FROM WARS AND REVOLUTIONS

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FROM WARS AND REVOLUTIONS

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PREFACE

Since the events herein have taken place within the memory of living men, this book may be regarded as contemporary history.

To some historians such a description in itself is sufficient to read no further; others, sensitive to the momentous character of these years of turmoil, believe it not only permissable but desirable to chronicle the present, and even to dub what they have written, "history."

The writer, it is evident, is sympathetic to their point of view.

He is, of course, aware that much of what he has written is not definitive.

On the other hand the revolutionary tempo of this present hour and the bitter death of young men everywhere in this global maelstrom are facts which need recording by one who breathes the atmosphere of 1943.

- World Wars And Revolutions by Walter Phelps Hall, PhD, of Princeton, copyrighted 1943
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FRANCE

There was trouble, too, in Alsace and Lorraine.

Those two redeemed provinces promptly were incorporated into France proper and were turned into three departments, for the Third Republic had a passion for uniformity, and all Frenchmen, it was held, should be subject to the same laws.

But Alsace and Lorraine were overwhelmingly Roman Catholic.

When they had been annexed by Germany in 1871 the Napoleonic Concordat with the Catholic Church still was the law of France, and the priests in Alsace and Lorraine had been supported by the state and the schools had been Catholic schools.

The Germans had not changed the status of the Catholic Church in the two provinces, but when they were returned to France their inhabitants found that the Concordat had been repudiated, that the Republic no longer concerned itself with religion, that the schools were laicized.

Furthermore, there was the ever important question of language bobbing up again.

Most of the Alsatians used German as a primary language and the Republic changed overnight the primary instruction in the schools from German to French.

No wonder, then, that protests were loud and numerous, and that agitation arose for autonomy under the Tricolor, similar to the agitation in the two provinces when ruled as a Reichsland in the Germany Empire.

And yet another never-ending source of worry to the French was the problem of security.

The Germans still outnumbered them at the close of the war (WWI), three to two, and if Austria ever came to be included in the Reich, the disparity in the numbers would be still more pronounced.

The French had surrendered at the Versailles Congress their desire for the Rhine frontier in return for guarantees from England and America, as well as from the League of Nations, guarantees which they soon discovered worthless or of slight value.

The problem of French security more properly belongs to the discussion of international politics in the post-War world.

But it never ceased to cause friction within France herself; it was intimately correlated to the financial problem, since it involved the construction of the expensive Maginot Line to the east, and since it further involved large loans to potential allies, such as Poland, Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia, and so on; and it also played an important part in the constant swinging back and forth of the political pendulum between the different party groupings or blocs which controlled the government.

- pp.186,187, World Wars And Revolutions by Walter Phelps Hall, PhD, of Princeton, copyrighted 1943
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Re: FROM WARS AND REVOLUTIONS

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CZECHOSLOVAKIA

The Czechs had watched with anxious eye, as well they might, the submergence of their southern neighbor in the German Reich.

Not only did they have Nazis to the north of them and Nazis to the south of them, but within their own border was a clamorous German minority, the redemption of which might be sponsored any day by Adolf Hitler.

That minority had received more consideration than that given to any other minority in the post-war world.

It had full parliamentary representation and equal educational opportunities - in fact, there were more German secondary schools in Czechoslovakia in proportion to the population than there were schools for Czechs.

On the other hand, that German minority had just cause for complaint: Public officials were generally Czechs; and minor officials, such as postmen and ticket agents, were apt to pretend that they could not understand German.

The great estates in Czechoslovakia before the war (World War I) had been owned by German landlords who were dissatisfied with the compensation paid them when the lands were subdivided after the war among the peasants.

More important yet, the condition of the German workingmen in the industrial districts was deplorable.

The Czechs were not responsible for the world economic depression of the nineteen-thirties, but they might have been more generous in the relief given to the stricken areas.

At one time there were nearly a million unemployed in this little country, and over a half were Germans!

Until 1935 most of the Germans in Czechoslovakia cooperated with the Czechs in carrying on parliamentary government, but in that year, Konrad Henlein's Sudetendeutsch Partei, intransigent and dissaffected, captured sixty percent of the German vote.

This party, the S.d.P., was not originally allied with the German Nazis.

It did, however, stress certain German principles: hatred of democracy, devout obedience to a Fuehrer - Henlein - and racial particularism.

The S.d.P.'s demands now increased, one of them being "full liberty for Germans to proclaim their Germanism and their adhesion to the ideology of Germans," and another a demand that Czechoslovakia should renounce its treaties with France and Russia, the former calling for the military support of the Third Republic should Germany threaten invasion, the latter promising Russian aid, provided France aided the threatened state first.

Neither of these demands could safely be granted by the Czech majority; to accede to the first would invite open propaganda against democracy in a democratic state; to accede to the second would make Czechoslovakia defenseless in case of attack.

War was narrowly averted in the month of May, 1938.

A frontier incident resulted in the death of two Germans; Hitler promptly cut off negotiations with the Czechs and hastened troops to the border.

Czechoslovakia as promptly mobilized and rushed 400,000 men to the German frontier.

France affirmed her support for Czechoslovakia and that meant that Russia must follow suit.

Britain agreed to support France, and Hitler withdrew his troops.

But he did not change his intentions, nor did the Czechs their resolution to fight for their country.

What did take place during the four succeeding months was the betrayal of Czechoslovakia by France, aided and abetted to no little degree by England.

- pp, 310-311, World Wars and Revolutions - The Course of Europe Since 1900 by Walter Phelps Hall, Ph.D, Dodge Professor of History, Princeton University, copyright 1943
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CZECHOSLOVAKIA, continued ...

It is very difficult to fathom what lay behind French and British policy in the crisis of 1938.

Mile by mile the two governments gave way to Hitler's threats and bombast, until finally there was nothing left of Czechoslovakia except a completely disillusioned and discouraged little rump of a country, which could not fight if it wanted to, and which was occupied without a shot by the Fuehrer the following spring.

Czechoslovakia was by no means defenseless in the summer of 1938.

She had a good country, a mountainous frontier, defended by a Maginot line reputed stronger than even the famous line of that name in France.

Near Prague were the strategic Skoda munitions works, the largest in all Europe, owned by a resolute people, protected not simply by their natural frontiers but by the pledged word of France.

In addition, Czechoslovakia was a member of the Little Entente, and both Yugoslavia and Rumania were sworn to aid her.

True, Yugoslavia might stand aside for fear of Mussolini, and Rumania was not a dependable ally.

But the Rumanians presumably would at least permit the passage of Soviet troops through their territory to aid the Czechs if they were attacked.

With France, England, and Russia behind them it seemed improbable that Mussolini would give any active aid to Hitler in order that the latter might occupy Prague.

Nevertheless, the British and the French between them opened the mountain passes to the Bohemian plain, permitted Nazi troops to pass through unopposed, and thus made sure of a war in which they would not have Czechoslovakia as their ally, and Hitler would have Skoda.

The feeble and inept behavior of Britain and France during the last six months of 1938 is incredible.


It began to be in evidence when the British sent Lord Runciman to Prague as a kind of unofficial advisor to the Czechs.

The Czechs did not ask for him; they did not want him; but they were afraid if they did not accept him Britain would wash her hands altogether and persuade France to do likewise.

Chamberlain had blown neither hot nor cold.

He had refused a definite guarantee of Czechish independence, but at the same time he had intimated that British policy was not to be interpreted as one of non-intervention under all circumstances.

Plainly, they had better accept Runciman.

The Czechs, urged on by his Lordship, now offered generous concessions to the S.d.P. and Henlein.

They agreed to a cantonal division of Czechoslovakia on the Swiss model.

"All nationalities should share proportionately in all state offices and in state enterprises, monopolies, institutions and other organizations."

Autonomy in all local matters was assured the Sudetendeutsch, and a large sum of money was to be granted for their economic relief.

This was fair enough, but not sufficiently fair for the London Times.

It proposed that Czechoslovakia cede its border districts to Germany.

The Times, of course, was not an official organ of the British government, but the Nazis had good reason to believe that it flew the Chamberlain kite.

Hitler took the cue.

A few days later, September 12, he addressed a huge meeting of Nazis and said that he intended to come instantly to the relief of his oppressed racial comrades in Czechoslovakia and announced simultaneously that the most impregnable defenses ever built by man were being rushed to completion on the western frontier of Germany.


