But Hitler is mad with rage. He feels that Beneš has humiliated him, and the urge to make war is rising within him. On May 28, he summons the Wehrmacht’s field officers and barks at them: “It is my staunch desire to wipe Czechoslovakia off the map.”
Beneš, worried by Great Britain’s reluctance to honor its commitments, calls his ambassador in London for the latest news. The conversation, recorded by the German secret service, leaves no doubt about the Czechs’ disillusionment with their British counterparts—beginning with Chamberlain, who gets it with both barrels:
“The dirty bastard just wants us to lick Hitler’s ass!”
“You have to talk him around! Make him get his wits back!”
“The old bugger hasn’t got any wits left. All he does is sniff the Nazis’ shit.”
“So talk to Horace Wilson. Tell him to warn the prime minister that England, too, will be in danger if we don’t show ourselves resolute. Could you make him understand that?”
“How do you want me to talk to Wilson? He’s just a jackal!”
The Germans rush to get the tape recordings to the British. Apparently, Chamberlain was dreadfully upset and never forgave the Czechs.
This same Wilson, Chamberlain’s special advisor, made a bid for conciliation between the Germans and Czechs, with Britain acting as referee. Not long afterward, Hitler would talk about it in these terms:
“Why should I care about the British being involved? The filthy old dog is mad if he thinks he can con me like this!”
Wilson is surprised:
“If Herr Hitler is referring to the prime minister, I can assure him that the prime minister is not mad. He is simply interested in the outcome of the peace talks.”
Hitler then really lets loose:
“I’m not interested in what these ass-lickers say. The only thing that interests me is my people in the Sudetenland; my people who are tortured and assassinated by that vile queer Beneš! I won’t take it any longer. It’s more than a good German can bear! Do you hear me, you stupid swine?”
So there is at least one point on which the Czechs and Germans were in agreement: Chamberlain and his clique were a bunch of ass-lickers.
Curiously, however, Chamberlain was far less offended by the German insults than by those of the Czechs. With hindsight, you’d have to say that’s a shame.
On August 21, 1938, Edouard Daladier, the French council president, gives an edifying speech on the radio:
Faced with authoritarian states who are arming and equipping themselves with no regard to the length of the working week, alongside democratic states who are striving to regain their prosperity and ensure their safety with a forty-eight-hour week, why should France—both more impoverished and more threatened—delay making the decisions on which our future depends? As long as the international situation remains so delicate, we must work more than forty hours per week, and as much as forty-eight hours in businesses linked to national defense.
Reading this transcription, I was reminded that putting the French back to work was the French right’s eternal fantasy. I was deeply shocked that these elitist reactionaries, understanding so little the true nature of the situation, would use the Sudeten crisis to settle their scores with the Popular Front. Bear in mind that in 1938, the editorials of the bourgeois newspapers shamelessly stigmatized those workers whose only concern was enjoying their paid holidays.
Just in time, however, my father reminded me that Daladier was a radical Socialist, and thus part of the Popular Front. I’ve just checked this, and staggeringly, it’s true: Daladier was the defense minister in Leon Blum’s government! I feel like I’ve been punched in the stomach. I can hardly bear to tell the story: Daladier, former defense minister of the Popular Front, invokes questions of national defense not to prevent Hitler carving up Czechoslovakia but to backtrack on the forty-hour week—one of the principal gains of the Popular Front. At this level of political stupidity, betrayal becomes almost a work of art.
On September 26, 1938, Hitler must deliver a speech to the crowds gathered at the Sportpalast in Berlin. He practices his speech on a British delegation who come to tell him that the Czechs have refused to evacuate the Sudetenland. “They treat the Germans like blacks! On October 1, I will do what I please with Czechoslovakia. If France and England decide to attack, let them go ahead! I couldn’t care less! It’s pointless to continue negotiations—they’re going nowhere!” And he leaves.
Then, on the podium, in front of his fanatical supporters: