of the battlefields of the Great War on which Italy had fought as an ally of France and Britain, not of Germany. Here was a clear signal to Nazi Germany, as it was pushing into central Europe during the Sudeten Ccrisis, that these regions were Italian.22 v 159 v

The Munich Crisis, politics and the people

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A contemporary, if embellished, view of Mussolini’s speeches is Four Days, a collection of journalists’ accounts of the Munich Crisis from the major European capital cities. Luigi Barzini, Jr, a journalist writing for the Corriere della Sera and boasting good connections to Fascist leaders such as the foreign minister, Galeazzo Ciano, glorified the Duce as a prudent man. According to Barzini, Italian people had reacted enthusiastically to Mussolini’s speeches: People – Black Shirts, peasants, children in uniform – tightly packed the space between houses, their upturned faces like paving-stones. Microphones carried his words to broadcasting stations, to wireless sets all over Italy.  Gripping the railing in front of him with both hands, he spoke. He stopped at the end of each sentence to allow the shouting and the applause to die down. Whenever he said the word ‘war’, the people knew what he meant.23

Barzini insisted that most people in Rome, while wishing for peace and oblivious to the idea that war was so close, would be prepared to fight in a war against France and Britain. In an implicit defence against Fascist attacks on the bourgeoisie, Barzini declared that some rich Roman men had even allegedly rung up their tailors to cancel work on bespoke suits, as the men expected soon to be wearing uniform. Support for whatever Mussolini would decide in the event of a failure to settle the Czechoslovak crisis came from all social classes. Barzini quoted a taxi driver: ‘I was in the last War. I’ll go to this one. I’m not afraid. I wish Il Duce would give me one whole day before sending me off. I’d borrow a lot of money, live like a millionaire for twenty-four hours, then off to war.’24 Barzini’s observations reflected Fascist ideas about the unanimous popular support for the Duce’s policies.25 Closer analysis of Italian popular opinion suggests that there was wide dissatisfaction with the pro-German declarations of the Duce’s speeches. On 29 September 1938, for example, Achille Starace, the General Secretary of the Fascist Party, expressed his concern about a popular opinion report submitted by the Milan Fascist Party’s secretary about the attitudes of the Milanese working class: ‘The people does not believe in the friendship with Germany.’26 Reports with a similar tenor were sent in by Fascist Party branches and state officials from across Italy. These popular opinion reports do not lend themselves to a straightforward reading. To start with, the genre of popular opinion reports was an integral part of Mussolini’s regime and was the product of a state and/or party bureaucracy with its own vested interests.27 Nevertheless, it is clear v 160 v

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Mussolini, Munich and the Italian people that the regime’s pro-German warmongering policies did not resonate as much with the Italian people as the regime had hoped for. According to reports on popular opinion in the provinces sent by Fascist Party officials to the party’s leaders, the regime’s pro-German positioning came under increasing criticism, as the ‘Axis’ was widely thought to lead to war. From the late 1930s, in the wake of the conquest of Ethiopia and in the context of the ongoing Italian involvement in the Spanish Civil War, many people, exposed to declining living standards as a result of these conflicts, began to articulate their disillusionment with the Fascist regime. Fascist rhetoric about a corporate state creating a more equal society was at odds with the dire reality of worsening material conditions.28 Noteworthy in this regard was the enthusiastic popular celebration of Mussolini as a guardian of European peace, a reaction that stood in sharp contrast to the core Fascist belief in war as a transformative instrument to remake Italians. At the same time, the nationalist message that Munich marked the official recognition of Italy as a great European power resonated widely with many Italians, pointing to the fact that many Fascist policies chimed with the long-standing aims of Italian nationalists.29 Individual actors are largely absent from popular opinion reports. How, if possible, does one link the micro level with the macro level? What  were typical individual views towards Mussolini and the Fascist regime during the Munich Crisis? Thousands of letters addressed to Mussolini during the crisis and its aftermath, such as the one quoted at the beginning of this essay, have survived and help us answer these questions. Letters to the Duce were an integral part of the mechanism of the Mussolini cult that presented him as an omnipresent ruler, accessible to the needs and desires of individual Italians. This function of the Duce cult reflected Fascism’s pretension to create a truly totalitarian society united in devotion to Mussolini. As under previous political regimes, especially monarchies, the letters thus fulfilled an essential political role in bridging the gap between Mussolini and the Italian people. Mussolini’s secretariat, the Segreteria particolare del Duce, handled the correspondence. On an average day in the 1930s, the Segreteria’s staff received about 1,500 letters and then chose some 200 to present to the Duce. It is not known whether Mussolini read these letters or how much time he spent dealing with this kind of correspondence. Suffice it to say that the act of being shown letters from ‘the people’ reinforced Mussolini’s sense of being in touch with what the people thought and thereby legitimised his rule. If replies were sent v 161 v

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The Munich Crisis, politics and the people to the correspondents, who had often asked for money or jobs, an official would reply in Mussolini’s name in order to maintain the myth of the Duce’s accessibility and benevolence.30 Before the Munich Conference, the general tenor of these letters was that Mussolini must try to convince Hitler to adopt a more moderate stance towards France and Britain. While this hope was naive, many Italians believed that the Duce had a powerful influence on Hitler, a variation of Mussolini’s increasingly outdated idea that he was the senior leader of the European far right. Before the Munich Conference, a mother who had lost her son in the Great War implored the Duce to ‘save Italy! Leave this criminal [Hitler, CG]. The Italian soldier does not fight for bandits. We really liked you, don’t destroy us now.’31 An engineer from Rome, a member of the Fascist Party, outlined a concrete policy proposal to Mussolini. The Duce must persuade Hitler that Italy ought to occupy the Sudetenland before a plebiscite could be held. Hitler should then fly to England and force Chamberlain to accept this deal. In a typical over-estimation of Mussolini’s influence, the engineer expressed his hope that ‘Hitler will perhaps accept, given that you consider him a good friend … and the formal promise you have given him to be on his side in the case of a conflagration.’32 After Mussolini’s return to Italy from Munich, even more letters poured into Mussolini’s secretariat. The correspondents, men, women and children, came from across the class spectrum, just as those who wrote to the other heads of government conferring at Munich. The letters were summarised by his secretariat, who told him about the general acclamatory tenor of the letters that praised him as a guardian of peace, a reputation he did not like. A letter from a schoolgirl in northern Italy was typical in this respect: ‘Dear Duce, Piccola Italia, daughter of an old Ardito with a firm heart, I thank you, Your Excellency Head of Government, because you have saved the peace.’ Writing letters to the Duce was often organised at schools and at meetings of the various Fascist youth organisations in order to reinforce the cult of the Duce.33 A female worker from a chemical factory in Milan praised Mussolini in a letter with religious overtones. Thanking him for having ‘saved the entire humanity and especially our beautiful and precious Italy’, she expressed her hope that ‘God [will] give you all health’. Widespread relief that war had been averted suggests that the Fascist regime had not succeeded in turning Italians into a nation of warriors.34 One correspondent from Reggio Calabria went even further and declared his admiration for Mussolini in a missive dated 1 October. He insisted that crowds v 162 v

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Mussolini, Munich and the Italian people in the southern city had been shouting ‘Duce, you are a God’ after the news about the signing of the Munich Agreement had come in.35 Like these letters, the following five letters from the vast collection entitled ‘Sentimenti per il Duce 1922–1943’ (‘feelings for the Duce’), kept in 122 thick folders at the Central Italian State Archives in Rome (Archivio centrale dello Stato), provide further insights into the ways and styles in which ordinary Italians communicated with the Duce during the Munich Crisis.36 Very little background information is available on the correspondents, and the Duce’s secretariat filed most of these letters without investigating them further. Whether or not the correspondents were genuine Fascists is a moot point. Many, if not most, correspondents were, like the vast majority of Italians, members of one Fascist organisation or another, such as the Fascist youth organisation or the Dopolavoro afterwork scheme. The first letter is from Maria B. from Milan. As soon as she heard the news about the conclusion of the Munich Agreement on 30 September, Maria wrote to Mussolini that he was ‘a new God’ for Italians. The second letter is from a war widow from Milan. Also writing on 30 September, she thanked Mussolini for averting war on behalf of all Italian ‘mothers, wives and sisters’ who had lost their loved ones in previous conflicts. The third letter is from a family from Piacenza in northern Italy, signed with ‘the most respectful Fascist respects’, praising Mussolini as a ‘saviour of the world’.37 The fourth letter is from G.C., a man who signed his letter as ‘Prof.’, suggesting that he was either a teacher or a university professor. In his convoluted missive, G.C. thanked the Duce for three accomplishments. First, he praised Mussolini for having ‘suppressed the ‘Bolshevik-Masonic hydra’, a reference to the Fascist belief in a Jewish-Bolshevik-Masonic world conspiracy. Second, he highlighted Mussolini’s role in turning Italy into a great nation. Third, he credited Mussolini for having safeguarded ‘the rights of men’ in the ‘gravest international question of our days’, presumably a reference to the right to national self-determination of the Sudeten Germans.38 The fifth and final letter is by Claudio Faina, a wealthy member of the Italian Senate from Umbria who had advocated an Italian intervention in the Great War and had then fought as a volunteer before helping to establish the Fascist Party in Orvieto in central Italy. In a telegram to Mussolini, he expressed his ‘unlimited admiration [and] gratitude [for] your quasi-divine achievement’.39 That a high-ranking Fascist official like Faina thanked Mussolini for having averted war suggests that amongst the Fascist Party it was clear that Italy was not in a position to fight a long war. v 163 v

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The Munich Crisis, politics and the people For Christopher Duggan, who used some of these letters in his 2012 book Fascist Voices, the letters were ‘spontaneous emotional “out-­ pourings”’. Duggan conceded elsewhere that these letters to Mussolini were not necessarily direct reflections of the Duce’s or the Fascist regime’s popularity. Still, he implicitly interpreted the letters as manifestations of deep consent. Duggan saw the style and content of these letters as almost verbatim statements of the emotions of ordinary Italians whose critical faculties had been swept away by their exposure to the Duce cult. Instead, it is more productive, following Kotkin’s insights about ‘speaking Bolshevism’, to view these letters as attempts by ordinary Italians to fashion themselves as good patriots and Fascists, while at the same time exploiting the ambiguity left by Mussolini’s statements that seemed, as we have seen, both warmongering and peace-minded.40 What is also striking about these letters is their highly formulaic and predictable contents, often with references to Catholicism, the monarchy and the Duce’s genius.41 Nevertheless, many of the letters to Mussolini during the crisis express thankfulness for preserving peace, just like the similar missives sent to Daladier, Chamberlain and Hitler, which suggests that, regardless of the political regime, most people in the four nations represented at Munich were united in their desire to maintain peace. It would be a stretch to argue that Mussolini appeared as a moderating influence at Munich because of these letters. There is a fundamental problem with such an interpretation: as we have seen, Mussolini was far from moderate in the Munich Crisis. He wanted war, but he was realistic enough to recognise the economic and political constraints Italy would face in a war with Britain and France over Czechoslovakia. Thus, there is no evidence at all that Mussolini took on board the largely anti-German and anti-war sentiment of these letters. A major gap in our knowledge about the workings of the cult of the Duce is its relationship to the myths surrounding the other two charismatic leaders in Italy, the King and the Pope. If and how ordinary people also wrote letters to these two personalities is a question that deserves more research, and it would be interesting to see how such letters were formulated.42 If anything, the letters demonstrate that many Italians, including representatives of the Catholic Church, members of the Fascist Party and ordinary people, were glad that war had been averted and felt secure expressing their views. In Nazi Germany too, agents of the exiled Social Democratic Party diagnosed widespread relief that war had been avoided. The black-and-white view that ordinary people either enthusiastically supported the regime or were coerced into submission v 164 v

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Mussolini, Munich and the Italian people has rightly been overcome. People living under the Fascist dictatorship had to negotiate their lives on an everyday basis, and it is not helpful to imagine everyday life under Fascism through a bifurcated lens of ‘consent’ versus ‘coercion’ or to portray Italians’ attitude towards the regime as ‘conformity without conviction’.43 That people tried to fashion themselves as ardent lovers of Mussolini is not surprising, given the years of exposure to the cult of the Duce. The likelihood of being heard was greater if they positioned themselves as followers of the cult of the Duce. This mood created even more tension for the regime, as war and the alliance with Nazi Germany increasingly became the central policy focus mantra of the Fascist regime.44 My examination of popular opinion in Italy during the Munich Crisis at macro and micro levels demonstrates an increasing gap between the belligerent aspirations of the Fascist regime and what officials identified as ‘the Italian people’. While Mussolini’s policies and performances during the Munich Crisis were not directly influenced by what he and other officials perceived to be the views of the Italian people, communicated through mediated channels such as official popular opinion reports and the summaries of letters sent to the Duce, some of his speeches remained ambiguous, as he knew that popular opinion was at odds with his preferred warmongering. Furthermore, Mussolini knew about Italy’s limited military capabilities. Still, the fact that he was celebrated as the saviour of peace in Europe by many Italians legitimised his rule, although Mussolini resented this reputation. Indeed, popular opinion reports compiled by Fascist officials maintained that while ‘the Italian people’ may have lost faith in Fascism, they had not lost faith in Mussolini, an observation that further complicates the banal verdict about the failure of Fascism and allows us to go beyond the observation that Mussolini had been far from moderate during the Munich Crisis.45 Munich was the moment when the Fascist and Nazi regimes began to converge in their foreign policies. What seemed like a fateful union between Mussolini’s Italy and Hitler’s Germany soon became a German-dominated alliance. When Germany invaded the remainder of Czechoslovakia on 15 March 1939, in contravention of the Munich Agreement, it did so without consulting Mussolini. A Fascist popular opinion report of late March 1939 even painted Italy as a country that was turning into the ‘lieutenancy of Hitler’ (luogotenenza di Hitler).46 The fateful union between these two aggressive fascist regimes would soon lead Europe to war. v 165 v

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The Munich Crisis, politics and the people Yet, the increasing tension between popular opinion and the regime’s war plans meant that Mussolini and leading Fascists had to negotiate between their warmongering pro-German course, as exemplified by the totalitarian drive of the regime, and the war-weariness of the majority of the Italian people. Italy’s refusal to enter the war on Nazi Germany’s side in September 1939 was a reflection of the increasingly directionless regime that had to grapple with popular dissent and, of course, the fact that the country was unprepared for a large-scale war. By spring 1940, pressure from the German ally on whom Italy increasingly depended economically, given the British blockade of coal deliveries, and the fact that Hitler appeared to be about to win the war without Italian support, pushed Mussolini to go to war. By June 1940, the regime, caught in its contradictory policy of nonbelligerency, had disintegrated further to a point where the only viable solution for Mussolini was to go to war in order to save face and in order to rally the Italian people behind him.47 This interpretation, proposed by Paul Corner, resembles Tim Mason’s theory that the timing and nature of Nazi Germany’s war of 1939 were shaped by a domestic social crisis brought about by the tension between the economic implications of rearmament and the Third Reich’s fear of popular unrest and a new 1918. According to Mason, this dilemma left Hitler no other choice but to go to war in 1939, as the regime would not have survived without it.48 Several historians attacked Mason, above all Richard Overy, for whom Hitler’s invasion of Poland was motivated by military and diplomatic objectives and not by domestic considerations. In a similar vein, Italy’s decision to go to war in June 1940 cannot solely be explained with reference to the internal crisis of the regime. Mussolini and his generals seized the moment when France was about to surrender to Germany, stoking fears among Italian political and military elites that they might end up without any war booty. Yet, some crucial differences remain: there was no serious rearmament to speak of in Fascist Italy until after Munich, and Mussolini did not have as clear a foreign policy agenda as Hitler did. Since there had not been a revolution in Italy in 1918, there was no Fascist equivalent to the Nazi obsession with social unrest or a new ‘stab in the back’. But what united both regimes was their warmongering, the inner contradictions in their policy making and political structures, and the idea that conquering the masses at home was a precondition to territorial expansion, which would then in turn reinvigorate the regimes and make them stronger, both domestically and militarily.49 Yet the fact that the ‘masses’ in Italy, as seen through the prism of popular opinion, were against war v 166 v

Mussolini, Munich and the Italian people on Germany’s side placed a heavy burden on the Fascist regime. This increasing gap between the regime’s aim and popular views meant that it would only be a few years before the Fascist dictatorship disappeared.

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Acknowledgements I should like to thank Kevin Passmore, Alexia Yates and the editors for their comments on an earlier draft. This is a greatly extended version of some ideas I first developed in my Mussolini and Hitler: The Forging of the Fascist Alliance (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2018). Notes   1 Keith Robbins, Munich 1938 (London: Cassell, 1968), p. 316.  2 Giorgio Pini, ‘Mussolini arbitro di pace’, Il Popolo d’Italia, 29 September 1938, front page.   3 Gaetano Polverelli, ‘Errori riparati’, Il Popolo d’Italia, 30 September 1938, front page.   4 For the speech, see Osservatore Romano, 1 October 1938, front page.   5 Archivio centrale dello Stato (hereafter ACS), SpD, CO, b. 2815, also printed in Alberto Vacca, Duce! Tu sei un Dio! Mussolini e il suo mito nelle lettere degli italiani (Milan: Baldini & Castoldi, 2013), p. 173.   6 G. Bruce Strang, ‘War and Peace: Mussolini’s Road to Munich’, Diplomacy and Statecraft, 10:2–3 (1999), 16–90; Hans Woller, ‘Vom Mythos der Moderation. Mussolini und die Münchener Konferenz 1938’, in Jürgen Zarusky and Martin Zückert (eds), Das Münchener Abkommen von 1938 in europäischer Perspektive (Munich: Oldenbourg, 2013), pp. 211–16; Patrizia Dogliani, ‘Das faschistische Italien und das Münchener Abkommen’, in Zarusky and Zückert (eds), Das Münchener Abkommen, pp. 53–68; Daniel Hucker, ‘International History and the Study of Public Opinion: Towards Methodological Clarity’, International History Review, 34:4 (2012), pp.  775–94; Ian Kershaw, The ‘Hitler Myth’: Image and Reality in the Third Reich (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987); Ian Kershaw, Popular Opinion and Political Dissent in the Third Reich: Bavaria 1933–1945 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1983); see also the essays in Paul Corner (ed.), Popular Opinion in Totalitarian Regimes: Fascism, Nazism, Communism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009).  7 Christopher Duggan, Fascist Voices: An Intimate History of Musolini’s Italy (London: Bodley Head, 2012), pp. 227–8; Stephen Kotkin, Magnetic Mountain: Stalinism as a Civilization (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997); see also Anna Krylova, ‘Imagining Socialism in the Soviet Century’, Social History, 42:3 (2017), pp. 315–41. v 167 v

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The Munich Crisis, politics and the people   8 ACS, MinCulPop, Gabinetto b. 39, sf. 253, Itinerario del treno presidenziale, undated.  9 Opera Omnia di Benito Mussolini (hereafter OO), 44 vols, ed. Edoardo and Duilio Susmel (Florence: La Fenice, 1959–80), XXIX, p. 166; cf. Renzo De Felice, Mussolini il Duce, vol. 2 : Lo State totalitario (Turin: Einaudi, 1981), p. 530; for Fascist choreographies, see Simonetta Falasca-Zamponi, Fascist Spectacle: The Aesthetics of Power in Mussolini’s Italy (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997). 10 For the memory of Fascist Italy, see Filippo Focardi, Il cattivo tedesco e il bravo italiano. La rimozione delle colpe della seconda guerra mondiale (Rome: Laterza, 2012). 11 Strang, ‘Mussolini’s Road to Munich’, p. 190. 12 Alexander De Grand, ‘Cracks in the Facade: The Failure of Fascist Totalitarianism in Italy 1935–9’, European History Quarterly, 21:4 (1991), pp. 515–35, here p. 516; more recent work includes Roberta Pergher and Giulia Albanese (eds), In the Society of Fascists: Acclamation, Acquiescence, and Agency in Fascist Italy (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012); Joshua Arthurs, Michael Ebner and Kate Ferris (eds), The Politics of Everyday Life in Fascist Italy: Outside the State? (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2017). 13 See what Mussolini told Claretta Petacci in Mussolini segreto: diari 1­ 932–1938, ed. Mauro Suttora (Milan: Rizzoli, 2009), pp. 413–17 (1 October 1938); see also Duggan, Fascist Voices, p. 324. 14 OO, XXIX, p. 192. 15 Woller, ‘Vom Mythos der Moderation’, pp. 211–16. 16 Thomas Buzzegoli, La polemica antiborghese nel fascismo (1937–1939) (Rome: Aracne, 2007); De Felice, Mussolini il Duce, vol. 2, p. 537; Paul Corner, The Fascist Party and Popular Opinion in Mussolini’s Italy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), p. 229. 17 MacGregor Knox, ‘Conquest, Foreign and Domestic, in Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany’, Journal of Modern History, 56:1 (1984), pp. 1–57; for the transformative significance of war, see Silvana Patriarca, Italian Vices: Nation and Character from the Risorgimento to the Republic (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), pp. 133–60. 18 Corner, The Fascist Party and Popular Opinion, pp. 192, 201. 19 Ibid., pp. 192–3; for the Giornata della Fede, see Petra Terhoeven, Liebespfand fürs Vaterland: Geschlecht und faschistische Nation in der italienischen Goldund Eheringsammlung 1935/6 (Tübingen: Niemeyer, 2003). 20 For Mussolini’s visit to Germany, see Christian Goeschel, ‘Staging Friendship: Mussolini and Hitler in Germany in 1937’, Historical Journal, 60:1 (2017), pp. 149–72. 21 For the speech, see OO, XXIX, pp. 144–7; for the introduction of anti-Semitic legislation in Italy, see, amongst others, Esmonde Robertson, ‘Race as a Factor in Mussolini’s Policy in Africa and Europe’, Journal of Contemporary v 168 v

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Mussolini, Munich and the Italian people History, 23:1 (1988), pp. 37–58; Michele Sarfatti, Gli ebrei nell’Italia fascista: vicende, identità, persecuzione (Turin: Einaudi, 2000); for an older study, see Meir Michaelis, Mussolini and the Jews: German–Italian relations and the Jewish Question in Italy, 1922–1945 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1978). 22 Paul Baxa, ‘“Il nostro Duce”: Mussolini’s Visit to Trieste in 1938 and the Workings of the Cult of the Duce’, Modern Italy, 18:2 (2013), pp. 117–28; for the Verona speech, see OO, XXIX, p. 164. 23 Luigi Barzini, Jr, ‘Rome’, in Michael Killanin (ed.), Four Days (London: William Heinemann, 1938), pp. 53–74, here p. 53. 24 Barzini, ‘Rome’, pp. 61–2, 66 (for quotation). 25 OO, XXIX, pp. 144–7; cf. De Felice, Mussolini il Duce, vol. 2, pp. 516–17; for popular opinion in Italy, see Simona Colarizi, L’opinione degli italiani sotto il regime 1929–1943, 2nd edition (Rome: Laterza, 2009), pp. 261–5. 26 Printed in Piero Melograni, Rapporti segreti della polizia fascista (Rome: Laterza, 1979), pp. 16–17. 27 Corner, The Fascist Party and Popular Opinion, pp. 172–5. 28 Roland Sarti (ed.), The Ax Within: Italian Fascism in Action (New York: New Viewpoints, 1974), p. 210; Alberto Aquarone, ‘Public Opinion in Italy before the Outbreak of World War II’, in ibid., pp. 212–20. 29 Colarizi, L’opinione degli italiani, p. 264. 30 For background, see Teresa Maria Mazzatosta and Claudio Volpi, Italietta Fascista (lettere al potere 1936–1943) (Bologna: Capelli, 1980), pp. 15–24. 31 Cited in De Felice, Mussolini il Duce, vol. 2, p. 531, n. 176. 32 Printed in De Felice, Mussolini il Duce, vol. 2, p. 533. 33 ACS, SpD, CO, b. 2815, sf. 37–5, letter of 1 October 1938; for context, see Paola Bernasconi, ‘A Fairy Tale Dictator: Children’s Letters to the Duce’, Modern Italy, 18:2 (2013), pp. 129–40. 34 Cited in De Felice, Mussolini il Duce, vol. 2, p. 533; for the letters, see ACS, SpD, CO, Sentimenti b. 2815–2820; cf. Duggan, Fascist Voices, pp. 227–8. 35 ACS, SpD, CO, b. 2815, sf 37–1, letter of 1 October 1938. 36 ACS, SpD, CO, Sentimenti per il Duce, 1922–43. 37 Vacca, Duce!, p. 173 (citing b. 2815), p. 176 (citing b. 2815), p. 181 (citing b. 2815); for the Dopolavoro, see Victoria De Grazia, The Culture of Consent: Mass Organization of Leisure in Fascist Italy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981). 38 Vacca, Duce!, p. 198 (b. 2816). 39 ACS, SpD, CO., b. 2815. 40 Duggan, Fascist Voices, p. 324; Christopher Duggan, ‘The Internalisation of the Cult of the Duce: The Evidence of Diaries and Letters’, in Stephen Gundle, Christopher Duggan and Giuliana Pieri (eds), The Cult of the Duce: Mussolini and the Italians (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2013), pp. 129–43; for Fascism as a political religion, see Emilio Gentile, ‘Fascism as Political Religion’, Journal of Contemporary History, 25:2 (1990), pp. 229–51; v 169 v

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The Munich Crisis, politics and the people for a critique, see Walter L. Adamson, ‘Fascism and Political Religion in Italy: A Reassessment’, Contemporary European History, 23:1 (2014), pp. 43–73. 41 See, for examples, the letters reprinted in Vacca, Duce!, pp. 172–97. 42 For the papacy and Fascism, see John F. Pollard, The Vatican and Italian Fascism, 1919–1932: A Study in Conflict (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985); David I. Kertzer, The Pope and Mussolini: The Secret History of Pius XI and the Rise of Fascism in Europe (New York: Oxford University Press, 2014); for the monarchy and Fascism, see Paolo Colombo, La monarchia fascista 1922–1940 (Bologna: Il Mulino, 2010). 43 Paul Corner, ‘Italian Fascism: Whatever Happened to Dictatorship?’, Journal of Modern History, 74:2 (2002), pp. 325–51. 44 For Germany, see Klaus Behnken (ed.), Deutschland-Berichte der Sopade, 7 vols (Frankfurt am Main: Zweitausendeins, 1980), vol. 5, p. 940; for selffashioning under other contemporary dictatorships, see Jochen Hellbeck, Revolution Under My Mind: Writing a Diary Under Stalin (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006); Janosch Steuwer, Ein Drittes Reich, wie ich es auffasse. Gesellschaft und privates Leben in Tagebüchern 1933–1939 (Göttingen: Wallstein, 2017); Moritz Föllmer, Individuality and Modernity in Berlin: Self and Society from Weimar to the Wall (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013), pp. 101–80. 45 Corner, The Fascist Party and Popular Opinion, pp. 227, 245; cf. De Grand, ‘Cracks in the Facade’ and Woller, ‘Vom Mythos der Moderation’. 46 Colarizi, L’Italia antifascista, vol. 2, p. 461. 47 Corner, The Fascist Party and Popular Opinion, pp. 253–64. 48 Timothy W. Mason, ‘Internal Crisis and War of Aggression’, in Nazism, Fascism and the Working Class: Essays by Tim Mason, ed. Jane Caplan (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), pp. 104–30. 49 For the Mason–Overy debate, see Jane Caplan, ‘Introduction’, in Nazism, Fascism and the Working Class, pp. 1–32, here pp. 10–14; Richard J. Overy, ‘Germany. “Domestic Crisis” and War in 1939’, Past and Present, 116 (1987), pp. 138–68; Knox, ‘Conquest, Foreign and Domestic’, pp. 1–57.

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v 8 v

‘England is pro-Hitler’: German popular opinion during the Czechoslovakian crisis, 1938 Karina Urbach

History is about perspective as well as information. To understand Germany’s actions during the Czechoslovakian crisis,1 we have a great deal of information and perspective from the top but much less from the bottom. The reason for this unevenness is obvious. In a dictatorship, people censor themselves continuously – in every letter they write and in every conversation they have. As a consequence, we are left with anecdotal evidence.2 However, with the help of new sources it will be shown that it is possible to combine political and social history to understand this crisis in its multiple dimensions. The general background is well known: Czechoslovakia was a new state of Central-Eastern Europe that, like the others, was by no means homogeneous. Its largest minority were the 3.5 million Sudeten Germans. While Germany was quiescent, the Sudeten Germans were quiescent. When Hitler came to power, however, everything changed for the worse. On 12 September 1938, a rampage took place in Oberplan, a town in the Bohemian forest. It was the work of supporters of Konrad Henlein, the leader of the Sudeten German party (SdP), overtly an ally of Adolf Hitler.3 Henlein’s supporters had developed a certain routine when it came to rampages. First, the windows of the Czech school and the Czech administrative offices were to be smashed. Then the shops of local Jews were to be attacked. During this particular incident, the targets were Mr  Kohn and Mr Schwarz. Schwarz was about to drive his pregnant wife to the maternity ward and had packed his car with baby equipment. The  attackers tore up the baby clothes, ensuring that the pieces were ­scattered all over the market square. Afterwards they slashed the wheels of the car and turned the vehicle upside down.4 v 171 v

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The Munich Crisis, politics and the people Oberplan was just one of several places in the Sudetenland experiencing rampages that day. The violence had been ‘encouraged’ by the broadcast of Hitler’s closing speech at Nuremberg on 12 September 1938. Among other things, the Führer had called the Czechs ‘terrorists and blackmailers’ and his opponents ‘warmongers’.5 During the whole Sudeten crisis Hitler’s psychological warfare worked brilliantly on French, British and Czech politicians.6 But when it came to his domestic audience in Germany proper, not everything went as smoothly for the Führer as the rampage in Oberplan. For a few weeks in 1938, the master at manipulating emotions was confronted with the raw reactions of his own people. Before one can begin to understand this battle of emotions, it is important to remember the history of the Sudetenland. For a thousand years Sudeten Germans had been subjects of the Bohemian crown, which subsequently was incorporated into the Habsburg Empire. When the Sudeten Germans became part of the new Czechoslovakia in 1918, they still felt a bond with Austria, and – to a much lesser degree – with Germany itself.7 Germans would not have declared any particular kinship with the Sudetenland either. In 1938 grumbling Germans would declare: ‘what do we need the Henlein people for? The first time we heard of their existence was only two years ago.’8 The indifference to the Sudetenland becomes apparent in comparison to the great enthusiasm for Austria. When Hitler annexed Austria by force in March 1938, the German public was genuinely ecstatic. In their eyes, the Führer had remedied the failures of the past: Bismarck’s creation of a German Empire in 1870 had excluded Austria-Hungary, and the urge to ‘correct’ this ‘historical mistake’ had surfaced again in the winter of 1918/19. The Entente powers had immediately squashed such hopes,9 and this humiliation was never entirely forgotten. When Hitler achieved ‘the miracle’ of creating a greater Germany in March 1938, even his opponents reported that Germany experienced a ‘national high’.10 Hitler was well aware that similar sentiments did not exist for the Sudeten Germans, but he was determined to create them.11 The cornerstone for his plan was Konrad Henlein and his Sudeten German party (SdP). It had been secretly financed by Germany for years with the aim of subverting Czechoslovakia.12 A week after the surprisingly easy ­annexation of Austria, Hitler decided Czechoslovakia would be next. On 20 March, Goebbels wrote in his diary: ‘We studied the map: first we will get the Tschechei [Czechoslovakia]. We will share it with Poland and Hungary. And we will do it ruthlessly at the next opportunity.’13 Four v 172 v

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German popular opinion in 1938 days later Goebbels wrote in a typically sarcastic tone: ‘Poor Prague! Not much will be left of it.’14 To stir up a crisis, Henlein was needed. During a secret meeting on 28 March 1938, Hitler ordered the Sudeten German leader to make completely unacceptable demands to the Czechoslovakian government. Henlein summed up his instructions: ‘we must always demand so much that we cannot be satisfied’.15 The following month, during a speech at Carlsbad, he carried out his brief. He also performed an impressive job in publicising the case of the Sudeten Germans internationally. Though he was an ardent anti-Semite and anti-Bolshevik, he claimed not to be a Nazi.16 Instead he posed in Britain as a ‘reasonable man’ fighting for his people’s autonomy. In return Henlein was courted by British appeasers and in May 1938 gave – with his simple look and manner – an impressive theatrical performance at the Royal Institute of International Affairs and at informal meetings with British politicians.17 Part of his main appeal for the appeasers was his anti-Bolshevism. Czechoslovakia and the Soviet Union had been allies since 1935 and Henlein warned that Czechoslovakia could easily turn into a Soviet air base.18 He also had an emotionally touching story to tell the British public – about the suffering of the suppressed Sudeten Germans. It was an emotive trigger Henlein had perfected over the years. It is true that the economic depression in the 1930s hit the Sudeten Germans harder because they worked in the declining glass and textile industries.19 But to this day there exists a debate whether the Sudeten Germans were actually suppressed by the Czechs.20 In retrospect, it seems an obvious birth defect of Czechoslovakia to incorporate a huge German minority into a newly founded country. But Czechoslovakian politicians believed that coexistence was possible,21 and they certainly handled their minority problem better than their eastern neighbours. In contrast to Hungary and Poland which were ruled by military leaders, Czechoslovakia was a democracy in the Western sense. Though it was by no means perfect, this did not affect the further course of events. Whether the suffering of the Sudeten Germans was real or imagined, from the beginning it was used as propaganda.22 But how effective was this propaganda on the German population? A contemporary report, written in September 1938, came to the conclusion that it was extremely difficult to find out what people actually thought: ‘the mood is very bad amongst workers and employees and it is even worse amongst farmers. Mistrust, mistrust, mistrust. You can just figure out what people think by a nodding of the head in agreement or disagreement.’23 Three sources will help us to get beyond silent affirmation: first, v 173 v

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The Munich Crisis, politics and the people the reports by Sopade, the exiled organisation of the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD). These reports were written by a network of underground informants in Germany who listened to and recorded the day-to-day conversations of Germans – from factory workers to members of the German middle classes.24 The second source that will be employed has never been used before in this context. It is secret information sent from German Communist Party representatives to the executive committee of the Comintern in Moscow.25 Naturally, both sources have some degree of bias because they come from the left. However, the third source is written by the Nazis themselves: the Meldungen aus dem Reich. These were intelligence reports on the domestic situation in Germany, an attempt to compensate for the absence of freedom of expression. They were compiled by the Sicherheitsdienst (SD) of Reichsführer SS Himmler. The reports started in 1938 and became more detailed over the years.26 All three sources illustrate that, from spring to autumn 1938, the German population experienced a great variety of emotions ranging from anger, black humour, indifference and utter fear to elation. The shifts were connected with several turning points during the crisis: first, when Czechoslovakia partly mobilised in May 1938; second, in August when Viscount Runciman was sent to Czechoslovakia by Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain and the crisis dragged on; third, after Hitler’s speech at the Nuremberg rally in September 1938; fourth, when Chamberlain came to Germany; fifth, on 26 September when Hitler gave his speech at the Berliner Sportpalast; and last, when the crisis was resolved. During the whole period, Goebbels’ propaganda machine tried its best to control the narrative.27 This worked well at the beginning: ‘[The Germans] believe the Nazi propaganda that the Sudeten Germans are not allowed to speak German and are starving’, reported a frustrated Sopade informer in spring 1938. He tried to convince his interlocutors that ‘one can get all the goods in Czechoslovakia and that this kind of suppression does not exist’, but he was not believed.28 To ensure that the Sudeten Germans stayed under their control, the Nazis had started to hire an increasing number of them to work in Germany. They were expected to join the Henlein party and if they refused they immediately lost their jobs.29 German workers did not appreciate the cheaper competition,30 but the majority of Germans felt sympathy with the ‘suffering Sudetenland’. At this early point, nobody was particularly scared of a war with Czechoslovakia. The average German was told that it would be a painless affair – similar to the Austrian operation. The country was v 174 v

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German popular opinion in 1938 portrayed as a ‘Lilliput state’: ‘People are … assured by the Nazis, that taking over Czechoslovakia will be similar to the Austrian ­operation … no shots will be fired until the German army is facing Prague … the press keeps saying that the [German] fire brigade could take over a country like Czechoslovakia.’31 This was a very literal case of Lilliputian hallucination since the Czechoslovakian army and its fortifications were actually substantial, something Hitler’s generals were aware of.32 Apart from under-estimating the enemy militarily, the German public also did not seem to fear that Western powers would get involved. Even old SPD members doubted that anyone cared about Czechoslovakia: ‘Who is going to stop Hitler? The French have one government crisis after another, England is pro-Hitler and Russia will only march if France is marching, which is unlikely. They have let down Spain too with their policy of non-­intervention.’33 In the spring of 1938, the Propaganda Ministry certainly felt it had the narrative under control. On 20 April, Hitler’s birthday, Goebbels organised a triumphant gala for the release of Leni Riefenstahl’s film Olympia. The film raised the spirits among the German population even further. Two limericks were making the rounds: ‘Mit Pulver und Blei holen wir die Tschechei’ (With powder and lead we will take Czechoslovakia), and ‘Im April macht Hitler was er will, im Mai holt er sich die Tschechei’ (In April Hitler does what he wants, in May he takes Czechoslovakia). But then perceptions changed. Goebbels got ahead of himself. On 19 May he began a particularly violent press attack against Prague.34 At the same time, the highly nervous Czechoslovakian government received false information from their intelligence service that German troops had been moved to the Czech borders with Bavaria and Saxony. Prague decided on partial mobilisation. The Führer was outraged by this unexpected display of strength: his portrayal of a Lilliput state was suddenly in question. Hitler would later claim that the May crisis triggered his decision for a military intervention. As has been shown above, this was a lie. He had made up his mind as early as March. After the May crisis, he simply decided that the deadline for the attack would be 1 October.35 Once the partial mobilisation started, Sopade reported that Germans at the Czech border with Saxony were in shock. They started to frantically empty their bank accounts and hoarded food.36 Yet not everyone knew immediately what had happened on 20/21 May. Only people who managed to listen to Fremdsender (foreign radio stations) were informed and the Nazis did their best to jam these stations. People had to turn up the volume and risk being reported by their neighbours. Still, once v 175 v

The Munich Crisis, politics and the people

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the news about the Czech mobilisation became common knowledge, an increasing number of Germans started to feel less confident about Lilliput. The May crisis was perceived as a major loss of prestige for the regime. Sopade described it as a ‘Schlappe des Faschismus’ (a defeat for fascism).37 Heinrich Himmler’s SD informants reported disapprovingly: the smallest endurance test makes bourgeois and intellectual circles doubt (our) government and they influence with their liberal, pacifist thinking the population negatively. … This is not organized, but they use Mundpropaganda [word of mouth propaganda] and are dangerous … When the Czechs mobilized in May the war psychosis began … The Sudeten Germans are seen as part of Bohemia (and therefore Habsburg) … a strong burden on the Reich.38