On September 13 there were uprisings among the Sudenten Germans (acknowledged later by Runciman to have been stirred up by Nazi agitators) and the instant reply of Benes, President of Czechoslovakia, was to proclaim martial law.

One day later Chamberlain announced that he would go by airplane to consult with Hitler.

This was to be the first of three trips by air to Canossa which the Prime Minister of England was to take - successive steps, all of them, in humiliating subservience to the will of the German dictator.

The first flight was to Berchtesgaden, where he was told by Hitler that Germany insisted on the instant inclusion of the Sudeten Germans in the Third Reich, even at the cost of general war.

Time would be given Chamberlain to consult with his ministers; no other concession was offered.


- pp. 311-313, World Wars and Revolutions - The Course of Europe Since 1900 by Walter Phelps Hall, Ph.D, Dodge Professor of History, Princeton University, copyright 1943
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CZECHOSLOVAKIA, continued ...

What was to be done?

The British cabinet was divided; so was the French.

The premier of France and his foreign secretary flew to London and a decision was reached without consulting Prague.

Czechoslovakia was told by England and France that she must deliver "the districts mainly inhabited by the Sudeten Germans" to Germany.

If this was done there would be guarantees of her future independence.

This was selling the pass, for the districts to be ceded lay along the frontier where the Czechs had their fortifications.

England and France were now offering Hitler all that he demanded.

Benes and his cabinet begged for reconsideration.

Czechoslovakia had, they said, a treaty of arbitration with Germany.

Why not invoke it?

Runciman, meanwhile, made his formal report.

It proposed not only to give Germany all that Hitler had demanded but a little more, for he suggested not only that parts of Czechoslovakia be ceded Germany but also that the rump which remained should renounce all treaties of defense with other countries, suppress all anti-German agitation, and enter into close economic relations with the Reich.

The Runciman report was followed by sharp insistence at Prague on the part of the French and British ambassadors that Benes agree to the Anglo-French proposals.

Benes asked that the demands be given him in writing; he was refused.

Would the Czechs yield or not?

If France fought on their side they had a good chance, but even so there were German divisions to the south of them in Austria and their own Maginot line was in the north.

They would, in any case, be subject to a severe bombardment from the air.

But France had now repudiated her word, and without France, Russia was under no obligation.

Benes and his colleagues decided to yield - with the understanding, they said, that Britain and France would guarantee the future independence of what was left of their country, and that the land transferred to Germany would not be occupied by German troops until the new frontiers had been delimited.

Whereupon followed Chamberlain's second flight to Canossa, this time to the little German town of Godesberg.

To his surprise he found Hitler in a towering rage.

The German army was going to march on October first, roared the Fuehrer, and nothing could stop it.

There might be "subsequent corrections" in the boundaries suggested, and perhaps plebiscites.

But Germany was going to take by force what was hers by right and would listen to no one.

Hitler presented Chamberlain with a map showing what districts Germany was going to annex immediately, and Chamberlain received it, agreed to present it to the Czechs without recommendation, and flew back to London.

The Czechs indignantly rejected the Godesberg ultimatum, the British mobilized their fleet, the French their army.

It looked like war.

Trenches were dug in London streets, tanks and trucks rolled through Berlin on their way south, and gas masks were distributed in Paris.

The British foreign office gave categorical assurance to France that Britain would come to her assistance if she took military action against Germany in the event of that country's invading of Czechoslovakia - a much stronger guarantee than Britain gave France on August 2, 1914.

Seemingly, Hitler must give way or the second World War would break.

- pp. 313-314, World Wars and Revolutions - The Course of Europe Since 1900 by Walter Phelps Hall, Ph.D, Dodge Professor of History, Princeton University, copyright 1943
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CZECHOSLOVAKIA, continued ...

The Fuehrer gave no indication of yielding.

Within five days his Germans were to march.

He had no qualms, he said, against Poland or France.

"After the Sudeten German question is regulated," he asserted, "we have no further territorial claims to make in Europe."

But October first was the deadline, and to prove that he meant business, German divisions were concentrated on the Czech frontier, and German workmen labored day and night on the "Westwall."

To frighten the democracies he even took another step: "German action" (whatever that meant), he told the British ambassador, would commence the next day at 2 P.M., namely, on September 28.

