Documentation

Secret documents are always published after a major war, years afterward as a general thing. But just before the peace of last week (see p. 75), His Majesty's Government in the United Kingdom made historic haste, disclosing in a White Paper ten documents of the Czechoslovak crisis, hitherto secret. Although these did not quite tell all, for verbal encounters had been of great importance, they provided future historians with prompt and vital data, provided glimpses behind the scenes of the recent crisis:

Document 1 is the final Runciman Report, summing up scores of hitherto secret cablegrams and verbal messages sent to His Majesty's Government by Viscount Runciman of Doxford in the period from August 3 to September 16, during which the veteran British shipping tycoon labored in Czechoslovakia as mediator.

During those 44 days the Czechoslovak Government was obliged to make steadily greater concessions to the Sudeten German Party. Lord Runciman wrote that in his opinion and "in the opinion of the more responsible Sudeten leaders" the concessions offered on September 6 as the famed Plan No. 4 could be considered virtually full acceptance of those demands which provoked the Czechoslovak crisis, namely the Karlsbad Demands made last April 24 by the Sudeten "Little Fuehrer," Konrad Henlein.

According to the Runciman report, "Sudeten extremists" such as Fuehrer Henlein brashly refused to go to Prague to discuss Plan No. 4, and also Henlein's additional demands, instead urged "ex-treme unconstitutional action"--i. e., Sudeten secession--so that by September 13 "the Reich had become the dominant factor in the situation; the dispute was no longer an internal one. It was not part of my function to attempt mediation between Czechoslovakia and Germany."

So Mr. Chamberlain flew to Berchtesgaden on September 15. Next day, Mediator Chamberlain and ex-Mediator Runciman, starting respectively from Berchtesgaden and from Prague, flew back to London where they arrived within a few minutes of each other. They promptly conferred at No. 10 Downing Street. Events then moved so swiftly that by September 19 the capitulation of Prague had already been demanded by Britain and France, but it took methodical Lord Runciman until September 21 to write his report. Excerpts:

"It is a hard thing to be ruled by an alien race; and I have been left with the impression that Czechoslovak rule in the Sudeten areas for the last twenty years, although not actually oppressive and certainly not 'terroristic,' has been marked by tactlessness, lack of understanding, petty intolerance and discrimination to the point where the resentment of the German population was inevitably moving to the direction of revolt. . . .

"Czech officials and Czech police speaking little or no German were appointed in large numbers to purely German districts; Czech agricultural colonists were encouraged to settle on land transferred under the land reform in the middle of German populations; for the children of these Czech invaders Czech schools were built on a large scale; there was a very general belief that Czech firms were favored as against German firms in the allocation of State contracts and that the State provided work relief for Czechs more readily than for Germans. I believe these complaints to be in the main justified. . .

"I consider . . . that . . . frontier districts should at once be transferred from Czechoslovakia to Germany. ... I recommend that an effort be made to find a basis for local autonomy [of other Sudetens] within the frontiers of the Czechoslovak Republic. . . . There are very real reasons for a policy of immediate drastic action. . . . The problem is one of removing the center of intense political friction from Middle Europe."

Document II is the urgent London-to-Prague message of September 19 in which the British Prime Minister and French Premier Edouard Daladier told President Eduard Benes: "We are both convinced that after recent events the point has now been reached where further maintenance within the boundaries of the Czechoslovak State of the districts inhabited by Sudeten-deutsche cannot in fact continue any longer without imperiling the interests of Czechoslovakia herself and European peace. . . . The area for transfer would probably have to include areas with over 50% German inhabitants. . . . We are satisfied that a transfer based on a higher percentage would not meet the case."

Britain and France went on to offer "to join in an international guarantee of the new boundaries of the Czechoslovak State against unprovoked aggression" with one major condition, namely, "the substitution of a general guarantee against unprovoked aggression in place of the existing treaties which involve reciprocal obligations of a military character." This meant that Czechoslovakia, by accepting, would renounce her military alliance with Soviet Russia.