Ironically, SD reports and Sopade agreed that only two groups in Germany wanted a war with Czechoslovakia now – ardent Nazis and ardent anti-Nazis. The latter hoped, according to Sopade, that this war would eliminate Hitler and his regime once and for all.39 Yet finding out what people really felt remained difficult for Himmler’s SD people as well as for the opposition. Sopade stated that the atmosphere differed greatly from summer 1914: In August 1914, complete strangers discussed the political events on trains and buses. Today people have the feeling that they don’t have any influence on events anyway and try to avoid getting harassed. Only within the closest circle of family or friends the subject of war and peace is discussed. The result is complete resignation. People envisage a total war, that will include the front as well as the home.40

On 28 May, Goebbels scaled down his aggressive press campaign and blamed his problems on the ‘gutless Ribbentrop and the [German] Foreign Office’.41 But this scaling down did not mean that Hitler had changed his plans. He completely ignored the advice of Ludwig Beck, the Chief of the Army General Staff, that if Britain came to the aid of Czechoslovakia, an ensuing war could not be won.42 On 30 May, behind closed doors, Hitler informed his generals that they had to be ready ‘to smash’ Czechoslovakia by 1 October. Yet it was not just Beck who was worried. Senior officers in the Wehrmacht and a few diplomats were opposed to the plan and might even have contemplated a coup. But how strong their opposition really was is still a question of debate.43 There existed another segment of society that had serious doubts and their feelings are better documented: working-class women had every v 176 v

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German popular opinion in 1938 reason to be dissatisfied with the turn of events. For some time, their husbands, brothers and sons had been sent off to build the Westwall (the Siegfried Line) – the German fortifications opposite the French Maginot Line. The accelerated construction of the Westwall had become an ongoing grievance for working-class families. Dramatic scenes were now reported from train stations. At Potsdam railway station, for example, women overran the barrier of SA men and screamed ‘we want our men back!’44 Sopade also reported an incident on 29 August, at Hindenburg station, where men were waiting to be transported: ‘The SA was trying to calm down the angry women, assuring them that their men were just needed for building the fortifications not for actual fighting. One woman screamed: “If you want to take away my only child, you have to arrest me, I am not moving”.’45 Another incident was reported from Beuthen: 120 workers were about to be sent off, but only 74 turned up at the station and were too drunk to travel.46 While the men got drunk, the women got angrier: ‘Several women were trying to prevent their men from leaving, they cursed Hitler and the system and the police did not dare to arrest them.’47 Working-class women were not the only ones getting angry. Businessmen were frustrated too. Himmler’s SD reported that ‘the intensification of all efforts for the fortification of the Western borders created criticism in [German] economic circles, because the security of our country had to come before other interests … Their defeatism culminated in the phrase that the Reich was carrying out “adventure politics”.’48 By mid-July, Goebbels had to admit that on the propaganda front things were not going as well as he had hoped. In his diary he noted: ‘Our crusade against Prague is tiring the people a bit. You cannot keep a crisis going for months … [people] believe war is inevitable, nobody feels good about this. Fatalism is the most dangerous of all.’49 Goebbels was a fanatic, but no fool. He even acknowledged mistakes in his own press coverage: ‘we use the weapon of attack too often. It therefore wears off.’50 Still, he exploited every opportunity he could get. When the British sent businessman Walter Runciman to Czechoslovakia on 3 August for a ‘fact finding mission’, the simple-minded viscount was photographed giving the Henlein supporters a Nazi salute. German propaganda was happy to use the photo which was a slap in the face of Hitler’s critics. Their fears were confirmed: ‘We were ridiculed … by the photo of Runciman making the Hitler salute to the Henlein demonstrators.’51 v 177 v

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The Munich Crisis, politics and the people Indeed, Runciman was never going to be an ‘honest broker’. Behind the scenes he and his politician wife Hilda were charmed, wined and dined by the pro-Henlein nobility in their Czech country houses.52 Before Runciman released his report, Hitler ratcheted up the pressure again. At the annual Nuremberg rally he gave his speech about the ‘Czech terrorists and blackmailers’. This triggered the aforementioned rampage in Oberplan and the rest of the Sudetenland which resulted in several casualties. Yet, average Germans did not feel like going on a rampage. They were scared.53 A Comintern informant overheard a woman in a shop saying: ‘This pig Hitler what has he gotten us into? He wants to drive us into a war!’ A Catholic woman stated: ‘Hitler has brought nothing but misery upon us.’54 The Comintern informants came to the conclusion that ‘the majority of the German population was against the war. Workers in the factories, antifascist leaflets and handwritten posters against Hitler’s war mongering circulated.’55 Of course, there was a large dollop of wishful thinking on the side of the Comintern. But their observations were not stereotypical, they even noticed gender differences. According to Comintern reports, women were more outspoken: [in September] it was the women who … discussed their anti-war feelings in shops, factories and on the street … In one factory, a Nazi had argued that whatever happened one had to follow Hitler. The men had not disagreed with the Nazi, but the women shouted him down.56 And in another factory, the workers were told they had to march to a sports field to listen to a Hitler speech. Nobody wanted to go; yet while the men marched on, the women never arrived there, they had just gone home.57

While the Comintern was hopeful, the more cautious Sopade singled out two major groups that stood four-square behind Hitler: first, lower- and middle-ranking civil servants, especially those who had not fought in the last war; second, the youth, at least as long as they had not been drafted:58 ‘Every Hitler youth, every customs officer, every official will tell you that it is the Jews’ fault, that they want to provoke a war.’59 This belief was also echoed in a secret Nazi report on the internal political situation in Franconia: In the days when the threat of war was increasing, the nasty disposition of the Jews was made very manifest. The Jews displayed a behavior that was haughty and provocative, emerging from the otherwise customary sneaky reserve and conniving shyness. One could notice that they were waiting for war, which in their calculations was to bring about the destruction of the Reich.60 v 178 v

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German popular opinion in 1938 Ironically, the youngsters who accused Jews of warmongering advocated a war themselves. At an inn, young people were boasting that once they had taken Czechoslovakia, Alsace-Lorraine would be next. Older men told them off: ‘“What do you young guns know about the war? You weren’t even born when we had to go out there. This time it will be even worse. We don’t give a damn about Czechoslovakia and Alsace Lorraine. We want peace and not this heroic crap that can only end in misery”.’61 But this was not a straightforward generational divide, either. Young people who already had been drafted would have sided with the older men at the inn. Morale in the army was low. Sopade lists multiple cases of unrest among soldiers in September. The relationship between soldiers and their superiors was reported to be tense: ‘the drill is unbearable; nothing is done out of free will, everything under pressure. The food has deteriorated and the uniforms are of bad quality.’62 Similar to the aforementioned problems with transporting workers for the fortifications, the draft did not go smoothly either. Again, people turned up in such a drunken state that they could not be transported, others vanished or stated ‘we are not getting beaten up for Hitler’. Sopade came to the conclusion: ‘It might be the case that these stories about deserters are exaggerated, but everyone talks about them.’63 A young soldier wrote to his parents with heavy irony: when we heard that we would not be allowed to go home by 26 October we were dancing with such delight that we broke several chairs and electric lights. We are in quarters near the Czech border. One thing even the dumbest has worked out by now is that the higher your rank, the further away you are from the front. One of my comrades has already been wounded. He ‘fell’ into a beer bottle and had the good luck to be sent to hospital. Everyone is envious of him because he had been so inventive.64

Women who ‘had marched into all the National Socialist Women’s League meetings [NS-Frauenschaft], suddenly had screaming fits when their men were drafted’.65 A Sopade informant described the case of a woman who had always demanded a military campaign against ‘the damned Czechs’ and was suddenly deeply depressed. Asked what was wrong, she said that if Hitler had not rushed the issue, he would have obtained the Sudetenland by negotiations. It turned out that the reason for her sudden change of mind was that her husband had been called up and had to leave home within twelve hours.66 In the meantime, Chamberlain had decided to fly to Germany and meet Hitler at the Berghof. The German press needed to react to this new v 179 v

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The Munich Crisis, politics and the people development. On 15 September, a press briefing took place in Berlin. Journalists were instructed to comment that this was a sensational step and very satisfying for the Führer. However, they were told not to describe Chamberlain as an ‘angel of peace’; instead they should argue that without Hitler’s tough stance this visit would have not been possible. In general, the commentators should treat Chamberlain politely and welcome the idea that from now on everything would be discussed ‘man to man’. At the same time, articles had to appear about the dire situation in the Sudetenland.67 Despite these cautious instructions, the German public welcomed the British prime minister enthusiastically during his visits.68 When Chamberlain returned for the second meeting, the people of Cologne showered him with flowers and gifts. But the meeting at Bad Godesberg was a failure, and on 23 September news came of the Czech mobilisation. Sopade reported the reactions from the south of Germany: a man was arrested in an inn in Karlsruhe because he loudly declared that he had been at the front long enough and would not go back again. Another guest alerted the police. However, this snitch had to leave with the police because the other people in the inn – craftsmen and small businessmen – would have certainly harmed him. Three of them volunteered to come along with the arrested man to assure the authorities that the arrested had made completely harmless comments. However, the arrested man, who works in a munitions factory in Karlsruhe, has not been released to this day.69

Other reports came to the conclusion: ‘Nobody amongst the working classes thinks the territory of the Sudetenland is that important to start a war for it. If a war does start, it will be very unpopular.’70 Goebbels’ propaganda about the suffering Sudeten Germans had completely lost its effect: ‘People say, this is not about the Sudeten Germans. It is about the Czech industries and raw materials.’ Others made ironic comments: ‘How surprised they [the Sudeten Germans] will be once they are liberated. Like us, when we were liberated from Bolshevism.’71 Hitler’s critics hoped that the Nazis had finally found their match in the British: ‘Better a painful break than a never ending brownshirt agony.’72 A Sopade informant reported on 25 September: ‘people say “now they got Austria, why do they want Czechoslovakia as well? Napoleon wanted too much too and in the end, he was left with nothing”.’73 The local authorities, were finding it difficult to keep people under control: ‘The leading Nazis circles in Silesia are convinced that the people do not want a war and are trying everything to change their feelings … People are v 180 v

German popular opinion in 1938

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now openly criticizing Hitler.’74 They were also hoarding. ‘People buy everything they can get their hands on: soap, sugar, coffee etc.’75 In Duisburg, even a Nazi official who worked for the DAF (Deutsche Arbeitsfront) was close to a nervous breakdown: for the last five years … we have given up our private life. We little functionaries had to make ourselves unpopular with the people, we are just the mercenaries for the big bosses [Bonzen] … We have to collect rags while the bosses pocket gold and silver and live in fairytale palaces. Adolf supports this and … is becoming a megalomaniac. When it does not work out, war is used as an escape route. But we don’t want to be the cannon fodder for this deranged bunch.76

Despite this tense atmosphere, Goebbels managed a huge supportive audience for Hitler in the Berliner Sportpalast on 26 September. In a passionate speech, Hitler claimed he was making his ‘last territorial demand in Europe’. Again, he lied about the events of May 1938, when Prague had partly mobilised. He portrayed himself as a victim who up to that point had never thought ‘of solving the problem militarily’.77 Though he pretended to praise Chamberlain’s peace efforts, he also claimed Beneš was intending to slowly exterminate everything German (‘das Deutschtum langsam auszurotten’). According to Goebbels, the speech was a ‘psychological masterpiece’. The audience certainly seemed to experience a kind of mass orgasm, screaming for several minutes ‘Führer befiehl, wir folgen’.78 The audience was composed of true believers, but outside the Sportpalast people were less gullible and reacted lethargically.79 This did not escape Goebbels’ sharp eyes. He had been born and bred in the Catholic Rhineland where feelings were reported as being particularly hostile against a war. Sopade even noted an ‘almost forgotten feeling reemerging – separatism! This is especially the case amongst the Catholics. A vote on breaking off the Rhineland from Nazi Germany would have received a majority.’80 The SD had noticed this too: ‘The political up and down has caused strong pessimism in intellectual circles, they even wanted to flee from border areas in the west. In the Rhineland and in the Ruhrgebiet people withdrew their savings.’81 In other parts of Germany, nihilism seemed to dominate. In late September, discipline broke down in several factories. Since war would come anyway, people became uninhibited. The dread of the concentration camp decreased and workers descended on the pubs to get blind drunk.82 In Bavaria the reports of the Regierungspräsidenten v 181 v

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The Munich Crisis, politics and the people (Government Presidents) speak of a clear anti-war feeling in August and September.83 So do the SD reports which disapproved of the German population: ‘Instead of defending law and honor of the nation, a great part of the population wanted peace at any price.’84 On 27 September, Hitler ordered a division parade down the Berliner Wilhelmstrasse to demonstrate military strength. But Berliners ignored the display, ‘hurrying to the next underground station to avoid having to witness the spectacle. The few hundred people who had assembled on Wilhelmsplatz stood in complete silence. When Hitler then briefly appeared on his balcony at the Chancellery, there were no cheers, and he quickly went back inside.’85 This time round Goebbels had not organised a jubilant crowd.86 It is highly likely that this was a calculated act by him to send his master a message. A day later, on 28 September, Goebbels went a step further and told Hitler over lunch that the German population did not want a war.87 Whether this really had an impact on Hitler is difficult to verify. Hitler’s latest biographer, Volker Ullrich, believes that the apathy demonstrated by Berliners on 27 September, combined with the enthusiastic welcome of Chamberlain, did have an impact. Ullrich follows Hitler’s interpreter Paul Schmidt who wrote that ‘the enthusiasm for Chamberlain carried an “undertone of criticism of Hitler” as the one who led the world to the brink of a major war’.88 Hitler was certainly disgusted by the Germans’ lack of enthusiasm, reportedly uttering that one could not win a war ‘with such people’. But did German popular opinion really change Hitler’s decision-making process? It was a factor, but it was most probably only one factor of several. Apart from the lack of enthusiasm among the German population, there existed many tactical reasons (not least the warnings of the military) that made Hitler agree to Mussolini’s ‘offer’ of mediation.89 Though Hitler always pretended to be highly dissatisfied with having to sign the Munich Agreement on 30 September, one should not underestimate his good acting skills. Munich handed him the Sudetenland with all its fortifications on a silver platter. Without a shot being fired German soldiers could simply take over these decisive fortifications, which meant that occupying the rest of Czechoslovakia would later be plain sailing.90 The Munich Agreement was a brilliant deal for Hitler and he knew it. Munich also meant that Britain and France handed over Czech territory to Poland and Hungary. To achieve such a criminal act, they had to break five treaties. Not surprisingly, the Czechs were in utter shock. Sopade reported from the Wenzel Square in Prague: ‘People cannot believe it. They scream, cry and I will never forget the face of a v 182 v

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German popular opinion in 1938 worker who shouts: “Those pigs, this is treason!”’91 Another anti-Nazi stated: ‘with impotent anger we realise that the great democracies are giving away their friends to save themselves’.92 Although Munich meant emigration, prison or outright death for Hitler’s outspoken critics, the average German was jubilant. Goebbels noted in his diary: ‘Big sigh of relief by everyone that the dangerous crisis is over. We were all walking on a tight rope above the abyss. We are a Great Power again. Now we have to arm, arm, arm! It was a victory in the exercise of pressure, of nerves and of the press!’93 Himmler’s SD reports did not agree with the last point. They came to the conclusion that the propaganda ministry had failed. This verdict was partly due to rivalries between Himmler and Goebbels, but also touched on a deeper point. Though the propaganda had worked well at the beginning of the crisis, it had backfired by September and left people distrustful of the press, according to the SD informant: ‘The belated explanations by our press, had the effect that great parts of the German public trusted the foreign press more and were therefore encouraged in their distrust. These pacifists feeling appeared suddenly during the crisis, but they also disappeared immediately after the Munich agreement.’94 However, Sopade noticed that not all was well again for the regime. Despite the general relief after Munich, the average German did not care much about the acquisition of the Sudetenland: The people are not interested in acquiring new territory. Only 100% Nazis are enthusiastic. Hitler got the Saar and the people have not been better off, he got Austria and the living standard has not risen. And now each of us gets 100g less of butter with the explanation ‘this is for the Sudeten Germans’. That hardly triggers off enthusiasm.95

Some people had other problems than butter. Twelve miles from Munich lies the suburb of Dachau. Since 1933 it had housed a ­concentration camp. Its intake had considerably increased after the annexation of Austria. The Jewish novelist Friedrich Torberg had friends imprisoned at Dachau. When he read the glowing British newspaper reports that Chamberlain had saved ‘European civilization’ at Munich,96 Torberg wrote to a colleague: ‘Please explain to me how European civilization could have been saved in Munich which is only 12 miles from Dachau?’ As a Czech-Austrian product of the Habsburg monarchy, Torberg was living in limbo.97 He drew a little diagram into his letter: ‘please do give me a new coordination system my current one is this’ (Figure 8.1).98 v 183 v

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The Munich Crisis, politics and the people

8.1  Friedrich Torberg’s diagram, 7 October 1938.

Notes  1 In Germany, the Czechoslovakian crisis is called Sudetenkrise (Sudeten crisis). This term will be employed here.   2 In the following, the term popular opinion instead of public opinion will be used. As Ian Kershaw has rightly pointed out: ‘Public opinion in the sense of opinion publicly held and expressed, was after 1933 almost wholly that of the Nazi regime, or at least of rival sections within the ruling elites … In distinction to “public opinion” – a term by and large applicable only to societies where there exists a plurality of freely and publicly expressed opinion – it seems sensible to designate … attitudes and responses – unquantifiable, often unspecific, diffuse, and ill-coordinated … as “popular opinion”.’ Ian Kershaw, Popular Opinion and Political Dissent in the Third Reich, Bavaria 1933–1945 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2002), p. 4. So far, there exists no scholarly analysis of German popular opinion during the whole Sudeten crisis. Since it is difficult to detect popular opinion in a dictatorship, historians have focused on the political side of the crisis, namely Hitler’s decision-making process and the international relations of the time. However, they mention popular opinion at the end of the crisis, that is, from mid-September onwards when German crowds welcomed Chamberlain. Popular opinion during the whole crisis (from April to September 1938) has only been analysed for one particular group – the Sudeten Germans themselves. See Volker Zimmermann, Die Sudetendeutschen im NS-Staat. Politik und Stimmung der Bevölkerung im Reichsgau Sudetenland (1938–1945) (Essen: Klartext, 1999) and Detlef Brandes, Die Sudetendeutschen im Krisenjahr 1938 (Munich: Oldenbourg, 2008). This essay will try to cover the popular opinion of the Germans during the whole crisis.  3 The rampage in Oberplan was part of Henlein’s ‘first September rising’. It took place between 12 and 13 September and was eventually stopped v 184 v

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German popular opinion in 1938 by Czech police. Shortly afterwards Henlein founded the FS (Freiwilliger Selbstschutz) and on 21 September started his ‘second September rising’.   4 See, for the rampage in Oberplan, Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschland (ed.), Deutschland-Berichte der Sozialdemokratischen Partei Deutschlands (Sopade) 1934–1940, vol. 5 (Salzhausen: Verlag Petra Nettelbeck, 1980), p. 1040ff. In the following, the Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands in exile will be shortened to ‘Sopade’. See also for the treatment of Jews in the Sudetenland, Jörg Osterloh, Nationalsozialistische Judenverfolgung im Reichsgau Sudetenland 1938–1945 (Munich: Oldenbourg, 2006).   5 Hitler’s speech at the Nuremberg rally, 12 September 1938, in Paul MeierBenneckenstein (ed.), Dokumente der Deutschen Politik (DDP), vol. 6: Großdeutschland, Part 1 (Berlin, 1939), p. 299.   6 See Zara Steiner, The Triumph of the Dark: European International History 1933–1939 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), p. 583ff.  7 Some contemporary commentators believed that the British might not have researched this properly: ‘they don’t understand the history and ­geography … The fact is that the whole idea of the Sudeten Germans being German is ahistorical. If they belong anywhere it would be Austria.’ Quoted in Sopade, vol. 5, 1938, p. 1008. See also Hugh Seton-Watson, Eastern Europe Between the Wars. 1918–1941 (New York: Harper & Row, 1967), p. 279.   8 Quoted in a report by Sopade, September 1938, p. 976.   9 See Marie-Luise Recker, England und der Donauraum 1919–1929. Probleme einer europäischen Nachkriegsordnung (Stuttgart: Klett, 1976). 10 Heinrich August Winkler, Der lange Weg nach Westen. Vom ‘Dritten Reich’ bis zur Wiedervereinigung, vol. 2 (Munich: C.H. Beck, 2014), p. 54. 11 He started to prepare the German public for the upcoming conflict with Czechoslovakia as early as February 1938: ‘we will protect the ten million Germans in the two neighboring states which were until 1866 united with the German people’. Quoted in ibid., p. 55. 12 The Nazis had paid for the SdP election campaign in 1935 and kept on financing the party. For a biography of Konrad Henlein, see Ralf Gebel, “Heim ins Reich!” Konrad Henlein und der Reichsgau Sudetenland 1938–1945 (Munich: Oldenbourg, 1999). 13 Diary entry 20 March 1938, in Elke Fröhlich (ed.), Die Tagebücher des Joseph Goebbels, Part I, vol. 5, p. 222. 14 Ibid. Diary entry 24 March 1938, p. 227. 15 Quoted in Steiner, Triumph of the Dark, p. 560. Steiner points out that ‘such instructions, unknown in London, Paris or Prague, made a mockery out of subsequent Czech efforts to find an acceptable solution to the Sudeten problem’. Ibid. 16 Which was technically correct. He joined the NSDAP and the SS after Munich. v 185 v

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The Munich Crisis, politics and the people 17 For the courting of Henlein by the British, see Karina Urbach, Go-Betweens for Hitler (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015), p. 285f. Chamberlain wanted to believe in Henlein because he had no intention of being dragged into a conflict. He wrote to his sister: ‘If we can avoid another violent coup in Czechoslovakia, which ought to be feasible, it may be possible for Europe to settle down again, and some day for us to start peace talks again with the Germans.’ Quoted in Steiner, Triumph of the Dark, p. 557. 18 Urbach, Go-Betweens for Hitler, p. 256. 19 Richard J. Evans, The Third Reich in Power (London: Allen Lane, 2005), p. 667. 20 Heimann points out that unemployment was twice as high in the Sudeten German border regions as in the Czech interior. Mary Heimann, Czechoslovakia: The State That Failed (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2009), p. 75. For a different interpretation of the Sudeten German situation, see Eagle Glassheim, ‘Genteel Nationalists: Nobles and Fascism in Czechoslovakia’, in Karina Urbach (ed.), European Aristocracies and the Radical Right 1918–1939 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), p. 149ff., and Eagle Glassheim, Noble Nationalists: The Transformation of the Bohemian Aristocracy (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2005). 21 The founder and first president of Czechoslovakia, Tomáš Masaryk, spent time in the US and was inspired by the American idea of a melting pot. 22 See Urbach, Go-Betweens for Hitler, p. 285ff. 23 Sopade report, September 1938, p. 983f. 24 Sopade was published between 1933 and 1940. About 100 copies were printed and circulated to SPD party leaders abroad. The names of informants and interlocutors mentioned in the reports were anonymised. The reports are divided by regions and try to cover cities, towns and villages. The quality of the reports differs, but they do give useful insights. The intention behind the reports was to inform the exiled SPD leadership, but also other critics of the regime abroad. Some historians claim that these reports are biased, focusing too much on potential opposition to the regime, and furthermore were used as a propaganda tool. However, reading them in their entirety shows that the majority of these reports were brutally honest and far from glorifying the chances of a regime change. That they were a propaganda tool was an argument already used by the Nazis. Himmler’s intelligence service, the SD, was well aware of the Sopade reports. The SD believed that the DeutschlandBerichte of Sopade were very important abroad and that the informants caused unrest at home: ‘carrying out whispering campaigns. Former SPD functionaries travel as salesmen … or go to funerals of former Marxists, join associations … this intelligence work is done by the former SPD functionaries from abroad and in the factories.’ Quoted in Heinz Boberach (ed.), Meldungen aus dem Reich. Die geheimen Lageberichte des Sicherheitsdienstes der SS 1938–1945, vol. 2 (Herrsching: Pawlak, 1984), p. 62; in the f­ollowing v 186 v

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German popular opinion in 1938 it is shortened to ‘SD reports’. The reports were accumulated by Otto Ohlendorf, who ran a wide network of informants. Their reports included highly critical comments on the regime. 25 I would like to thank Jonathan Haslam for making me aware of these Comintern reports. Like the Sopade reports, they were written in German; the English translation is my own. The Comintern reports are less immediate than the Sopade ones and often written as a reply to questions asked by Comintern headquarters. See information from the German Communist Party (KPD) representatives on the executive committee of the Comintern on Germany, 1938, Comintern Archive RGASPI f.495, Op. 292, d.104. These reports are available on the Internet, see Sovdoc.rusarchives. ru/#showunit&id=157500;tab=img (accessed February 2019). In my footnotes, I will include the German original in case this website is taken down. For the importance of the Comintern in the interwar years, see Jonathan Haslam, The Spectre of War: International Communism and the Origins of World War II (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2021). 26 They were distributed only to Hitler’s inner circle. Whether Hitler actually read them cannot be verified. Another useful administrative source exists for Bavaria only: the reports of the Government Presidents (Regierungspräsidenten) regarding popular opinion in Bavaria. The Government Presidents based their reports on monthly bulletins from lower offices, including local police stations. The reports were edited by the Munich Institut für Zeitgeschichte: Martin Broszat, Elke Fröhlich and Falk Wiesemann (eds), Bayern in der NS-Zeit. Soziale Lage und politisches Verhalten der Bevölkerung um Spiegel vertraulicher Berichte, vol 1. (Munich: Oldenbourg, 1977); Martin Broszat, Elke Fröhlich and Falk Wiesemann (eds), Herrschaft und Gesellschaft im Konflikt, vol. 2 (Munich, 1981). For an English translation and evaluation, see Kershaw, Popular Opinion and Political Dissent in the Third Reich. 27 The media was, of course, state controlled. Goebbels’ press strategy was to sell the public a Kriegsursache (grounds for war) and journalists were constantly briefed. Only the Frankfurter Zeitung received some leeway because it was read abroad. Roland Höhme‚ ‘Die Einschätzung der internationalen Machtverhältnisse durch die Frankfurter Zeitung während der Sudetenkrise’, in Franz Knipping and Klaus-Jürgen Müller (eds), Machtbewußtsein in Deutschland am Vorabend des Zweiten Weltkrieges (Paderborn: Ferdinand Schöningh, 1984). For the Nazi press in general, see Norbert Frei, Nationalsozialistische Eroberung der Provinzpresse; Gleichschaltung, Selbstanpassung und Resistenz in Bayern (Stuttgart: Deutscher Verlags-Anstalt, 1980). Also Engelbert Schwarzenbeck, Nationalsozialistische Pressepolitik und die Sudetenkrise 1938 (Munich: Minerva, 1979). Schwarzenbeck uses Albrecht Blau’s influential 1935 publication Propaganda als Waffe. Ibid., p. 290f. v 187 v

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The Munich Crisis, politics and the people 28 Sopade, pp. 380, 386. 29 Most of them were enthusiastic Hitler supporters anyway and – according to the Sopade reports – this enthusiasm got on the nerves of German workers; Sopade reports April/May, p. 369. 30 Sopade, p. 370. 31 Ibid., p. 380. 32 Apart from the fortifications in the Sudetenland, Czechoslovakia owned the Skoda works, one of the largest weapon factories in Europe. 33 Sopade, p. 380. 34 This was done against the advice of the German Foreign Office. See Peter Longerich, Joseph Goebbels. Biographie (Munich: Siedler, 2010), p. 377. 35 Angela Hermann, ‘Verhandlungen und Aktivitäten des nationalsozialistischen Regimes im Vorfeld von München’, in Jürgen Zarusky und Martin Zückert (eds), Das Münchner Abkommen von 1938 in europäischer Perspektive (Munich: Oldenbourg, 2013), p. 146. 36 Sopade, p. 382. 37 Ibid., p. 384. 38 The report was written retrospectively, at the end of 1938; SD, vol. 2 p. 72. 39 ‘They hope for the catastrophe’, Sopade, pp. 389, 976. 40 Sopade, April/May Berlin report, p. 387. 41 Quoted in Longerich, Goebbels, p. 377. 42 Beck would resign in August 1938. Richard J. Evans, The Third Reich in Power, 1933–1939 (London: Penguin, 2012), p. 669. 43 See Susanne Meinl, Nationalsozialisten gegen Hitler. Die nationalrevolutionäre Opposition um Friedrich Wilhelm Heinz (Berlin, 2000), pp. 268–9. A member of the opposition, Hans Bernd Gisevius, was of the opinion that ‘Chamberlain saved Hitler’. Quoted in Jürgen Zarusky, ‘Der deutsche Widerstand gegen die Nationalsozialisten’, in Zarusky and Zückert (eds), Das Münchner Abkommen, p. 232. Richard Evans comments that ‘the fundamental weakness of the conspiracy was that its members, by and large, did not disapprove of Hitler’s basic aim of dismembering Czechoslovakia; they only deplored what they considered his irresponsible haste in doing so while the German economy and the armed forces were still unprepared for the general European war to which they feared it would lead.’ Evans, Road to War, p. 670. 44 Original Comintern report: ‘Die Kriegsangst ist bei den Frauen besonders stark. Sie haben sehr viel dazu beigetragen, dass die Ablehnung von Hitlers Kriegsabenteuer durch das deutsche Volk in den Septembertagen so eindeutig zum Ausdruck kam. Schon bei der Zwangsverschickung der Festigungsarbeit und während der Massenmobilisierung im September zeigt sich der Friedenswillen der deutschen Frauen … Arbeiterfrauen erzählen, dass es bei der Abfahrt der Männer zu Befestigungsarbeiten sehr viele Tränen gab. Man sagte zu den Frauen, sie sollten draussen vor der Sperre bleiben und ihren Männern das Herz nicht so schwer machen. Die Frauen waren ganz empört, v 188 v

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German popular opinion in 1938 wie man ihre Männer behandelt habe. Ein Ton hätte geherrscht, als ob man es mit Verbrechern zu tun hätte … Auf dem Potsdamer Bahnhof durchbrachen Frauen die Absperrungen der SA Posten. Frauen sagten zu SA Männern‚ wir wollen unsere Männer wieder zurück!’ Comintern Archive RGASPI f.495, Op. 292, d.104; see Sovdoc.rusarchives.ru/#showunit&id=157500;tab=img (accessed 24 July 2019). 45 The other women calmed her down in the end and the SA promised her financial support. Sopade, p. 933. 46 Sopade report from 3 September, p. 932. 47 Ibid. 48 SD reports, vol. 2, p. 72. 49 Quoted in Longerich, Goebbels, p. 378. 50 Ibid. For the zigzag course of the press, see Longerich, Goebbels, p. 380. 51 Sopade report, p. 944. From the very beginning they had been of the opinion that the Runciman mission was a sign the democracies had developed ‘weak knees’. Sopade, p. 917. 52 See Urbach, Go-Betweens for Hitler, p. 288. 53 Sopade, p. 913. 54 Original Comintern report: ‘In einem Geschäft standen einige Frauen zusammen. “Dieses Schwein (gemeint war Hitler) sagte die eine Frau – wo hat er uns denn nun hingebracht. Das also will er, dieser Halunke, in den Krieg will er uns treiben.” Eine andere wieder, deren Sohn mit den Truppen abmarschiert war, sagte: “Jetzt sehe ich meinen Jungen wahrscheinlich nicht mehr. Es ist furchtbar, was die Banditen mit uns vorhaben.” … Fünf Frauen hatten sich in einem Laden zufällig getroffen und unterhalten sich darüber, dass vielleicht morgen die ganze Strasse schon ein Trümmerhaufen sei und dass sie mit ihren Kindern unter den Trümmern begraben liegen. “Und wer ist schuld? Fragte eine katholische Frau, Mit Hitler … ist das ganze Unglück über Deutschland gekommen.” In drastischen Worten tat sie ihrer Ansicht kund, dass das Hitlerregime verschwinden müssen, damit Deutschland frei werde.’ Comintern Archive RGASPI f.495, Op. 292, d.104. See Sovdoc. rusarchives.ru/#showunit&id=157500;tab=img (accessed 24 July 2019). 55 Ibid. 56 Original Comintern report: ‘Aus einem Caram-Betrieb wird berichtet, dass in den kritischen Tagen viel Diskussionen geführt wurden. Ein Nazi vertrat den Standpunkt, was auch immer kommen möge, man müsse Hitler folgen. Als die Frauen merkten, dass die Männer der betreffenden Abteilungen nicht zu widersprechen wagten, fingen sie an, sehr laut zu schimpfen. Und alle zusammen haben nicht eher Ruhe gegeben, bis der Nazi schwieg.’ Comintern Archive RGASPI f.495, Op. 292, d.104. See Sovdoc.rusarchives. ru/#showunit&id=157500;tab=img (accessed 24 July 2019). 57 Original Comintern report: ‘In einem anderen Großbetrieb sollte nach Arbeitsschluss gemeinsam zum Sportplatz marschiert werden, um die v 189 v

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The Munich Crisis, politics and the people Hitler-Rede anzuhören. Da sich viele drücken wollten, lies der Unternehmer die Fabriktore schließen. Die Belegschaft musste im Hof antreten, Männer und Frauen (letztere sind die Mehrzahl) getrennt. Nachdem man eine Weile marschiert war, löste sich der Frauenzug plötzlich wie auf Kommando auf, und die Frauen gingen nach Hause während die Männer weitermarschierten.’ Comintern Archive RGASPI f.495, Op. 292, d.104. See Sovdoc. rusarchives.ru/#showunit&id=157500;tab=img (accessed 24 July 2019). 58 Sopade, p. 914. 59 Ibid., p. 926. 60 Otto Dov Kulka and Eberhard Jäckel, The Jews in the Secret Nazi Reports on Popular Opinion in Germany, 1933–1945 (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2010), p. 332. 61 25 September, Sopade, p. 929. 62 Sopade, p. 932. 63 Ibid., p. 919. 64 Ibid., p. 929. 65 Ibid., p. 919. 66 Ibid., p. 924. 67 Hellmuth Auerbach, ‘Volksstimmung und veröffentlichte Meinung in Deutschland zwischen März und November 1938’, in Knipping and Müller (eds), Machtbewußtsein in Deutschland, p. 283. 68 Some made predictions by comparing Chamberlain’s talks in Berchtesgaden and Godesberg with the meeting of Austrian Chancellor Schuschnigg and Hitler in Berchtesgaden shortly before the annexation of Austria. Sopade, p. 921. Hitler’s translator, Paul O. Schmidt, famously described the conversations of the two men in his autobiography: Statist auf diplomatischer Bühne 1923–1945: Erlebnisse des Chefdolmetschers im Auswärtigen Amt mit den Staatsmännern Europas (Hamburg: CEP Europäische Verlagsgsanstalt, 2005 [1949]). 69 Sopade report 26 September 1938, p. 923. 70 Sopade report from the Ruhrgebiet, p. 916. 71 Sopade, p. 917. 72 Ibid, p. 976. 73 Sopade, p. 927. ‘The reunion with Austria did not improve anything and if we get the Slovaks as well now, it will not be better either. They are not worth a war.’ Ibid., pp. 927–8. 74 Sopade, p. 930. 75 Ibid., p. 936. 76 Ibid., p. 971. 77 Speech by Hitler in the Berliner Sportpalast, 26 September 1938, in MeierBenneckenstein (ed.), Dokumente der Deutschen Politik (DDP), vol. 6, p. 342. 78 See, for example, Kershaw, Hitler, 1936–1945: Nemesis (London: Penguin, 2001), p. 117. v 190 v

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German popular opinion in 1938 79 A Sopade informant talked to a middle-class woman who had never been critical of Hitler before. She had listened to the radio broadcast and said: ‘Have you heard him screaming again last night? I am not supporting him.’ Sopade, p. 976. 80 Sopade, p. 972. 81 SD report, vol. 2, p. 73. 82 Sopade, p. 978. 83 Bayern in der NS-Zeit, vol. 1, p. 121. 84 SD reports, vol. 2 p. 151. 85 This contemporary report by journalist William J. Shirer is quoted in all studies of the crisis. See, for example, Evans, The Third Reich in Power, p. 677 or Volker Ullrich, Hitler (London: The Bodley Head, 2016), p. 741. 86 Longerich, Goebbels, p. 385; Sopade, p. 978. 87 Quoted in Longerich, Goebbels, p. 385. 88 Ullrich, Hitler, p. 745. 89 In fact, the ‘offer’ had been arranged by Göring. From the beginning, Göring had been against the timing of the war, though not the war itself. See Evans, The Third Reich, pp. 668ff. 90 Urbach, Go-Betweens for Hitler, p. 287. 91 Reports from Wenzelsplatz, Prague, Sopade, p. 1032. 92 Sopade, p. 944. Dedicated socialists said ‘what use does it have? … The whole world is scared of Hitler.’ Ibid. The SD reported similar despair from the Catholic exiled paper Der deutsche Weg, in SD, vol. 2, p. 35. 93 Quoted in Longerich, Goebbels, p. 385. 94 SD reports, p. 151. The SD again warned that people were now increasingly listening to Fremdsender (foreign radio stations). 95 Sopade, p. 1065. 96 As quoted in The Observer, 2 October 1938. 97 At the time, Thomas Mann, Germany’s Nobel Prize winner, also owned a Czechoslovakian passport. See Zarusky, ‘Der deutsche Widerstand gegen den Nationalsozialismus und das Münchner Abkommen’, p. 219. 98 Friedrich Torberg to Schlamm, 7 October 1938, in Friedrich Torberg, Eine tolle, tolle Zeit. Briefe und Dokumente aus den Jahren der Flucht 1938 to 1941 (Munich: Langen Müller, 1989), p. 30.