The democracies, on the other hand, did give signs of yielding.

The French newspapers deliberately minimized as unofficial the British guarantee of standing by France; and Chamberlain, in a most ambiguous speech, showed that he was of two minds - he spoke of Czechoslovakia as a "far-away country" for whom it seemed almost impossible that England would be fighting, and the general tenor of his remarks in the House of Commons sounded more like Hamlet than Pitt or Palmerston.

Then, just as the last sands were running out of the hour-glass, the Fuehrer, at the request of Mussolini, postponed mobilization twenty-four hours and invited Daladier and Chamberlain to a conference with the Duce and himself at Munich.

Chamberlain accepted, and for the third time made a journey to Canossa.

This Munich conference was still another victory for the dictators.

Czechoslovakia was an uninvited onlooker as the four statesmen carved up that unhappy country in accordance with the Godesberg ultimatum.

Minute concessions of no importance were made by which England and France might save face.

Four zones were to be occupied by the Germans "in four rapid bites instead of one."

A fifth zone was created in which there were supposed to be plebiscites.

"But the final result was worse for the Czechs than Godesberg would have been."

- pp. 314-315, World Wars and Revolutions - The Course of Europe Since 1900 by Walter Phelps Hall, Ph.D, Dodge Professor of History, Princeton University, copyright 1943
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CZECHOSLOVAKIA, continued ...

The international commission supposedly in control of plebiscites was a farce.

The Germans took what they wanted, marched to within forty miles of Prague, and absorbed about 750,000 Czechs in the new Germany.

As they did so the Poles invaded Teschen, annexing about 80,000 Poles and 120,000 Czechs.

Hungary then advanced on the helpless Czechs from the south, crossed the Danube, took Bratislava, and would have divided Ruthenia and perhaps Slovakia with Poland had she been permitted to by the all-powerful Germans.

The latter, together with the Italians, decided everything.

All French and British guarantees vanished into thin air.

"I return from Germany," said Chamberlain to cheering thousands, "bringing peace with honor."

He brought back neither.


Peace the Prime Minister might have envisaged, but how about honor?

We are too close to these events to write now with assurance of the motives which underlay them.

Perhaps some day history will show that the French were more to blame than the British, for it was France, not England, that guaranteed the independence of Czechoslovakia, and England had simply guaranteed to help France.

Nevertheless, the British had joined the French in pressing on Czechoslovakia the Franco-British plan which the Czechs accepted, and from that moment Britain was bound by implication to defend those who took her advice and yielded at her insistence.

Why did the British give way all along the line?

Several explanations have been offered.

A number of journalists asserted that the British Tories were bluffing from the beginning, that the mobilization of the fleet was a blind and a fake, carried on to deceive the simple, the real intent of the Tories being to support Hitler so that he might become strong enough to be ultimately victorious over Soviet Russia, or at least strong enough to act as their agent in staving off the Red menace.

This is pure assumption and a rather silly one, for it lays too much emphasis on economic determinism and suggests an altogether too complicated and subtle a plot.

The Tories, afterall, were British citizens, and to impugn their patriotism and common sense without evidence is, to say the least, not being historically minded.

Another conjecture was that Britain was profoundly pacifistic, unwilling to fight in any cause which did not directly concern land over which flew the Union Jack.

In this there was probably an element of truth, but not a great deal.

Pacifistic or otherwise, the sons of John Bull presumably had not been transformed in less than a generation into gentle Quakers.

Two other reasons for Chamberlain's stand come closer to the truth.

He knew that, arrogant and boastful though Hitler might be, he had a good talking point in demanding the inclusion of Sudeten Germans in the Reich on the grounds of self-determination.

Bohemia had been a part of the old Austria, not a part of the old Germany, but that could not offset altogether the argument for self-determination.

Might not Hitler be content with just annexing Germans?

Perhaps there was a possibility that he would be.

- pp. 315-316, World Wars and Revolutions - The Course of Europe Since 1900 by Walter Phelps Hall, Ph.D, Dodge Professor of History, Princeton University, copyright 1943
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CZECHOSLOVAKIA, continued ...

And finally, and perhaps most important of all, was the military argument.

Russia was an uncertain factor.

