Hitler’s triumphal arrival to popular acclaim in his former home town of Linz during the 1938 Anschluss of Austria (which subsequently represented itself as ‘Hitler’s first victim’).
Czechoslovakia’s loss of the Western border territories also meant loss of key border defences – and the will to defend herself, after the debacle of the summer. When, in March 1939, Hitler’s armies invaded Prague, there was little the Czechs could do to resist German take-over. Bohemia and Moravia became a German protectorate, while Slovakia became a satellite state of the German Reich. As far as Britain was concerned, it was prudent to allow this ‘faraway country’ of which they knew little (as it was put in September 1938) fall without Western military intervention.
Emboldened by the feeble Western response to the invasion of Czechoslovakia, Hitler now turned his attention to Poland and the Baltic states. Lithuania ceded Memel to Germany, but the Poles stood firm on Danzig. At this point, the British took a stronger stand, issuing a guarantee of Polish independence. Hitler chose not to take too much notice of this, given the British record of appeasement. In August 1939, in a surprise move – and putting an end to parallel British negotiations with the Russians – Hitler concluded a pact with his ideological arch-enemy, the communist leader Joseph Stalin. In conjunction with a further agreement in September, Hitler and Stalin mutually carved up the Polish and Baltic states, and achieved certain strategic aims; while Stalin bought time for further rearmament, Hitler sought to avoid the possibility of war on two fronts. Again, the longer-term consequences were to prove catastrophic.
Map 4.2 Territorial annexation,84 1935–1939.
On 1 September 1939 German troops used the pretext of incited border incidents for a well-organized invasion of Poland. By 3 September Britain and France had concluded that this clear act of German aggression now meant that they were, at last, at war with Germany. The precarious attempt at stabilizing European affairs and achieving a new international order after the First World War had collapsed. Germany under Hitler was again unleashing war in Europe. But this time – unlike the mood of August 1914, however exaggerated by nationalist mythology – there was little enthusiasm for war among the German people. The peaceful gains of the preceding years had been greeted with an acclaim tinged by relief at the avoidance of bloodshed; now, in the main, the Germans took up arms in sombre mood, with considerable foreboding, clinging to the hope that Hitler was right in his predictions of an assured and early German victory. But, as it was to turn out, Hitler’s aims for the ‘master race’ were so ambitious as to pave the way for eventual total defeat.
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