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v 9 v

Munich and the masses: emotional inflammation, mental health and shame in Britain during the September crisis Julie V. Gottlieb

The dramatic unfolding of the Sudeten crisis that culminated in the signing of the Four Powers Agreement in Munich on 30 September, 1938, was followed by months of political and diplomatic aftershocks. It was an all-consuming event, receiving blanket media coverage at the time, and becoming the focal point of contemporary political and social commentary. Appeasement has received ample consideration in the historiography of modern Britain, with political and diplomatic historians and international relations specialists relying on the empirical matter and interpretive tools of their own disciplines and subdisciplines. The scholarship has hitherto focused on geopolitical manoeuvring, the political leaders and opinion formers, and the media rendering of the crisis. Insofar as the social dimension has been considered, it has been the ways in which leading politicians perceived the mood, and how those in power sought to guide, manage, manufacture and manipulate public opinion. With regard to the Second World War, research on the war inside, on the ‘domestic angst on the home front’,1 and the pathologising of the public sphere is expanding – this is a literature concerned with the psychological, psychoanalytical and psychiatric dimensions of the ‘people’s war’. More recently too, cultural, material culture, literary and gender historians have begun to think more elastically about the prelude to war, as a history from below and/or a history of mentalities. For example, Shapira has demonstrated that in the course of the 1930s there was a shift ‘from the problem of “shell-shocked” soldiers to that of civilians panicking at the prospect of enemy aerial attack’,2 and she has examined how the emotions of anxiety and fear were conceptualised by p ­ sychological experts in the fallout from the Munich Crisis. Indeed, there was a v 192 v

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Britain during the September crisis remarkable concentration of interest and effort among social psychologists, psychiatrists and psychoanalysts as they eagerly offered their expertise to the state, and their professional services for the much-anticipated home front crisis concomitant with a war from the air.3 These are all promising new directions, encouraging us to dig still deeper to unearth private opinion and intimate experience during the Munich Crisis. It is helpful to think about the ‘crisis inside’, and the interior history of the anxious and intensely suspenseful pre-war denouement. To put it another way, it is high time to turn the Munich Crisis inside out. The Munich Crisis was a momentous historical moment that is easily comparable in scale, duration, resonances, supra-national ramifications and its all-encompassing nature to other milestones, turning points and iconic events in modern history. Further, there was a sharp awareness at the time of living in and through a crisis; the terminology of crisis is not imposed in retrospect. It was telling that the main reference point for Britons in the autumn of 1938, whether politicians, writers, or man and woman on the street, was the outbreak of war in August 1914. A radio programme that aired in December 1938, based on interviews with fifteen ‘common people’ sharing views on the crisis, revealed how the ‘majority of speakers contrasted the hopeful enthusiasm of 1914 with the disillusion of 1938’.4 Other historical analogies were made – for example, with Mafeking night, and the very recent abdication crisis – but by far it was the still fresh memory of 1914 that resonated, too familiar for the intensity of emotion but in stark contrast as the thoughtless jingoism of August 1914 had given way to a widespread irenic response on the eve of a second world war. The crisis had profound psychological and emotional affect, both subjectively and collectively. As the Director of the Institute of Experimental Psychology at Oxford, psychiatrist and social psychologist William Brown, put it: We must remember that the attention of the whole world en masse had been focused upon the one problem, the grim alternative of war and peace, the issue becoming sharper with the passing of each day and hour. It hypnotised the mind, it invaded the secret territory where are the springs and sources of feeling, it mobilized the unconscious. People felt more strongly on the subject than they were able to say, or even to think.5

For the Wimbledon men’s finalist H.W. (‘Bunny’) Austin, ‘The recent crisis was a turning point in my life. It can never be quite the v 193 v

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The Munich Crisis, politics and the people same again’,6 as it marked his dedication to the Moral Rearmament movement. The international crisis also became the stuff of dreams and nightmares, the dramatic and traumatic events becoming deeply inscribed on people’s dreamscapes. The topic of why we dream was discussed by recent émigré Dr Franz Plewa at the meeting of the summer school of the London Group for Individual Psychology in the summer of 1939, when he expounded the psychoanalytic theory that in dreams ‘we relived some unpleasant happening to recur when we felt threatened in any way’. In other cases, he explained, the purpose of the dream was consolation. ‘The dreamer was, in effect, telling himself “I have survived this accident, therefore I shall survive the thing that now threatens me”.’ Dr Plewa noted that ‘there was always an increase of such dreams and of psychological symptom generally in times of national crisis. Such periods, when the whole of national life was in the melting-pot, seemed to bring the difficulties of individuals to a head’.7 Based on this rich and varied evidence of the subjective effect of public events, this chapter seeks to access and record the tangible and material, the ethereal and emotional, the rational and irrational, and the psychological and visceral experience of the Munich Crisis. It will draw on private diaries and correspondence, Mass-Observation, press representations of private and of mass emotion, and the burgeoning literature in the field of medical psychology and psychoanalysis as it specifically interpreted the emotional force of the Munich Crisis. The description of the Sudeten affair as ‘the Munich Crisis’ was used immediately. Despite the fact that economic and international crises had been chronic in the 1930s, the events of September and October 1938 were named ‘the Crisis’. For instance, already in mid-September 1938, ‘Crisis – the word with its tragic import to the peoples of the world – has been on everyone’s lips for eight days.’8 No matter where people stood on these deeply divisive foreign policy issues, appeasers and anti-appeasers alike could agree that they were united by the experience of living through an acute crisis. Even more specifically, it would be the four days that proved to be the apotheosis of the crisis, between 25 and 29 September, that were transformative. People everywhere were feverish with excitement and expectancy, evidenced by the ‘Fever Chart’ published first in a French newspaper and a week later in the Illustrated London News. Stefan Zweig referred to the ‘two or three days waiting on tenterhooks, days when the whole world seemed to hold its breath’.9 Accounts of Chamberlain’s receiving the invitation to Munich v 194 v

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Britain during the September crisis in mid-speech in Parliament on 28 September captured the singularity of an occasion that hit the very highest notes on the emotional register. Michael Killanin, the Daily Mail’s diplomatic columnist, recalled how the excitement that night was ‘terrific’, and ‘for an hour there was confusion, everyone shook each other’s hands. Yes, we are an emotional race when there is a real cause … That night was like Mafeking night.’10 The visceral impact of Chamberlain’s return from Munich was, if possible, even more hard-hitting, with ministers forgetting ‘their restraint’, the noise of the crowd ‘terrific’, the massive swell of the celebrants crushing people against the railings, and the memorable site of a woman climbing on top of the Prime Minister’s car as he tried to return to 10 Downing Street. Killanin’s own personal experience was that, ‘as I clung to the railing, my emotion was too great to record in words. It was peace.’11 Psychoanalyst Edward Glover observed much the same, although the undertone was more critical. Glover described how the general populace ‘celebrated their temporary relief from anxiety in an almost hysterical outburst when Chamberlain returned with “peace in our time”’.12 Further, the physical urban geography was also t­ ransformed – or rather, vandalised – by the crisis, public spaces bludgeoned and defaced: ‘Greater London’s thirty-five picked parks and squares were cut and scarred by 189 miles of ARP trenches during Crisis Week. After digging from two and a half feet to eight feet deep, the diggers went away, leaving decaying, waterlogged relics that have now become mantraps.’ The Daily Express reporter asked the local authorities, ‘“What are you going to do about your trenches?” They replied: “We are waiting for a decision from the Home Office … Local authorities are erecting fences round the forlorn trenches; setting red hurricane lamps on the mounds of earth”.’13 The anti-appeaser Harold Nicolson repeatedly suggested that the September crisis differed from other diplomatic crises in the power of its affect. As the crisis was unfolding, and from his platform as a BBC broadcaster, Nicolson was hoping to conduct the chorus of public emotion. In his 8 September broadcast he was likely being prescriptive rather than descriptive when he spoke of being genuinely impressed by how calm the people were: ‘I do not think I have ever felt so pleased with my own country as I have during the past ten days. We have been, and still are, faced with an appalling crisis. Our whole future may be at stake. And yet the public, while realising the dangers and the difficulties, have remained amazingly calm.’ Seeking to dulcify his listeners rather than to mirror, and certainly not to feed, their anxiety, he asserted: ‘They know what is v 195 v

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The Munich Crisis, politics and the people happening over there and they realise that the events of the next fortnight may affect all that they most care for. Yet they have remained calm, resolute and unhysterical. There can be no panics, no waves of emotion, no bursts of hatred. The solid sense of Great Britain, its quiet fortitude, has been an example to the world.’14 Nicholson would, however, change his tune – or rather, there is strong evidence that his public and private views were at odds. His reading of the popular response to the crisis was very different only a couple of short months later, when he remarked that ‘one of the most interesting things about the Munich Settlement is that it should have proved so unsettling’.15 He wondered ‘why this Munich business’ should have ‘so distorted human judgement and courtesy that it drives agreeable people to gibe at us at a time when we are all feeling mortified, unhappy and anxious’, and that ‘in all thinking people Munich has created a strange condition of emotional inflammation, due to the coincidence of immense physical relief with extreme spiritual discomfort. Severe moral shock, following upon an abrupt relaxation of nervous tension, has scalded the conscience of the world.’16 Nicolson himself was ill at ease with this emotional abandon. Even as an Edenite and one of the harshest parliamentary critics of the Munich Agreement, he nevertheless felt public displays of disaffection and of emotion were equally unseemly. Indeed, the emotional history of the Munich Crisis can best be studied comparatively. Idioms of feeling are aligned with national character and ethnic identity, and this was certainly how they were constructed in the late 1930s. Londoners impressed one northern newspaper correspondent with their controlled attitude towards the possibility of war, even as all felt loathing at the thought of another war. But there was no panic or fear, and ‘one realises at such times why the English have the reputation of being an undemonstrative race’.17 British crowd psychologist Wilfrid Trotter congratulated his own nation on its unique capacity ‘for courageous endurance and its principle of reasonable compromise’.18 Edward Glover made a comparative study of morale in which he recognised that the English were known by their neighbours for ‘British phlegm’ and for ‘not expressing our feelings’. The Englishman ‘will go through torture rather than admit anything about his intimate feelings … This undemonstrativeness of the British, their incurable habit of running themselves down just when they feel unusually cock-a-hoop, their attempts at light humour on serious occasions, their apparent smugness and lack of imagination, have seriously misled their enemies.’ In comparison, Glover opined that ‘war shock’ in the Spanish Civil War was relatively v 196 v

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Britain during the September crisis low because ‘the more volatile Spaniard is not debarred from working out his feelings’, and ‘in times of stress no one thinks the less of him from weeping aloud’. The Frenchman ‘can feel about his beloved country as an Englishman feels about his sweetheart’.19 This kind of mainly impressionistic socio-psychological study of communities and capital cities in crisis did much to reinforce national stereotyping and thus, perhaps, contributed to people’s understanding of the crisis itself. Just as politicians fancied themselves apt social psychologists, a group of psychiatrists and medical psychologists embraced the roles of political analyst and international relations expert. In October 1938, contributors to The Lancet proposed to ‘examine international relations in the same way [as the study of disease] … and to discuss the biology of war’.20 Psychiatry was reckoned to be ‘the most sociological of all the medical sciences’,21 and it followed that psychiatrists and psychologists turned to diagnosing and theorising the impact of the Munich Crisis on mental health. Certain mental health conditions were induced by external factors, and Stephen Taylor MD estimated that while ‘schizophrenia is 90 per cent constitutional and 10 per cent environmental … hysteria is 60 per cent constitutional and 40 per cent environmental, and anxiety states 30 per cent constitutional and 70 per cent environmental’.22 The Perth physician Dr W.D. Chambers, physician superintendent to James Murray’s Royal Asylum, stressed the importance of psychological preparation for war. His own worries that the country was psychologically ill prepared was based on both his clinical cases during and since the European crisis, and his observations of the other­ wise mentally healthy civilian population. Dr Chambers’ patients and their families identified the European crisis as causative of mental breakdowns. In the six months since Munich, patients’ mental health deteriorated due to anxiety that war was imminent, fear for personal safety, depression caused by the interruption of normal habits, fear of financial consequences, and altruistic concerns for the general suffering war would bring, while others ‘had disagreeable memories of the last war’. Dr Chambers was even more concerned, however, about those ‘ostensibly in good health and with normal mental equipment, who display with little attempt at concealment morbid and quite irrational terror at the idea of aerial bombardment … They are preparing themselves for uncontrollable panic state which will certainly lead to genuine nervous illness or to mental derangement in some cases.’23 Medics were now taking a much keener interest in the environmental conditions and the political context. By observing their own patients and extrapolating v 197 v

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The Munich Crisis, politics and the people from there to the general population, they tried to understand how the international crisis precipitated a range of psychological conditions. These probing – if still mainly uncoordinated – investigations of the psychological symptoms of the crisis served as a laboratory for developing treatments for and management of the much-anticipated and, as it proved, exaggerated, psychiatric casualties of the people’s war to come. Preparations were being made for both breakdowns on a singular basis and for psychiatric epidemics. For instance, the September crisis was the spur for the Tavistock Clinic, also known as the Institute of Medical Psychology, to offer its services to the Ministry of Health by setting up a large special hospital for psychiatric casualties in a building outside London. Although it did not materialise in its original form, clinic staff were ready to organise emergency psychiatric services.24 In another example, the Munich Crisis was the impetus for the Institute of Psycho-Analysis to make various offers to the Ministry of Health of units for the purpose of psychotherapy, of research and training personnel, both medical and lay. Another scheme was drawn up by the Institute to train social workers of both sexes in mental nursing and as an auxiliary service in the event of a major air attack.25 There is significant evidence to suggest that psychoanalysis entered the mainstream in Britain as it was purveyed by modernist writers and artists, as it came increasingly to inform journalistic enquiry and language, as its terms and complexes permeated diary-keeping and confessional modes, and as the figure of the psychoanalyst became visible as a public intellectual and even as a celebrity (the arrival of the refugee Dr Sigmund Freud in London on 6 June 1938 attracted a great deal of public attention). Nonetheless, it is clear that the government was not ready to put psychoanalysis into practice in civilian defence, much to the annoyance of Dr Edward Glover who led on these initiatives on behalf of the Institute. The psychoanalyst and prolific populariser of the same, Edward Glover (1888–1972), was also one of twenty analysts who collaborated on a study of 76 individual cases (and a total of closer to 100 when they included patients they only mentioned in passing) to investigate the working of the Munich Crisis on already troubled minds. ‘The majority of patients “reacted” to the crisis. Most of the reactors were “upset” in varying degrees and manner. Others reacted with a definite or transitory improvement in their previous symptoms. A minority were unaffected.’26 In the first category, the symptoms suffered were fear of desertion by the analyst, agitation, hyperactivity, helplessness, bewilderment, confusion, v 198 v

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Britain during the September crisis sense of fatigue and sleeplessness, digestive disorders, gloom and depression, increased self-accusation and sexual difficulty. Next to these mental health conditions triggered by the crisis, doctors reported on an outbreak of a medical condition they dubbed ‘crisis throat’, with clear psychosomatic aspects.27 The condition emerged as a reaction to the prolonged anxiety of the crisis period, and it took on epidemic proportions across the country, particularly in the towns. Medical and intellectual efforts to describe the public mood during this period of crisis are helpful, but how far do they facilitate an understanding of what it felt like to live through it? How, exactly, can we trace, record and evidence the feelings evoked? Sally Alexander and Barbara Taylor have confronted the challenges of writing psychohistory, and they give guidance for this method by reminding us that ‘people leave behind many traces and clues to their mental states, but these only become accessible to the historian when they achieve some form of cultural expression’.28 Following this, how can we trace, record and evidence the feelings evoked by the Munich Crisis? The first step in retrieving sentient and sentimental experience is to plot the emotional spectrum of the Munich Crisis. At one end of this emotional spectrum, the crisis excited feelings of relief/release, gratitude, as well as deliverance and the ecstasy of salvation.29 At the polar opposite end, the crisis triggered overwhelming feelings of shame, guilt and dishonour. All of these have both private and social charges. Honour and dishonour is more an ethical judgement than an emotion – honour is an important measure of social prestige, dishonour its absence or its loss. Honour is deeply rooted in cultural expectations of character, bravery and heroism; dishonour is marked by cowardice and character flaws. On the other hand, shame is a sociological, psychological, theological and moral reaction. Shame has been described as the ‘primary social emotion’,30 and thus its expression as a noun combined with its deployment as a verb provides the ideal nexus in which to study the interaction between the personal and the collective. Winston Churchill wrote to Lord Moyne at the outset of the crisis on 11 September: ‘Owing to the neglect of our defences and the mishandling of the German problem in the last five years, we seem to be very near the  bleak choice between War and Shame. My feeling is that we shall choose Shame, and then have War thrown in a little later on even more adverse terms than at present.’31 Former French prime minister Léon Blum said much the same some days later. Writing in his newspaper Le Populaire, Blum felt that while ‘war has probably been averted’, it was under conditions ‘which I, who have never ceased to fight for peace, can v 199 v

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The Munich Crisis, politics and the people take no pleasure and feel myself divided between relief, shame and cowardice.’32 On 1 October, former Liberal MP Isaac Foot wrote a letter to the press to put on record that he was among those ‘whose relief is mixed with a sense of shame because of the action our country has been forced to take, and whatever the example set by others, we shall decline to stick the swastika in our coats’.33 The left-wing Daily Herald received thousands of letters from its readers, only a handful of which the paper could print. An overview of these letters shows that while most expressed relief that war had been averted, there was hardly one which did ‘not express the deep feeling of disquiet – the sense of shame and frustration felt by the ordinary men and women at the destruction and dismemberment of Czechoslovakia – the sense of the responsibility of the two great democracies upon who, she has relied for friendship for the terms of surrender imposed upon her’.34 Let us not forget the prevalence of guilt and shame in the lexicon of the anti-appeasers – Cato’s Guilty Men (published July 1940) being the prime example. Shame is the reigning emotion, a political sense of shame but something that is more palpable and hits the nerves. Shame is the externalised symptom of the war of nerves.35 While anthropologists have long studied guilt and shame, historians of emotion are only now starting to write their histories.36 Anthropologists make the distinction between shame societies that are usually primitive and pre-modern, and guilt cultures that are normally sophisticated, modern and Western. Guilt cultures allow for restoration and redemption after the culpable act, and this may be a helpful distinction in analysing the social psychology of Britain at the time of the Munich Crisis. ‘Guilt is a highly individualist emotion, reaffirming the centrality of the isolated person; shame is a social emotion, reaffirming the emotional independency of persons.’37 As a caveat, ‘it has also been suggested that the idea of shame was preserved more obviously in Anglo-Saxon cultures, whereas Romance cultures were more inclined to develop the related emotions of embarrassment and humiliation’.38 If the shame–guilt cultural binary becomes less convincing across space, it is even more problematic across time. Anthropologists have struggled to explain how the most technologically advanced guilt cultures waged two world wars during the twentieth century, and ‘the belief in the individualised sense of guilt as the standard bearer of civilization and progress has been considerably shaken by studies which seek to link the major pathologies of modern civilization – war, dictatorship, and mental disease – to the “heightened sense of guilt”’.39 In their p ­ rovocative study of shame in modern Britain, and the second v 200 v

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Britain during the September crisis of a t­wo-volume study of the shifting meaning of shame, David Nash and Anne-Marie Kilday assert that not only has shame ‘survived into modernity’ but this ‘apparently primitive emotion and reaction has remained a central part of modernity and was probably enhanced by it!’40 However, their compelling conclusion is based on their investigation of social history case studies, and it begs the question about how shame functions in the political sphere. How is political shame, and shame of one’s country, internalised? While there are important linguistic distinctions to be made, in the context of the Munich Crisis ‘shame’, ‘guilt’ and ‘dishonour’ were used interchangeably. The powerful language and the physical symptoms of guilt, shame and dishonour pervaded the anti-appeasement camp. Many Britons were acutely aware of the impact of their nation’s foreign policy on the Czechs, and were in full sympathy with President Beneš who, ‘ruined, physically sapped, depressed and dejected’, uttered these desperate words on seeing the terms of the Anglo-French ultimatum: ‘We have been shamefully betrayed.’41 A tinplate worker who was interviewed for the programme Everyman and the Crisis confessed: ‘The more I thought the more strongly I felt, and by the time the Munich agreement was reached, I felt disappointed and ashamed.’42 Marjorie Randle, who published her personal diary of the crisis in the periodical The Highway, resented the politicians who had got the world into this mess, but a­ dmitted that, even more than resentment I felt shame, a sort of share in a collective shame. I was ashamed that men and women, human beings, of whom I was one, could find no better way of settling their disputes than maiming and starving and killing and ruining the lives of little children and wasting the good gifts of the earth. The row of four swine-like gas masks on the kitchen table seemed the very symbol of our degradation.43

In addition, there is an intriguing imperial dimension as the Indian press reacted to and reflected on the shamefulness of its imperial overlords in their sacrifice and betrayal of the vulnerable and dependant national other. The French and especially British treatment of Czechoslovakia was enthusiastically evoked by those resisting British rule. ‘The Indian press has been extremely critical of the part played by Britain and France in the crisis, such phrases as “The betrayal of Czecho-Slovakia” and “Complete surrender to Hitler” being common.’ The Statesman of Calcutta remarked: ‘Throughout the democratic world commingled with relief that the horrifying menace of war has been v 201 v

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The Munich Crisis, politics and the people averted is grave ­misgiving, of not shame, regarding the methods whereby this has been brought about…’44 Munich exposed the moral weakness and military impotence of the metropole. However, honour could be grasped from the clutches of shame by the appeasers as well, and the Daily Mail’s diplomatic correspondent J. Wilson Broadbent regarded Chamberlain as the virile response to his emasculated and emasculating ‘safety first’ predecessor, Stanley Baldwin. Broadbent asserted that Chamberlain ‘taught Britons a lesson, and gave them another chance to regain a lost vitality, lost leadership. The price of Munich peace may be humiliation to some and a threat to the British Empire, but if it ends lazy leadership, it can be a British victory over national smugness.’45 Indeed, the language of honour was closely tied up with constructions of masculinity. The language of guilt and shame was not reserved for the anti-­ appeasers. Pro-Chamberlainites could be just as filled with rage at those who opposed the government and those whose actions were deemed unpatriotic. For example, the political correspondent Raymond Burns vented his fury at the ‘emotional turncoats’ who having overcome their bout of willies of ten days ago, have arisen to shake their fists at the Prime Minister and write dreary little letters to the Press explaining just why they are ashamed to be English. Bogus pacifists and the immature idealists of the post-War collective security principle handover have been passing resolutions: the workers of Britain have gone stolidly back to normal routine, instinctively aware of the value of one man’s efforts on their behalf.46

The climax of the September crisis at Munich caused either relief or shame or – and this state of feeling was equally prevalent – a volatile mix of emotional extremes. Somewhere towards the middle of the emotional spectrum, the vast majority of the population responded to the crisis with a mêlée of emotions that was usually described as ‘bewildering’. Beatrice Webb’s diary entry for 1 October describes her own psychomachia: ‘A sense of profound relief, or a consciousness of disgust for one’s own outlook on life – which was the greatest? I think the sense of relief.’47 Lord Cranborne (U., Dorset, S.) told the House that ‘He hoped they would not delude themselves into thinking that the agreement was a source of pride to the British people. They had only got to go out into the streets and ask anybody. Relief and deep personal gratitude to the Prime Minister there was, but with it there was mingled a deep sense of abiding shame.’48 In the same debate, fellow Munich v 202 v

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Britain during the September crisis dissentient Leo Amery said ‘that to-day the relief that we have escaped was so overwhelming that it was difficult to find the true perspective. There was another emotion, and that was a sense of shame and humiliation at the fate which has befallen a gallant little nation.’49 Speaking in public on the Munich Agreement for the first time at the end of October in London, David Lloyd George described what he presumed was not only his own dizzying emotional response but one experienced by much of the nation: ‘We all shared in the sort of thrill of relief which passed through this country when we realised that we were to be spared, at any rate for some time, the horror and squalor of war … But the relief is now beginning to be suffused with a sense of shame that we purchased peace at the price of conscience and of honour.’50 Ex-President of the Congregational Union of England and Wales, Dr J.D. Jones, spoke of the ‘bitter ingredient of shame’ in the Munich Agreement, ‘realising that Britain shared with other nations in the guilt of an international order which subordinated justice to power’.51 This same pendulum swing between relief and shame was captured by P. Bibbings, a Mass-Observer in Cardiff who collected replies to the questionnaire ‘What Do You Think of the Peace?’ On 3 October, Bibbings gathered evidence of a pretty even balance between relief among those who were pro-Chamberlain (and of these there were more women) and feelings of shame. A ‘Naval Man (about 30) [said]: We have let the Czechs down terrible.’ A dispenser who was also an ex-serviceman (age 39) ‘Was extremely worried last week because he has a two-year-old child. Could never take a gun in his hand again but would not mind working in a hospital or a clearing station at the front line. When he heard the Peace Plan said it was a Bloody shame.’ An unemployed motor mechanic told Bibbings that ‘I can sympathise with the Czechs and admire their great courage and magnificent gesture. But I cannot forget the feeling of relief at the news of ‘Peace with Honour?’ (the quotes are not mine P.B.) I think the treatment of the Czechs is a wicked shame.’52 Another M-O volunteer, I. Blackwell, a woman who admitted to following the internationally news regularly, described her churning mix of emotions: Last week I felt ill with worry and not much better when Chamberlain came to his agreement with Hitler, for I felt if Hitler was allowed to get strong enough to dominate Europe we should have a war sooner or later and I would rather have it now, before he is too strong. Once war seemed a certainty, I lost my worry and began to feel quite an exhilaration in all the bustle and hurry, the anti-aircraft guns, searchlights, trenches, gas masks, queues … The atmosphere was exciting and chilling, so when the news v 203 v

The Munich Crisis, politics and the people

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came through about the Four Power Conference which seemed to cut off the war I felt almost flat.53

Respected medical psychologist William Brown – who also happened to be a firm supporter of Chamberlain’s appeasement policy, and who was given an interview with the Prime Minister on 14 February 1939 – sought to explain the fact and the feeling (and the fiction) of a highly mutable and unstable emotional cycle unleased by the Munich Agreement. This cycle was individual and collective. The rapidity of the change of heart and of perspective was bewildering and unpredictable. Writing in 1939 and reflecting on the events of the previous September, Brown noted how, At that time our Prime Minister and other statesmen of the democratic countries were hailed hysterically as saviours of the world, and yet with startling rapidity there came about a revulsion of feeling often fanatically uncontrolled. This was partly due to the disturbance caused by emotional breakdown, frustrated hopes, the recognition that our desires for a new world order were not to be fulfilled in a moment, not even within a term of years.54

Let us return to Dr Edward Glover who, with his colleagues, was interested in the mass reaction and the contagion of fear and shame, as well as in the impact the crisis had on those already suffering from mental illness. Glover reflected further on the one hundred cases in his essay ‘Preamble to War: A Psycho-Analytical Study of the Munich Crisis’, taking an incisive look at the nature of the prelude to war. The prelude, he suggested, ‘lasted long enough to constitute a psychological phase’.55 He argued that the Munich Crisis ‘stands out in distinct outline with a sharply rising curve, a narrow plateau of high tension and a long, tapering fall’,56 and he asserted that ‘sufficient information was gathered to provide a scientific foundation for direct investigation of the psychological effects produced’.57 In neurotic cases just as in those who were not undergoing psychanalysis, the nervous pendulum swung between relief and guilt, although Glover was quick to cast guilt in Freudian psychosexual terms. Of course, those working in a Freudian tradition correlated feelings of political humiliation with the psycho-sexual origins of shame, original sin and the family romance. So far, we have been thinking about how social emotions like shame and catharsis were experienced privately and emoted in public. Now, we need to consider how individual psychological complexes were projected onto the collective. As Richard Overy has argued, ‘the popularization v 204 v

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Britain during the September crisis of ideas about human biology and medicine was a central aspect of the culture of the early twentieth century and it supplied a convenient set of metaphors for diagnosing the illnesses of civilization and dissecting its moribund elements’.58 Under the influence of psychoanalysis and other popularised psychological research, we find a wide range of examples of private feelings and individual psychological complexes being projected onto the political sphere during the Munich Crisis. The political was made personal, to invert the famous women’s liberation slogan. Emotion was experienced collectively, as in the report of 17 September where it was noted that ‘London has had another day of intense anxiety. Those of us engaged in maintaining contact at Downing Street sensed very clearly the deep emotional strain of the crowds in Whitehall.’59 Wilfrid Trotter was a pioneering neurosurgeon and social psychologist, and author of Instincts of the Herd in Peace and War (1916), an early classic in crowd psychology. In a short essay offering his analysis of the crowd under the strain of the crisis in September and October, 1938, Trotter remarked how ‘The stoical endurance of the Londoner had gone, and in its place was something to which the thoughtful mind could not refuse the ominous panic … Innumerable critical decisions had thus to be made by people exposed to and more or less deeply affected by the insidious solicitations of panic.’ This ‘panic fear’ was something ‘infectious’, and brought on by the ‘hypothetical horrors’ of modern warfare.60 Trotter’s diagnosis of panic and this infectious hysteria is entirely convincing, especially as it is corroborated by many confessional sources where people opened up about their states of high anxiety and crisis-triggered neuroses, and remarked on the emotional excitability of the crowd. Indeed, there are many examples of contemporary interpretations of the crisis that hinged on exteriorising private psychological disorder. For example, Dr W.R.D. Fairbairn, late Lecturer in Psychology and Psychiatry, Edinburgh University, said that analogous phenomena ‘might be observed in international affairs, for the rapprochement with Germany sought by Czechoslovakia after the recent crisis was unquestionably motivated by hate and fear’. He went on to diagnose the mechanism of projection, ‘a mental process which enabled trends belonging to the individual himself to attributed persons the outer environment and so treated as external’.61 In contrast to the medicalisation and pathologisation of British society under the strain of the international crisis, it is interesting to note the lengths to which the British news media went to quell panic, and to take control of the narration of the mass psychological reaction. v 205 v

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The Munich Crisis, politics and the people At every opportunity, the media stressed the triumph of self-controlled Britishness over emotional exuberance.62 The pro-Chamberlain press was even more responsible for this, and on 29 September it acknowledged: ‘We are living in one of those moments to which future ages will look back as a turning-point of destiny. The events of yesterday were like the evolution of some sublime tragedy.’ And, yet, ‘the soul of the nation had been filled with anguish. Never had it stood closer to universal devastation than it did yesterday. No one who knows Britain could doubt its resolution. It was facing the horror of modern war calmly and valiantly. The people were preparing without fuss.’63 The next day’s Daily Mail made the same point: ‘The last few weeks have seen the British nation tackling the job of preparing for an emergency, calmly and efficiently … The spirit of the people everywhere has been magnificent. Intense activity has been going forward without heroics and without panic.’64 The same kind of congratulations was offered at the local level, as, for example, when Dr A.C. Headlam, Bishop of Gloucester, offered this praise for his parishioners who were faced by the danger of a terrible war, and to their credit ‘the great mass of the people faced the position without any hysterical emotions, but with calm. Suddenly there came relief and all through amongst the majority of the people there was a great dignity.’65 It seemed significant, for instance, that there had been no run on the banks, and Lord Mattistone, chairman of the National Savings Committee, told a meeting at the Guildhall at the end of October that, ‘so far from there being panic withdrawals during the crisis period, small investors raised the total to their credit – £1,453,000,000 at the end of August – by £2,300,000. In the “dread week” Post Office Savings Bank deposits exceeded withdrawals by £400,000.’66 Decreasing crime rates for September 1938 were also interpreted as evidence of the orderliness but also the transfixed state of the civilian population. According to the Daily Mail’s Scotland Yard man-on-the-spot Hugh Brady, during the crisis itself the criminal impulse was supressed, for whatever reason, but when relief set in, a crime wave broke out. Either it was the case that even criminals were so engrossed by the crisis that they could not ply their trade, or that a new psychosis was caused by the crisis that led to murderous rage and violent acts. It is also noteworthy that much of the crime was committed against female victims, which is probably usual enough, but it also suggests heightened tension within personal relationships and marriages that would have been symptomatic of the public crisis.67 As the press sought to calm its readers by portraying the British crowds as excited but not panic-stricken, it was the foreign crowds in Germany, v 206 v

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Britain during the September crisis Italy and France that were represented as emotionally unreserved and at the mercy of their primitive instincts, and of course they were conceptualised as the mesmerised masses under the hypnotic control of totalitarian dictators. In subtle contrast, depictions of the Czechs in the British press tended to be far more compassionate, conveying gratitude to a people who allowed themselves to be sacrificed for the peace of Europe. Indeed, it was important to show that ‘during the whole time of these great demonstrations [in Prague], which lasted from Wednesday morning until Thursday midday, not one incident occurred; the people themselves had exercised strict self-control’.68 This is from the account of Prague by Hubert Ripka, journalist, diplomatic correspondent and friend of both Masaryk and Beneš, and it forms part of the edited collection Four Days that covered all the major capital cities in and during the crisis (London, Rome, Prague, Paris, Berlin, Washington). The wide reporting of spiritual reawakening and of how the people returned to the churches in Britain during the crisis did much to reinforce the message of calm, without defusing the powerful emotional charge of the international crisis.69 Indeed, ministers were delighted by the rise in church attendance and by their own renewed importance as community and national leaders, stressing too that emotional ­expression – including tears and admission of feelings of fear – was respectable and dignified in the act of supplication. Preaching at a United Peace Thanksgiving Service at the St Edward’s Church in Stow on Sunday, 16 October, Rev. H. Marsh sought to extract the important lessons that emerged from ‘all the intensity of emotion’ of the crisis days. ‘“Can we take full advantage of our great emotion now? I cannot help feeling”, said Mr Marsh, “that the crisis and our deliverance from it is a great challenge from God to us to put our house in order”.’70 Prayer was still regarded as the most respectable way of channelling exuberant feeling. In his broadcast to the nation after the Munich settlement, the Archbishop of Canterbury wondered ‘whether ever in the history of our land there has arisen greater tide of prayer’,71 and he was definitely of the opinion that these prayers had been answered by the Prime Minister’s success at brokering a peace at Munich. In northeast Scotland where thousands responded to the call of the Moderator of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland to join in prayer and intercession concerning the international crisis, ‘an emotional atmosphere could be sensed’, and church leaders ‘spoke of the anxieties and fears of recent days and of the spiritual significance of the situation, and counselled calmness, confidence and courage in facing the momentous days v 207 v

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The Munich Crisis, politics and the people ahead. National hymns were included in the praise in many churches.’ An Aberdeen minister, referring to the events of the past days, said, ‘I think the spirit of the people has been deeply touched … The attendance in church this forenoon was one of the largest I have ever seen.’72 The vicar of St Stephen’s, Oldham, Rev. George Braithwaite, wove together the language of faith and medicine, or rather faith as medicine, in asserting that it was prayer that had saved the peace: ‘Crisis in Europe! A sudden disease that fell into our workaday life like a thunderbolt from a blue sky. Whole nations sank upon their knees and prayed – as we all pray when crisis confronts us in the way … And such is the power of fervent prayer than God answered – in the way he wanted. The operation was successfu – because of prayer.’73 In London it was the same. There, perhaps especially, ‘people prayed – in a time when perhaps religion has lost ground, the people showed their faith in prayer. Led by the Prime Minister’s wife Annie Chamberlain, who went daily to Westminster Abbey, they prayed. Special services were held. Throughout the day and night women prayed at the tomb of the unknown soldier in the Abbey.’74 The Prime Minister’s wife spent much of the crisis at prayer, fulfilling the role of the woman who waits and weeps, with all its associated devotional context and religious symbolism. On the PM’s first visit to Hitler on 14–15 September, ‘while her husband was speeding across Europe as the World’s Ambassador of Peace, Mrs Chamberlain joined the silent throng which entered Westminster Abbey to pray below the Unknown Warriors Tomb’.75 Again, on 20–21 September when Chamberlain was flying to see Herr Hitler, she went to Westminster Abbey, open during the crisis period for continuous intercession, and joined the people praying for peace. It was entirely fitting, then, that on 29 September, as her husband negotiated with Hitler at Munich on this third visit, ‘crowds of women made Mrs Neville Chamberlain the centre of an affectionate demonstration. She had been at St. Michael’s Church, Chester Square, London, where the Archbishop of Canterbury had addressed a crowded broadcast midweek service.’76 There were reports that police reinforcements had difficulty keeping the crowd in check as ‘it surged forward in an effort to shake Mrs Chamberlain’s hand’, while a number of women fainted and had to be carried to neighbouring offices.77 And yet this return to God and to the churches was fleeting, a symptom of the national emergency, as religious leaders bemoaned the ‘shameful’ continued decent into paganism once the crisis had passed. In conclusion, the intensive contemporary psycho-medical study of the Munich Crisis, the heightened state of emotion and the ­temporary v 208 v

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Britain during the September crisis spiritual rebirth of the British people together demonstrate the allengrossing and all-encompassing nature of the diplomatic drama. Much of the emotion was spontaneous and visceral, and can be found in descriptive and confessional sources. On the other hand, we have also seen how mental health professionals, politicians and the media worked hard to provide prescriptive forms of individual and mass behaviour, and avert a war of nerves that would further undermine Britain’s precarious diplomatic and military position. These projections from the powerful onto the people allow us to map the politico-emotional regime under which Britain went to war in the autumn of 1938, and under which it finally did wage war eleven months later. Historians and political biographers have engaged with the emotional and psychological dimension of what has since become an iconic and exemplary international event. They have done so by getting into the heads of the main protagonists, and offering various analyses and psychoanalyses. What has, however, been underplayed in the scholarship is how the domestic impact of the international crisis was immense and on a mass scale. We cannot make claims or counter-claims about the ‘people’s war’ that followed without excavating the social and emotional experience of the ‘people’s crisis’, and the internalisation of international crisis. Notes   1 Lyndsey Stonebridge, ‘Anxiety at a Time of Crisis’, History Workshop Journal, 45:1 (1998), pp. 171–82.   2 Michal Shapira, ‘The Psychological Study of Anxiety in the Era of the Second World War’, Twentieth Century British History, 24:1 (2013), pp. 31–57.   3 See also Susan Grayzel, At Home and Under Fire (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012).   4 ‘Everyman and the Crisis: An Observer Sums Up’, The Listener, 8 December 1938, p. 1253.  5 William Brown, War and the Psychological Conditions of Peace (London: Adam & Charles Black, 1942) [Preface to second edition dated June 1942], p. 87.   6 H.W. (‘Bunny’) Austin, ‘Moral Rearmament and Myself’, Lincolnshire Echo, 19 November 1938.   7 ‘Dreams at Times of Crisis: A Psychologist’s View’, Manchester Guardian, 2 August 1939.  8 ‘A Week of Anxiety’, Sunderland Daily Echo and Shipping Gazette, 17 September 1938. v 209 v

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The Munich Crisis, politics and the people   9 Stefan Zweig, The World of Yesterday (London: Pushkin Press, 2009 [1942]), p. 441. 10 Michael Killanin (ed.), Crisis! Four Days: 25–29 September, 1938 (London: Heinemann, 1939), p. 240. 11 Killanin (ed.), Crisis!, pp. 241–2. 12 Edward Glover, War, Sadism and Pacifism (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1946), p. 129. 13 ‘Those ARP Trenches are to Stay’, Daily Express, 26 October 1938. 14 Harold Nicolson, ‘The Past Week’, The Listener, 8 September 1938, p. 483. 15 Harold Nicolson, Marginal Comment: January 6–August 4, 1939 (London: Constable, 1939), p. 55. 16 Ibid., pp. 59–60. 17 ‘Our London Letter’, Northern Whig, 13 September 1938. 18 Wilfrid Trotter, ‘Panic and its Consequences’ (originally published posthumously in the British Medical Journal, 17 February 1940). 19 Edward Glover, The Psychology of Fear and Courage (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1940), pp. 12–13. 20 ‘Grains and Scruples by a Voice in the Wilderness’, The Lancet, 15 October 1938, p. 909. 21 ‘Medico-Legal Society and Royal Society of Medicine’, The Lancet, 3 December 1938, p. 1293. 22 Stephen Taylor, ‘Mental Illness as a Clue to Normality’, The Lancet, 13 April 1940, p. 678. 23 ‘Perth Physician Discuss War Fears’, Perthshire Advertiser, 8 July 1939. 24 The Institute of Medical Psychology (The Tavistock Clinic): Report for the Period 1 January to 31 December 1938, Malet Place, London WC1, pp. 9–10. More work needs to be done on the link between the mental hygiene movement and moral disarmament. 25 Edward Glover, ‘Notes on the Psychological Effects of War on Conditions on the Civilian Population (I)’, International Journal of Psycho-analysis, 22 (1941), pp. 132–46. 26 Ibid. 27 ‘Crisis Throat’, Bucks Herald, 21 October 1938. 28 Sally Alexander and Barbara Taylor (eds), History and Psyche: Culture, Psychoanalysis and the Past (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012), p. 4. 29 See the ‘Crisis Letters’ sent to Neville and Annie Chamberlain and the discussion of these in Julie V. Gottlieb, ‘Guilty Women’, Foreign Policy and Appeasement in Inter-war Britain (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015). 30 Peter N. Stearns, ‘Shame, and a Challenge for Emotions History’, Emotion Review, 8:3 (2016), pp. 197–206. 31 Winston S. Churchill to Lord Moyne, 11 September 1938. Quoted in Martin Gilbert, Churchill: A Life (London, 1991), p. 595. 32 ‘Relief and Shame’, Liverpool Echo, 20 September 1938. v 210 v

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Britain during the September crisis 33 ‘Relief Mixed with Shame’, Western Morning News, 3 October 1938. 34 ‘How You Want to Save the World’, Daily Herald, 6 October 1938. 35 See Julie V. Gottlieb, ‘The Munich Crisis: Waiting for the End of the World’, History Today, 68:9 (2018). 36 See Peter Sterns, “Shame, and a Challenge for Emotions History,” Emotion Review, 8:3 (July 2016), pp. 197–206 37 Quoted in David S. Nash and Anne-Marie Kilday, Cultures of Shame: Exploring Crime and Morality in Britain 1600–1900 (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010), p. 6. 38 Ibid., p. 7. 39 Gerhart Piers and Milton B. Singer, Shame and Guilt: A Psychoanalytical and Cultural Study (Springfield, IL: Thomas, 1953), p. 47. 40 Anne-Marie Kilday and David Nash, Shame and Modernity in Britain: 1890 to the Present (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2017), pp. 284–5. 41 Killanin (ed.), Crisis!, p. 82. 42 ‘Everyman and the Crisis: Tinplate Worker’, The Listener, 1 December, 1938, p. 1189. 43 Marjorie Randle, ‘A Personal Diary of the Crisis’, The Highway, 31 (January 1939), pp. 80–2. See also Susan Grayzel, ‘Defence Against the Indefensible: The Gas Mask, the State and British Culture during and after the First World War’, Twentieth Century British History, 25:3 (September 2014), pp. 418–34. 44 ‘The Indian Press and the “Peace”: Sharp Criticism’, Manchester Guardian, 13 October 1938, p. 13. 45 Killanin (ed.), Crisis!, p. 50. 46 Raymond Burns (Our Political Correspondent), ‘The Home Front – A Retrospect: Lessons of the Crisis’, Sunderland Daily Echo and Shipping Gazette, 8 October 1938, p. 2. 47 Norman and Jeanne MacKenzie (eds), The Diary of Beatrice Webb, vol. 4: 1924–1943 (London: Virago, 1985) p. 422, 1 October 1938. 48 ‘Parliamentary Report’, The Scotsman, 5 October 1938, p. 6. 49 Ibid. 50 ‘We Have Gone Down the Ladder of Dishonour’, Birmingham Daily Gazette, 27 October 1938, p. 3. 51 ‘“Ingredient of Shame”: Munich Agreement: Resolution on Recent Crisis’, Yorkshire Post and Leeds Intelligencer, 12 October 1938, p. 5. 52 P. Bibbings (8, DeBurgh Street, Riverside, Cardiff) Replies to Questionnaire: What Do You Think of the Peace? 3 October 1938, BIBBINGS, P. 3563, M-O Archive. 53 Blackwell, I. 3568, ‘Comments on the Crisis’, 28 September 1938, M-OA: Directive Replies 1938, Box 11 of 13, Munich Crisis, Sept.–Oct. – Women. 54 William Brown, War and Peace: Essays in Psychological Analysis (London: Adam & Charles Black, 1939) [published in April 1939], p. 2. v 211 v

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The Munich Crisis, politics and the people 55 Edward Glover, ‘Preamble to War’, in War, Sadism and Pacifism: Further Essays on Group Psychology and War (London, 1945), p. 99. 56 Ibid. 57 Ibid., p. 101. 58 Richard Overy, The Morbid Age (London: Penguin, 2010), p. 366. 59 “London Letter”, Aberdeen Press and Journal, 17 September 1938, p. 6. 60 Wilfrid Trotter, ‘Panic and its Consequences’ (originally published posthumously in the British Medical Journal, 17 February 1940). 61 ‘Germany’s Exploitation Process’, Yorkshire Post, 14 January 1939, p. 9. 62 See Adrian Bingham, Gender, Modernity and the Popular Press in Inter-war Britain (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2004), especially for the Daily Mirror’s coverage of the Munich Crisis. 63 ‘The Meeting of Four’, Daily Mail, 29 September 1938. 64 ‘The Spirit of Britain’, Daily Mail, 30 September 1938. 65 ‘Tuffley’s New Church’, Gloucester Citizen, 24 October 1938, p. 6. 66 ‘And Still They Save: No Crisis Panic’, Daily Express, 26 October 1938, p. 11. 67 Hugh Brady, ‘Give Me Whitehall 1212’, Daily Mail, 1 November 1938. 68 Killanin (ed.), Crisis!, p. 88. 69 See Paul Horsler, ‘Cometh the Hour, Cometh the Nation: Local-level Opinion and Defence Preparations Prior to the Second World War, November 1937  –  September 1938’ (PhD dissertation, London School of Economics, 2017). He discusses a spike in church attendance during the crisis weeks (and notably the first Sunday after the Munich Agreement), pp. 88–91. 70 ‘Peace Service at Stow’, Gloucestershire Echo, 17 October 1938. 71 ‘Two Days that Will Live’, Nottingham Journal, 3 October 1939. 72 ‘Day of Prayer and Intercession’, Aberdeen Press and Journal, 19 September 1938, p. 8. 73 Rev. George Braithwaite, ‘As My Wife Lay Under’, Daily Mirror, 14 October 1938, p. 22. 74 Killanin (ed.), Crisis!, p. 234. 75 ‘Mrs Chamberlain at the Abbey’, Hull Daily Mail, 15 September 1938. 76 ‘Rumours in London’, Manchester Guardian, 30 September 1938. 77 ‘Besieged by Crowds’, Derby Daily Telegraph, 30 September 1938.

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Melanie Klein and the coming of the Second World War: a clinical archive, 1938 Michal Shapira

Melanie Klein was a true pioneer of British psychoanalysis, though her contribution did not end there; it extended to historical thinking about war, violence, the self and the psyche of the child during the momentous events of the twentieth century. This chapter analyses Klein’s contribution and her extensive 1938 clinical archive of the dreams and thoughts of her British patients vis-à-vis the Nazis, Hitler and the Second World War as it loomed on the horizon. In particular, the chapter will interrogate and analyse her patients’ different reactions to both the Nazi invasion of Austria in March 1938 and the Sudeten crisis as it unfolded over the summer and autumn of that year, while also providing an historical overview in order to contextualise Klein’s work within the broader history of psychology. Indeed, this study of Klein’s notes leading up to the war can be placed within the still-developing historiography of cultural history and the history of emotions vis-à-vis the dramatic international interwar developments. More than eighty years later, and despite the attention and resonance it continues to arouse today in the public discourse, the Munich Crisis and the events that threatened to propel Europe into war during 1938 are still too often researched from the top down – an approach which focuses on the decision makers and takes the perspective of political and diplomatic history.1 Thus, the present investigation can be seen as complementing the research of innovative historians who have tried to initiate more diverse ways of looking at politics by using a greater range of sources, including diaries, personal reflections and medical notes.2 Despite the abundance of sources, the most neglected aspects of the Munich Crisis are cultural and emotional, part of the explanation v 213 v

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The Munich Crisis, politics and the people for which is that it is particularly hard to tease out its psychological and affective responses to the international emergency. Klein’s unique clinical record allows for an exposition of the specifically cultural, emotional and intellectual dimensions of the crisis, as seen in the psychoanalytic clinic.3 How was the Munich Crisis discussed and perceived privately, in the confines of a therapy session? What kind of emotional and intellectual history of the crisis might emerge from Klein’s clinical notes? How did Klein conceptualise fear, anxiety, revenge, aggression within the democratic context in which she found herself after she moved to Britain from Europe? How did she understand her patients’ responses to the threat of war? Undeniably, we need to pay closer attention to the conceptualisation of war-related emotions as they were conceived and as they evolved at the time, rather than taking them at face value and accepting them as self-explanatory.4 In looking at the coming of a new world war and the development of the modern self, the figure of controversial psychoanalyst Melanie Klein emerges at the heart of this project. In the age of world wars, Klein distinctly conceptualised extreme violence as a perilous internal reality. Anti-Semitism and professional marginalisation had already displaced Klein from the European continent to Britain in the mid-1920s. During the Blitz, Klein spent part of the war evacuated in rural Scotland. Yet Klein’s interwar and wartime writings placed aggression and anxiety at the centre of modern selfhood and its predicaments. Other British analysts, such as Barbara Low and Susan Isaacs, wrote for wide consumption during the interwar period, while Donald Winnicott and Anna Freud worked in nurseries and hostels serving hundreds of children during the war. During this period, Klein mainly worked in private practice with a few patients. Her views, however, had tremendous influence on some of her British colleagues who used versions of her work in public forums. In this way, unusual ideas developed in Klein’s clinic were to reach a vast audience. Klein’s uncharted archival records allow examination of her work as a kind of laboratory that developed a language on violence. Total war was to inflect her words and metaphors with imagery and descriptions full of brutality and mêlée. The analysis below places her writing on the self within the context of the mid-century crisis.5 Dislocated in a new country before the Second World War, Klein quickly gained professional status as a foreign laywoman at the British Psycho-Analytical Society (BPAS). However, she soon needed to defend her theoretical ideas against internal professional criticism. During the v 214 v

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Melanie Klein’s clinical archive, 1938 years leading to the war, the psychoanalytical community became deeply divided between her followers and adherents of the ideas of Anna Freud (Sigmund Freud’s daughter) – chiefly over differences regarding child psychoanalysis. The Controversial Discussions in the BPAS, where these ideas were conferred in the early 1940s, were ‘a war within a war’, and indeed others have commented that it took ‘more than a World War to stop analysts from fighting each other’.6 Nevertheless, the pre-war and war periods were productive times for Klein. She inventively conceptualised the different reactions of her patients to both the Nazi invasion of Austria and the Munich Crisis during 1938, as she followed their ideas and dreams about Hitler and the possibility of war.7 Psychoanalytic scholars often concentrate on the theoretical differences between Anna Freud and Klein before and during  the war, yet a historical reading of these two women’s archival and published war-related work reveals that they were more similar than they first appeared. They both emphasised anxiety, aggression and the fragility of selfhood, and the social as well as personal need to acknowledge and work through such facts. Different scholars have shown that human beings, their emotions, and notions of inner life, should not be seen as self-explanatory facts, but rather as historically made phenomena.8 Nikolas Rose argues that in modern Western societies ‘human beings have come to understand and relate to themselves as “psychological” beings, to interrogate and narrate themselves in terms of a psychological “inner life” that holds the secrets of their identity, which they are to discover and fulfil, which is the standard against which the living of an “authentic” life is to be judged’.9 This chapter adds a more historically specific dimension to Rose’s claims by looking at Klein’s contribution to the remaking of the mid-century self. A pioneer of child psychoanalysis, Klein saw the clue for understanding the self as lying in early life anxieties and conflicts. Klein, her notes reveal, had a complex way of dealing with the war. On the one hand, she was personally influenced by its experience since she needed to evacuate to the countryside and was also in the midst of a professional conflict.10 On the other hand, theoretically she emphasised a partial view of her present time that looked only at the violence ‘inside individuals’ and not in the ‘outside world’. Klein looked to the war only to look away from it and into the self. She partly ignored real warfare only to invoke an alternative narrative that, as we shall see, was no less violent. War was something she both recognised and denied; she incorporated violence into her work while disavowing the possible reality of aerial v 215 v

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The Munich Crisis, politics and the people bombardment. For her, only the war inside could be analysed. Her ideas stressed depth instead of surface; truth about violence could be found inside her patients, not in the newspaper reports on the war which they tried to read to her. Born in Vienna in 1882 into a traditional Jewish family, in her youth Melanie Klein aspired be a doctor. She never had the opportunity to pursue academic education, but she read widely on her own. She encountered psychoanalysis around 1914 while living in Budapest, where she first read Sigmund Freud. Early in the First World War, already unhappily married with children, Klein sought treatment with Hungarian analyst Sándor Ferenczi who encouraged her to analyse children in her own work as an emerging psychoanalyst. Heeding his advice, Klein analysed her own children. Klein moved to Berlin in 1922 due to anti-­Semitism and political upheaval in Budapest, and continued her analysis with Karl Abraham who became her protector at the Berlin Psychoanalytic Society. There Klein’s ideas to treat children’s play within psychoanalytic sessions like adult free association, and her willingness to analyse and verbalise harsh feelings of anxiety and aggression in her young patients, were criticised. Luckily for her, in 1925 Klein was invited to lecture on child analysis at the BPAS in London, which she did to acclaim.11 After Karl Abraham died in December 1925, Klein’s ideas were criticised more intensely than ever and, amidst a climate of growing anti-Semitism, she decided to leave Berlin. She relocated to London in September 1926. While her migration was only partly voluntary, this decision would spare Klein from the terror that awaited other European psychoanalysts several years later in the 1930s, when they became refugees after the rise of Nazism.12 Klein’s move to Britain marked the formation of a Kleinian centre in London that would stand against Anna Freud’s ideas on child psychoanalysis that were supported by analysts in Vienna. Before Anna Freud and her supporters fled to British soil, Klein’s position in London was ­relatively secure: she had the support of most of the members of the BPAS, and it was at that time that she published her article on the child named ‘Dick’.13 The seeds of conflict between Anna Freud and Melanie Klein were sown in 1927 when Anna Freud attacked Klein’s work in print, and Klein and other British analysts published a series of responses.14 For the time being, Klein enjoyed the support of the president of the BPAS, Ernest Jones, who defended her work in his letters to the sceptical, and at times antagonistic, Sigmund Freud. Freud felt that the British had launched a Kleinian campaign against the work of his v 216 v

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Melanie Klein’s clinical archive, 1938 daughter Anna. In response, in 1927 Jones described the BPAS’s impression of Klein and her ideas of child analysis in positive terms.15 The loyalties to and affiliations with these two women would soon be tested once Anna and Sigmund Freud moved, along with several colleagues, to London in 1938. A state of discord soon developed between the ‘Kleinian school’ and the ‘Anna Freudian school’, with analysts from the two groups now based in Britain itself. The schism was already underway as psychoanalysts from the Continent started arriving in Britain from 1933 onward. Indeed, by 1938 a third of the psychoanalysts in the BPAS were from the Continent and the atmosphere in the Society was altered. Fearing loss of support for her work at the time, Klein wrote to analyst Donald Winnicott: ‘It will never be the same again. This is a disaster.’ Upon arriving in London, the German-speaking analysts characterised the way psychoanalysis was developing in Britain as ‘war, absolute war’.16 It is thus interesting to note that Klein’s archival notes on the reactions of patients to the Nazi invasion were taken in London before the Freuds arrived there on 6 June 1938, while her observations on the Munich Crisis were written when the Freuds were already in Britain. Patients’ reactions to the Nazi invasion of Austria, 1938 Recording the reactions of patients to the Nazi invasion of Austria in her unpublished notes, Klein came closer than in any of her published writings to dealing with the connection between political questions and the self. Explaining her reasons for taking these unusual records, she said, ‘The phenomenon of whole nations submitting to dictators and being kept under by them seems to be much more interesting even than the psychology of dictators … We get to understand this better if we study the reactions of people who are not directly implied, but stirred in their feelings by happenings like the overrunning of Austria.’17 Klein thought that her location in Britain put her at an advantage for understanding the mental attitudes that enabled support for a violent dictator and for war. Before exploring how Klein viewed her patients’ reactions to world events, it is important to understand how she mapped childhood experiences and their importance to the emerging self. Klein believed that every child experienced different emotional situations that are ‘intimately bound up with the individual’s own phantasy attacks against his parents, brothers and sisters, and so on’.18 ‘Normally’, the child has split identification with conflicting internal images of a good and a bad father and a good and a bad mother. Goodness is identified with love while badness is v 217 v

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The Munich Crisis, politics and the people identified with hatred. The child also experiences an imagined notion of ‘good parents’ united with each other and providing a sense of security and harmony, and ‘bad parents’ united against the child yet also dangerous to each other and to the child.19 Klein believed that the ability to cope well with these early harsh unconscious inner representations is crucial to a future ability to develop moral-social capacities. The ways in which the child deals with the early hatred against an internal bad ‘father’ and ‘bad mother’ is of fundamental importance to the later development of a sense of right and wrong and moral courage in the individual, she argued. For Klein, hatred is ultimately hatred against one’s own ‘bad’ and violent tendencies. If this hatred were bound up with love for the imagos of ‘good mother and father’ which are to be protected against ‘bad aggressors’ (ultimately against oneself), the foundation would be laid for a moral attitude in which the hatred would be turned against what is felt to be unfair, wrong and violent, not only to oneself, but to people and things one loves and who need protection.20 Klein presented here a glimpse into what would later be called object relations theory. For Klein, the mind is referring to people or ‘objects’ in complex and changing ways. Other people or ‘objects’ are first experienced in a partial manner in the child’s mind and are split into ‘good’ and ‘bad’ objects. The mother in particular, as the main object for the infant, is split into partial objects of a good nurturing breast and a bad depriving breast. With age, the child begins recognising that these two emotionally split objects are actually part of one whole object – the mother. This realisation raises guilt, deep regret and depression as the child feels sorry for the previous imaginary attacks on the mother. Yet Klein emphasised that these two states – an earlier ‘paranoid position’ where objects are split and a later ‘depressive position’ where objects are whole – are not phases to be completed. The feelings and defence mechanisms associated with both positions continue to exist in the mind throughout life.21 Based on these assumptions, Klein explained that the ‘deeper reasons’ for submitting to a dictator, who mentally represented an image of a sadistic father, had to do with a wish to deny one’s own hatred of him in order to escape from internal early conflicts.22 With these ideas in mind, in her London clinic Klein listened to the changing attitudes of patients to the international tensions. Klein saw the child’s mind as a battlefield set for fighting anxiety which arose from aggression. Her goal was to bring this anxiety to the surface through ‘deep interpretation’ of ­‘internal struggles’. Her notes on patients’ reactions to the Nazi invasion v 218 v

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Melanie Klein’s clinical archive, 1938 of Austria, and to the Munich Crisis, reveal how the political events of the time offered Klein new clinical and theoretical opportunities to map the internal war of modern selves. One of Klein’s adult male patients, for example, expressed a complex attitude towards the Nazi invasion of Austria. At a session immediately after the invasion took place, this patient criticised the British government and expressed his sympathy with Austria, with Jews, and with Sigmund Freud who was still trapped in Vienna. Knowing that Klein was originally Austrian, the patient also showed sympathy for her. In the following session, however, the patient’s feelings completely reversed. He now criticised psychoanalytic writings and revealed, according to Klein, that behind his feelings of sympathy, he had sadistic satisfaction with the hard situation of psychoanalysts in Vienna as well as hatred towards Klein whom he wanted to see humiliated. Klein linked the reactions of this patient to the external circumstances of militarism to aggression and sadism residing in his own mind. She said, ‘It now became clear that Austria and myself were standing for the mother who had been raped, injured and humiliated, and that sadistic phantasies of this kind had been strongly aroused in the patient through this [real] event.’23 The patient confessed that he was not aware of these sadistic wishes, yet, on leaving the session, he revealingly said with relief, ‘I feel as if I had had an undeserved holiday.’24 In the subsequent session, this patient came filled with guilt due to the fact he felt that he had, in his mind, ‘deserted’ and ‘injured’ Klein, here as a representation of a good mother. Klein noted  that he also had homosexual phantasies directed towards Hitler due to what she believed was his growing fear and identification with an internal and external aggressive father.25 For Klein, the patient’s contradictory feelings were indeed triggered by world events. Yet where she directed her sole attention was to the patient’s supposed ‘reality inside’ as it was connected to the various infant’s imagos of parents. ‘Patient B’, another adult male patient, came to his session after the invasion of Austria, hopeless about his own analysis. Klein suggested to him that these feelings were connected with the invasion, and that because he felt that Austria and Klein had been injured, he therefore believed that no help could be expected from Klein as an analyst.26 In a later session, Patient B reported a fear for his wife in future air raids, but Klein interpreted this as his own anxiety about air raids and about an imagined ‘terrifying father.’ She believed that B felt an inability to protect his wife from an internal bad father, and that he had lost faith in the goodness in himself and in the analysis. According to Klein, Patient B was anxious because of v 219 v

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The Munich Crisis, politics and the people his worry for an internal injured mother and his incapacity to emotionally protect and save her.27 Thus, while Patient B was talking about fear of real bombs, for Klein this was just the surface meaning. Klein’s notes on both of these patients reveal how, for her, the invasion of Austria took on meaning personalised by patients’ family dramas. Invaded Austria became a symbol for an ‘injured’ analyst and a mother under attack, while Hitler became a symbol for a hostile father. The inability to save the injured mother/Austria/Klein led to guilt and depression. Klein saw these feelings as connected to early life more than to the invasion itself, and by that insisting that the understanding of politics was masked by an individual perception. To give another example, an adult woman named ‘Patient C’ experienced contradictory feelings of anxiety and pleasure, and fear and attraction to what Klein called the ‘bad Nazi father’ after the invasion. Patient C dreamt that she was in Germany talking to the Nazi leader Hermann Göring. She wanted to shoot him, but she did not know how to use a pistol. In the dream, Göring remained friendly and explained to her how to use it, and she could not help feeling a certain attraction to him.28 Klein interpreted this as meaning the patient felt that she could not adequately fight back against ‘the dangerous father’, simultaneously an object of attraction that C wanted both to please and to take away from her mother or kill out of her fear and jealousy.29 Klein’s interpretation did not include any reference to the real Göring or to Patient C’s possible desire to kill a real future enemy. Her focus remained on the ‘inner world’. Klein, then, saw the invasion of Austria as stirring anxieties in her patients that had to do with their personal experiences. In her notes on the Munich Crisis, she further conceptualised the ways in which individuals made sense of violent conflicts. The Nazis’ aggressive moves against Austria and Czechoslovakia afforded Klein an atypical occasion to advance her theories. In essence, Klein utilised some theoretical vocabulary pre-dating 1938, yet she used the unfolding international developments as a laboratory for developing her ideas on modern selves. The Munich Crisis provided a perfect setting for further experimentation along these lines. The Hitler inside: notes on the Munich Crisis In September 1938, citizens all over Britain held their breath when Prime Minister Chamberlain tried to appease Hitler in an effort to prevent an v 220 v

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Melanie Klein’s clinical archive, 1938 outbreak of war. For Klein, this was a fruitful occasion to explore inner crises and to decipher the psychological dynamics leading to violence. Klein distinguished three stages of emotional reaction to the Munich Crisis. She connected the counter-intuitive changes in attitude of her patients to ‘deeper layers of the mind’.30 The first stage took place over the days prior to the Munich Agreement, when war seemed probable. The international situation activated in most patients some deep anxieties about the actual external dangers. Their analytic treatment at this time, however, concentrated on the interpretation of internal anxieties. According to Klein, ‘the anxieties are so much intensified … because the fight with an internal father is so overwhelmingly dangerous – much more than any fight with the external father-figure could be’.31 For Klein, Hitler’s real militant demands were seen to pose less dread in her patients than the aggression of their internalised father. Once those inner anxieties were analysed, the patients were capable of dealing with the external international situation and with making practical decisions.32 The second stage of patients’ reaction to the crisis happened during the days immediately preceding the Munich Conference when war seemed certain. In those days, Klein noticed, there was a striking, seemingly irrational, change in the attitude of most patients. Rather than becoming more anxious about the possible outbreak of war, most patients, surprisingly, expressed relief. Klein believed that this was due to their feeling indignation over Hitler’s violent attitude, which seemed to leave no doubt that Britain had to defend itself, and freedom in general, against him.33 Yet for Klein, the true reason for relief was the patients’ ability to identify with a ‘good father’ (symbolised by Chamberlain) against a ‘bad father’ (represented by Hitler) and their wish to protect ‘the mother’. Patients were now able to express their hatred of the ‘bad Hitler father’, and their love for the ‘good father and mother’ that was earlier repressed. Thus, the relief of anxiety really came from externalisation of an internal conflict, a process made possible once the war became more definite. Anxiety was further relieved by the feeling that repair in the outside world would also repair the inner world.34 Patients’ attitudes were again connected to childhood experiences rather than to the international emergency. The real players in the political drama, Hitler and Chamberlain, were seen as symbols of an internal unconscious world. The third stage of reaction followed the Munich Agreement and was characterised by another illogical change of attitude among the patients. Despite the fact that war seemed to be avoided (for the time being), many patients became depressed.35 What could account for the fact that v 221 v

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The Munich Crisis, politics and the people the patients were demoralised, rather than relieved, by the fact that war seemed to have been prevented? According to Klein, despite the i­ mmediate relief from the acute danger of war, most patients ‘felt dissatisfaction and shame because of the feeling that Czecho-Slovakia had been betrayed and the feeling that Britain had bowed to the bad father – Hitler – distrust in him and in future peace and freedom disturbed the relief experienced from the point of self-preservation’.36 A form of readjustment to the new reality of external loss and the expected persecution of the helpless people of Czecho-Slovakia was therefore needed. In some patients, the relief from fear of the dangers of war caused a feeling of guilt and loss of faith in the goodness in themselves along with a feeling that bad and destructive parts inside of them had gained power. It led to despair of ‘goodness surviving in the external and internal world’.37 Klein reciprocally connected destructive aggression in the outside world to destructiveness in the self. A growing identification with the bad father – now represented by Hitler or Chamberlain or both – and a feeling that the ‘good objects’ inside the self were not saved, was part of the depression in stage three. In fairness to Klein, it is important to mention that in these notes she did not wish to consider external circumstances, but was instead concerned ‘with internal situations which arose out of a multitude of factors’.38 However, the notes show that Klein seemed to have no actual theory of reality itself. Outside reality was only marginally interesting for her. Patients’ reactions to the outside reality served only as indications of early life anxiety and aggression. For example, in his session on 19 September 1938, during the phase ‘before the crisis’ according to Klein’s periodisation, adult male ‘Patient M’ felt anxious about his son’s violent behaviour and expressed feelings of despair. M did not say a word about the international situation, however. Klein interpreted this to indicate that his actual fear was that his own uncontrollable violence would be stirred by the external circumstances and that he was also afraid of ‘the violent father’. Thus, she linked fear of violence in reference to the world to the individual’s aggression. Two days after, M said to Klein that she looked well and shared his fantasy of having sexual relations with her. Klein interpreted these comments on her looks as Patient M’s desire to show that ‘I [Klein] am not injured within or can stand the strain of the dangerous Hitler inside me’.39 M, she believed, wanted the sexual act as a reassurance that Klein was all right inside and so was he. M’s anxiety for his son, who was being difficult, stood for fear of Hitler and for fear for M and Klein’s ‘internal disaster’. For Klein, the real ‘Hitler outside’ was connected to a ‘Hitler inside’ and to Patient M’s very personal perception. v 222 v

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Melanie Klein’s clinical archive, 1938 In response, Patient M confessed his wish to yell in the room so that Klein would stop analysing. Klein believed that in M’s eyes she contained the Hitler-father, and therefore her analysis of M felt like an attack against him.40 According to Klein, M avoided recognising his despair about the international situation. This was due to anxieties about a dangerous external and internal father, fears of his internal parents allied against him, and feelings that the mother was being destroyed being ‘too strongly stirred by the actual situation’.41 She formed a hyperbolic cyclical process: the realities of the international situation evoked old anxieties and mental occupations that in turn twisted the perception of the world. In Patient M’s case, Hitler became a personal, adaptable symbol of other fears. Hence, despite the fact that Klein was reported to be personally worried during the Munich Crisis and was ‘in a state of agitation about the threat of invasion’, the focus of her work was removed from the external situation.42 Whenever Patient M brought material related to the upcoming war, Klein saw this as externalisation of inner wars.43 ‘Patient T’ began his session on 20 September 1938, in the phase ‘before the crisis’ when war seemed likely but not inevitable; notably, this occurred between Chamberlain’s Berchtesgaden visit (which appeared to have alleviated much of the tension) and the Godesberg summit (which would ratchet tensions back up to unbearable levels). T began by expressing despair over the international situation and telling Klein of ‘the awful conflict that one is relieved about avoiding war, but horrified about what is ahead of one’. His horrible feeling of uncertainty and dread felt to him like the danger of ‘falling into an abyss’. Klein in return, referring to the patient’s previously expressed fears of a woman’s bodily insides, interpreted that ‘the fear of the actual situation seems to be represented by the fear of the dangerous and unknown inside and genitals of the woman’.44 War or otherwise – fears of the unknown were tied to the patient’s personal dreads. Klein also took notes on the sessions of ‘Patient A’. On the most critical day of the Munich Crisis, Patient A was anxious and spoke about gas masks and Hitler bombing London. He lay down on the couch and complained that his appendix hurt him. His appendix had been removed some years earlier and thus Klein interpreted that the appendix hurt him again because he was attacked ‘by Hitler inside’.45 Due to this interpretation, Klein reported, Patient A felt better and was able to consider what needed to be done during the war. The real Hitler would indeed bomb Britain as the war began, yet the place of the Hitler inside seemed to Klein to be more important in the analysis of Patient A. Ideas such as these, which v 223 v

The Munich Crisis, politics and the people had been conceived during the interwar period, were further developed during the war in several ways which I will describe in brief below.

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Wartime aggression and anxiety As enemy aliens in Britain, Austrian psychoanalysts like Anna Freud were not allowed to leave London once the Second World War started. Klein, on the other hand, who had been a British subject since 1934, had moved to Cambridge where she had joined forces with her ally, the psychoanalyst Susan Isaacs. Klein saw patients in Cambridge and advised Isaacs on the evacuation report she edited.46 In Cambridge, Klein confessed, ‘Anything I could write seemed so utterly unimportant in comparison with world happenings.’47 Yet Klein was able to write something substantial during the war, and in 1945 she published the article where she discussed some of her war work with the boy ‘Richard’ in Scotland.48 Another significant unknown manuscript from the war period came in the form of her archival notes on ‘Patient A’. A short unpublished essay that Klein wrote around June 1940 clarifies some of the ideas she had in mind when she wrote her notes on Patient A’s wartime analysis.49 In this essay, Klein claimed that if during the war the individual experiences too much internal terror – related to one’s own destructiveness and ‘nervous-murderousness’ and an inability to distinguish between love and hate – this might have a paralysing effect in relation to external dangers. Klein concluded that an important step in human development is the capacity to split imagos into good and bad ones. This capacity goes hand in hand with the individual ability to trust one’s constructive tendencies and love feeling. Only then is it ‘possible to hate with full strength what is felt to be evil in the external world – to attack and destroy at the same time protecting oneself with one’s good internal object as well as external loved objects, country, etc. against the bad things’.50 The way in which the individual is fighting the internal war is crucial to the fighting of the outside war. Klein believed that if the balance between internal and external situations were weak, the individual might feel overwhelmed by a real war situation. If such an individual feels that the external war is really going on inside and ‘that an internal Hitler is fought inside’, then the individual would feel that it is impossible to fight the war. If, on the other hand, there is a better balance between internal and external happenings and ‘the war inside is not predominating, then one can turn with strength and determination against the external enemy’.51 v 224 v

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Melanie Klein’s clinical archive, 1938 She saw the wartime analytic sessions as confirming her principle that reassurance of the patient was of little value and that the continual analysis of aggression and guilt was the most helpful. Klein wished patients would not regress to their internal ‘good objects’ so that they could act courageously and fight against external evil. She also said that in analysing patients during the war, psychoanalysts must ‘remain aware of the constant interplay [between] present and external situation, with internal and with the past, as well as past experiences’.52 Throughout the analysis of Patient A, such ideas were further refined. During the Battle of Britain, the parents of ‘Patient A’ – the boy earlier named by Klein as ‘Dick’ – became worried about his safety and decided to move him to Pitlochry, Scotland. Klein joined them in July 1940, in what she saw as an opportunity to rest and work during the war. Klein wrote to Donald Winnicott on 2 July, once she arrived there, and described her enjoyment of Scotland. She told him how she was admirably reading Churchill’s ‘Great Contemporaries’ and confessed her feeling of reassurance that such a statesman was in charge ‘of our so terribly difficult position’.53 Indeed, in October 1940, during the Blitz, Klein’s London house was hit by a bomb and partially damaged. Another reason that kept Klein in Pitlochry was the news coming from London that there was little work available and no financial security for psychoanalysts there during the war. In contrast, in Pitlochry, Klein received patients’ fees for seeing Dr Jack Fieldman, Richard, Patient A and Patient A’s brother, and Dr David Matthew.54 At the same time, however, Klein was eager to return to London as her friends and patients were there. Klein also worried about the growing opposition to her work by those analysts who remained in London, chiefly from the ex-Viennese Anna Freudians. Klein wrote to Winnicott worrying about what she saw as a struggle for preserving the essence of psychoanalytic science. She commented, ‘Does it sounds funny that I compare this great struggle we are in for the preservation of freedom in the world with such a small thing as the goings on in our [psychoanalytic] Society?’55 Because of these concerns, Klein decided to return to London in September 1941. Her wartime analysis with Patient A resumed there in November 1941. The first account we have of Patient A’s early history is through the paper Klein published in 1930 where she called him ‘Dick’. In this article Patient A/Dick was a four-year-old boy. Klein portrayed him as  an unusual child.56 Dick, Klein described, was largely devoid of affects, and was indifferent to the presence of caretakers. He had only rarely v 225 v

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The Munich Crisis, politics and the people displayed anxiety and had almost no interests, did not play, and had no contact with his environment.57 Dick was antagonistic to his mother, displayed insensitivity to pain, and had no wish to be touched. Klein believed that he grew up in an environment unusually deprived of love, and suggested that he was unable to tolerate his own anxiety and aggression. She reported that she was able to activate in Dick the development of interest and anxiety and a better relationship with the outside world. During the continuous analysis of Patient A over the course of the war, Klein’s disagreements with Anna Freud would erupt in the form of the Controversial Discussions that took place in the BPAS and centred, among other issues, primarily on childhood.58 As bombs fell on London during the war, the differences between Klein and Anna Freud were heatedly disputed at the BPAS. It is important to mention the differences between Anna Freud and Klein in order to note hidden similarities between the work of the two women.59 There were several principal differences between Anna Freud and Klein. Klein believed that psychoanalysis could benefit every normal as well as abnormal child. She attached aggressive sexual interpretations to children’s games and saw play as equivalent to adult free association – to be analysed for unconscious conflicts and hostile feelings that were then communicated to the child. Klein believed in meticulously interpreting the child’s negative transference. Anna Freud acknowledged the value of Klein’s play technique, but thought Klein went too far in equating children’s play with free association and seeking symbolic meaning in the child’s gestures. Anna Freud maintained that children were not ready to transfer a new edition of the love relationship with parents onto the analyst. Assuming the child’s super-ego to be undeveloped, Anna Freud opted to educate him rather than give free reign to all his drives. Children, she believed, could not be analysed as adults since they are not aware of their disorder, cannot freely associate on the couch, or develop the same relationship to the analyst as adults.60 Anna Freud and Klein developed their ideas from different backgrounds and political commitments. Anna Freud was a committed teacher associating with different socially conscious analysts and, like many other analysts in Vienna, she mostly identified the sources of children’s suffering as stemming from a depriving environment unable to meet the infant’s emotional needs. The Viennese child treatments mixed psychoanalysis with corrective pedagogy. Melanie Klein, on the other hand, was neither teacher nor social reformer. Klein’s ideas developed v 226 v

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Melanie Klein’s clinical archive, 1938 mostly out of her engagement with psychoanalytic theory. She rejected the emphasis on education for social norms, and as time went on she paid increasingly less attention to an unloving or cruel environment and more attention to the child’s own psyche making, his or her inner fears and anxieties. Children, for her, were terrorised by their own inner ‘death drive’, which when projected outward, manifested itself in human aggression.61 The differences between Anna Freud and Klein were debated in a set of scientific debates, with members of the BPAS representing the two groups offering papers and questions for discussion. At the core of the debates was the question of theoretical leadership of the psychoanalytic movement after Sigmund Freud. Among Klein’s supporters at the time of the Controversial Discussions were Jones, Paula Heimann, Joan Riviere, the Stracheys and Susan Isaacs. Edward Glover, initially a supporter of Klein, was now fiercely against her, and so were her own daughter and her son-in-law, Melitta and Walter Schmideberg.62 Kate Friedlander and the Hoffers supported Anna Freud. John Bowlby and Donald Winnicott were early followers of Klein, but they grew more independent of her ideas; however, during the time of the debates, Winnicott was still considered a Kleinian. These bitter theoretical debates in the BPAS eventually concluded with a creative solution that secured the existence of the Society with all its different theoretical threads. In 1944, a revised training scheme was created to now offer two parallel training courses for candidates who supported Klein (A group) and those who supported Anna Freud (B group). Those who did not strictly follow the theories of these two women and remained ‘independent psychoanalysts’ formed what was called the ‘middle group’.63 The point most important to our discussion, however, is that despite these theoretical differences between Klein and Anna Freud, during the Second World War there were also concealed similarities between them. During the world conflict, they both saw connections (of various degrees) between psychological and external realities and linked the ‘war inside’ with the ‘war outside’. Both saw the child as being in need of care, yet at the same time full (to different extents) of anxiety and aggression. During the war, Anna Freud paid more attention to internal dynamics, yet she still emphasised the importance of the real relationship with the mother. Klein’s analysis of her patients was conducted in ways very different from those of Anna Freud, yet the similarities mentioned could be traced throughout her notes which, at times, with their internal outlook resembled those of Anna Freud and her colleagues at the Hampstead War Nurseries. v 227 v

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Klein and the mid-century self Placing his work against Nikolas Rose’s narrative mentioned above, historian Mathew Thomson offers a new periodisation of ‘the history of the psychological’ in twentieth-century Britain.64 According to Thomson, the fixation on a narcissistic, individualist-emotionalist psychological identity is a relatively recent development of the last decades of the twentieth century that actually stands in contrast to much of what preceded it. Quoting from the works of psychoanalysts like Edward Glover and John Bowlby, Thomson claims that during the Second World War in particular, psychology had come to the fore as an ethical and social subject and as a discipline for guiding human nature.65 At that time, he says, the emphasis was on the individual’s relation to the social, the spiritual and the moral, and the focus was on an ideal of ‘self-overcoming, rather than an inward-looking search for authenticity’.66 It was only after the war, according to Thomson’s periodisation, that psychology turned inwards, and found for itself a new politics, the politics of the personal. Thomson, however, argues that it took another two decades, with the rise of the so-called permissive society, for this vision of individualism to truly capture the public imagination.67 How are we to understand Klein’s unique theses in relation to historical questions regarding violence and the self in the m ­ id-twentieth century? What was Klein’s specific historical contribution to the remaking of the self? Kleinian psychoanalysis does not neatly fit ­ Thomson’s periodisation. While I have emphasised the similarities that Klein’s work had with other analysts throughout this chapter, it is also important to mention that she was unique even among them. Klein did belong at some level to the same category as that of mid-century psychoanalysts and psychologists who concentrated directly on sociopolitical problems. Yet she was also distinct from them and does not fully fall into this category, nor does her work resemble the hyper-­ individualistic scrutiny associated with the last decades of the century. Indeed, Kleinian psychoanalysis has an overlooked part in the history of modern subjectivity. It viewed self and society in unique ways because it looked at the social and political issues of the time through a very personal perspective of the individual. Klein dealt with the mid-century predicaments of war, violence, bombing and aggression by looking inside, into the self. The key road to understanding this self, as well as the problem of violence, was by exploration of early childhood ideas about family dynamics. This was also true of other analysts, but Klein v 228 v

