Eighty years ago, unknowingly Hitler makes his last (peacetime) territorial seizure
The horrified reaction to his
feeble initial response to the Nazi occupation of Bohemia persuaded prime minister Neville Chamberlain
that he needed to do something rather more resolute. The British ambassador was
recalled from Berlin and Chamberlain took the opportunity of a long-planned
speech to the Birmingham Conservatives to take a far tougher line with Hitler.
The speech was broadcast in Britain and the US as well as into Germany, in
translation. He asked the rhetorical question whether tearing up the Munich
Agreement betokened a move to dominate the world by force. Britain, the Commonwealth and France were united to meet a challenge. He also brought himself
to mention the plight of the Jews, which had previously been a taboo topic.
The speech was well received but the
excursion into the more practical world of diplomacy that Chamberlain made next
failed to translate the apparent new-found resolve into an effective means of facing down
Hitler. He proposed a four power agreement with France, The Soviet Union and
Poland to “consult together” should Hitler make any further moves. It would
have required extensive and skilful diplomatic preparation to persuade the
Poles to enter into any kind of agreement with the Russians and, such was
Chamberlain’s haste to roll out his initiative, that none was made before the proposal
was made public.
Hitler followed up his coup in Bohemia
by bullying Lithuania into the ceding Memel (Klaipeda in Lithuanian) which
had belonged to Germany before the First World War after being originally
seized by Frederick the Great. Since then it had become extensively Germanised and
was an autonomous province of Lithuania. Together with the Sudetenland it had
featured prominently in the lists of offences against self-determination by
German people of which Hitler complained. Having thoroughly reneged on his claim that the Sudetenland had been his
last territorial demand, he had no reason not to move on to Memeland. It had little strategic value to Germany
but it bordered the isolated German enclave of East Prussia on whose western border lay the Danzig territory which was widely expected to be its
next target. The annexation sent a signal to Poland that a move on Danzig and the corridor would not be long coming.
At the AGM of the Courtaulds
textile company the Chairman ushered in a new, grim future for Britain. Courtaulds
and ICI were setting up a factory to manufacture the new wonder synthetic
fabric, nylon, which had just been patented and launched by DuPont in the US.
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