GCE History Teachers' Guide - Unit 3 - WJEC

GCE AS and A HISTORY UNIT 3 Teachers' Guide 32
DOCUMENT 5
'Hitler's comments at the Hossbach meeting had already made it plain. He was aiming not
just at the incorporation of the Sudetenland into the German Reich, but at destroying the
state of Czechoslovakia itself. By the end of May, this aim, and its timing meant war –
certainly against Czechoslovakia, and probably against the Western powers. Hitler, it
became unmistakenly plain, actually wanted war. "Long live war – even if it lasts from two to
eight years," he would proclaim to the Sudeten leader Konrad Henlein. Hitler felt cheated of
the greater triumph which he was certain would have come from the limited war against the
Czechs, which had been his aim all summer. Even military action for the more restricted
goal of attaining the Sudetenland by force had been denied him.'
[Ian Kershaw, an academic historian and specialist in the Nazi period, writing in a specialist
book, Hitler: a Profile in Power (1991)]
DOCUMENT 6
'After his meeting with Chamberlain, the Fuhrer spoke a long time to me and Schmundt over
the results of the agreement. My impression is that he really liked the old gentleman and
desires to negotiate more with him. The Fuhrer expressed the thought that things could now
finally quieten down. He himself at present is in no way thinking on any kind of a step which
might politically become dangerous. First, at the very least, the newly won prizes must be
digested. And then too the solution of the controversial question with Poland won't run
away. At a given time, he would proceed to soften up the Poles, for which task he would use
the same methods that have now proven useful with the Czechs. In the long run however,
peaceful quiet could be maintained only if the entire Versailles Treaty were annulled.'
[Major Gerhard Engel, Hitler's army adjutant from 1938-1943, writing in his diary entry on
October 1 st 1938. His diaries were published in German in 1976 and first published in
English in 2006 and called
At the Head of the Reach: the Secret Diaries of Gerhard Engel]
DOCUMENT 7
'It was on the eve of Munich that I realized beyond a doubt that the enemies of the Third
Reich were determined to have our hide at all costs and that there was no possibility of
coming to terms with them. When that arch-capitalist bourgeois Chamberlain, with his
deceptive umbrella in his hand, put himself to the trouble of going all the way to
Berchtesgaden to discuss matters, he knew very well that he really intended to wage
ruthless war against us. He was quite prepared to tell me anything which he thought might
serve to lull my suspicions. His one and only object in undertaking this trip was to gain time.
What we ought then to have done was to strike at once. We ought to have gone to war in
1938. It was the last chance we had of localizing the war.
But they gave way all along the line and, like the poltroons that they are, ceded to all
our demands. Under such conditions it was very difficult to seize the initiative and
commence hostilities. At Munich we lost a unique opportunity of easily and swiftly winning a
war that was inevitable in any case. Although we were ourselves not fully prepared, we
were nonetheless better prepared than the enemy. September 1938 would have been the
most favourable date.'
[Adolf Hitler, in an alleged conversation with an unknown acquaintance, recorded by Martin
Bormann, Hitler's secretary on February 1945. The transcript was found in Bormann's notes
in the bunker]