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Melanie Klein’s clinical archive, 1938 took it to a new level. In this manner, Klein interpreted her patients’ views on Adolf Hitler as only partly related to the real murderous dictator who led Germany to war. For her, he was also something else – as she called it, a Hitler Inside – a psychological inner image stemming from the patient’s internal world. Dealing indirectly in her notes with the world tensions, she emphasised in the mid-century a form of distinct individualistic psychological inwardness, one that was overlooked by Thomson. Unlike the i­ndividualism of the permissive society, Klein’s emphasis on individual psychology was not aimed at freeing the self from social, spiritual and moral chains.68 Yet, at the same time, her ideas were also distinct from the social-ethical visions of others of her time and did not connect the individual so tightly to contemporary values. Klein was not the only one discussing the self in the context of violence and political extremism. Sigmund Freud, of whom she saw herself as a follower, discussed the connection between the individual, violence and society throughout the 1920s and 1930s.69 Freud’s formulations of the ‘death drive’ and ‘civilisation and its discontents’ were developed in diverse directions by different kinds of psychoanalysts during the mid-century, ranging from Edward Glover to Roger Money-Kyrle to the Freudian-Marxists of the Frankfurt School – Wilhelm Reich, Erich Fromm and Theodor Adorno. Klein developed Freud’s theory on the death drive in her own ways. While other psychoanalysts also connected inner and outer realties, Klein stands out even among them as a unique thinker who placed the highest value on individual inner psychology, and conceptualised, perhaps more than any other thinker of her time, the outside reality of war in relation to an inner conflict. Indeed, Klein was, and still is, frequently accused of offering no place for external reality. Reading her related unexplored war notes, it seems that outside reality for Klein in this period never played a part as its own distinct entity but was always connected to inner reality. Klein’s views were therefore a mid-century peak of experimental thought on a particular form of individualistic inwardness. The Kleinian gazing into the self could have been translated to the social. Yet its centrality was on the inside since the outside world was seen as mediated by internal reality. It is the close connection that she formed between the ‘war inside’ and the ‘war outside’ that makes her work significant. Julia Kristeva claims: ‘Although Klein was moved by the dramatic history of the European continent, which culminated in the delirium of the Nazis, she did not focus on the political aspects of madness that tainted the twentieth century.’ This, I showed above, is only partly true. While Klein did not write on the v 229 v

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war directly, her archival notes reveal the extent to which she was dealing with the question of war indirectly and the ways in which her poetics of violence is symptomatic of the questions of the high time of human destruction.70 Klein provided a model of selfhood, along with ‘practicable recipes for action’, that indirectly connected the personal aggression of the family drama to the wider political and social questions of the time related to war and peace.71 Notes  1 See, for example, Andrew David Stedman, Alternatives to Appeasement: Neville Chamberlain and Hitler’s Germany (London: I.B. Tauris, 2011); David Faber, Munich: The 1938 Appeasement Crisis (London: Pocket Books, 2009); Peter Neville, Hitler and Appeasement: The British Attempt to Prevent the Second World War (London: Hambledon Continuum, 2006); David Gillard, Appeasement in Crisis: From Munich to Prague, October 1938–March 1939 (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007); Zara Steiner, The Triumph of the Dark: European International History, 1933–1939 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011).   2 See, for example, Susan Grayzel, At Home and Under Fire: Air Raids and Culture in Britain from the Great War to the Blitz (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2012); Julie Gottlieb, ‘Guilty Women’, Foreign Policy, and Appeasement in Inter-War Britain (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015); Daniel Hucker, Public Opinion and the End of Appeasement in Britain and France (Farnham: Ashgate, 2011); Michael Roper, ‘Between Manliness and Masculinity: The “War Generation” and the Psychology of Fear in Britain, 1914–1950’, Journal of British Studies, 44:2 (2005), pp. 343–62.   3 For a broader history of the intellectual debates of the time, see Richard Overy, The Morbid Age: Britain between the Wars (London: Allen Lane, 2009).   4 See the argument in Michal Shapira, ‘The Psychological Study of Anxiety in the Era of the Second World War’, Twentieth Century British History, 24:1 (2013), pp. 31–57.  5 Melanie Klein’s archive at the Archives and Manuscript Collection, the Wellcome Library (hereafter WAMC). The notes are rich and are often challenging to decipher, especially as they do not follow Standard English. Since these notes were never published, I hope that in addition to exploring the chapter’s goals, I am also successful in presenting their main ideas. I thank the late Elizabeth Spillius for her kind help. This chapter has drawn upon Michal Shapira, The War Inside: Psychoanalysis, Total War, and the Making of the Democratic Self in Postwar Britain (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013), especially pp. 87–112, reproduced with permission of Cambridge University Press. v 230 v

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Melanie Klein’s clinical archive, 1938   6 Adam Limentani, ‘The Psychoanalytic Movement During the Years of the War (1939–1945) According to the Archives of the IPA’, International Review of Psycho-Analysis, 16 (1989), p. 6.   7 WAMC/PP/KLE/B.84: Patients’ Material, ‘Crisis I, Reactions of Patients to Events in Austria’, and WAMC/PP/KLE/B.85: Patients’ Material, ‘Crisis II: Before and After the Crisis’, (hereafter Crisis I or II). Klein analysed a child evacuee in Scotland named ‘Richard’ whose case was published at length. Melanie Klein, Narrative of a Child Analysis (New York: Free Press, 1961); Melanie Klein, ‘The Oedipus Complex in the Light of Early Anxieties’, International Journal of Psycho-Analysis, 26 (1945), pp. 11–33.   8 The classic text is Norbert Elias, The Civilizing Process, vol. 1: The History of Manners (Oxford: Blackwell, 1978 [1939]).  9 Nikolas Rose, Inventing Our Selves: Psychology, Power, and Personality (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), p. 22. 10 Klein’s imaginative work concentration on practice and everyday anecdotes was increasingly seen as ‘unscientific’, especially by some of her male medical colleagues such as John Bowlby. 11 Pearl King, ‘The Life and Work of Melanie Klein in the British Psycho-Analytical Society’, International Journal of Psycho-Analysis, 64 (1983), pp. 251–60. 12 Ernest Jones heard about Klein from Alix and James Strachey. Jones had intellectual and personal interest in child psychoanalysis. Besides sharing her knowledge of children with the BPAS, part of the arrangements made for Klein’s arrival was that she would analyse Jones’s wife and children. See Perry Meisel and Walter Kendrick (eds), Bloomsbury/Freud: The Letters of James and Alix Strachey, 1924–1925 (New York: Basic Books, 1985), pp.  145–6; Phyllis Grosskurth, Melanie Klein: Her World and Her Work (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1986) pp. 154–62; R. Andrew Paskauskas (ed.), The Complete Correspondence of Sigmund Freud and Ernest Jones, 1908–1939 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1993), p. 617. 13 Grosskurth, Melanie Klein, p. 183. 14 Anna Freud, The Psycho-Analytical Treatment of Children (London: Imago, 1946); cf. ‘Symposium on Child Psycho-Analysis’, International Journal.of Psycho-Analysis, 8 (1927), pp. 339–91. 15 Paskauskas (ed.), The Complete Correspondence, p. 628. 16 Grosskurth, Melanie Klein, pp. 241, 243. 17 Crisis I, p. 1. 18 The word ‘phantasy’ in Kleinian psychoanalysis refers to the mental representation of an instinct; it is also the basic stuff of all mental processes. Elizabeth Bott Spillius, ‘Developments in Kleinian Thought: Overview and Personal View’, Psychoanalytic Inquiry, 14:3 (1994) pp. 324–64. For Klein’s theories more generally, see Hanna Segal, Introduction to the Work of Melanie Klein (New York: Basic Books, [1964] 1980); Meira Likierman, Melanie Klein: Her Work in Context (London: Continuum, 2002). v 231 v

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The Munich Crisis, politics and the people 19 Crisis II, p. 61. 20 Ibid., pp. 62–3. 21 Melanie Klein, ‘A Contribution to the Psychogenesis of Manic-Depressive States’, International Journal of Psycho-Analysis, 16 (1935), pp. 145–74. 22 Crisis II, pp. 63, 66. 23 Crisis I, p. 3. 24 Ibid., pp. 3–4. 25 Ibid., pp. 4–5. 26 Ibid., p. 6. 27 Ibid., pp. 8–11. 28 Ibid., p. 12. 29 Ibid., pp. 12–14. 30 Crisis II, p. 72. 31 Ibid., p. 68. 32 Ibid., p. 56. 33 Ibid., p. 57. 34 Ibid., pp. 69–70. 35 Ibid., p. 71. 36 Ibid., p. 72. 37 Ibid., p. 76. 38 Ibid., p. 60. 39 Ibid., pp. 37–8. 40 Ibid., p. 39. 41 Ibid., p. 40. 42 Quoted in Grosskurth, Melanie Klein, p. 240. 43 Crisis II, p. 44. 44 Ibid. 45 Ibid., p. 134. 46 Susan Isaacs (ed.), The Cambridge Evacuation Survey (London: Methuen, 1941). See chapter 2. 47 Quoted in Grosskurth, Melanie Klein, p. 249. 48 Klein, ‘The Oedipus Complex’. 49 Joan Riviere’s letter reacting to this essay is dated 3 June 1940. 50 WAMC/PP/KLE/ C.95: Unpublished paper, Melanie Klein, ‘What Does Death Represent to the Individual’, p. 2. 51 Ibid., p. 2. 52 Ibid. 53 Quoted in Grosskurth, Melanie Klein, p. 254. 54 Ibid., p. 60. 55 Quoted in ibid., p. 260. The last paragraphs are entirely based on pp. 245–61. 56 In the analytic community today, Dick is usually considered to be an autistic child.

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Melanie Klein’s clinical archive, 1938 57 Melanie Klein, ‘The Importance of Symbol-Formation in the Development of the Ego’, International Journal of Psycho-Analysis, 11 (1930), pp. 24–39, here pp. 26–7. 58 See Pearl King and Riccardo Steiner (eds), The Freud–Klein Controversies 1941–1945 (New York: Routledge, 1991). The main discussions took place between January 1943 and May 1944. 59 See King and Steiner (eds), The Freud–Klein Controversies. 60 Claudine and Pierre Geissmann, A History of Child Psychoanalysis (New York: Routledge, 1998), pp. 102–8, 122–5; King and Steiner (eds), The Freud–Klein Controversies; Anna Freud, The Psycho-Analytical Treatment of Children; Melanie Klein, The Psycho-Analysis of Children (London: The Hogarth Press, 1932). 61 George Makari, Revolution in the Mind: The Creation of Psychoanalysis (London: Harper Perennial, 2009), pp. 427–31. 62 Klein and her daughter never reconciled. 63 King and Steiner (eds), The Freud–Klein Controversies. 64 See Mathew Thomson, ‘The Popular, the Practical and the Professional: Psychological Identities in Britain, 1901–1950’, in G.C. Bunn, A.D. Lovie and G.D. Richards (eds), Psychology in Britain: Historical Essay and Personal Reflections (Leicester: BPS Books, 2001), p. 115. Among other goals, Thomson offers to follow the ways in which ‘the psychological reached even further into the social fabric to shape and inform everyday life and turn all identity into something which was self-consciously psychological’. 65 Thomson claims that he wants to expand his investigation beyond psychoanalysis, yet many of his references for the mid-century crisis are of psychoanalysts. Mathew Thomson, Psychological Subjects: Identity, Culture, and Health in Twentieth-Century Britain (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006). 66 Ibid., p. 250. 67 Ibid., p. 244. While mapping the changes in psychological cultures, Thomson also shows continuities between the periods as well as contradictory strands. 68 Ibid., p. 250. 69 Sigmund Freud, ‘Why War?’ [1933], SE, vol. XXII, pp. 195–216; ‘Beyond the Pleasure Principle’ [1920], SE, vol. XVIII, pp. 1–64; ‘Thoughts for the Times on War and Death’ [1915], SE, vol. XIV, pp. 273–300; ‘Introduction to Psycho-Analysis and the War Neuroses’ [1919], SE, vol. XVII, pp. 205–16; ‘Civilization and its Discontents’ [1930], SE, vol. XXI, pp. 57–146. 70 Julia Kristeva, Melanie Klein (New York: Columbia University Press, 2001), p. 15. Kristeva too would agree with the last statement. 71 Rose, Inventing Our Selves, p. 34.

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The poet’s perspective on the Munich Crisis: ‘news that STAYS news’? Helen Goethals

Can the poet’s response to the events of September 1938 be useful to the historian and, if so, in what ways, precisely? Historians have never completely banished poets from the historical narrative but they do tend to confine them, at best, to paraphrasable quotations, which are visibly set apart from the main argument, most often in an epigraph.1 It is true that the ‘emotional turn’ in history has done much to incorporate literature into the historical canon of the Munich period but historians have so far been mainly concerned with a selection of works in prose, particularly novels.2 The one notable exception to this general neglect of poetry is, of course, Louis MacNeice’s Autumn Journal, written beween late August and late December 1938, and published by Faber in May 1939. Of this long, loosely rhymed poem, it has been said, and oft repeated, that ‘If anyone wants to know what it was like to be a young, very intelligent, sensitive man in the autumn of 1938, this is the book to read. It is a unique document.’3 Two objections might be made to this statement. The first is qualitative: the historical interest of Autumn Journal is by no means unique in the sense of being the only response in verse. Once one starts looking, one soon becomes astonished at the sheer number of poems written in response to the prolonged ‘Munich moment’.4 In December 1938 an anthology entitled The Year’s Poetry: 1938 gathered together sixty-five poems published in that year.5 In fact, what Julie Gottlieb has called ‘the war of nerves’ gave rise to a whole new school of poetry, known by the title of its first anthology, The New Apocalypse. Entire volumes of poetry were published in the shadow of Munich: Cecil Day Lewis’s Overtures to Death, David Gascoyne’s Hölderlin’s Madness, W.B. Yeats’s Last Poems v 234 v

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The poet’s perspective on the Munich Crisis and Two Plays, to name but three. The Munich autumn became a turning point in both the private and the public life of W.H. Auden. Outside Britain, in the other countries intimately involved in the crisis, major works were written by, among others, Bertolt Brecht, Jaroslav Seifert, Marina Tsvetaeva, Eugenio Montale and Saint-John Perse. This brings us to the second objection to the idea of Autumn Journal being ‘a unique document’, and this time the objection is qualitative. The sheer quantity of poems published might well present a problem for some literary critics,6 but not (at least not directly) for the historian. To the literary critic ‘unique’ implies ‘uniquely well-written’ whereas, broadly speaking, for the historian that aesthetic judgement is irrelevant. For the historian, every document is self-evidently unique. It has value because it is being read historically, in terms that first examine and then weigh up what it adds to our historical knowledge. The knowledge we seek, chapter by chapter, to accumulate here concerns the emotional content of the responses to the Munich moment. Literary critics are free to argue over whether or not Autumn Journal is better or worse than any or all of the poems that could be gathered around that particular event, but historians are equally free to borrow from their arguments only such details as help them to understand what, precisely, a poem can bring to our historical understanding that a prose document cannot. Put another way, what has not yet been argued anywhere is that Autumn Journal is valuable to the historian because it is a poem, and not because it is Autumn Journal. Accordingly, what will be argued in this chapter is that the very nature of a poem confers on it a historical function which makes it uniquely valuable. Engaging, within the space of a few pages, in this more general, and indeed fundamental, argument is no mean task, so we shall need to simplify – without of course over-simplifying – our approach. On the other hand, the task will be made easier by the fact that the event that we are dealing with occurs in the late 1930s. During the long decade of ‘mathematics for the million’, specialists were keen to communicate the insights of their field as simply and as pragmatically as possible.7 In the fields of literary criticism and moral philosophy, the fields that, for reasons which will become clear later, most concern us here, it is therefore fortunate and in no way fortuitous that we are able to draw on the profound insights, simply expressed, of some leading figures writing in, or in the period leading up to, 1938. Among these, it is the influential literary critic I.A. Richards who will help us to structure an overall argument in which, within the field of v 235 v

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The Munich Crisis, politics and the people emotional history, we seek to establish a connection between content and form, between what and how something is said. In Principles of Literary Criticism, Richards declared that ‘The two pillars upon which a theory of criticism must rest are an account of value and an account of communication.’8 On this assumption, let us begin by looking at a single poem as a particular medium of communication, in order later to decide why that should give it a unique historical value. As pointed out above, any poem, from epic to epigram, will serve that purpose but the one we shall be studying in some detail is titled ‘News of Munich’ by Timothy Corsellis. On the one hand, a relatively simple and certainly short poem will enable us to focus on what is peculiar to poetry rather than prose without leading us too far into the often tangled undergrowth of literary criticism. On the other, as its title suggests, this poem raises the ­question – one that is surely crucial to an emotional history of Munich – of the extent to which the reception of news varies according to the form in which it is received. Timothy Corsellis (1921–41) was a ferry pilot killed at the age of twenty in an unheroic plane accident near Carlisle during the Second World War. Apart from a distraught family, he left behind him a small suitcase containing a handwritten book of schoolboy essays, the typescript of an unfinished autobiographical novel, drafts of political essays and debates, dozens of letters and two notebooks of poems he had written between 1937 and 1941: over 240 poems in all. Most of the poems had never been published, though a few had found their way into wartime anthologies. In 2009, Timothy’s brother, the late John Corsellis, contacted me, as one of the very few specialists of the poetry of the Second World War, with the request that I edit and introduce a selection of Timothy’s work. The main difficulty, as I saw it, was to find a way of avoiding the likelihood that the work of such a young poet would be dismissed out of hand as mere juvenilia. Happily, the suitcase turned out to be a treasure trove of micro-history, enabling me to organise the final book into a chapter-by-chapter account of a poet’s life and work. The poems came alive when they were framed within the particular social, political or cultural context out of which they had been written. In brief and taken chronologically, those contexts were a Suffolk childhood in the 1920s, school at Winchester in the late 1930s, social work in London’s East End, Timothy’s involvement in the Federal Union movement and other ‘ideas of a Christian society’, his RAF training and the honourable discharge from the RAF which followed his refusal (in January 1941) to bomb civilians, his ARP work in London during the Blitz and, finally, v 236 v

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The poet’s perspective on the Munich Crisis the ferry pilot work which caused his death but also, as it turned out, heralded his entrance into the literary world. In September 1938, Timothy Corsellis was a seventeen-year-old schoolboy in his last term at Winchester, biding time before he could take up a position as an articled clerk in London. The Munich crisis affected him deeply: as he wrote in a letter to a friend at Oxford, ‘Since September 10th I have been thoroughly put out by the crisis and the whole thing made me feel sick and ill.’9 In fact, to rephrase W.H. Auden’s comment on Yeats, it might be said that ‘Mad Munich hurt him into poetry’ since, during that long autumn term, he wrote no less than eighteen poems, all of which could be thematically related to the crisis. A longer discussion than is possible here would take into account not only the variety of emotions expressed in that set of poems, but also the essays and letters he wrote at the time, as well as the list of books which he borrowed from the school library; however, for the purposes of this chapter we shall be confining the discussion to a brief reading of a single poem: News of Munich First it came a rumour An unbelievèd tale, Golding had told it to an old man with a pail; His cap was dirty on his head, His shirt could not be seen And I enjoyed despair too deep for rumour to redeem. But then another stronger voice Lent credence to his view And I, contented with my task, thought, ‘Could this thing be true?’ It came on strong and stronger Word followed upon word A hand within me stirred my soul. It was the truth I’d heard. September 28, 1938

Two aspects of this poem might attract the historian more immediately than others. The first concerns what literary critics often disdainfully term the ‘paratext’, in other words the elements beside, or outside, the versified text. The title, ‘News of Munich’, and the date, ‘September 28, 1938’, indicate both the general and the specific context in which the poem was written. From these we understand that the ‘news’ received by the poet was the announcement of the convening of the Four Power Conference. Thus, our attention is focused on the one meeting truly associated with ‘Munich’, undistracted by the two previous meetings at Berchtesgaden and Bad Godesberg which the historical narrative v 237 v

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The Munich Crisis, politics and the people naturally has to include. Second, historians might well accord more importance than literary critics to the apparent subject of the poem, the question of the reception of ‘news’. Semantically, this meaning is conveyed by two twice-repeated words: ‘rumour’ and ‘word’. Through such repetition a poem can foreground something perhaps neglected in historical accounts which ignore the form of what is being said. Rumour and word, the oral transmission of information, being archaic sources of knowledge, continue to take precedence over the more modern forms of communication (newspaper, newsreel, radio) left implicit in the poem. This in itself offers a psychological insight worth pondering. Timothy Corsellis’s description of his reception of the last-minute news that this unhoped-for conference would be taking place curiously mirrors that of Chamberlain himself, which we can read in Hansard. Having obtained, through the good offices of Mussolini, a reprieve of twenty-four hours to the Chancellor’s ultimatum, Chamberlain ended his Statement to the House of Commons on this dramatic note: That is not all. I have something further to say to the House yet. I have now been informed by Herr Hitler that he invites me to meet him at Munich tomorrow morning. He has also invited Signor Mussolini and M. Daladier. Signor Mussolini has accepted and I have no doubt M. Daladier will also accept. I need not say what my answer will be. [An HON. MEMBER: ‘Thank God for the Prime Minister!’]10

If, as D.G. Rossetti proclaimed, a poem is ‘a moment’s monument’,11 then it will not be inappropriate to begin by seeing Timothy’s response to the news as a counterpoint in minor key to the major-key ­parliamentary moment. At the very least, Timothy’s reception of the momentous news offers a pleasant example of a Munich moment-from-below. Confining themselves to the semantics of the document, historians would have no trouble hearing the class and religious undertones typical of a Winchester schoolboy in the 1930s. In the first six lines, Timothy describes his incredulity at news coming from extraneous and normally untrustworthy sources: we note the class associations in the description of ‘Golding’ with a dirty cap and no shirt. In the last six lines he describes his growing conviction that the news must be true because it came from several sources and because it corresponds to his own inward belief: we hear the Anglican undertones in ‘credence’, ‘word’ and ‘soul’. Thus to read these twelve short lines as an historical document is to be reminded of the social and religious context in which the Munich moment was played out. v 238 v

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The poet’s perspective on the Munich Crisis However, the semantics of a poem will only take us so far. Art, according to the philosopher R.G. Collingwood, cannot be reduced to description and neither, it should be added, can poetry be reduced to paraphrase. As the literary critic Louise Rosenblatt pointed out, ‘Someone else can read the newspaper or a scientific work for us and summarize it acceptably. But no-one can read a poem for us. The reader of the poem must have the experience himself.’12 Rosenblatt, we notice, is distinguishing between two kinds of reading, that which is appropriate for prose and that which is called forth by poetry. Many accounts of the Munich Crisis rely heavily on newspapers and scientific works. However, what would happen if we made more use of poems? Beyond the paraphrasable subject, in what ways might the experience of reading a poem extend or deepen our knowledge of its times? To answer that question, we must experience the poem as a poem. First and foremost, poetry needs to be read aloud because primarily we experience it as a series of sounds on a page, sounds which form as many echoes to the sense. A poem communicates a specific state of mind through the patterning of words, a patterning which works, like music, through a main theme and its variations. In ‘News of Munich’ the poet’s state of mind shifts from one state to another. It moves from seemingly reasonable doubt (in the first six lines) to a state of certainty, ‘beyond all reasonable doubt’ (in the last six lines). From despair at certain war to an unlooked-for hope for peace: the change in a state of mind is conveyed through significant breaks (or jarring notes) in a general harmony of metre, rhyme and form, and it is these breaks which call for our attention. Let us begin, then, by experiencing the poem in terms of regular and irregular rhythm, or metre. As we do so, let us bear in mind I.A. Richards’s wise observation on the difference between the two: ‘Metre adds to all the variously-fated expectancies which make up rhythm a definite temporal pattern, and its effect is not due to our perceiving a pattern in something outside us, but in our becoming patterned ourselves.’13 The predominant metre of this poem is iambic (di dum di dum), the default metre of the English language, the ‘iambic groove we are all born into’.14 That metre is quietly disturbed by the trochees (dum di) of ‘First it’ and ‘Golding’, signifying the doubtful news that the poet dare not believe. It is more emphatically disturbed in the penultimate line, ‘Word followed upon word’, which is an anapaest (dum di di) followed by a dactyl (di di dum). This unusual combination can be heard in two ways. First, it is a chiasmus (dum di di di di dum) a self-enfolded form which imitates the v 239 v

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The Munich Crisis, politics and the people closed world of Winchester and other Hampshire and High Tory strongholds. Second, to move from a falling rhythm (dum di di) to a rising one (di di dum) is to express the upbeat relief of the final line ‘It was the truth I’d heard’. How does the rhyme scheme work in this poem? It reinforces the contrast between that which is disturbing because it is apparently unconnected and events which ‘make sense’ because they take up their expected place in a connected world. The rhyme scheme –abbcddeffghh – is an unusual one, apparently subdividing the poem into triplets: abb cdd eff ghh. The effect of the single unrhymed lines is to suggest a thought pattern initially struck by solitary, unconnected news and random observations: First it came a rumour … His cap was dirty on his head … But then another stronger voice … It came on strong and stronger … But these intrusions are soon followed by the news which, through the emphatic and quite complex rhymes of tale/pail, seen/redeem, view/true, word/heard, establishes the apparently firm connections which express a growing harmonisation between the poet’s outer world and his inner feelings. Within the short time span of the poem itself, the private fears aroused by the public chaos of rumour and counter-rumour are transformed into the feel-good of ‘truth’. For reasons that will be discussed later, it is important that the news is finally heard, rather than seen, as true. The four pairs of rhymes move from the outward and visible world of phenomena to the inward world of faith, from unbelief to belief. The first two pairs of rhymes (tale/pail, seen/redeem) correspond to things merely seen and therefore not necessarily believable, whereas the second two (view/true, word/heard) enter the Christian world of hope through faith: ‘Now faith is  the substance of things  hoped for, the evidence of things  not seen.’15 In addition, we need to understand that the poetic moment is like the historical moment: not an isolated event but part of a longer time sequence, a whole poetic tradition.16 As well as making an individual choice of musical pattern, a poet works within traditional patterns which, over time, have been felt as those most appropriate to convey a certain state of mind. The sonnet, for example, with its great variety of rhyme schemes, is often used to imitate the unpredictable logic of the working out of an idea. In this poem, as we have already noticed, the rhyme scheme works in regularly recurring couplets, which allow the poet to end on a clinching rhyme (word/heard) and so give the desired end-of-story feel to his experience. Reading the poem within a much larger poetic tradition, however, the final couplet recalls the traditional form of a Shakespearean sonnet. This cue, induced v 240 v

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The poet’s perspective on the Munich Crisis by the sound pattern, is then reinforced by the layout of the poem on the page. The visually compact and continuous form encourages us to see the rhyme scheme not as an endlessly repeatable set of triplets, but as a single sonnet-like figure, the very form which we identified earlier as the most appropriate to tracing the movement of thought. There remains, however, a problem: a sonnet has fourteen lines, whereas here we only have twelve. So, what in fact we have been given here is not a sonnet, but an incomplete sonnet. Trust the poem, not the poet is a sound rule in poetry. The historian will be all too uncomfortably aware that the news which Timothy heard was not the be-all and end-all of ‘truth’ so much as temporarily correct but, as it turned out, misleading intelligence. The point that needs to be made, however, is that our malaise comes not from our previous historical knowledge but from the poem itself: it loiters there in its unfinishedsonnet feel and in its semantic undertones. In that last line, ‘A hand within me stirred my soul. It was the truth I’d heard.’, we learn that at least one individual received the news of Munich in terms of an event which was received as nothing less than divine intervention, a kind of modern version – almost a parody – of the Annunciation. This, and the word ‘redeem’, place us firmly in the merciful and miraculous world of the New Testament. That was sufficient at the time, for Timothy, but not perhaps, for the reader who is uncomfortably aware that the New Testament is not only about announcing a birth but also a death, and Apocalypse. Timothy’s response is a far cry from the much-reported reliefcum-shame experienced by Léon Blum at the news of an earlier conference, ‘I can experience no joy, but feel myself divided between a cowardly relief and shame.’17 The relief expressed by Timothy is undivided because, as we understand from the religious undertones of the words he uses, it was pre-conditioned by the Anglican environment of Winchester in the 1930s. Perhaps it was mixed with gratitude, because it chimes well with the spontaneous cry of that Honourable Member of the House of Commons, ‘Thank God for the Prime Minister!’. Certainly, both were prepared to accept the news within the framework of a deeply ingrained religious logic which cast Chamberlain in the role of Archangel Gabriel, bearing not merely the news of a last-minute political reprieve but the larger hope of sempiternal salvation. A poem, observed Robert Frost, begins in delight and ends in wisdom.18 To consider this poem as a historical document is not only to add one more source to an already large stock of primary sources, but also to offer v 241 v

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The Munich Crisis, politics and the people a new perspective on the Munich Crisis, one that focuses our attention on the event as a specific form of communication. Historians do not, of course, ignore form but they do tend to see it in terms of the reliability of sources, while focusing, for their argument, on the semantic content of communication. Like Timothy, they ask the question, ‘Could this thing be true?’ and like him they weigh up the evidence before coming to a satisfactory conclusion – satisfactory, that is, to their own way of thinking. Timothy, however, was wrong: the news he heard was only ‘true’ in the historical sense that on 28 September 1938 a meeting was announced and did in fact take place. But ‘this thing’ that is true or not true goes well beyond the merely factual meaning of one more summit meeting that was to take place: in the context of 1938, it bears the full symbolic weight of a last-ditch bid for peace. And with that word ‘peace’ we enter into the realm of ethics. In order to understand the unique role played by poetry in the connecting of emotions to ethics, we need to turn to the thinking about emotions which was being done at the time, and in particular that of I.A. Richards, R.G. Collingwood, Bertrand Russell and Jean-Paul Sartre. It was Bertrand Russell who, in a book read by Timothy, was the first to bestow upon the emotions an ethical function. In the last chapter of Religion and Science, Russell defines ethical values as desires for whatever each person subjectively defines as ‘the Good’. Such definitions lie outside the domain of scientific knowledge: ‘That is to say, when we assert that this or that has “value” we are giving expression to our own emotions, not to a fact which would still be true if our personal feelings were different.’ From this it follows that, ‘Every attempt to persuade people that something is good (or bad) in itself, and not merely in its effects, depends upon the art of arousing feelings, not upon an appeal to evidence.’19 For Russell, there are no purely scientific arguments in favour of either democracy or fascism, nor can you change the minds of fascists or democrats by an appeal to scientific evidence, but, he affirms, there are emotional ways of altering men’s opinions on such subjects. Within Russell’s arguments lie embedded the insights of I.A. Richards who, ten years previously, had divided language into two uses: the scientific and the emotive. For Richards, as for Russell, the unchecked rise of the scientific use of language implied the suppression of ethical values: ‘Science is simply the organisation of references with a view solely to the conveniences of reference. It has advanced mainly because other claims, typically the claims of our religious desires, have been set aside.’20 We notice that Richards saw ethical values in terms of ‘religious v 242 v

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The poet’s perspective on the Munich Crisis desires’ whereas for Russell ethical values become simply ‘desires’, and moreover desires which take on a decidedly political meaning: ‘Ethics is thus closely related to politics: it is an attempt to bring the collective desires of a group to bear upon individuals; or, conversely, it is an attempt by an individual to cause his desires to become those of his group.’21 There are, of course, important differences between religious desires and political desires but one does not need to live in a theocracy to agree that the two are often inextricably intertwined, as in the class and religious undertones that we detected in Timothy’s poem. The main point, though, is that when it comes to a debate over ethical values, science and the language of science are of little use, because ethical values are bound up with our emotions, and will be found wherever emotive language is most naturally used. Newspapers would be an obvious source and, so I am arguing, poems another. It does not follow, however, that these two sources need to be put on the same footing, although the argument from Russell summarised above might seem to imply that. Russell does not distinguish between what he terms ‘giving expression to our own ­emotions’ and what he terms ‘the art of arousing feelings’, but I would argue that what distinguishes the poet from the journalist is that poets earn their meagre living by expressing their emotions whereas journalists are paid to arouse them. Once again, that argument rests on a distinction made in The Principles of Art. According to Collingwood, ‘A person arousing emotion sets out to affect his audience in a way in which he himself is not necessarily affected … A person expressing emotion, on the contrary, is treating himself and his audience in the same kind of way: he is making his emotions clear to his audience, and that is what he is doing to himself.’22 Like all poets, Timothy did not know what he was going to write until he wrote it, art being ‘the activity by which we become conscious of our own emotions’.23 His task was to set out and give meaning to his own feelings, not to influence the feelings of others. The relationship between journalists and their readers is necessarily asymmetrical because it is one of advocacy: by means of emotive language, journalists seek to persuade readers to absorb, preferably unconsciously, the emotions which they have wrapped around the event on which they are reporting. For poets, however, the historical event is only a pretext for the real event which is the poem. And in the poem the emotion(s) are not enfolded so that the event and the emotion can be transferred as part and parcel of the same thing, to be swallowed whole, but are unfolded, in order that v 243 v

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through the process of understanding the poet’s emotional relationship to the event, readers can better understand their own: Hence, when someone reads and understands a poem, he is not merely gaining an understanding of his, the poet’s emotions, he is expressing emotions of his own in the poet’s words, which have become his own words. As Coleridge put it, we know a man for a poet by the fact that he makes us poets. We know that he is expressing his emotions by the fact that he is enabling us to express ours.24

Journalists use emotive language for a preconceived ethical/political purpose, whereas poets use it in order to focus attention on the ­importance of understanding emotions when making ethical decisions. It is this lack of a prior purpose which makes poetry intrinsically superior to the prose of politicians and the journalists they manipulate. Genuine poetry resists manipulation because poets – ‘genuine poets, in their moments of genuine poetry’ – are unable to write to a preconceived plan. Poets write to express and display their emotions, journalists to arouse them. This makes it all the more surprising that historians should rely so heavily for their information on journalists, rather than poets. Surely it makes more sense to listen to those whose task was not to arouse emotions but to express them? When we do so, we learn more about the desires which shaped the politics of the time. In the case of Munich, this will turn our attention away from the retrospective logic of the events leading towards war and towards the emotions which made up the desire for peace. Historians by no means belittle the general desire for peace at the time but they tend to keep it general, by focusing on the rapturous crowds that greeted Chamberlain’s return from Munich and often following this up with Daladier’s remark, ‘Ah, les cons!’. Tending to agree with Daladier and blinded by the dramatic irony of a ‘peace’ which rapidly led to war, historians have neglected the need to examine how the emotional/ethical desire for peace worked towards, or was manipulated into, an acceptance of war. Individual poems, written by individual poets, can help correct an overly vague view of the very real ethical questions, of immeasurable practical importance, by encouraging us to pay attention to the emotions which impeded the thinking about peace. Our attention would then be focused, as was that of Jean-Paul Sartre in Le Sursis, not on the content of the news of the Munich accords but on the verbal form in which they were reported. To hear the individuals in the crowd and to decide if it is helpful to consider them as cons (idiots), v 244 v

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The poet’s perspective on the Munich Crisis we need to turn our attention to the individual receptions of that news. Obviously, Timothy Corsellis’s poem comes into its own here, but not only his. It is a point which can be made about all poems, each in their own singular way: ‘The poet converts his experience into poetry not by first expurgating it, cutting out the intellectual elements and preserving the emotional, and then expressing the residue, but by fusing thought itself into emotion: thinking in a certain way and then expressing how it feels to think in that way.’25 In 1938 Laura Riding complained bitterly that people reasoned about the situation in Spain but they relied on newspapers to feel it.26 Chief among the emotions which the newspapers made people feel was despair. No matter what way readers were reasoning when they opened their newspapers in the September of 1938, wherever they stood on the pacifist spectrum, the primary emotion they experienced was despair. Timothy’s initial inability to believe in a fresh possibility for peace was not the emotion of an isolated individual, but part of a collective despair induced by the media which, whether ideologically or commercially, had no interest in peace. The work of the media in the 1930s was to prepare for war, not for peace, according to evidence exposed thirty years ago by Richard Cockett,27 and backed up by more recent work undertaken on the shadowy Ministry of Information set up in September 1938. Conversely, the relentless media campaigns to prepare people for the advent of war confirm the general desire for peace, since they are only necessary if the view being promoted is not widely held. The study of emotions helps explain why the media were so successful: warmongering works because, as Timothy’s poem shows, in time of crisis and conflict we are literally fascinated by the media and – even against our better judgement – we seize upon every scrap of news available. We can link this phenomenon to an insight first offered by Jean-Paul Sartre: the fact that emotions are always attached to an object, an object which fascinates us, captivating our consciousness.28 For Timothy, and indeed many others on that day, that object was the ‘news’. The fresh hope linked to the Conference struggles to be accepted in view of the ‘deep despair’ that newspapers had already instilled in him, but he continues to seize on every available external source of news in search of confirmation for his resurgent hope for peace, until he finds the sources that harmonise with his own pacifist desires. News itself is not the subject of his poem, but the doubts that it raises. Alas, such doubts are not as common as they should be, mainly because we do not usually turn to newspapers in order to be disturbed v 245 v

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The Munich Crisis, politics and the people (as  Timothy was) but only to find comfort, to have our opinions confirmed. To have our minds changed, to realign our thoughts, we must turn to other sources, such as poetry. Poets are among the people least able to conform to the received opinions of their time, because poetry makes play – serious play – with words, rearranging them into newly imagined patterns of thought. Deeply influenced by the experiences communicated in poetry by Owen and Sassoon, the poets of Timothy’s generation were among the foremost to resist the paralysing state of despair induced by the general picture of impending and inevitable war. Despair is not the focal point of the poem, but part of its paratext. Read alongside Timothy’s letters, we know that the despair sprang from the reporting of the crisis and the actual experiences of being fitted with a gas mask and hearing ‘the noise of tanks passing at night’ (the title of a poem written on 26 September). Despair in this poem functions as a background, in a way well explained by Jean-Paul Sartre. In the course of an essay arguing for an understanding of the emotions in terms of what he called ‘phenomenological psychology’, Sartre pointed out that the emotional apprehension of an object always took place within a world that was already apprehended: ‘to perceive an object as horrible is to perceive it against the background of a world which has already been revealed as horrible.’29 In Timothy’s case, however, his emotions change radically, from despair to hope. Following Sartre, that means the emotional background also has to change, and indeed it does, in three ways. As we have seen, Timothy in the poem – through the poem – comes to believe his hope well-founded partly because the grounds for hope (the news of the Four Power conference) are confirmed by several increasingly trustworthy sources, and partly because within an Anglican and High Tory context the news comes to feel right. To these two intellectual backgrounds, we can now add a third, suggested by the curious image (when we come to think about it) of ‘A hand within me stirred my soul’. The image strikes us as incongruous, even weak, if we read it as part of purely religious background, but it works better if we relate it to another work which Timothy was reading in earnest at the time: Modern Man in Search of a Soul. In that seminal work, Carl Jung had argued that modern man would do well to turn to the insights offered by psychology, a discipline which in the attention it paid to personal intuition would provide a sounder basis for political judgement than blind faith in organised religion or science.30 Timothy took the idea of the importance of personal intuition to heart and in his letters and schoolboy essays developed the v 246 v

