The following day, Goebbels added: ‘We have all walked on a thin tightrope over a dizzy abyss… The word “peace” is on all lips. The world is filled with a frenzy of joy. Germany’s prestige has grown enormously. Now we are really a world power again. Now, it’s a matter of rearm, rearm, rearm…’399 Hitler and Ribbentrop did not share the general elation. Ribbentrop had pushed for war until the last minute. He felt robbed of his humiliation of the British — all the more so since Chamberlain was feted on his journey through Munich in an open-topped car as the hero of the moment, the actual saviour of Europe’s peace.400 Hitler’s own mood had altered overnight. The impressions he had given of savouring his triumph over the western powers had vanished by the next morning.401 He looked pale, tired, and out of sorts when Chamberlain visited him in his apartment in Prinzregentenplatz to present him with a joint declaration of Germany’s and Britain’s determination never to go to war with one another again. Chamberlain had suggested the private meeting during a lull in proceedings the previous day. Hitler had, the British Prime Minister remarked, ‘jumped at the idea’. Chamberlain regarded the meeting as ‘a very friendly and pleasant talk’. ‘At the end,’ he went on, ‘I pulled out the declaration which I had prepared beforehand and asked if he would sign it.’402 After a moment’s hesitation, Hitler — with some reluctance it seemed to the interpreter Paul Schmidt — appended his signature.403 For him, the document was meaningless. And for him Munich was no great cause for celebration. He felt cheated of the greater triumph which he was certain would have come from the limited war with the Czechs which had been his aim all summer.404 Even military action for the more restricted goal of attaining the Sudetenland by force had been denied him. He had been compelled, through the readiness of the western powers to make Czechoslovakia concede the Sudetenland, to compromise on the directives that he had upheld since May despite internal opposition. During the Polish crisis the following summer this would make him all the more determined to avoid the possibility of being diverted from war. But when that next crisis came, he was even more confident that he knew his adversaries: ‘Our enemies are small worms,’ he would tell his generals in August 1939. ‘I saw them in Munich.’405
Of those in Hitler’s immediate entourage, none had done more to bring about the eventual acceptance of a negotiated settlement than Göring. He had ultimately scored a victory over his arch-rival, and leading hawk, Ribbentrop. The draft which formed the basis of the Munich Agreement had been largely Göring’s work. His excellent mood at Munich reflected his pleasure that his own approach had ultimately triumphed. But it marked the end of Göring’s influence on foreign policy. It was the first, and last, time that he had pressed for a solution which did not meet with Hitler’s favour. The Führer’s displeasure was apparent to him. His standing with Hitler was diminished. During the following months, he would be totally displaced by Ribbentrop as Hitler’s right hand in all matters related to foreign policy. Weakened and depressed, Göring would take himself on an extended holiday in the Mediterranean in early 1939, leaving the way clear for his arch-rival, and would be largely excluded from decisions on the expansionist programme that culminated in the Polish crisis and war.406
