rise-and-fall-of-the-third-reich-william-shirer-pdf

378 THE RISE AND FALL OF THE THIRD REICHthe means for an attack which involved the piercing of the frontierfortifications. 417It has always been assumed by Allied military experts that the GermanArmy would have romped through Czechoslovakia. But to the testimony ofKeitel that this would not have been the case must be added that of FieldMarshal von Manstein, who became one of the most brilliant of the Germanfield commanders. When he, in his turn, testified at Nuremberg (unlike Keiteland Jodl, he was not on trial for his life) on the German position at the time ofMunich, he explained:If a war had broken out, neither our western border nor our Polishfrontier could really have been effectively defended by us, and thereis no doubt whatsoever that had Czechoslovakia defended herself, wewould have been held up by her fortifications, for we did not havethe means to break through. 418∗Jodl, the ”brains” of OKW, put it this way when he took the stand in hisown defense at Nuremberg:It was out of the question, with five fighting divisions and sevenreserve divisions in the western fortifications, which were nothing buta large construction site, to hold out against 100 French divisions.That was militarily impossible. 419If, as these German generals concede, Hitler’s army lacked the means ofpenetrating the Czech fortifications, and Germany, in the face of France’s overwhelmingstrength in the west, was in a ”militarily impossible” situation, andfurther, since, as we have seen, there was such grave dissension among the generalsthat the Chief of the Army General Staff was prepared to overthrow theFuehrer in order to avert a hopeless war – why, then, did not the French andBritish general staffs know this? Or did they? And if they did, how could theheads of government of Britain and France be forced at Munich into sacrificingso much of their nations’ vital interests? In seeking answers to such questionswe confront one of the mysteries of the Munich time which has not yet beencleared up. Even Churchill, concerned as he is with military affairs, scarcelytouches on it in his massive memoirs.It is inconceivable that the British and French general staffs and the twogovernments did not know of the opposition of the German Army General Staffto a European war. For, as already noted here, the conspirators in Berlin warnedthe British of this through at least four channels in August and September and,as we know, the matter came to the attention ofChamberlain himself. By early September Paris and London must havelearned of the resignation of General Beck and of the obvious consequences tothe German Army of the rebellion of its most eminent and gifted leader. It∗ Even Hitler became at least partly convinced of this after he had inspected the Czechfortress line. He later told Dr. Carl Burckhardt, League of Nations High Commissioner ofDanzig, ”When after Munich we were in a position to examine Czechoslovak military strengthfrom within, what we saw of it greatly disturbed us; we had run a serious danger. The planprepared by the Czech generals was formidable. I now understand why my generals urgedrestraint.” (Pertinax, The Grave Diggers of France, p. 5.)