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The poet’s perspective on the Munich Crisis idea that the ‘super-ego’ and the ‘id’ working together produced poetry. In other words, the ‘hand’ stirring Timothy’s soul is not so much the hand of God as his own hand, stirred by an irresistible need to write, to express his changing emotions. ‘A genuine poet, in his moments of genuine poetry’, remarked Collingwood, ‘never mentions by name the emotions he is expressing.’31 The emotion not mentioned by name is, of course, hope. As it happened, the truth and falsehood of Timothy’s hope concerned only the news of yet another ‘peace conference’, not Peace itself, but that we know from the inconclusive form of his ‘moment’s monument’. More generally, however, hope is something that poetry trains us to listen for. Perhaps poetry alone has that privilege because of its association with birdsong. Not only Thomas Hardy but also Emily Dickinson have proclaimed as much: ‘Hope’ is the thing with feathers – That perches in the soul – And sings the tune without the words – And never stops – at all –32

How it feels to think about the desire for peace … Collingwood’s principle connects well to a statement made by Jaroslav Seifert, a Czech poet who was himself very much present and writing about the Munich Crisis. Lyrical poetry, he explained much later, is a state of mind: ‘a state of quiet experiencing of those values upon which man bases the most profound, the most fundamental, and the most essential foundations of his equilibrium’. And, in such a state, ‘That which otherwise would oppose us we let suffuse us, while at the same time we ourselves suffuse it, too. We listen intently to that which is around us, and in that very way, we find ourselves.’33 Surely that is just how we would describe the poet-persona in ‘News of Munich’: an individual listening intently and finding himself both part of and apart from what is being said around him. Unlike the ‘blind mouths’ of those more interested in power than in peace,34 poets do not place themselves as beings above the fray. They pay heed to the quality of the sounds they hear and to their own distance from those sounds, and in sharing that experience they show us, poem after poem, how to do the same. And since it is the ear rather than the eye which connects us to other people, by teaching our ear to be more attentive, poems develop our political understanding. They help us to listen for what Seamus Heaney called ‘the music of what happens’.35 They sharpen our ability to hear the false v 247 v

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The Munich Crisis, politics and the people notes in public discourse, to separate the strident from the sweetly pitched and to distinguish music from noise. Perhaps they also help us to hear what Timothy did not hear, but which an older and wiser E.M. Forster did: peace flapping from the posters and not upon the wings of angels.36 It is not only what a poem says that gives it historical interest but the way in which it says it. In their different ways, all poems are occasional. As Wallace Stevens put it, ‘The poem is the cry of its occasion / Part of the res itself and not about it.’37 There are, of course, many kinds of cry: the cries of newspaper vendors and the cries which express emotion – cries of pain, of fear, of anger, of relief, of joy – and from silent scream to stage whisper the modulations are endless. Emotions are usually discussed in terms of visual expression, but they are also present in sounds, which is why some knowledge of poetry should be a central element in the history of sound. Not only does poetry train us how to hear the ­individual – or for that matter the polyphonic – cry, but it also helps us to understand why we should hear it. The cry of the occasion lodges itself in our memories, what W.H. Auden called ‘memorable speech’, setting up a persistent and resonant vibration. Every time we read a poem as a poem, that poem becomes a historical document in its own right, communicating the values of, and beyond, its time and so becoming, as Ezra Pound put it, ‘news that STAYS news’.38 Notes  1 For a notable exception to this rule, see G.M. Trevelyan, English Social History: A Survey of Six Centuries: Chaucer to Queen Victoria (New York and Toronto: Longman, Green & Co, 1942).   2 So far, the relationship between literature and history during the Munich Crisis has been most convincingly demonstrated by the literary critics. See S. Ellis, British Writers and the Approach of World War Two (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015) and K. McLoughlin, ‘Voices of the Munich Pact’, Critical Inquiry, 34:3 (2008), 543–62. There remains room for many more truly interdisciplinary studies.   3 Walter Allen, quoted in A. Haberer, Louis MacNeice 1907–1963: L’Homme et la poésie (Bordeaux: Presses universitaires de Bordeaux, 1986), p. 126.   4 For the details of what follows, see the anthology by H. Goethals, Lost Honour among Thieves: Poets’ Perspectives on the Munich Crisis of 1938 (by private subscription, forthcoming).  5 Denys Kilham Roberts and Geoffrey Grigson (eds), The Year’s Poetry: 1938. (London: The Bodley Head, 1938). This was the third of three annual ­anthologies. v 248 v

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The poet’s perspective on the Munich Crisis  6 For structuralist and post-structuralist critics, who did not believe that a poem could have a referential function worth spending time on, a poem’s literary value was seen as being in inverse proportion to its historical value. A poem such as Autumn Journal, which clearly had both literary and historical value, challenged that belief. Poet-critics in the 1930s, although they sometimes had doubts about the literary value of ‘political poems’, were less judgemental. In the opening sentence of his preface to his 1939 anthology of poems drawn from six years of New Verse, Geoffrey Grigson closed off the question of evaluation by declaring roundly that ‘It is a fact that both an epic and a limerick are poems.’  7 Lancelot Hogben, Mathematics for the Million (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1936).  8 I.A. Richards, Principles of Literary Criticism (London: Routledge, 1926), p. 25, my emphasis.   9 H. Goethals, The Unassuming Sky: The Life and Poetry of Timothy Corsellis (Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars, 2012) p. 14. 10 House of Commons Debate, 28 September 1938 vol 339 cc5–285. https:// api.parliament.uk/historic-hansard/commons/1938/sep/28/prime-ministersstatement#column_5 (accessed 31 December 2018). 11 D.G. Rossetti, Ballads and Sonnets (London: Ellis and White, 1881), p. 161. More precisely, the words come from the first line of the Introductory Sonnet to ‘The House of Life: A Sonnet-Sequence’, which reads, ‘A sonnet is a moment’s monument, —’. 12 Louise Rosenblatt, Literature as Exploration (New York: D. AppletonCentury Company, 1938), p. 33. 13 Richards, Principles of Literary Criticism, p. 139. 14 Preface to The Burning Perch, published in the Poetry Book Society Bulletin, no. 38 (September 1963). 15 Hebrews 11:1, in the Authorised Version. 16 T.S. Eliot, ‘Tradition and the Individual Talent’, in The Sacred Wood (London: Methuen, 1920). 17 Léon Blum, quoted in translation in The Times, 21 September 1938, p. 10. For more on this point, see J. Gottlieb’s chapter. 18 Robert Frost, Collected Poems (New York: Henry Holt & Company, 1939), p. vi. 19 Bertrand Russell, Religion and Science (London: Thornton Butterworth Ltd., 1935), pp. 230, 235, my emphasis. 20 Richards, Principles of Literary Criticism, p. 265. 21 Russell, Religion and Science, p. 232. 22 R.G. Collingwood, The Principles of Art (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1938), p. 110. 23 Collingwood, The Principles of Art, p. 293. 24 Ibid., p. 118. v 249 v

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The Munich Crisis, politics and the people 25 Ibid., p. 295. 26 Laura Riding, The World and Ourselves (London: Chatto & Windus, 1938), pp. x, 20. Riding had avoided being caught up in the Spanish Civil war by escaping to England, then to France. Her long relationship with Robert Graves was drawing to a painful end. In September 1938, when her Collected Poems were not well received, she turned definitively to prose as the best means to construct a republic of well-meaning and like-minded people. 27 For more on the connivance between the government and the media, see R.  Cockett, Twilight of Truth: Chamberlain, Appeasement and the Manipulation of the Press (London: Weidenfeld & Nicholson, 1989). 28 Jean-Paul Sartre, Esquisse d’une théorie des émotions (Paris: Éditions Hermann, 1938), p. 114. My translation of ‘saisir un objet quelconque comme horrible, c’est le saisir sur le fond d’un monde qui se révèle comme étant déjà horrible’. 29 Ibid., p. 114, author’s emphasis, my translation. 30 Carl Jung, Modern Man in Search of a Soul, trans. W.S. Bell and C.F. Barnes (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1933). See also George Orwell’s reflections at the beginning of ‘Notes on the Way’, in The Collected Essays, Journalism and Letters of George Orwell, vol. 2 (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1970), pp. 30–1. 31 Collingwood, The Principles of Art, p. 112. 32 First of three untitled stanzas by Emily Dickinson; www.poetryfoun dation.org/poems/42889/hope-is-the-thing-with-feathers-314 (accessed 31 December 2018). The reference to Thomas Hardy concerns ‘The Darkling Thrush’ in Poems of the Past and Present (1901). 33 Jaroslav Seifert, ‘On the Pathetic and Lyrical State of Mind’, Nobel Prize speech 1984. www.nobelprize.org/prizes/literature/1984/seifert/lecture/ (accessed 31 December 2018). 34 This well-known catachresis is from line 119 of John Milton’s ‘Lycidas’. 35 The expression is from the last line of Seamus Heaney’s ‘Song’ in Field Work (London: Faber & Faber, 1979), p. 56. 36 E.M. Forster, ‘Post-Munich’, BBC broadcast, 1939, published in E.M. Forster, Two Cheers for Democracy (New York: Harcourt Brace & Company, 1951), p. 22. 37 Wallace Stevens, ‘An Ordinary Evening in New Haven’, from Auroras of Autumn (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1950). The res of res publica is not italicised by Stevens. This lack of italics poetically performs the intended meaning: the poet’s writing is not calligraphically set apart from the public world which he inhabits. 38 Ezra Pound, The ABC of Reading (London: Faber & Faber, 1934, 1951) p. 29.

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Public opinion, policy makers and the Munich Crisis: adding emotion to international history Daniel Hucker

Images of the 1938 Munich Conference are seared into the popular consciousness. Perhaps the most famous is that of a beaming Neville Chamberlain, on his return from Germany, brandishing above his head the Anglo-German Agreement. The cheering crowds that provided the backdrop to this image were replicated as Chamberlain’s car travelled to Downing Street, the roads lined with jubilant people, encouraging his subsequent proclamation of having secured ‘peace for our time’. Such an emotive statement was out of character, as acknowledged by Chamberlain just days later in the House of Commons. His evocation of Disraeli, he explained, came about ‘in a moment of some emotion, after a long and exhausting day, after I had driven through miles of excited, enthusiastic cheering people’.1 Images of the French premier, Édouard Daladier, both at Munich and on his return to Paris, are somewhat different. Huge crowds gathered in the French capital but Daladier himself was glum, just as he had been when posing alongside Chamberlain, Hitler and Mussolini at Munich. The jubilant masses surprised him; on landing he confessed to Guy La Chambre, France’s air minister, that he had feared a hostile reception.2 Where Chamberlain interpreted the emotional response in London as the necessary confirmation of the righteousness of appeasement, the emotion in France left Daladier bemused and even angry. ‘The fools’, he remarked, ‘they don’t realise what they’re applauding!’3 His foreign minister, Georges Bonnet, was more upbeat. He recalled crowded Parisian streets abounding with ‘joy as on a beautiful day of celebration …, a fraternal day where men, women, even children, ran to take our hands, to hug us and cover us with flowers’.4 As the unbearable tension gave way v 251 v

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The Munich Crisis, politics and the people to thankfulness for the salvaged peace, the outpouring of relief in Paris and London found an echo across Europe and the world. The tension had engulfed entire populations, notably in Britain and France, and its emotional impact affected not just ordinary people but also the diplomats most intimately involved. This chapter explores further the emotional dimension of the Munich Crisis, specifically how emotions impacted upon the two prime ministers, Chamberlain and Daladier. These men experienced enormous pressures, emanating not only from Hitler’s belligerence but also existing international commitments, an awareness of their own countries’ limitations and, perhaps most significantly, the perceived wishes of their own populations. In this context, decisions could not be taken in an emotional vacuum. The ‘emotional turn’ in international history Traditional diplomatic history has been accused of prioritising narratives that assume a ‘disembodied policy-making process’ in which policy makers are ‘rarely depicted as driven by emotions’.5 This reluctance to consider emotions stems, in part, from an uneven and patchy evidential base. The problem is that statesmen rarely – if ever – leave explicit accounts of how personal feelings inform their policy choices. Traces of emotion are more abundant in personal papers but remain infrequent and often opaque. This is particularly problematic for international history, a subdiscipline that has proven peculiarly susceptible to ‘source fetishism’. As Petra Goedde insists, such ‘archive positivism’ overlooks how ‘values, ideologies, and emotions’ inform diplomatic practice. Incorporating emotions does not amount to replacing the traditional approach, but seeks instead to ‘enrich’ it, culminating in a ‘more nuanced, if “messy”, understanding of foreign relations’.6 The history of emotions is not new. Historians of the family and childhood have long considered them, whilst the Annales school included emotions within the broader range of factors comprising the human experience that its practitioners sought to extrapolate.7 To date, works on emotion have concentrated chiefly on collective responses; distinct categorisation along the lines of social class, religion, gender or national identity makes it easier to identify collective emotional responses and outbursts. Evaluating how emotions operate on an individual level, including on diplomats, has proved more elusive.8 This is partly explained by the aforementioned ‘archive positivism’ of diplomatic historians, their natural habitat being, as Peter Stearns notes, ‘the archives v 252 v

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Public opinion, policy makers and emotion of statesmen who prided themselves on their sober judgment’.9 Where emotions feature at all they are usually little more than an addendum, a background influence assuming the shape of an unruly or excitable crowd. The public is characterised as an emotionally volatile entity, in contradistinction to rational and dispassionate policy makers. Conflating emotion with the ‘people’ not only reinforces an unjustly pejorative conception of the public but also denies individual policy makers any emotional agency. Studies of key individuals, suggests Stearns, have usually been based on a Freudian approach to biography, a ‘psychohistory’ that has ‘proved less fruitful and has largely been abandoned’.10 The role of emotions in shaping responses to pivotal events remains under-­scrutinised, but things are beginning to change. John Young, for example, has recently examined emotions in the British Cabinet as the July crisis unfolded, contending that existing accounts of the outbreak of the First World War dismiss emotions as ‘a short-term disturbance to “normal,” rational thinking’. Young regrets this omission, insisting that emotions were a constant presence in British deliberations, ‘an integral part’ of the reality that shaped London’s formal diplomatic response.11 A key figure in bringing emotions into international history is Frank Costigliola. In one of several important incursions, Costigliola posited that George Kennan’s famous ‘long telegram’ from Moscow in 1946 abounded with rhetoric that ‘emotionalizes’ and ‘conditions’ his articulation of the containment doctrine. Kennan’s gendered and sexualised language provided the emotional underpinnings of US diplomatic strategy, an ‘emotional sermon that helped shape the meaning of the Cold War’.12 Elsewhere, Costigliola evokes the importance of ‘homosociality’, a particular politics of intimacy that is especially crucial in the traditionally male-centric domain of diplomacy. These ‘homosocial emotions’ are prevalent when groups of men focus on ‘a common task, on a common enemy or object of desire, or even when enemies focus intently on each other’. A raft of emotional responses enter play – ‘jealousy, anticipation, excitement, affection, seduction, allure, fascination, disappointment, sadness, and bitterness’ – mirroring erotic relations despite the absence of physical contact.13 The Munich Crisis involved many such encounters, most famously Chamberlain’s meetings with Hitler. Emotions factored into decision making in other ways too, involving issues of honour and prestige, the responsibility felt towards those they governed, not to mention the emotional baggage of those who could recall the last war. The Munich ‘crisis’ is also emotionalised by virtue of being gendered. Each time the ‘Munich moment’ is relived, the feminised appeasers are v 253 v

The Munich Crisis, politics and the people compared unfavourably to the masculinity of those preaching firmness.14 For the British and French prime ministers, the Munich moment was emotionally turbulent.

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Chamberlain and Daladier Neville Chamberlain is frequently portrayed as stuffy and reserved, lacking the geniality of his half-brother Austen and sharing his father’s voracious appetite for hard work.15 Aware of his ‘accursed shyness’, the affection that he displayed with close family was absent from his public and professional persona.16 If Chamberlain took pride in his dispassionate demeanour, he became increasingly aware during 1938 that Hitler was a different beast. Along with his sisters Ida and Hilda, Neville devoured Stephen Roberts’s The House That Hitler Built (1937) in a bid to understand the Führer’s mentality. One particular passage from Roberts’s book caught Chamberlain’s eye, noting how an ‘emotional and unbalanced’ Hitler was prone to ‘delusional manias about everybody with whom he came into contact’.17 Daladier was a different character, a taciturn former teacher from Carpentras who, having replaced Léon Blum as premier in April 1938, began his third term as Président du Conseil. A decorated Great War veteran, Daladier shared with many of his generation an abhorrence of conflict, although this manifested itself in a commitment to security rather than outright pacifism. Politically, he was a moderate member of the Radical Socialist Party, and although his was nominally a Popular Front administration, he was keen to steer France away from the social unrest that had prevailed for the past several years. Not a natural showman, and usually sporting a frown, Daladier was a loyal colleague and friend who cultivated a reputation as a strong and silent type, the kind of ‘strong man’ that France looked to as the Nazi menace ­intensified. His choice of foreign minister, Georges Bonnet, seemed odd at first glance. Another veteran, Bonnet’s aversion to war was tinged with a visceral pacifism that set him apart from Daladier. Though an astute appointment from a domestic political perspective, it resulted, diplomatically, in mixed messages emanating from Paris. Daladier harboured few illusions as to Hitler’s intentions and spoke frequently of France’s determination to uphold existing alliance commitments; Bonnet, by contrast, shared Chamberlain’s faith in appeasement and was willing to pay a considerable price for peace. In mid-July, he sought v 254 v

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Public opinion, policy makers and emotion to ­disabuse the Czechoslovakian government of any assumption that France would, independently, come to their aid. French public opinion, he insisted, would only countenance intervention if undertaken jointly with Britain.18 Daladier’s habitual approach to diplomatic discussions undermines his superficial toughness, routinely beginning with a show of defiance only to subsequently back down. Meeting with British ministers in April 1938, he articulated a principled stance at the outset before losing his nerve.19 This pattern was repeated in Franco-British conversations in September, playing into Chamberlain’s hands. Indeed, Chamberlain’s personal letters reveal an unbridled self-confidence. On 13 August, he commented how ‘I do not feel pulled down or depressed’, suggesting further that his own robustness was a ‘great relief’ to his less assured foreign secretary, Lord Halifax. Nevertheless, there is evidence of ­profound unease; writing to his wife, Annie, on 2 September he acknowledged that ‘the thing hangs over me like a nightmare all the time’, yet still he clung to ‘a rather more hopeful impression of the situation’.20 Even the ‘awful week’ that he acknowledged on 11 September failed to unsettle him unduly, his ‘firmly screwed on head’ enabling him to retain composure whilst those around him floundered. Yet, he betrayed implicitly his own emotional turmoil, expressing profound gratitude for being able to ‘unburden myself to [Annie] at all hours’.21 Chamberlain’s emotional rollercoaster intensified once ‘Plan Z’, his dramatic flight to Germany in a final effort to avert war, was unveiled. The Berchtesgaden visit was Chamberlain’s first meeting with Hitler and thus his first opportunity to gauge personally the intentions of his adversary. Marcus Holmes has analysed the Chamberlain–Hitler summitry through a neurological and psychological lens, assessing the former’s ability to identify deception. Despite acknowledging that Chamberlain’s ‘high levels of narcissism and hubris … worked against successful deception detection’, he insists that the prime minister did identify certain ‘behaviours, tone, words, and so forth’. Chamberlain, therefore, was not ‘as naïve, and overtly duped, as many historians and political scientists assume’.22 Even so, Chamberlain was convinced that he had established a genuine rapport. His radio broadcast on his return to London described a ‘friendly’ talk with Hitler, the prime minister convinced ‘that each of us fully understands what is in the mind of the other’.23 Whilst not entirely duped by Hitler, Chamberlain wanted to believe that the Führer could be appeased. As Holmes contends, ‘Chamberlain potentially colluded in Hitler’s deception’ because the alternative would v 255 v

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The Munich Crisis, politics and the people mean acknowledging that appeasement had failed, which would be ‘difficult to deal with psychologically and practically’ given his attachment to it.24 Daladier, meanwhile, was piqued by Chamberlain’s failure to consult Paris prior to the Berchtesgaden visit. Responding to French unhappiness, Daladier and Bonnet were invited to London. Daladier maintained that France would uphold its obligations to Prague, speaking with characteristic precision of French honour and readiness for war. Equally characteristically, he soon backed down and accepted Chamberlain’s position that Sudeten German self-determination must be respected. As the permanent under-secretary at the Foreign Office, Alexander Cadogan, noted, ‘We had to listen to Daladier, voice trembling with carefully modulated emotion, talking of French honour and obligations … we brought him back to earth before lunch adjournment.’25 Given France’s long-standing commitment to Prague, this capitulation carried an emotional price. During a recess in the FrancoBritish talks, the atmosphere within the French delegation was despondent. ‘[A] great silence reigned’, recalled Bonnet, their thoughts ‘as dark as the autumn sky.’26 Once back in Paris, Daladier confessed to his Cabinet colleagues that he was ‘not proud’. Justifying the abandonment of Czechoslovakia, he sketched out bluntly the unpalatable realities. ‘France is gravely ill’,  he insisted, unable to wage war; Hitler may be bluffing, but strategic, military and diplomatic realities rendered resistance too risky. Daladier evoked a conversation earlier that day (19 September) with Joseph Vuillemin, Chief of Staff of the French Air Force, who, being unwilling to ‘lead an air force that does not exist’, threatened to resign should war come. Given the stark choice between war and peace, an ‘ashamed’ Daladier felt that his hands were tied: ‘we do not choose war’.27 Bonnet, though less troubled by France’s abandonment of Prague, was no less affected by emotion. He was, after all, a member of France’s génération de feu, and his wartime experiences translated into a visceral fear of another war, manifesting itself in a distinctly pacifist mindset.28 As the Sudeten crisis evolved, tensions between Bonnet and Daladier became more palpable. It was, therefore, unsurprising that Daladier was accompanied at Munich not by Bonnet but by the more amenable secretary-general of the Quai d’Orsay, Alexis Léger. Prior to this, however, Bonnet stated his case in emotive terms. He reminded Daladier on 26 September of France’s diplomatic isolation and lack of military preparedness; the following evening, a visibly shaken Bonnet restated his case, practically begging Daladier to ‘continue our efforts v 256 v

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Public opinion, policy makers and emotion for peace’.29 Both men sought to avoid war but adopted different strategies. Bonnet favoured capitulation, whilst Daladier hoped that enhanced British support might deter Hitler from aggression. As Lacaze concludes, Daladier’s ‘vagueness and vacillation’ compared unfavourably to ‘Bonnet’s consistency’.30 Meanwhile, Chamberlain was locked in a psychological struggle with Hitler. The whole process, he acknowledged, ‘entailed terrific physical and mental exertions’ and not for the first time Chamberlain expressed appreciation to Annie for stoically maintaining ‘her courage and her confidence’ during these ‘agonising hours’.31 There are two interpretations of the Hitler–Chamberlain summitry. In one, Hitler is the victor, hoodwinking a naive Chamberlain by giving him the easy victory of preventing war whilst securing a diplomatic coup for Germany. Alternatively, Chamberlain prevailed by compelling the Führer to accept a peaceful settlement that he did not want. Whoever triumphed, it is clear that the diplomatic exchanges of September 1938 were emotionally charged encounters, and the Munich Conference was no exception. Daladier arrived in pensive mood, determined to demonstrate resolve but acutely conscious of France’s unpreparedness and Chamberlain’s determination to avoid war. He adopted his usual opening tactic, losing his temper and accusing Hitler of perpetrating a ‘crime’ by destroying Czechoslovakian independence.32 Anguished by the realisation that he was powerless to secure an honourable outcome, Daladier was not helped by the lack of meaningful advice from friends and colleagues.33 As his chef de cabinet, Roger Génébrier recalled, ‘Aside from his mistress, the Marquise de Crussol, whose influence, while discreet, was perhaps greater than it appeared, the friends most able to influence him were Guy La Chambre and the American ambassador, William Bullitt.’34 La Chambre simply reinforced Vuillemin’s pessimistic appraisal of France’s aerial situation, whilst Bullitt, on the evening of 27 September, could only convey President Roosevelt’s desire for peace. Prominent advocates of resistance were scarce. For Chamberlain, the outcome of Munich was, at first glance, a tremendous personal victory. His policy had worked; war was averted and the postbag at Downing Street overflowed with expressions of thankfulness from all corners of the globe.35 Given his proclivity for narcissism, it is unsurprising that the premier internalised the experience, spinning it as the essential confirmation of his ability (and his alone) to rescue Europe from the abyss.36 Nonetheless, the emotional journey had shaken him. Retreating to Chequers on 1 October, he confessed that he had come ‘nearer there to a nervous breakdown than I have ever been in my life’.37 v 257 v

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The Munich Crisis, politics and the people Despite the cheering crowds, the appreciative newspaper commentary, and the countless letters of gratitude reaching him, Chamberlain dwelt on expressions of discontent, especially those emanating from his own party. He confessed to Ida on 9 October that ‘the ceaseless stream of vituperation’ was having ‘a somewhat depressing effect on my spirits’, although a readily available ‘antidote to the poison gas’ was the plethora of ‘letters and telegrams which continued to pour in’.38 Daladier’s post-Munich mood was less upbeat. His seventeen-yearold son, Jean, recalled how his father had, on returning from Munich, turned to his excitable son who dreamt of going to battle and said ‘in a bitter and exasperated voice’ that a war would come, and it would last far longer than young Jean could imagine.39 Daladier’s speech in the French Chamber also betrayed doubts about the righteousness and durability of the Munich accords. Rather than lauding peace, Daladier urged the French people to resume work and brace themselves for the still more ‘formidable events’ that lay ahead.40 Despite his caution, the French Chamber endorsed Munich stridently, the accords approved by 515 votes to 75, most dissenters being Communist Party members. This apparent manifestation of French unity contrasted sharply with the disunity that had defined France for much of the 1930s, a disunity that contributed to France’s diplomatic passivity during the Munich Crisis. Indeed, the domestic basis of foreign policy – including the role of the people – is crucial, and it is to this that the chapter now turns. Bringing in the ‘people’ France was a troubled nation in the summer of 1938. The global financial crash had not been without effect, and several years of political and social instability – comprising the 6 février events, the Popular Front experiment and the reverberations caused by the civil war in Spain – had left France divided, bloodied and bruised. Where France was beset with internal disorder, Britain appeared an exemplar of stability. Chamberlain assumed the premiership in May 1937, leading a Conservative-dominated National Government boasting a large parliamentary majority, a united and well-whipped parliamentary party, and a loyal national base. With regard to foreign policy, Chamberlain pursued appeasement energetically, and in 1938 he was determined not to allow the Sudeten crisis to escalate into a European war. Unlike France, Britain had no binding commitments to Czechoslovakia, and Britain’s imperial interests were best served by maintaining peace in Europe. v 258 v

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Public opinion, policy makers and emotion In France, Daladier’s efforts to distance his government from its Popular Front predecessors prompted predictable left-wing dissent and a wave of industrial unrest, but as the strikes subsided by late summer foreign affairs took centre stage. Initial responses to the Sudeten crisis were partisan. The political left (especially the far left) adopted a consistently pro-Czech stance; the Humanité (the journal of the Parti Communiste Français [PCF]) held a fete in the Parisian suburb of Garches to which, according to police reports, some 45,000 people travelled from St Lazare. The fete itself featured an entire stand devoted to Czechoslovakia, a banner proclaiming ‘Vive l’indépendance de la Tchécoslovaquie! Soutenez l’action anti-hitlérienne!’ Jacques Duclos, general secretary of the PCF, told the gathering on 5 September that Daladier was unpopular and undemocratic, that his government lacked the ambition to ‘unite the nation’, and that Hitler must know that ‘a united working class’ in France stood resolutely against him.41 Shortly afterwards, a notorious article appeared in the London Times on 7 September advocating the cession of the Sudeten territories to Germany.42 This article was reported favourably in several French newspapers (La République, La Liberté, Le Matin and the Jour-Écho de Paris), encouraging Bonnet to warn Prague that the Western publics would only countenance war once all avenues of peace had been explored.43 To be sure, the French people applauded Chamberlain’s Plan Z, Daladier acknowledging that his British counterpart’s initiative had left ‘a deep impression’.44 Still, the prospect of capitulation was troubling, and it was common to want both peace and a policy of resistance. One letter reaching Daladier on 20 September was brimming with emotionally charged but contradictory rhetoric. The writer assured Daladier that France would not be ‘dishonoured’ by permitting Sudeten self-determination and, moreover, that countless parents ‘will owe you a deep gratitude for saving the peace’. At the same time, it was held that any German subjugation of the Czechs must be resisted: ‘I believe that France should not shy away from war today – a war which would only be postponed – even if this war costs the lives of one or more of my children.’45 The high stakes were not lost on Chamberlain. A future war would be more horrific than the last, and nobody wanted to see British homes bombed; images of Guernica were raw, played out vividly in British newspapers and newsreels. It is easy to empathise with the Prime Minister when, flying over London after the Godesberg meeting, he imagined a German bomber taking the same course. As he told the Cabinet, ‘war to-day was a direct threat to every home in the country’.46 This was partly v 259 v

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The Munich Crisis, politics and the people an emotionally charged appeal to wavering Cabinet colleagues not to lose faith in appeasement, but it also reflected what Overy has called Chamberlain’s ‘mental conflict’.47 This was emblematic of widely held anxieties about the ‘next war’ that permeated British and French society, politics and culture.48 La Chambre told Bullitt on 28 September that he had sent his wife and children away from Paris; in the event of war, he prophesied, ‘the destruction in Paris would pass all imagination’.49 An awareness of their own weaknesses compounded governmental fears of an air war. A French report in January 1938 noted that Germany’s air power had, from a standing start, eclipsed all other major European powers in just three years, and continued to grow.50 The well-known note by Vuillemin was, commented Daladier, ‘more pessimistic than usual’.51 France’s aerial deficiencies meant that the French air force could only ‘with extreme difficulty [and with] very heavy losses fulfil the missions entrusted to it’. The report estimated that some 40 per cent of the French air force’s initial effectiveness would be lost in the opening weeks of a war, rising to 64 per cent by the end of month two. The land army would be denied vital intelligence whilst French territory – particularly beyond the Paris region – would be exposed to aerial attack. By contrast, French bombing aircraft would be practically unable to penetrate German territory at all.52 These fears crystallised after Chamberlain’s second meeting with Hitler at Bad Godesberg (22–23 September), the Führer’s increased demands increasing the likelihood of war. Halifax warned Chamberlain that the ‘[g]reat mass of public opinion seems to be hardening in sense of feeling that we have gone to the limit of concession’.53 Further pressure came on 25 September when, in Franco-British conversations, Daladier spoke with characteristic bombast. Reminded by Chamberlain of France’s lamentable aviation and anti-war public opinion, Daladier retorted that one million Frenchmen were mobilising without incident. ‘Do you believe’, he asked, ‘that it was with enthusiasm that I asked them to answer my call?’54 France’s mobilisation was not trouble free, but official reports suggest that dissent was minimal; a 25 September report noted only a few renditions of the ‘Internationale’ and several utterances of ‘À bas la guerre’ and ‘À bas les hitlériens français’. It was observed on 26 September that mobilisation was being undertaken serenely, whilst no significant incidents were reported the following day as reservists departed the Gare de l’Est.55 If many on the extreme left urged resistance, many on the right agitated for peace. Indeed, much of the unrest during September, according to v 260 v

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Public opinion, policy makers and emotion police reports, emanated from supporters of Action Française and those endorsing the views of Pierre Étienne-Flandin. Of particular concern to the police was an Action Française pamphlet, ‘La Paix! La Paix!’, accusing Freemasons, Jews and other Soviet ‘puppets’ of provoking a war in order to foment a ‘universal revolution’.56 A more latent desire for police cut across political divides. A joint petition from Le Fédération Postale and the Syndicat national des instituteurs – containing 83,935 signatures collected in just three days – advocated negotiation, whilst La confédération nationale des anciens combattants, speaking on behalf ‘of 4 million men  and their sons’, urged that the crisis be resolved peacefully. One pro-appeasement minister, Anatole de Monzie, recalled how the teachers’ and postal workers’ petition intensified already strained ‘expectations and emotions’ in decision-making circles.57 The French press ensured that appeals for both peace and resistance found a wide audience; the press became, as the government noted, a forum in which ‘partisans of negotiation and supporters of resistance confronted one another’.58 The atmosphere was less febrile in Britain but no less anxious. After Godesberg the nation girded for war, and the launching of Air Raid Protection (ARP) services commenced. Trenches were dug in London and elsewhere, and newspapers carried official advice on protecting oneself against aerial attack. The Daily Express labelled 25 September ‘Gas Mask Sunday’, a nod to both the distribution of gas masks and their rapid ubiquity. Still, as Susan Grayzel reminds us, press coverage was ‘nearly unanimous in its emphasis on the calm that prevailed’.59 Despite criticism of the lack of anti-gas protection for infants, the overriding impression was one of stoical resolve. In France, vulnerability to aerial attack prompted an urgent discussion of passive defence. Some 135  million francs had been found for the construction of air-raid shelters for the Paris region alone, and a further 135 million to make metro stations safe against poison gas, but these measures were incomplete.60 As war appeared imminent, thousands of Parisians fled the capital; 45,700 cars left Paris on 25 September, with only 16,800 coming into the city.61 On 27 September the police reported a marked increase in grande ligne ticket sales comparing 20 September to 27 September (Table 12.1). Increased density of automobile traffic out of Paris was also detected, with most (whether by rail and road) heading for Brittany or southwest France. The police reported, however, that this flight was undertaken without panic.62 France’s aerial vulnerability affected Daladier, who acknowledged that it ‘seemed impossible’ for France to resist Hitler.63 At the same time, he deplored British efforts to project French opinion as overwhelmingly v 261 v

The Munich Crisis, politics and the people Table 12.1  Sales of grande ligne tickets, 20 and 27 September 1938.