The Soviets were said to have promised 200 airplanes for the defense of Czechoslovakia, but on the border of that country were 1,000 German planes that probably would sweep over it before France, England, and Russia could do anything.

Stalin had but recently put to death so many generals that Chamberlain might well have questioned the importance of any help Russia might provide, even if she honored her treaty with France.

The French were well prepared with their Maginot line for defense, but how could they reach Czechoslovakia to rescue that country from Hitler's maw?

And if the French could not, how about England?

His first duty was to secure the safety of his own country.

He knew that Germany was better prepared for air battles than Britain, and it is possible that he had reliable information that the Reich had a two-to-one superiority in the air.

Could he afford to risk a war under such circumstances?

Possibly Hitler was bluffing; but on the other hand, possibly he was not.

Chamberlain's role in this affair certainly was not brilliant, but that does not necessarily mean that it was absurd.

Perhaps he had some right to feel that Baldwin and MacDonald were more responsible in the long run than himself, for it was they who neglected for so many years to make ready against the day when no argument could prevail against Hitler's lawless will unless backed by superior force.

The triumphant Germans, meanwhile, had won two astonishing diplomatic victories in less than six months, since without any fighting at all not only Austria but also the mountain bastions of Bohemia lay in their hands.

- pp. 316-318, World Wars and Revolutions - The Course of Europe Since 1900 by Walter Phelps Hall, Ph.D, Dodge Professor of History, Princeton University, copyright 1943
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CZECHOSLOVAKIA, continued ...

Hitler had solemnly pledged himself to go no farther, but he had not the slightest intention of keeping his word.

Having swallowed somewhat more than one-third of the area of Czechoslovakia, and somewhat less than one-third of the population, he was still greedy for more.

What was left of the Republic of Czechoslovakia soon found that it was independent in name only and that it must look to Berlin for guidance.

The Germans demanded and obtained a corridor across the country for a military highway; they demanded and obtained the right to decide on the destinies of Slovakia and Ruthenia, not only in respect to government but also in respect to how much land should be ceded to Poland and Hungary.

And when Hacha, the last president of the republic, protested against Germany's high-handed interference, he, like Schuschnigg, was summoned to Hitler's presence.

His going to Germany was a formality.

Even before he reached Berlin, the German army had started south again.

Hacha, berated and browbeaten by Hitler, signed away the independence of his country, and almost simultaneously with his so doing, the Germans entered Prague, none resisting.

A few snowballs were thrown at the Teutonic invader; that was all.

Czechoslovakia was made a German protectorate, and Hitler could boast of adding still more military booty, to say nothing of much needed gold, to Germany's store.

- pp. 318-319, World Wars and Revolutions - The Course of Europe Since 1900 by Walter Phelps Hall, Ph.D, Dodge Professor of History, Princeton University, copyright 1943
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CZECHOSLOVAKIA, concluded ...

In somewhat characteristic vein, he boasted of other things, and especially of the first German Reich, which had been born again.

That German Reich had been the Holy Roman Empire, reaching far across the Rhine into France and across the Alps into the heart of Italy.

Mussolini knew this as well as Hitler, knew that Florence and Milan had been part of that Reich.

The Duce said nothing, but one suspects he made note of these new boasts of the German Fuehrer.

It was not tactful for Hitler to speak thus.

And he spoke of other things as well, this fateful month of March, 1939.

It was not self-determination that Hitler emphasized now, but rather the idea of a German Lebensraum, a living space, which he now in the process of gaining for the Third Reich.

How large was that living space to be, and where beyond Czechoslovakia was it to be extended?

Always until March, 1939, there had been explanations of Nazi diplomacy based upon the iniquity of Versailles and of the violations by the Allies of the sacred right of self-determination.

But the demise of Czechoslovakia could not thus be explained.

Quite evident it now seemed to thoughtful men that, unless Hitler was stopped somewhere by force, a large part of eastern Europe would fall speedily under his control.

And after that, what about Alsace-Lorraine, and French, Belgian, Dutch and British colonies; and for all anybody knew, the coast of the English Channel?

- p. 319, World Wars and Revolutions - The Course of Europe Since 1900 by Walter Phelps Hall, Ph.D, Dodge Professor of History, Princeton University, copyright 1943
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