These terms--secretly accepted by Czechoslovakia in her capitulation on September 21--are considerably harsher than was suggested at that time by reports of British, French and Czech statesmen in authoritative off-the-record statements to the world press. For example, the world was led to believe that only districts in which Sudetens number 80% or more of the voting population would have to be handed over to Germany without a plebiscite, whereas actually this demand applied to the much larger area in which Sudetens number 50% or more. The impression given the world that "about five weeks" had been mentioned as the period of transfer was not borne out last week by anything in the official text, which implied speed only in saying "these areas are now [to be] transferred to the Reich."

Documents III, IV, V and VI include the famed letters which Neville Chamberlain and Adolf Hitler wrote to each other from opposite sides of the River Rhine during the tense "breakdown" of their talks.

"My Dear Reichskanzler . . ." began the Prime Minister. "The difficulty I see about the proposal you put to me yesterday afternoon arises from the suggestion that the areas should in the immediate future be occupied by German troops. ... I do not think you have realized the impossibility of my agreeing to put forward any plan unless I have reason to suppose it will be considered by public opinion in my country, in France, and indeed in the world generally, as carrying out the principles already agreed upon in an orderly fashion and free from the threat of force. . . . There must surely be alternatives to your proposal. ... I am faithfully, Neville Chamberlain."

Replied the Fuehrer: "If formerly the behavior of the Czechoslovak Government was brutal, it can only be described during recent weeks and days as madness. ... In a few weeks the number of [Sudeten] refugees who have been driven out of [Czechoslovakia] has risen to 120,000. This situation as stated above is unbearable and will be terminated by me. . . .

"Your Excellency assures me now that the principle of the transfer of the Sudeten territory to the Reich has in principle already been accepted. I regret to have to reply to Your Excellency that as regards this point the theoretical recognition of principles also has been formerly granted to us Germans. In the year 1918 the armistice was concluded on the basis of the Fourteen Points of President Wilson, which in principle were recognized by all. They, however, in practice were broken in the most shameful way. . . .

"I cannot conceal from Your Excellency that the great mistrust with which I am inspired leads me to believe that the acceptance of the principle of the transfer of the Sudeten Germans to the Reich by the Czech Government was given only in the hope thereby to win time so as by one means or another to bring about a change in contradiction of this principle. . . . Adolf Hitler."

"My dear Reich Chancellor," rejoined Mr. Chamberlain in cold British wrath, ". . . Since the acceptance or refusal of Your Excellency's proposal is now a matter for the Czechoslovak Government to decide, I do not see how I can perform any further service here. ... I propose, therefore, to return to England. . . . Yours faithfully. . . ."

So Mr. Chamberlain went home to forward the latest German demands to Prague and then await events.

Documents VII and VIII give the Czechoslovak Government's official complaint at Adolf Hitler's "unbelievably coarse and vulgar [propaganda] campaign"; go on to affirm that "Hitler's demands in their present form are absolutely and unconditionally unacceptable"; then close with a declaration that "the Czechoslovak Government will be ready to take part in an international conference where Germany and Czechoslovakia, among other nations, would be represented, to find a different method of settling the Sudeten German question."

Documents IX and X are the final strained letters between Chamberlain and Hitler which immediately preceded the calling last week of the Munich Four Power Conference (see p. 15). With asperity the Prime Minister wrote: ". . . You said that the only difference between us lay in the method of carrying out an agreed principle. . . . Surely the tragic consequence of a conflict [war] ought not to be incurred over a difference in method."

In his reply, Chancellor Hitler referred to Czechoslovakia's frantic objections to being dismembered, stated with bland brass: "I must openly declare that I cannot bring myself to understand these arguments. . . . Czechoslovakia, after the cession of the Sudeten German territory, would constitute a healthier, more unified economic organism than before."

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