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Gare de Lyon Gare d’Austerlitz Gare d’Orsay Gare du Nord Gare St Lazare

20 September

27 September

2,660 6,713 5,113 3,185 1,867

15,200 14,987 12,103 3,505 4,254

Source:  APP, BA 1685, Police report, 28 September 1938.

pacifist, claiming that the desire for peace was both natural and widely shared. ‘In what European country would war not be unpopular?’ he mused, ‘even in Germany?’64 Once again, Daladier assumed a superficial air of steadfast determination. Following a 27 September Cabinet meeting, Interior Minister Albert Sarraut told reporters that Daladier had spoken with admirable ‘clarity and firmness’.65 Daladier also emphasised French unity, stressing the ‘perfect order that reigns in the country, the sang-froid of the nation’ and the general orderliness with which war preparations had been executed. At the same time, speaking explicitly as an ancien combattant, he insisted that his government would consider any possibility of securing an ‘honourable’ peace.66 That same day, in Britain, Chamberlain took to the airwaves. After thanking the public for their supportive letters, he uttered an emotive line that has since been used to evidence his apparent indifference to Czechoslovakia. ‘How horrible, fantastic, incredible it is’, he said, ‘that we should be digging trenches and trying on gas-masks because of a quarrel in a far-away country between people of whom we know nothing.’ Although the latter part of this sentence is widely cited, it is the adjectives ‘horrible, fantastic, incredible’, coupled with the evocation of the realities of an air and gas war, that carry the most emotional resonance. Chamberlain urged his listeners to stay calm, to interpret ARP measures as strictly precautionary, and to share his belief that war was avoidable. He argued that sympathy for ‘a small nation confronted by a big and powerful neighbour’ should not drag ‘the whole British Empire’ into war.67 This emotive appeal may have been a carefully calibrated attempt to secure popular support for appeasement, but it also revealed one man’s despair that his hard work seemed destined to fail. After all, Halifax’s characterisation of British public opinion after Godesberg was accurate. The people now braced themselves for war, albeit without enthusiasm. As one respondent to Mass-Observation put v 262 v

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Public opinion, policy makers and emotion it, ‘I’ll fight only if sent for but I’m not going to fight if they don’t.’ Others were more belligerent. ‘Hitler has gone too far this time’, said one, ‘He needs to be taught a lesson.’ There were indications too that preparations for war were accepted and even normalised. Mass-Observers in Bolton reported residents there calmly asking one another, ‘Have you got your gas mask?’ or ‘Have you got your call-up papers?’68 The Manchester Guardian reported a ‘gas mask wedding’ where two ARP volunteers in Kent married in their local ARP office.69 As Grayzel notes, this served to ‘domesticise’ war preparations, a process that continued apace in the aftermath of the crisis.70 This can, of course, be interpreted as an impressive show of calm on the part of the British people; alternatively, it provided much-needed reassurance in an atmosphere of unprecedented emotional anxiety. Another source of reassurance was faith. Some local newspapers reported higher than usual church attendances as the Munich Crisis intensified, and there was certainly a spike in attendance on Sunday 2 October as people expressed their thankfulness for the reprieve.71 Although religious leaders would subsequently question whether the desertion of Czechoslovakia was compatible with Christian morality, the emotional turbulence of September was such that the Church instinctively embraced the chance of peace. In a 28 September radio broadcast, as news of the Munich Conference broke, Archbishop of Canterbury Cosmo Lang hailed the ‘sudden uplifting of the cloud’, attributing to the power of prayer the easing of the tensions that had ‘for the last weeks darkened and depressed our life’.72 In France too, organised religion conveyed unbridled thankfulness that war had been forestalled; the Archbishop of Paris, Cardinal Verdier, presided over a service at Notre Dame on 3 October celebrating the salvaged peace.73 When Daladier and Chamberlain embarked for Munich, they departed nations gripped by anxiety about the prospect of war but unsure how far their leaders should go to avoid it. Though eager to secure peace, anger at Hitler’s unreasonableness lingered. Contradictory manifestations of the ‘will of the people’ only heightened the uncertainty. Hilda Chamberlain noted dissenting voices campaigning outside Downing Street, the International Peace Campaign and the League of Nations Union agitating for ‘Peace and Security’, ‘Help the Czechs’ and ‘Down with Chamberlain’. ‘Could one conceive three more contradictory statements?’ she asked: ‘Naturally one did not pay any attention to an unimportant rabble but still a howling mob when your nerves are strung to breaking point is not soothing.’74 Daladier too was troubled by the v 263 v

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The Munich Crisis, politics and the people vicissitudes of French opinion. His reading material on the plane to Munich included both pro- and anti-appeasement newspapers as well as Vuillemin’s note outlining France’s aerial weaknesses.75 In the absence of a unified public opinion, such stark depictions of military deficiencies would have figured prominently in his reckoning. Despite divergent opinions, news of the Munich Conference was received in France – or in Paris at least – with palpable relief. It had, reported the police, generated a ‘nette impression de détente dans le public’. It was remarked further that many who had intended to leave the capital had now changed their minds, whilst another report noted widespread appreciation for the efforts of Daladier, Chamberlain and President Roosevelt.76 Whether these reports, or even the substance of them, reached Daladier is unclear, but had they done so he might have been less surprised by the buoyant crowds welcoming him home from Munich. It is unlikely, however, that anything would have prevented Daladier from being an unenthusiastic participant. After all, he was essentially sanctioning the desertion of an ally, even if, by so doing, he was avoiding a war that few French people wanted and the country as a whole appeared ill equipped to fight. At Munich, Mussolini told Daladier that he would ‘be received in Paris with enthusiasm … because peace is saved’.77 Daladier, as we have seen, was unconvinced. He was, nonetheless, struck by the number of women within the Parisian crowds, including numerous mothers thrusting their children in his direction.78 The police also noted the emotion, reporting how Daladier’s car struggled to navigate the streets given the density and enthusiasm of the crowd.79 Daladier reluctantly appeared on the balcony at the War Ministry, if only to ensure that the masses would subsequently disperse. He did not share their jubilation, noting afterwards how isolated he felt in seeing Munich as a desperate attempt to avoid war, a ‘supreme act of conciliation’.80 Daladier was circumspect on his return to Paris, not unmoved by his reception but unwilling to allow manifestations of emotion to alter his conviction that the settlement was dishonourable. In a radio broadcast, he did describe Munich as ‘indispensable for the maintenance of European peace’, and welcomed too how the ‘spirit of collaboration’ had prevailed, but he was intent chiefly on praising the ‘discipline, the calm and the resolution of the French people’. Aware of the need for still greater unity in the future, he urged the French to ‘remain a united, hard-working and strong people’, these characteristics alone capable of securing a lasting peace.81 v 264 v

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Public opinion, policy makers and emotion The British people welcomed the Munich reprieve, illustrated by the cheering crowds, the largely positive press commentary, and the deluge of ‘Munich letters’ reaching Downing Street. Many of the letters that Chamberlain (and Annie) received during the crisis were overflowing with emotive rhetoric. Christabel Pankhurst wrote to Annie on 28 September thanking the prime minister for his efforts, prompted to write by those ‘misguided critics’ of appeasement who failed to represent the ‘silent majority of the people’. Also writing to Annie, Queen Elizabeth evoked ‘these last agonizing weeks’, applauding the ‘sheer courage & great wisdom’ exhibited by the Chamberlains.82 Expressions of thankfulness poured in from around the world. Charlotte, Duchess of Luxembourg, thanked the prime minister for ‘sparing us all from the horrors of war’, whilst a group of Quai d’Orsay employees asserted that there was no wife or mother in France who was not venerating Chamberlain for his efforts ‘to save the peace’. Similarly, King Léopold of Belgium offered his ‘heartiest thanks’, noting how rare it was for one single man ‘to save innumerable lives’.83 Countless letters were received also from the Empire and the Dominions. ‘The heart of Canada is rejoicing tonight,’ wrote Canadian premier Mackenzie King, commending Chamberlain’s ‘unremitting efforts for peace’ and offering ‘the warm congratulations of the Canadian peoples.’ King’s letter was shrouded in emotive rhetoric. ‘On the very brink of chaos’, he concluded, ‘with passions flaming, and armies marching, the voice of Heaven has found a way out of the conflict which no people in their hearts desired.’84 Other correspondents confirmed Chamberlain’s belief that he had broken through Hitler’s emotional crust and established a genuine rapport. Former Labour leader and committed pacifist George Lansbury hoped that Chamberlain would ‘keep up personal relationships with Herr Hitler’, suggesting that the Führer’s ‘shouting & bluster’ could be ascribed to an ‘inferiority complex’. Chamberlain, continued Lansbury, had ‘struck a chord’, perhaps rendering Hitler more personable and amenable in the future.85 From Chamberlain’s home city of Birmingham, plentiful expressions of gratitude were articulated. ‘Millions of people today have full and thankful hearts’, wrote one, and ‘your own people’ in Birmingham are particularly proud of their man who had borne ‘such a crescendo of mental & physical strain’. Other letters were penned by children, including one from eleven-year-old Ifor Williams of Bangor, the child of a soldier from the last war who thanked Chamberlain for saving his father ‘from going to the war again’.86 Even seasoned politicians abandoned v 265 v

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The Munich Crisis, politics and the people their usual emotional stoicism. Samuel Hoare confessed to Annie that he was naturally ‘a very shy person [with] a bad habit of hiding my feelings’, but was now sufficiently moved to ‘break through the ice and let a warm heart make itself felt’.87 From Paris, former premier Alexandre Millerand applauded Chamberlain’s ‘audacious tenacity’ in salvaging peace despite the ‘frightful anguish’ hovering over him.88 Relief was the dominant and instinctive response to Munich. Some British and French newspapers, notably of a leftist proclivity, did protest the Munich terms, but most were simply thankful for the reprieve.89 The statesmen involved were briefly lauded: the Petit Parisien presented Bonnet with the Grand Livre de la Paix, carrying the signatures of nearly 400,000 French men, women and children, expressing their ‘eternal gratitude’ for his efforts; Paris-Soir launched a subscription to purchase a Maison de la Paix for the Chamberlains in the French countryside.90 At the same time, the post-Munich period saw much soul searching and introspection, in tandem with a desire to resume normal life. The Paris police reported numerous people leaving flowers at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, whilst Parisian cinemas and theatres reported a surge in post-crisis visitors.91 In Britain, many newspapers began questioning the prudence of Munich, whilst a series of autumn by-elections provided worrying indications for Chamberlain that his policy was losing its lustre. He remained, however, quite unmoved. Chamberlain’s stubborn refusal to acknowledge that appeasement might be haemorrhaging popular support owed much to the emotional journey he had undertaken during the Munich Crisis. Although the crisis itself was a relatively brief episode, its emotional effects would be longer lasting. Conclusion André-Jean Tudesq has noted how the Munich Crisis was, for the French people, bookended by two radio speeches by Daladier. In the first, a brief three-minute broadcast on 28 September, he expressed gratitude to France’s mobilised forces but also a determination to safeguard both the general peace and France’s vital interests. On his return on 30 September, Daladier avoided celebrating the saved peace and instead implored the French people to demonstrate unity and resolve. For Tudesq, these two broadcasts shaped the narrative of the Munich Crisis in the French popular imagination.92 To be sure, there was relief and joy – this was an understandable reflex given the drama of the reprieve. But it was a joy tempered by a recognition that France’s internal troubles v 266 v

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Public opinion, policy makers and emotion had ­contributed to a shameful outcome. This realisation aided Daladier in the months ahead as he sought to strengthen and unify a previously fragmented nation, girding France for what he considered to be an inevitable conflict. The ‘Munich moment’ was framed differently in Britain. For Chamberlain, the reprieve was not ephemeral but a clear sign that appeasement was working and must be continued. Paradoxically, although Daladier subsequently claimed that he had been ‘tricked’ by Chamberlain during the Munich Crisis, it was the French premier who would benefit most in its aftermath. Daladier’s power and prestige grew; by contrast, Chamberlain’s attachment to appeasement was increasingly out of step with public opinion. His popularity declined thereafter, culminating in his removal from office in 1940 and the emplotment of his historical reputation in Cato’s Guilty Men. Emotions clearly played a part. Chamberlain’s emotional attachment to appeasement needed little endorsement, but the immediate response to Munich provided it anyway. For Daladier, the overriding emotions were shame and bitterness, fostering a determination to ensure that such a capitulation would not be repeated. The people’s response was never uniform, but in the aftermath of Munich a near consensus emerged that the reprieve had come at too great a cost. Emotionally, therefore, Daladier was more attuned to the masses than Chamberlain. The Munich Crisis was an emotional rollercoaster for all involved, and the British and French prime ministers were prominent participants. Given the fast-moving events of September 1938 it is unsurprising that these men experienced emotional turbulence. It is unsurprising too that the British and French people experienced the crisis in an acutely ­emotional way. After all, modern war meant that civilians were now potential combatants and fatalities, a reality made plain by the civil defence preparations undertaken hurriedly during the crisis. Anxiety was rife, tensions were high, and responses were diverse and changeable. As both Julie Gottlieb and Jessica Wardhaugh discuss elsewhere in this volume, the crude and binary delineation of responses into shame and relief (in Britain) and the munichois and anti-munichois (in France) obfuscates a broad spectrum of emotional responses that were frequently experienced simultaneously. The ‘people’ in both countries exhibited the tumult of these mixed emotions, but so too did the policy makers. Indeed, the policy makers’ responses cannot be understood independently of the emotional responses of the people. The burden of power and responsibility rarely weighs so heavily, and the emotional v 267 v

The Munich Crisis, politics and the people

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cultures of decision making are thus hugely significant. Only by considering the emotional dimension of the Munich Crisis, and the role played therein by the people, can the diplomatic responses of Britain and France, both during the crisis itself and in its aftermath, be properly understood. Notes   1 Neville Chamberlain, House of Commons debate, 6 October 1938, Hansard (339 H.C. Deb. 5s, col. 55), my emphasis.   2 Cited in Pierre Lazareff, Deadline: The Behind-the-Scenes Story of the Last Decade in France (New York: Random House, 1942), p. 194.  3 Ibid.   4 Georges Bonnet, Défense de la paix: de Washington au Quai d’Orsay (Geneva: Les Éditions du Cheval Ailé, 1946), pp. 292, 293–4.  5 Robert Dean, ‘The Personal and the Political: Gender and Sexuality in Diplomatic History’, Diplomatic History, 36:4 (2012), p. 763.   6 Petra Goedde, ‘Power, Culture, and the Rise of Transnational History in the United States’, The International History Review, 40:3 (2018), p. 595.  7 Peter N. Stearns, ‘Emotion and Change: Where History Comes In’, in Yohan Arrifin, Jean-Marc Coicaud and Vesselin Popovski (eds), Emotions in International Politics: Beyond Mainstream International Relations (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2016), p. 50.  8 A notable exception is Martin Francis’s analysis of Winston Churchill, Anthony Eden and Harold Macmillan, in ‘Tears, Tantrums, and Bared Teeth: The Emotional Economy of Three Conservative Prime Ministers, 1951–1963’, Journal of British Studies, 41:3 (2002), where he effects ‘a scholarly synthesis that recognizes that the world of politics is a part of, and not apart from, the realm of private feeling’ (p. 387).   9 Peter Stearns, ‘Preface: Why Do Emotions History?’ Rubrica Contemporanea, 4:7 (2015), p. 5. 10 Stearns, ‘Emotion and Change’, p. 50. 11 John W. Young, ‘Emotions and the British Government’s Decision for War in 1914’, Diplomacy & Statecraft, 29:4 (2018), p. 545. 12 Frank Costigliola, ‘“Unceasing Pressure for Penetration”: Gender, Pathology, and Emotion in George Kennan’s Formation of the Cold War’, The Journal of American History, 83:4 (1997), pp. 1309–10, p. 1331. 13 Frank Costigliola, ‘“I Had Come as a Friend”: Emotion, Culture, and Ambiguity in the Formation of the Cold War, 1943–45’, Cold War History, 1:1 (2000), pp. 108–9. 14 Julie V. Gottlieb, ‘Guilty Women’, Foreign Policy, and Appeasement in InterWar Britain (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015), p. 167. v 268 v

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Public opinion, policy makers and emotion 15 Peter T. Marsh, The Chamberlain Litany: Letters Within a Governing Family from Empire to Appeasement (London: Haus Books, 2010), p. 22; Robert Self, Neville Chamberlain: A Biography (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2006), p. 10. 16 Self, Neville Chamberlain, p. 6. 17 Marsh, The Chamberlain Litany, p. 299. 18 Archives Nationales, Paris [hereafter AN], Fonds Daladier, 496 AP/9, 2DA2, Dr.1, srda: Georges Bonnet à de Lacroix, 16 July 1938. 19 René Girault, ‘La décision gouvernemantale en politique extérieure’, in René Rémond and Janine Bourdin (eds), Édouard Daladier, chef de gouvernement (Paris: Presses de la Fondation Nationale des Sciences Politiques, 1977), p. 222. 20 Chamberlain Papers, University of Birmingham, Special Collections Depart­ ment  [hereafter Chamberlain Papers], NC1/26/530, Neville Chamberlain to Annie, 2 September 1938. 21 Chamberlain Papers, NC18/1/1063, Neville to Hilda, 13 August 1938; Chamberlain Papers, NC18/1/1068, Neville to Ida, 11 September 1938. 22 Marcus Holmes, Face-to-Face Diplomacy: Social Neurosciences and International Relations (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018), pp. 202–3. 23 Cited in Holmes, Face-to-Face Diplomacy, p. 224. 24 Holmes, Face-to-Face Diplomacy, p. 228. 25 Diary entry, 18 September 1938, in David Dilks (ed.), The Diaries of Sir Alexander Cadogan, 1938–45 (London: Cassell, 1971), p. 100. 26 Bonnet, Défense de la paix, pp. 239–40. 27 Guy de Girard de Charbonnières, La plus évitables de toutes les guerres: un témoin raconte (Paris: Albatros, 1985), pp. 164–6. 28 Jacques Puyaubert, Georges Bonnet (1889–1973): Les combats d’un pacifiste (Rennes: Presses universitaires de Rennes, 2007), p. 163. 29 Cited in Elisabeth du Réau, Édouard Daladier: 1884–1970 (Paris: Fayard, 1993), p. 270. 30 Yvon Lacaze, ‘Daladier, Bonnet and the Decision-Making Process during the Munich Crisis. 1938’, in Robert Boyce (ed.), French Foreign and Defence Policy, 1918–1940: The Decline and Fall of a Great Power (London: Routledge, 1998), p. 225. 31 Chamberlain Papers, NC18/1/1070: Neville to Hilda, 2 October 1938. 32 Lacaze, ‘Daladier, Bonnet and the Decision-Making Process’, p. 222. 33 Ibid. 34 Génébrier, in Lacaze, ‘Daladier, Bonnet and the Decision-Making Process’, p. 224. 35 For more on this, and the gendered aspect of the ‘crisis letters’, see Gottlieb, ‘Guilty Women’, pp. 196–211. 36 See Holmes, Face-to-Face Diplomacy, p. 230. 37 Chamberlain Papers, NC18/1/1070, Neville to Hilda, 2 October 1938. v 269 v

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The Munich Crisis, politics and the people 38 Chamberlain Papers, NC18/1/1071, Neville to Ida, 9 October 1938. 39 Cited in du Réau, Édouard Daladier, p. 285. 40 Journal officiel de la République français: Débats parlementaires, Chambre des députés, séance du 4 octobre 1938. 41 Archives de la Préfecture de Police, Paris [hereafter APP], BA 1720, Police reports, 4–5 September 1938. 42 ‘Nuremberg and Aussig’, The Times, 7 September 1938. 43 AN, Fonds Daladier, 496/AP 9, 2DA2, Dr.6, sdrc, Bonnet à Lacroix, 8 September 1938. 44 AN, Fonds Daladier, 496/AP 3, Dr.1: 19–24 September, sdra, Notes manuscrites d’Édouard Daladier. 45 AN, Fonds Daladier, 496/AP 3, Dr.1: sdre, Fernand Boverat à Daladier, 20 September 1938. 46 The National Archives, London, CAB 23/94: Cabinet discussions, 24 September 1938. 47 Richard Overy, The Morbid Age: Britain Between the Wars (London: Allen Lane, 2009), p. 344. 48 For more on this in Britain, see Susan R. Grayzel, At Home and Under Fire: Air Raids and Culture in Britain from the Great War to the Blitz (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012); for France, see Daniel Hucker, ‘French Public Attitudes Towards the Prospect of War in 1938–1939: “Pacifism” or “War Anxiety”?’ French History, 21:4 (2007), pp. 431–49. 49 Bullitt to Roosevelt, 28 September 1938, in Orville H. Bullitt (ed.), For the President, Personal and Secret (London: Andre Deutsch, 1972), p. 298. 50 AN, Fonds Daladier, 496/AP 35, 4DA8, Dr.2, sdrb, Forces aériennes allemandes en 1938 (1er janvier), 27 April 1938. 51 AN, Fonds Daladier, 496/AP 32, 4DA5, Dr.5, sdre, Lettre Vuillemin, 26 September 1938. 52 AN, Fonds Daladier, 496/AP 32, 4DA5, Dr.7: sdrb, Vuillemin à Le Chambre. 53 Documents on British Foreign Policy, 3rd Series, Vol. II, no. 1058, Halifax to Chamberlain, 23 September 1938. 54 AN, Fonds Daladier, 496/AP 3, Dr.2, sdra, Notes manuscrites d’Édouard Daladier. 55 APP, BA 1685, Police reports, 25, 26, 27 September 1938. 56 APP, BA 1685, Police report, 25 September 1938. In Britain, too, the far right positioned itself as a ‘peace’ party at this time, urging that the British government stay out of the ‘Jews’ War’. For more on this, see Julie V. Gottlieb, ‘Gender and the “Jews’ War”: Women, Anti-Semitism, and the Anti-War Campaigns in Britain, 1938–1940’, Diplomacy & Statecraft, (forthcoming). 57 Anatole de Monzie, Ci-devant (Paris: Flammarion, 1942), p. 38. 58 AN, Fonds Daladier, 496/AP 8, 2DA1, Dr.3, Documents généraux – Munich. 59 Grayzel, At Home and Under Fire, p. 257. v 270 v

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Public opinion, policy makers and emotion 60 AN, F60/1026: Dossiers de Camille Chautemps, Note pour le Cabinet du Ministre, 28 September 1938. 61 APP, BA 1685, Police report, 25 September 1938. 62 APP, BA 1685, Police report, 28 September 1938. 63 AN, Fonds Daladier, 496/AP 3, Dr.3, sdra, Notes manuscrites d’Édouard Daladier. 64 AN Fonds Daladier, 496/AP 8, 2DA1, Dr.3: Documents généraux – Munich. 65 APP, BA 1685, Report on the Conseil des Ministres, 27 September 1938. 66 APP, BA 1685, Directeur du Cabinet du Préfet, quoting Daladier, 27 September 1938. 67 Cited in Neville Chamberlain, The Struggle for Peace (London: Hutchinson & Co., 1939), pp. 275–6. 68 Cited in Paul Horsler, ‘Cometh the Hour, Cometh the Nation: LocalLevel Opinion and Defence Preparations Prior to the Second World War, November 1937–September 1939’ (PhD thesis, London School of Economics, 2016), p. 82. 69 ‘Gas Masks at a Wedding’, Manchester Guardian, 22 September 1938. 70 Grayzel, At Home and Under Fire, pp. 251–73. 71 Horsler, ‘Cometh the Hour’, pp. 88–90. 72 Cited in Andrew Chandler, ‘Munich and Morality: The Bishops of the Church of England and Appeasement’, Twentieth Century British History, 5:1 (1994), p. 81. 73 Benjamin Martin, France in 1938 (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2005), p. 183. 74 Hilda Chamberlain to Mary Chamberlain, 30 September 1938, cited in Marsh, The Chamberlain Litany, p. 309. 75 AN, Fonds Daladier, 496/AP 10, 2DA3, Dr.6, sdrc, Notes manuscrites d’Édouard Daladier. 76 APP, BA 1685, Police memorandum, 29 September 1938; APP, BA 1685, Police report, ‘La situation à Paris’, 29 September 1938. 77 AN, Fonds Daladier, 496/AP 3, Dr.4: La conférence de Munich: sdra, Récits de la conférence. 78 AN. Fonds Daladier, 496/AP 8, 2DA1, Dr.3, Documents généraux – Munich. 79 APP, BA 1685, Police report, 30 September 1938. 80 AN, Fonds Daladier, 496/AP 8, 2 DA 1, Dr.3, Documents généraux – Munich. 81 AN, Fonds Daladier, 496 Ap 3, Dr. 4, sdrb. 82 Chamberlain Papers, NC13/11/741, Christabel Pankhurst to Annie Chamberlain, 28 September 1938; NC13/11/656, Queen Elizabeth to Mrs Chamberlain, 30 September 1938. 83 Chamberlain Papers, NC13/11/639, Charlotte, Duchess of Luxembourg, to Chamberlain, 30 September 1938; NC13/11/648, Letter to Chamberlain from a group of Quai d’Orsay employees, 1 October 1938; NC13/11/700, King Léopold to Chamberlain, 6 October 1938. v 271 v

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The Munich Crisis, politics and the people 84 Chamberlain Papers, NC13/11/689, Mackenzie King to Chamberlain, 30 September 1938. 85 Chamberlain Papers, NC13/11/691, Lansbury to Chamberlain, 30 September 1938 (original emphasis). 86 Chamberlain Papers, NC7/11/31/246, C. Herbert Smith (Birmingham) to Chamberlain, 2 October 1938; NC13/9/71, Ifor Williams to Chamberlain, 2 November 1938. 87 Chamberlain Papers, NC13/11/685, Samuel Hoare to Annie Chamberlain, 3 October 1938. 88 Chamberlain Papers, NC13/11/736, Millerand to Chamberlain, 30 September 1938. 89 For more on newspaper responses, see Daniel Hucker, Public Opinion and the End of Appeasement in Britain and France (Farnham: Ashgate, 2011), pp. 51–62. 90 Lazareff, Deadline!, p. 195. 91 APP, BA 1685, Police report, 2 October 1938. 92 André-Jean Tudesq, ‘L’utilisation gouvernementale de la radio’, in Rémond and Bourdin (eds), Édouard Daladier, chef de gouvernement, p. 259.

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France in the ‘blue light’ of Munich: popular agency, activity and the reframing of history Jessica Wardhaugh

On 26 September 1938, the major Parisian daily Le Petit Journal featured a photograph of a worker changing the bright white bulb of a street light for a new bulb, dimly shaded. It was not an unusual image. Other ­streetlights – in Paris as in Munich and in other cities around Europe – were being shaded or painted blue to restrict their illumination to that of the barest necessity: ‘For we know’, explained the newspaper, ‘that blue light offers a minimum of visibility.’1 A similarly shifting vision from normality to abnormality would be described less than a year later, when, as one magazine put it, Paris was once again ‘enveloped in a protective cloud’, with the ‘harsh light of the streetlamps often giving way to a pale blue light’.2 Not unlike the conference itself and the crisis that framed it, the pale blue light of the ‘Munich moment’ strictly limited freedom of action and perception. Its very dimness brought into focus the impending threat to the liberty and lives of the people across Europe. What, indeed, could ordinary people do at such a time of crisis, when decision making seemed to be entirely out of their scope of influence, out of the realm of national governments and parliaments, and in the hands of the four leaders meeting at Munich? Was there any point in doing anything, other than reacting to the actions of a political and diplomatic elite, to their comings and goings, decrees and decisions, promises and betrayal? In France, the Chamber of Deputies received the Munich Agreement as a fait accompli.3 While Prime Minister Édouard Daladier was greeted with overwhelming popular enthusiasm on his return from Munich – including a ‘veritable exodus’ from central Paris to Le Bourget in order to witness his arrival at the airport4 – more politicised expressions of v 273 v

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The Munich Crisis, politics and the people popular emotion were carefully circumscribed by rigorous police refusal to authorise mass meetings. Little wonder that research and recrimination have often focused on a guilty few, while assuming the esprit munichois of the many. Yet the moment of Munich was also a moment of possibility. At a political and diplomatic level, it was a moment at which the boundaries of Europe and the balance of power between its nation states were open for discussion, even if some outcomes were more likely than others. In countries where military mobilisation and evacuation were decreed, intense popular activity created scope for individual and collective initiative at local and municipal levels. Working within parties or religious groups, ordinary people could and did seek to mitigate the effects of high-level decisions over which they might seem to exercise little control. Though some were defeatist, others believed in the power of popular (and divine) agency to reshape the course of history and the relationships between the peoples of Europe, framing in their minds other structures for these relationships than those established by Hitler’s Germany. Pausing in the blue light of Munich to try to recapture some of this popular activity, agency and reimagining of history offers a new perspective on a historical turning point. Although the Munich Agreement of 30 September averted war in the short term, the organisation, character and resulting decisions of this particular meeting were far from easy to anticipate in the preceding weeks and days, even by the leaders most directly involved. It may seem an obvious point, but the peoples of Europe could not foresee the Munich Agreement either. To analyse popular experience before Munich, it is therefore important to move beyond assumptions on the ‘uniqueness and unidirectionality’ of historical processes,5 and the associated binary classifications of popular reactions as munichois and anti-munichois.6 Instead, as Reinhard Koselleck has argued, it is important to be sensitive to ‘hypotheses that, for example, bring into play past possibilities’.7 In the moment of Munich – as at other times of crisis – there was nevertheless a framework for agency and a space for liberty, however limited this space might seem. Writing the history of the Munich moment: the elites, the people and posterity The challenge with exploring popular agency during the Czechoslovak crisis is threefold. First, as any collection of essays on Munich makes v 274 v

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France in the ‘blue light’ of Munich clear, discussions of ‘Munich’ are only partly about 1938. The very word ‘Munich’ has since lent itself to the drawing of historical parallels, transcending its geographical specificity to become a state of mind, a reprehensible attitude of appeasement towards dictators (in any historical period), and a question about where and when Hitler’s ambitions should have been definitively curtailed.8 Often, studies of the Munich moment are ultimately less concerned with 1938 than with re-evaluating responsibility for 1939–45, on the assumption that the Allies would have fought an earlier war both swiftly and successfully. As Charles Sowerwine concludes: ‘Munich and its aftermath were disastrous for the West. It gave Hitler a much-needed year to rearm the Wehrmacht (German army) and convinced him that the West would always capitulate.’9 This desire to view Munich through the lens of 1939 or 1940 characterises personal testimony as well as historical analysis.10 And where France is concerned, there is a further tendency to assimilate the ‘shame’ of the Munich moment – and the ongoing ‘lickspittle policy’ of rapprochement with Germany11 – into a seamless narrative of republican decline culminating in the collapse of the Third Republic in 1940.12 Second, this discussion of Munich as pivotal to the outbreak of war has entailed a focus on the deeds or misdeeds of the elites rather than on the people. In the French case, recrimination has centred on Prime Minister Édouard Daladier. Sympathetic accounts such as that of Martin Thomas describe Daladier as finding at Munich ‘an improvised solution born of desperation’;13 more critical ones mock France’s bullish leader as having only ‘the horns of a snail’14 and as acting, together with the other leaders at the conference, ‘like witches three, [having] instructions to throw principle into the cauldron of expediency’.15 Certainly, no study of France’s role in the Munich Agreement would be complete without a focus on the Prime Minister. Ironically, Daladier himself had few illusions in September 1938 – whether about the agreement or about Hitler’s future ambitions – and was considerably less munichois than the French population as a whole. His personal preference for respecting France’s obligations to Czechoslovakia was, nevertheless, tempered by growing scepticism regarding France’s military capability and concomitant doubt about the strength of British support in a potential conflict. A veteran of the First World War and of French republican politics, Daladier had pushed hard for rearmament; as prime minister in 1938, he endeavoured to ‘put France back to work’ by crushing strikes and increasing production.16 Yet on 24 August 1938, Daladier was informed by General Vuillemin that Germany was producing v 275 v

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The Munich Crisis, politics and the people twelve times as many aeroplanes as France; he also knew from an earlier meeting with Neville Chamberlain that Britain was lukewarm about supporting France’s 1925 pact with Czechoslovakia. When faced with Hitler’s demands for the autonomy of the Sudeten Germans, Daladier’s ambivalent response was first to reaffirm the French pact while simultaneously advising the Czechoslovakian government to make concessions. On 20 September, Daladier made known to Edvard Beneš that if he resisted Hitler’s demands, French support could not be guaranteed. Although Daladier then decreed partial mobilisation of the French army on 24 September (following Czechoslovakian mobilisation the previous day), he reluctantly conceded to Hitler’s extended claims at Munich, and returned to France by plane convinced that he would meet a barrage of popular anger and recrimination. ‘The idiots’ (les cons), he muttered bitterly to himself on perceiving their jubilation – and photographs of his return to Paris in an open-top car show Daladier slumped gloomily in his seat while Foreign Minister Georges Bonnet smiles brightly beside him. Descriptions of Daladier’s car mobbed by euphoric crowds are often one of the rare accounts of popular activity in narratives of the Munich moment.17 Such images also reveal the third challenge to the study of popular agency at this time of crisis by exemplifying the continuing focus on popular opinion and reaction rather than on the people as actors in their own right.18 If historical debates on 1938 implicitly concern 1939–45, and by extension questions of appeasement and responsibility, then the people are of interest to such debates principally insofar as they supported or protested. In the French case, discussions have circled around questions of where fractures emerged between those who were munichois and those who were not. In a survey of public opinion conducted shortly afterwards, 57 per cent pronounced themselves in favour and 37 per cent against.19 These figures concealed, however, a complex fracturing of public opinion in ways that did not neatly correlate with divisions between left and right. Even some of the earliest historical analyses of public opinion in 1938 concluded – partly to their surprise – that the widespread assumption of a munichois right and an anti-munichois left needed to be carefully nuanced, and that ideological positions in 1938 did not predetermine later support for collaboration or resistance during the Occupation.20 Coinciding with the disintegration of the Popular Front alliance that had briefly (albeit only partially) united Socialists, Communists and Radicals from 1934 onwards, the Munich moment was part of a rapid reconfiguration of the French v 276 v

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France in the ‘blue light’ of Munich political scene.21 Through the earlier 1930s, for instance, pacifism and anti-fascism had been mutually supportive, helping to secure a degree of left-wing unity.22 Yet the prospect of military opposition to Hitler in 1938 divided parties among themselves on both left and right.23 While the Communist Party sought to present a united front (73 out of the 75 deputies who voted against the Agreement on 4 October were Communist), Socialist leaders and supporters were bitterly at odds, with Léon Blum admitting to a ‘cowardly relief’ that the dismemberment of Czechoslovakia had averted war.24 As police archives reveal – and as subsequent studies have analysed in detail – right-wing groups were similarly torn between resolute pacifism, conditional nationalism and a more ardent enthusiasm for war.25 The neo-monarchist Action française exhibited determined opposition to any prospect of war (while still praising the patriotism of those mobilised in national defence), and Colonel de la Rocque urged members of the Parti Social Français to demonstrate their patriotic fervour to ‘defeatists’ and ‘the fearful’.26 Yet the extreme right Parti Populaire Français witnessed the departure of several influential militants, disappointed by ‘proof of weakness’ on the part of their munichois leader Jacques Doriot.27 Crucial though these studies of opinion remain to the understanding of France’s changing political landscape, they leave questions of popular activity and agency unanswered. In contrast, this chapter explores not so much what French people thought in September 1938 as what they did, and what they thought they could do. Engaging with the conceptual framework of ‘possible histories’ previously described, this chapter also builds on the work of those who have challenged the idea of a simply passive or pacifist populace, or who have explored civil defence and population displacement in the 1930s and 1940s.28 To examine popular activity, agency and imagination, it draws on photographic and ministerial archives, as well as on the political press, seeking in particular to highlight shared themes and concerns (I have explored the differences between these groups in more detail elsewhere).29 The guiding aim is to retreat from the lens of posterity through which the Munich moment is inevitably viewed, and to study the frames and frameworks of activity when this future was unknown, capturing the specificity of popular experience ‘in the blue light of Munich’. Focusing first on popular activity and then on popular agency, the chapter finally moves outwards towards an examination of how the French reframed history in their minds, hopes and fears at the time of Munich itself. v 277 v

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Popular activity The decisions and implications of Munich transformed the activity and agency of ordinary people in France, as across Europe. Fourteen divisions (approximately 700,000 reserve soldiers) were mobilised at minimal notice on 24 September – and the crowds of reservists and their families that surged towards the Gare de l’Est in Paris would return vividly to the minds (and publications) of the French almost exactly a year later.30 As urban and suburban areas were extensively prepared for the possibility of attack, Parisians fled the capital and populations were evacuated from border areas in a displacement that would shape both mental and physical pathways for the exode of summer 1940.31 The specificities of the experience of mobilisation and evacuation in autumn 1938 remain, however, largely unexplored. Some accounts ignore this facet of popular experience entirely;32 others offer a fleeting reference.33 Certainly, recent research on civil defence and population displacement in the 1930s makes it possible to set the experience of 1938 in a broader chronological and geographical framework. In the interwar years, as Roxanne Panchasi reminds us, ‘the projection of the “nationterritory” of France into the “next war” was, to use Nora’s terminology, a lieu of both cultural memory and anticipation’.34 Thus, preparations for civil defence in the likely event of war, culminating in the law on the General Organisation of the Nation for Wartime on 11 July 1938, created both material and psychological frameworks for the experience of the Munich moment.35 Equally, the population displacement provoked by mobilisation and evacuation in September 1938 can be situated within the near-continuous demographic disruption of the period – for, as Nicole Dombrowski Risser explains, the six months between the Sudeten crisis of September 1938 and the invasion of Czechoslovakia on 15 March 1939 ‘witnessed an explosion of population movement in France and Europe’.36 In France, Hitler’s annexation of Austria in March 1938 had already led to the evacuation of tens of thousands from communities near Verdun to refugee facilities outside Reims, while the population of Spanish exiles in southwestern France would reach approximately 400,000 by the outbreak of war.37 Yet the particular character of disruption and displacement in September 1938 deserves attention, and not least because it was partial, short-lived, and the subject of retrospective re-evaluation with ‘next time’ firmly in mind – a powerful exemplification of what Panchasi describes as the ‘culture of anticipation’ in interwar France.38 The v 278 v

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France in the ‘blue light’ of Munich ­difference between reactions to the exodes of 1938 and 1940 are especially noticeable, not least when comparing the individual prefects’ reports prepared in response to a circular from the Ministry of the Interior in October 1938 with the ‘syntheses’ of prefects’ reports produced in the aftermath of defeat in summer 1940.39 The 1938 reports are rich in detail on civil defence, popular reactions and administrative initiative, all with the concern for greater efficiency at the outbreak of the next war. In stark contrast, the 1940 reports are briefer and lacking in questioning introspection, now that these pathways of possibility have been closed down by the finality of military defeat.40 How can the specificity of the Munich moment be defined? First, the requirement for partial rather than general mobilisation – which meant that no professions were exempt from armed service – created unusual scope for individual and municipal initiative. In the Pas de Calais, the mobilisation of policemen was of special concern in mining areas that included significant proportions of foreigners among the population,41 while the calling up of municipal officials such as local mayors disrupted administrative procedure and efficiency.42 Several prefects mentioned the mobilisation of bakers – more problematic than in 1914, they argued, now that those in rural areas were unaccustomed to baking their own bread.43 Meanwhile, the absence of an official declaration of war made it impossible to institute wartime rationing. Prefects were therefore obliged to use their own ingenuity, and in some cases to resort to previously devised plans: the Prefect of the Hautes Pyrénées had, for example, already submitted a proposal to the government in January 1938 for a commercial group responsible for collecting and rationing resources.44 In a similar spirit of initiative, the Prefect of the Haute Saône began in late September 1938 not only to centralise bakeries in his département but also to secure petrol coupons from the military authorities in Vesoul to ensure the safe and swift passage of doctors, vets and midwives.45 The second defining characteristic of popular activity at this point was that the hasty September preparations for evacuation and civil defence brought co-operation, confusion and – reading between the lines – a certain degree of chaos. In reports on these preparations, latent panic emerges from the fault lines of a patriotic narrative according to which evacuation and civil defence were, like the mobilisation of reservists, accomplished with smooth efficiency and patriotic resolve. Across France, prefects complained of the near absence of gas masks for their populations, and of the near impossibility of accommodating those fleeing not only Paris but also border areas such as the Ardennes in the v 279 v

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The Munich Crisis, politics and the people anticipation of German attack. While Parisians with houses or friends in the suburbs or further afield took to the trains (or to their cars if they had them), hundreds of thousands of refugees fled from regions such as the Ardennes to places of greater safety, which again required considerable improvisation if these refugees were to be fed and housed. A lack of communication at government level meant, for instance, that the Vendée received not only 170,000 evacuees from the Ardennes (temporarily housed in holiday camps) but also, by order of the Minister for Education, a potentially uncapped number of schoolchildren from the Parisian area, presenting acute difficulties of accommodation and sustenance.46 In September/October 1938, the ‘culture of anticipation’ was almost palpable. Among the most extensive overviews of civil defence and evacuation received by the Ministry of the Interior was a report from the Parisian Prefect of Police, whose analysis not only pointed out the inadequacies of the September exercises but also advocated urgent preventative measures. The threat of chemical attack, he warned, made the centralisation of Parisian animal and vegetable produce at Les Halles a particular danger, and he recommended the decentralisation of food production and distribution as well as the identification of additional sources of drinking water. But equally troubling were the lack of coordination during the process of evacuation (he noted the transportation of large numbers of people to towns whose host population had already departed); the precaution of using blue light (too visible, in his opinion); and the failure of citizens to remain sufficiently committed to civil defence to remember their gas masks once the immediate danger had passed. Continual alertness was in his view essential: for the Battle of Paris, when it came, would be so swift and devastating that the lost time of preparation could never be recovered – not even with the most ‘brilliant of improvisations’.47 Popular agency As these case studies suggest, the practicalities of mobilisation, evacuation and civil defence created a brief but intense context for popular activity and initiative in the second half of September 1938. These examples have focused on popular responses to government directives: situations in which a response was required. Yet what about more gratuitous action in response to the Munich Crisis? What did French people do when decision making was almost entirely out of their control? v 280 v

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France in the ‘blue light’ of Munich Did they believe in their power to change politics, diplomacy – or history? Evidence suggests that although conviction in popular power to change the course of events necessarily varied, there were nonetheless frameworks of agency both within and across longer-term networks of political and religious engagement. To be sure, some political groups were noticeably more pessimistic than others.48 Defeatism featured highly in the royalist Action française, for example, where partisans railed against the Popular Front government whose shortened working week (and accompanying strikes) had left the country both morally and materially disarmed. They also considered the coming of war – which in their opinion would benefit only the Soviets – as almost inevitable. Before mobilisation was even decreed, readers were advised that they could secure a special discount on their military attire at a tailor on the Boulevard Raspail with royalist sympathies. Acts of individual revolt were isolated, such as that of veteran activist Maxime Réal del Sarte, who took particular satisfaction in tearing down advertisements in Saint-Jean-de-Luz encouraging the French to spend their summer vacation in Germany – where they would supposedly be guaranteed a ‘warm welcome’.49 Throughout September 1938 there were externally imposed checks on the type of popular action that was legally permitted, and the government consistently refused demands to organise mass political meetings, whether by the Parti Communiste Français (PCF) on the left, or the Parti Populaire Français on the right. Nevertheless, members of political groups found means of working within and around such restrictions. The PCF, which loudly conflated all political battles across Europe (whether in France, Spain, Czechoslovakia or Germany) into a single war against fascism, published in its daily newspaper L’Humanité the speech that leader Jacques Duclos would have delivered at the unauthorised mass meeting. Here, Duclos featured a lengthy list of actions that could be taken in defence of peace – from opposing the home-grown fascists to standing in solidarity to defend the integrity of Czechoslovakia.50 Meanwhile, smaller-scale and more spontaneous acts of popular solidarity with Czechoslovakia were also possible. On 23 September, a series of workers’ associations sent their delegates to central Paris in order to make formal declarations of friendship and solidarity at the Czechoslovakian Legation (Figure 13.1), while a more disorderly demonstration took place in the streets outside. Several photographs of the delegations are preserved in the press archives of the Petit Parisien,51 while others appeared in the communist L’Humanité. v 281 v

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The Munich Crisis, politics and the people

13.1  ‘M. Reynaud (Union des Syndicats), in charge of the delegation, signs the register’.

Visible acts of popular resistance to elite diplomacy were also supplemented by written or financial marks of solidarity with the Czechoslovakian people. Following the Munich Agreement, French communists amassed financial support to send to displaced Czechoslovakians, emphasising the social and political breadth of those affected and publicising lists of subscriptions, both individual and collective. Party leaders Maurice Thorez and Jacques Duclos gave 100 francs, the newspaper recorded, while ‘our great friend’, the writer Romain Rolland, donated 200. The PCF as a whole had gathered 10,000 francs.52 Mobilisation against Daladier’s role in the agreement continued within the PCF, the trade union movements, and also with sympathetic socialists, as demonstrated by archival reports on meetings and resolutions. The archives of the Confédération Générale du Travail (France’s largest union), include, for example, a record of a meeting of the Union interlocale des syndicats ouvriers de la région Port-de-Bouc on 20 November during which members resolved to send a letter to Daladier. Their aim was both to protest against the Munich Agreement but also, in a further gesture of transnational solidarity, to request that a proportion of the French harvest be sent to suffering families in Spain.53 Equally emphatic – and equally trusting in the potential for favourable change – was the action of religious groups, whether within or v 282 v

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France in the ‘blue light’ of Munich across confessional boundaries. In Paris on 16 September 1938 (the day on which Neville Chamberlain left Hitler’s mountain retreat at Berchtesgaden for London, while anticipating his next interview with Hitler at Godesberg the following Tuesday), Cardinal Verdier celebrated a mass for peace at Montmartre for a densely packed crowd of the faithful.54 On the same day, the conservative Jewish newspaper La Tribune juive announced that the Chief Rabbi in Strasbourg, in consultation with Chief Rabbis in Palestine, Great Britain and Poland, had decreed a special day of prayer and fasting for the following Sunday, and that a penitential service for world peace would be held at the synagogue in Strasbourg.55 (Reports on this day of prayer described Parisian synagogues as scarcely capable of accommodating ‘all the faithful who had come to appeal to Heaven for the preservation of Peace.’)56 The following week, in response to widespread petition from Parisian Catholics, there was an exposition of the relics of Sainte Geneviève at Saint Étienne du Mont, opposite the Panthéon. Meanwhile, attendance at pilgrimages was particularly high. At Lourdes, veteran soldiers from sixteen countries formed, in the words of the large-selling Catholic daily La Croix, ‘a single army imploring heaven for peace on earth’.57 While the power of intercessory prayer was particularly underlined – ‘All the spiritual forces of our precious country must be mobilised’, insisted the same publication, ‘so that God takes away from us the unbearable chalice of blood’58 – the importance of mass offerings was equally emphasised. Indeed, the individually or collectively written notes accompanying mass donations for the Pope’s intentions make poignant reading. One anonymous group of people living ‘very close to the frontier’ sent a collective donation of 360 francs ‘for the intentions of the Holy Father, for the safeguarding of peace and for non-evacuation’.59 Pilgrimages, prayer, the papal decision for a simultaneous Holy Hour for peace across Europe on 23 September: these were initiatives that drew people together across social and also national boundaries in a fervent (and sometimes desperate) belief that change was possible. The queues of those waiting to pray at the tomb of the Unknown Soldier in London’s Westminster Abbey received favourable mention in the French press,60 and the sympathetic attention accorded by La Croix to Protestant and also Jewish prayer for peace contrasted markedly with the newspaper’s earlier anti-Semitism at the time of the Dreyfus Affair.61 In similarly ecumenical vein, La Tribune juive featured an enthusiastic article on papal opposition to anti-Semitism, and particularly praised La Croix for v 283 v

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The Munich Crisis, politics and the people a­ sserting that, ‘alongside the Popes, we recognise that the Jews are our brothers, men like us, chosen by God as we are, and in some ways even more so’.62 Rabbi Weill of Strasbourg, meanwhile, interpreted contemporary anti-Semitism as a call to repentance with scriptural precedents.63 Popular initiative across boundaries was equally characteristic of more nationally bounded projects, and not least in gender-specific support for the families of reservists. Political groups on both left and right protested at the minimal allocations provided for reservists after mobilisation had deprived them of their normal income, and some lobbied the government for increased supplies. Action française demanded extra government funding, Le Petit Journal insisted on the necessity of state provision to supplement private donations, while communist deputies wrote both to Édouard Daladier and also to the Prefect of the Seine, though received a standard response about the allocations already decreed.64 Faced by the particular need for mothers to secure additional financial support for their families in the absence of the male breadwinner, others founded their own initiatives. Louise Thuliez, First World War heroine and officer of the Légion d’Honneur, proposed a revival of the system of ‘godmothers’ (marraines de guerre) that had been established during the First World War to provide moral support for the  soldiers at the  Front.65 In Paris, women joined the Volontaires de Santé et d’Assistance, while women’s committees in Poitiers created a childcare co-operative to enable mothers to take on supplementary paid work. Meanwhile, members of the Comité National des Femmes contre la Guerre et le Fascisme were also encouraged to provide communal afterschool care, as well as free school meals for affected families.66 Reframing history The decisions of national leaders at Munich made this a time of necessity, dramatically transforming lives in a manner over which ordinary people often had little or no choice. Yet, as these examples of popular activity and agency have suggested, it was also a time of possibility – and these possibilities involved not only material but also mental frameworks. In the very act of redrawing European boundaries, national leaders opened up the question of how such boundaries might be imagined differently, or how the relationships between peoples and leaders might be rethought, even if not all reconfigurations were, of course, equally realisable. These questions were rendered more fluid and controversial by the intense and yet also elusive contact between ordinary people and the media. v 284 v

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France in the ‘blue light’ of Munich The Czechoslovak crisis as a whole impacted the mental maps of those who thought they knew where the boundaries should be drawn between European countries – or between reason and madness, civilisation and barbarism.67 Hitler’s strategic rhetoric was a particular challenge. Autocratic and inflammatory, his claim to the Sudetenland was also couched – opportunistically – in a discourse revered by democracies. If national self-determination were recognised in principle, and if ethnic minorities should have the option of rejoining the nation that correlated with their ethnicity,68 then how could Hitler’s claims be condemned as illegitimate? This was, as Action française put it rather gleefully, ‘Wilsonianism and a half’, a perfect example of the supposed ‘peoples’ rights’ or ‘principle of nationality’ championed by Woodrow Wilson after the First World War.69 With similar irony, the communist L’Humanité featured a cartoon by Dubosc in which a prisoner decides to appeal directly to Hitler in the latter’s new role as ‘defender of oppressed minorities’ (Figure 13.2).70 And across the Channel, Neville Chamberlain was countering the fears of his cabinet that Hitler might organise a plebiscite in the Sudetenland with the argument that it was ‘impossible for a democracy like ourselves to say that we would go to war to prevent the holding of a plebiscite’.71 Of course, many recognised that the redrawing of Europe after the Treaty of Versailles, ‘operated by fearsome surgeons as adept at blackmail as with a knife’ (as La Croix described it), had been unsatisfactory.72 But supposing such annexations and plebiscites were to become widespread, where would the reconfiguration end?73 As well as opening up for discussion and imagination the question of where boundaries existed or should exist, the Czechoslovak crisis also gave brief but intense impetus to alternative concepts of the bases on which nations should negotiate. Many shared the conviction that the national leaders involved in resolving the Czechoslovak crisis should be cognisant of their status and experiences as veteran soldiers of the First World War, fully aware of the devastation another European war would unleash.74 With their rival visions of universality, communists and Catholics in France proposed understandings of the relationships between peoples that were wider and deeper than any transient treaties or quarrels between their leaders. This was evident in a joint declaration issued on 30 September, not by the ‘Four’ deciding the fate of Czechoslovakia in Munich but by the four Communist Parties of France, Great Britain, Germany and Czechoslovakia, who proclaimed their belief in the union between the peoples of these countries to avert war while defending the independence of the Czechoslovakian state.75 But it was v 285 v

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The Munich Crisis, politics and the people

13.2  ‘Hitler, defender of oppressed minorities!’, R. Dubosc, L’Humanité, 14 September 1938.

also evident in Catholic conceptions of the destiny and sufferings of the Slavic peoples in the longer term:76 in the ninth century, observed La Croix, the Moravians converted by Saint Methodius had been obliged to appeal for papal protection to continue praying in their own language, outlawed by the Germans.77 Hitler’s cynical ‘Wilsonianism’ threw down a further challenge about the relationship between the people and their leaders. For if Hitler was borrowing democratic discourse, then were supposedly democratic leaders not also adopting forms of dictatorship? ‘We pour scorn on dictatorships’, pointed out Action française, ‘the destiny of millions in the hands of a single man! But what will happen in France? Isn’t it also M. Daladier who will decide on war or peace?’78 This argument broke out with particular force when, after months of ruling by decree law and without parliament, Daladier finally convened the Chamber of Deputies v 286 v

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France in the ‘blue light’ of Munich on 4 October so as to present the Munich Agreement as a fait accompli. Though he insisted that the recent diplomacy had been conducted ‘publicly, and discussed before all peoples’, few found this line of argument convincing (even if they largely applauded the resulting peace). In a speech enthusiastically received by the communist left, Gabriel Péri noted that the previous parliamentary discussion of international policy had taken place before the annexation of Austria: since then, the map of Europe had been ‘forcibly reconfigured’, and yet France’s deputies had been unable to express their opinions collectively. Others pointed to the stark failure in government communication. Louis Marin, leader of the conservative Fédération Républicaine, railed at the deputies’ enforced ignorance of diplomatic events, and called for their access to the documents with which such major decisions were being taken, not least the map showing Hitler’s Czechoslovakian claims (and on which his Godesberg ultimatum of 22 September had been based).79 As these debates made only too clear, the reframing of history and geography by the French people and their deputies was also dependent on an intense yet fragile relationship with the media. Marin’s allegation about ‘ignorance’ was at the same time undermined by his revelation that he and his fellow deputies had in fact been following speeches and decisions, but through English, Czech, German and Italian documents, including texts circulated to the House of Commons.80 In this sense, the deputies were no better informed than anyone in the French public,  reading Hitler’s speeches in the newspapers or listening to his speeches on the radio. Alongside complaints about the absence of information were widely shared concerns about news that was either fake or simply confusing, whether this was provided by national radio or newspapers or by international news agencies. On the night of 27 September, for instance, the Berlin outlet of the Havas agency announced that German authorities had decided on the mobilisation of the Wehrmacht for the following day – a rumour that was instantly disavowed.81 And yet despite panic and scepticism, the Czechoslovak crisis also furthered the intense, tactile, even sensory relationship between the people and the media, as they determined to grasp the latest editions of newspapers or squeeze as close as possible to radio sets at home or in cafés, even if the news relayed might be false or immediately superseded. In some cases, newspaper sellers were ‘completely overwhelmed’ by popular demand, and police were required to protect the stalls and assist with the sale of the papers.82 After the conclusion of the Munich Agreement, wrote Stéphane Faugier in Le Journal, ‘newspaper kiosks were literally v 287 v

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plundered. And more than one reader had to forego his usual newspaper and take potluck with whatever other titles remained. People went to work, their faces buried in sheets of newspaper still covered with fresh ink from the printers. And there were a few accidental encounters – taken in good part – resulting from this sudden desire for information.’83 Conclusions What could be believed, and for how long? Here, too, there was space for individual conjecture, for mental reconfiguration, as well as for defeatism and fear. For as this chapter has explored, the Munich moment was not only a time of popular impotence but also a time of possibility. There is, first of all, strong evidence that the mobilisation, evacuation and preparations for civil defence in September 1938 were an impetus to creativity and initiative, both during and after the events themselves. Prefects who had mentally constructed their own schemes for wartime rationing, transport or centralised food production took advantage of the Munich moment to translate their ideas into practice, or develop them for future use. Indeed the ‘ambiguity and special character’ of September 1938 – as several prefects described it – fostered a need for individual initiative: since war had not been declared, none of the official schemes designated only for a wartime situation could be implemented.84 Equally, as a comparison of prefects’ reports in 1938 and 1940 suggests, the retrospective perception of September 1938 as a ‘trial run’ of wartime measures was a prompt to new thinking and planning in the months that followed. To be sure, frameworks for personal initiative varied considerably according to geographical context. Mobilisation and evacuation involved higher numbers in Paris, as well as in border areas such as the Nord, Pas de Calais and Ardennes, where the sudden recruitment of policemen and municipal officers gave particular concern. Nevertheless, more rural or remote locations could be the designated hosts for evacuated ­populations – the Vendée received several hundred thousand from both Paris and the Ardennes – while the fear of air strikes and chemical weapons left no area entirely unthreatened. While many municipal officials found September 1938 to be a time of possibility, a significant number of other individuals and groups also believed in their own (and divine) agency to turn the course of events, and in their ability to provide practical assistance. Here, a focus on popular activity and agency offers a valuable corrective to the narrower preoccupation with French reactions as either munichois or v 288 v

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France in the ‘blue light’ of Munich anti-munichois – and by implication blameworthy or laudable. Despite frustration, horror or relief that the fate of Czechoslovakia and the peace of Europe were being determined by leaders largely outside popular control, French people were not thereby condemned to a state of passive approval or disapproval. Those already active within political or religious groups and communities took action within these frameworks, whether attending meetings or demonstrations, offering moral or financial solidarity to displaced Czechoslovakians, supporting reservists and their families, or taking part in pilgrimages and special religious services. Once mobilisation had been decreed these activities more closely concerned women, the young, the elderly and those not yet called up: veterans from the First World War, for example, took the lead in organising prayers for peace at Saint-Laurent sur Sèvre on 24 September. Yet there is also evidence that the Munich moment entailed a broadening, rather than a narrowing, of activity. Those normally on the fringes of political or religious commitment were, for instance, sometimes spurred on to uncharacteristic action through an intense, even desperate, belief in the possibility of change. Peaks in attendance at sites of pilgrimage and at collective prayers for peace offer the clearest evidence for this wider perception of possibility, with participants crowding into churches and synagogues – while in Britain the opportunity to pray at the tomb of the Unknown Soldier created an immediate (and lengthy) queue. Lastly, this perception of possibility shaped not only activity but also imagination. While the peace of Europe was at stake, men and women could in this moment of uncertainty imagine alternative national boundaries and allegiances: a veterans’ peace grounded in the experience of war, for example, or a ‘Front of Christian charity’, or a popular internationalism at odds with warmongering and militarism. Though information might be elusive and news suspect, people were nonetheless prompted by Hitler’s self-serving Wilsonianism, or by their own leaders’ autocracy, to reimagine the relationships between the peoples of Europe, and between themselves and their national leaders. In France at least, although there was defeatism, apathy and – on 1 October – simple relief, the blue light of Munich also illuminates ingenuity, creativity and belief in popular potential. Acknowledgement I am very grateful to William Rispin for sending reproductions of some of the documents from the Archives nationales required for this chapter. v 289 v

The Munich Crisis, politics and the people

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Notes  1 ‘On sait cependant que la lumière bleue offre un minimum de visibilité.’ ‘La Protection de la population parisienne en cas de bombardements’, Le Petit Journal, 26 September 1938. Cf. ‘Vers un Règlement général’, Le Petit Parisien, 30 September 1938. Lindsey Dodd discusses the use of blue street lamps in the context of civil defence in French Children under Allied Bombs, 1940–45: An Oral History (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2016), p. 70.   2 ‘Depuis quelques jours, Paris s’enveloppe chaque soir d’une ombre protectrice. Les réverbères ont en effet été mis en veilleuse et leur lumière crue a souvent fait place à une petite lumière bleue.’ Regards, 31 August 1939. Ominously, Das blaue Licht (The Blue Light) was also the name of a 1932 film directed by Leni Riefenstahl (who filmed Hitler’s rallies) and Béla Bálazs.   3 Although the deputies could not change what had already been agreed, 535 voted in favour of the Munich Agreement and 75 voted against. Le Journal officiel. Débats parlementaires: Chambre des Députés, 5 October 1938, p. 1543.   4 ‘Dans un élan spontané, la foule de Paris a follement acclamé le Président du Conseil’, Le Journal, 1 October 1938. The ‘véritable exode’ was described here in deliberate contrast to the ‘exode’ (evacuation) of the previous week.  5 Reinhart Koselleck, The Practice of Conceptual History: Timing History, Spacing Concepts (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2002), p. 9.   6 The binary division of the French into munichois and anti-munichois – one of the deepest divisions since the Dreyfus Affair, according to René Rémond – continues to shape studies of public opinion in this period. See, for example, Rémond, Le Siècle dernier, de 1918 à 2002 (Paris: Fayard, 2003), ch. 9; JeanRémy Bézias, Georges Bidault et la politique étrangère de la France: Europe, États-Unis, Proche-Orient (Paris: L’Harmattan, 2006), p. 28; Serge Berstein, La France des années 30 (Paris: Armand Colin, 2001), p. 162.  7 Koselleck, The Practice of Conceptual History, p. 13. This practice of hypothetical history is enjoying a particular renaissance in studies of French Algeria and decolonisation, where scholars are revealing the ‘past possibilities’ obscured by the post facto narrative of inevitable decolonisation. See, for example, Todd Shepard’s The Invention of Decolonization: The Algerian War and the Remaking of France (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2006) and Rabah Assaoui, ‘“For Progress and Civilization”: History, Memory and Alterity in Nineteenth-Century Colonial Algeria’, French History, 31:4 (2017), pp. 470–94 (especially pp. 474–5).   8 See, for instances, Igor Lukes’s introduction to Igor Lukes and Erik Goldstein (eds), The Munich Crisis, 1938: Prelude to World War Two (London: Frank Cass, 1999), and Yvon Lacaze, L’Opinion publique française et la crise de Munich (Bern: Peter Lang, 1991), p. 585. v 290 v

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France in the ‘blue light’ of Munich   9 Charles Sowerwine, France since 1870: Culture, Society, and the Making of the Republic (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009), p. 172. 10 ‘All that optimism was soon to collapse in 1940, together with the Third Republic’ (‘Tout cet optimisme allait bientôt en 1940 s’écrouler, avec la Troisième République’), Jean-Louis Arbey (a nine-year-old Parisian in 1938), letter to the author, 12 March 2018. 11 Eugen Weber, The Hollow Years. France in the 1930s (London: SinclairStevenson, 1995), p. 177. 12 Benjamin Martin, for example, equates Daladier’s loss of nerve at Munich with France’s ‘moral collapse’, in France in 1938 (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2005), p. 177; Serge Berstein describes France’s ‘abdication’ in the face of Hitler in 1938 as foreshadowing the moral and political crisis of 1940. La France des années 30, pp. 58–63. 13 Martin Thomas, ‘France and the Czechoslovak Crisis’, in Lukes and Goldstein (eds), The Munich Crisis, p. 152. 14 Martin, France in 1938, p. 91. 15 Ibid., p. 169. 16 See Jessica Wardhaugh, In Pursuit of the People: Political Culture in France, 1934–39 (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009), pp. 207–8. 17 Benjamin Martin discusses these photographs in France in 1938, p. 177. 18 See, for example, Lacaze, L’Opinion publique; Geneviève Vallette and Jacques Bouillon, Munich 1938 (Paris: Armand Colin, 1964); and René Rémond and Janine Bourdin (eds), La France et les Français en 1938–9 (Paris: Presses de la Fondation Nationale des Sciences Politiques, 1978). Daniel Hucker takes these debates further in his valuable comparative study of public opinion, which challenges the concept of a passive or pacifist population. Hucker, Public Opinion and the End of Appeasement in Britain and France (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2011). 19 David Drake, French Intellectuals and Politics from the Dreyfus Affair to the Occupation (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005), p. 145. 20 Vallette and Bouillon, Munich 1938, p. 227. 21 See, for example, Michel Winock, ‘Les Intellectuels français et “l’esprit de Munich”’, in Anne Roche and Christian Tarting (eds), Des Années trente – groupes et ruptures (Paris: Éditions du CNRS, 1985), pp. 147–56, and Julian Jackson, The Popular Front in France: Defending Democracy 1934–38 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988), pp. 247–8. Jean-Paul Brunet offers a useful perspective on right-wing fragmentation in chapter 15 of Jacques Doriot: du communisme au fascisme (Paris: Éditions Balland, 1986). 22 Mona Siegel, The Moral Disarmament of France: Education, Pacifism and Patriotism, 1914–40 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), p. 4. 23 The sudden emergence of an ‘opportunistic’ right-wing pacifism has, in particular, seemed disconcerting to those studying the longer-term trends v 291 v

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The Munich Crisis, politics and the people of ideological pacifism on the left. See Norman Ingram, The Politics of Dissent: Pacifism in France, 1919–39 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1991), p. 116. 24 Quoted in Weber, The Hollow Years, p. 176. 25 Lacaze’s minutely detailed study of public opinion, for instance, teases out the spread of different ‘pacifisms’ just on the right, from the ‘ideological’ pacifism of the Maurrassian neo-monarchists to the ‘weak’ pacifism around PierreÉtienne Flandin and Le Journal. Lacaze, L’Opinion publique. 26 ‘Entre les énervés et bellicistes, les défaitistes et trembleurs; sachons rester strictement Français.’ Colonel de la Rocque, ‘Deux Gestes symboliques’, Le Petit Journal, 24 September 1938. 27 Archives de la Préfecture de Police, Paris (hereafter APP), Ba 1945, ‘P.P. 16 février 1939’. 28 See Hucker, Public Opinion; Roxanne Panchasi, Future Tense: The Culture of Anticipation in France between the Wars (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2009); Dodd, French Children under Allied Bombs, 1940–44; and Nicole Dombrowski Risser, France under Fire: German Invasion, Civilian Flight and Family Survival (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015). 29 See Wardhaugh, In Pursuit of the People, and Wardhaugh, Popular Theatre and Political Utopia in France, 1870–1940: Active Citizens (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2017). 30 See, for example, the front cover of Regards on 31 August 1939. 31 See, for example, Nicole Ollier, L’Exode: sur les routes de l’an 1940 (Paris: Robert Laffont, 1970), p. 32, or Jean Daniau, Pique-Boche: Jeune Poitevin des années noires (Paris: Éditions Cheminements, 2005), p. 21. 32 Valette and Bouillon offer minimal discussion of popular responses to mobilisation, or of the exode, in Munich 1938. 33 See, for example, Weber, The Hollow Years, p. 176. 34 Panchasi, Future Tense, p. 80. 35 See Dodd, French Children under Allied Bombs, pp. 68–9. 36 Risser, France under Fire, p. 30. 37 See Risser, France under Fire, pp. 27–8. 38 Panchasi, Future Tense, p. 6. Nevertheless, Hanna Diamond’s brilliant study of 1940 borrows Stanley Hoffman’s description of departures at the outbreak of war in September 1939 as the ‘first exodus of which we hear so little’, without looking further back to September 1938. Diamond, Fleeing Hitler: France, 1940 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), p. 24. 39 The first are available at the Archives Nationales, Pierrefitte (hereafter AN): 19940497/4, ‘Dossier 121, 4 October–8 November 1938’. The second are preserved at the Institut d’Histoire du Temps Présent (hereafter IHTP): AJ41 397, ‘Synthèse zone occupée, 31 juillet 1940 (DGTO)’. 40 The reports from summer 1940 provide little information on local or municipal initiative, while popular opinion is discussed mainly in the context of the v 292 v

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France in the ‘blue light’ of Munich severe restrictions on communication. See, for example, IHTP, AJ 41 397: ‘Synthèse zone occupée, 2 août 1940 (Vichy)’. 41 AN 19940497/4, dossier 121: ‘Département du Pas de Calais: Exécution de la circulaire secrète du 1er octobre 1938 concernant l’application des mesures de mobilisation et de défense passive’. 42 AN 19940497/4, dossier 121: ‘Le Préfet des Ardennes à M. le Ministre de l’Intérieur, Mézières, le 20 octobre 1938’. 43 AN 19940497/4, dossier 121: ‘Le Préfet de la Haute-Saône, à M. le Ministre de l’Intérieur, Vesoul, le 5 octobre’. 44 AN 19940497/4, dossier 121: ‘Le Préfet des Hautes Pyrénées à M. le Ministre de l’Intérieur, Tarbes, le 11 octobre 1938’. 45 AN 19940497/4, dossier 121: ‘Le Préfet de la Haute-Saône, à M. le Ministre de l’Intérieur’. 46 AN 19940497/4, dossier 121: ‘Le Préfet de la Vendée à M. le Ministre de l’Intérieur, La Roche-sur-Yon, le 12 octobre 1938’. 47 AN 19940497/4, dossier 121: ‘Le Préfet de Police à M. le Ministre de l’Intérieur, Paris, le 25 octobre 1938’. 48 Action française, 17 and 19 September 1938. 49 ‘Échos’, Action française, 17 September 1938. Réal del Sarte’s activism was already notorious in the 1900s. See Jessica Wardhaugh, ‘Un Rire nouveau: Action française and the art of political satire’, French History, 22:1 (2008), pp. 74–93. 50 Jacques Duclos, ‘La Défense de la paix’, L’Humanité, 15 September 1938. Smaller-scale meetings did take place, as well as a procession to the graves, in the Père-Lachaise cemetery in Paris, of Czech soldiers who had died fighting for France in 1914–18. 51 See AN 11 AR/ 758: Fonds Le Petit Parisien/photographies. This demonstration is mentioned in a footnote in Danielle Tartakowsky, Les Manifestations de rue en France, 1918–68 (Paris: Publications de la Sorbonne, 1997), p. 437. 52 See L’Humanité, 2 October 1938. 53 Archives de la Confédération Générale du Travail, Montreuil, Box 25. ‘Résolution envoyé au Président du Conseil par l’Union interlocale des syndicats ouvriers de la région de Port-de-Bouc (Bouche du Rhône), le 20 novembre 1938’. 54 La Croix, 17 September 1938. 55 ‘Dimanche, jour de pénitence pour la paix’, La Tribune juive, 16 September 1938. 56 ‘Les Communautés israélites prient pour la paix du monde’, La Tribune juive, 23 Septembre 1938. ‘À Paris les synagogues ne pouvaient contenir tous les fidèles qui étaient accourus pour implorer le Ciel la conservation de la Paix.’ 57 La Croix, 22 September 1938. 58 ‘Il faut mobiliser toutes les forces spirituelles de notre cher pays pour obtenir de Dieu que l’épouvantable calice de sang s’éloigne de nous.’ La Croix, 22 September 1938. v 293 v

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The Munich Crisis, politics and the people 59 ‘Un groupe de personnes habitant l’extrême frontière vous envoie 360 francs pour des messes aux intentions du Souverain Pontife, pour la sauvegarde de la paix et la non-évacuation.’ La Croix, 22 September 1938. 60 For example, in Action française on 19 September and in La Croix on 20 September 1938. 61 See ‘Une Initiative en faveur de la paix: dans les synagogues’ and ‘Un Appel des protestants’, La Croix, 20 September 1938. 62 ‘Avec les papes, reconnaissons que les juifs sont nos frères, hommes comme nous, élus de Dieu autant que nous et sous certains aspects plus que nous.’ Quoted in ‘Le Côté des forces spirituelles’, La Tribune juive, 2 September 1938. The Pope’s insistence that Catholics were ‘spiritually Jewish’ was especially praised in La Tribune on 7 October 1938. 63 In Strasbourg, Rabbi Weill compared the situation in 1938 with God’s challenge – via Jonah – to the wayward inhabitants of Nineveh, who were spared annihilation on account of their repentance. Ernest Weill, ‘De Quoi demain sera-t-il fait?’, La Tribune juive, 23 September 1938. 64 See Action française, 25 September, Le Petit Journal, 26 September, and L’Humanité, 28 September. 65 ‘Des marraines pour les familles des “appelés”: une généreuse proposition de l’héroïne de guerre, Louise Thuliez’, Le Petit Parisien, 30 September 1938. Susan Grayzel’s study of the marraines explores its ambiguity as an opportunity for both altruistic engagement and opportunism: ‘Mothers, marraines and prostitutes: morale and morality in First World War France’, International History Review, 19:1 (1997), pp. 66–82. (Édouard Daladier had married his influential marraine de guerre.) 66 Maria Rabate, ‘Les pères sont partis! Les femmes et les enfants doivent vivre’, L’Humanité, 28 September 1938. 67 This concept of ‘mental maps’ has been explored by Stephen Casey and Jonathan Wright (eds), Mental Maps in the Era of the Two World Wars (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008). 68 Gerhard Weinberg points out that no objection was made to the annexation of the easternmost portion of pre-Munich Czechoslovakia in 1945, with the justification that those resident in this area were similar to those in the Ukrainian SSR. Weinberg, ‘Reflections on Munich after Sixty Years’, in Lukes and Goldstein (eds), The Munich Crisis, pp. 1–12, here p. 1. 69 ‘La Politique’ (Unsigned), Action française, 23 September 1938. Jonathan Wright explores how Hitler played a strategic game with the concept of national self-determination in Germany and the Origins of the Second World War (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007), pp. 120–5. 70 ‘Hitler, défenseur des minorités opprimées!’, L’Humanité, 14 September 1938. Emmanuel Mounier similarly poured scorn on those who seemed to see Hitler as genuinely righting the wrongs of the Versailles Treaty, in ‘Lendemains d’une trahison’, Esprit, 1 October 1938. v 294 v

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France in the ‘blue light’ of Munich 71 David Faber, Munich: The 1938 Appeasement Crisis (London: Simon & Schuster, 2008), p. 280. 72 ‘L’Europe en 1918 est livrée à de redoutables chirurgiens qui manient aussi habilement le chantage que le bistouri. Les traités mal faits, c’est entendu!’, La Croix, 23 September 1938. 73 ‘Quand le Duce réclame le referendum pour toutes les minorités, il soulève aussi un problème bien imprudent […] il faudrait refaire en entier la carte de l’univers!’ La Croix, 24 September 1938. 74 For example, Colonel de la Rocque, ‘À Ceux qui, de 1914 à 1918, ont tenu devant les mitrailleuses’, Le Petit Journal, 28 September 1938. 75 ‘À Munich, les “Quatre” décident en son absence du sort de la Tchécoslovaquie’, L’Humanité, 30 September 1938. 76 ‘Fêtes mariales en Tchécoslovaquie’, La Croix, 21 September 1938. 77 Pertransiens, ‘L’Enjeu de l’Europe’, La Croix, 23 September 1938. 78 ‘On flétrit les dictatures: le sort de millions d’hommes confié à un seul homme! Mais que se passera-t-il en France? N’est-ce pas M. Daladier qui décidera de la paix ou de la guerre? ‘Au jour le jour’, Action française, 19 September 1938. 79 Le Journal officiel, 5 October 1938. 80 Roger Cambon, from the French Embassy in Britain, remarked in August 1938 that ‘British opinion has seldom had at its disposal such abundant information and commentary.’ Cited in Hucker, Public Opinion, p. 42. 81 Lacaze, L’Opinion publique, p. 64. 82 ‘À certains endroits les vendeurs de journaux furent tellement débordés que des gardiens de paix durent les protéger…’ AN 11 AR/ 758. 83 ‘Les kiosques étaient parfois littéralement dévalisés. Et plus d’un lecteur dut se passer de son journal habituel et prendre au petit bonheur parmi ceux qui restaient. L’on allait à son travail, le nez plongé dans les feuilles couvertes d’encre d’imprimerie fraîche. Et plus d’un heurt d’ailleurs accueilli avec bonne humeur résulta de cette soif subite d’informations.’ Stéphane Faugier, ‘Paris, détendu, s’est éveillé dans le bonheur de la paix retrouvée’, Le Journal, 1 October 1938. 84 This particular description was offered by the Prefect of the Ardennes (AN 19940497/4, dossier 121).

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Index

Action Française 277, 281, 285, 286 American Fellowship Forum (AFF) 138 America First movement 142 American reaction to the Munich Crisis 136, 138 and appeasement 140–1, 146 impact of Kristallnacht 142 anti-Semitism 142, 214, 216, 261, 283 in Czechoslovakia 27, 28, 30, 31, 134, 171, 173 in Fascist Italy 159, 163 in Hungary 67, 73–4 in Poland 75 Anschluss 80, 93, 100, 113 Astor (Lady) Nancy 112 Auden, Wystan Hugh (W. H.) 235, 237, 248 Beaverbrook (Lord) William Maxwell Aitken 93 Beck (Colonel) Jósef 68, 80, 81, 82 Beneš, Edvard 19, 20, 21, 22, 25, 26, 28, 37, 45, 50, 78, 81, 92, 207, 276 in Czech historiography 51, 52, 56, 57, 59, 60, 61 Blum, Léon 96, 199–200, 241, 277 Bonnet, Georges 100, 102–3, 137, 251, 254, 255, 256–7, 276 Borah, William 139–40

Brexit 2 British reaction to the Munich Agreement 201, 205–8, 265–6 Bullitt, William 137, 138, 257, 260 Chamberlain, Anne 208, 255, 257, 265, 266 Chamberlain, Hilda 254, 263 Chamberlain, Ida 263 Chamberlain, Neville 6, 7, 19, 21, 26, 55, 79, 81, 103, 104, 127–8, 140, 141, 164, 179–80, 199, 202, 251, 254, 255–6, 259–60, 262, 263, 267, 276 anti-Soviet views 96, 97 perception of the Munich Agreement 257–66 Churchill (Sir) Winston Spencer 50, 90, 91, 97, 101, 121, 123, 127, 199, 225 and the Munich Conference 124–5 stance on Soviet Union 112–13, 114 on Stalin 121, 123, 127–8 on Trotsky 97, 115, 118, 119, 123, 127 Ciano, Galleazzo 79, 160 Collingwood, R.C. 242, 243, 247 Comintern (Communist International) 174, 178

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Index Communist interpretations of the Munich Crisis 46–7 see also Soviet Union Corsellis, Timothy 236–8, 241, 242, 245–7 Coughlin (Father) Charles 138–9 Czechoslovakian reaction to the Munich Crisis 19–21, 22–3, 27–8 Daladier, Edouard 19, 23, 55, 79, 96, 104, 164, 244, 251, 254, 255, 256–7, 258, 259, 260, 261–2, 263–4, 266–7, 273, 275–6, 282, 284 Doriot, Jacques 277 see also Parti Populaire Français Duclos, Jacques 281, 282 see also Parti Communiste Français Eastern Locarno 92, 93, 121 Eden (Sir) Anthony 93, 96, 97 Franco-Soviet relations 92, 96, 101 French reaction to the Munich Conference 264, 266, 278–80, 282–4 Freud, Anna 214, 215, 216, 217, 224, 225 Freud, Sigmund 198, 215, 216–17 German reaction to the Munich Conference 172, 173–5, 176–7, 178, 179, 180–2 Glover, Edward 195, 196, 198, 204, 227, 228 Goebbels, Joseph 174, 175, 176, 177, 180, 181, 182, 183 Göring, Hermann 35, 36, 220 Guilty Men 9, 200, 267 ‘Guilty Men’ thesis 10, 90 Hácha, Emil 28, 32, 34, 35–6, 37, 38 Halas, František 19, 20, 46 Halifax (Lord) Edward Wood 80, 85, 93, 98, 103, 104, 137, 260, 262

Henlein, Konrad 6, 172–3 Himmler, Heinrich 174, 176, 183 see also Sudeten German Party (SdP) Hitler, Adolf 2, 6–7, 19, 25, 33, 35–6, 138, 144, 178, 182 territorial demands 9, 21, 158, 172–3, 176, 276, 285 Hlinka Slovak People’s Party 29, 30 and Nazi Germany 32, 33 Hoare-Laval Pact 93 see also Laval, Pierre Hore-Belisha, Leslie 98 Horthy (Admiral) Miklós 67, 68, 69, 72, 75, 78 feudal revival 71–3, 75–7 Hungary and the Munich Conference 67, 79–80 Indian reaction to the Munich Agreement 201–2 Italian reaction to the Munich Agreement 154, 160, 163 Kennan, George F. 133–6, 253 and the Cold War 147 Kennedy, John F. 134 Kennedy, Joseph P. 137, 139 Klein, Melanie 214–15, 216 differences with Anna Freud 226–7 on the Munich Crisis 220–4 Kollontai, Alexandra 94, 103 Král, Václav 58–9 Laval, Pierre 92, 93 League of Nations 81, 92, 93, 97, 100, 102, 121, 139, 159 Lindbergh, Charles 142 Litvinov, Maksim 91, 92, 93, 94, 95, 96, 101, 102–3, 121 Lloyd George, David 95–6, 118, 203 Macartney, Carlile Aylmer (C. A.) 82–5 MacNeice, Louis 234 Autumn Journal 235

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Index Maisky, Ivan 91, 92, 93, 94, 95, 117, 118 and Chamberlain 96, 98 and Churchill 97, 101 and Halifax 98, 99, 104 Masaryk, Tomáš Garrigue (T. G.) 22, 26, 28, 98, 104–5, 207 Mass-Observation 5, 194, 262–3 Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact 2, 47, 90, 105 Monroe Doctrine 145 Mościcki, Ignacy 68, 81 Mussolini, Benito 19, 155–8 Nicolson, Harold 195–6 Nye, Gerald 142 Parti Communiste Français (PCF) 281, 282, 285–6 Parti Populaire Français 277, 281 Piłsudski (Marshal) Józef 68 see also Sanacja Poland and the Munich Conference 80–2 Roosevelt, Franklin Delano 137, 138, 139, 143–4, 148, 264 ‘national security’ 144–6 views on Chamberlain 140–1 see also Monroe Doctrine Runciman (Viscount) Walter 6, 52, 174, 177–8 Russell, Bertrand 242–3

Sanacja 68 Sartre, Jean-Paul 242, 244, 245, 246 Seaton-Watson, Robert William 82–5 Sidor, Karol 33, 34, 35 Slovak People’s Party 25, 27 see also Zilina Manifesto Sopade 174, 175, 176, 177, 178, 179, 182 Soviet Union 47, 53, 56, 59, 80, 90, 92, 95–6, 97 and Czechoslovakia 23, 61, 99, 100, 103 interpretation of Munich Crisis 47–8 reaction to Munich Agreement 105 Spanish Civil War 114, 158, 161, 196 Stalin, Joseph 47, 91, 92, 93, 96, 97, 99, 101, 105, 116, 121 Sudeten Crisis 6–7 Sudeten German Party (SdP) 6, 28, 171, 172 Tiso, Jozef 20, 32, 33–5 von Neurath, Konstantin 23 von Ribbentrop, Joachim 79, 90 Webb, Beatrice 95, 202 Wilson (Sir) Horace 7, 97, 98 Wilson, Woodrow 138, 141, 153, 285 and Wilsonianism 79, 153, 286, 289 Zilina Manifesto 27

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