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

384 THE RISE AND FALL OF THE THIRD REICHMemel, a Baltic port of some forty thousand inhabitants, had been lost byGermany to Lithuania after Versailles. Since Lithuania was smaller and weakerthan Austria and Czechoslovakia, the seizure of the town presented no problemto the Wehrmacht and in this directive Hitler merely mentioned that it wouldbe ”annexed.” As for Czechoslovakia:It must be possible to smash at any time the remainder of Czechoslovakiaif her policy should become hostile toward Germany.The preparations to be made by the armed forces for this contingencywill be considerably smaller in extent than those for ”Green”;they must, however, guarantee a considerably higher state of preparednesssince planned mobilization measures have been dispensedwith. The organization, order of battle and state of readiness of theunits earmarked for that purpose are in peacetime to be so arrangedfor a surprise assault that Czechoslovakia herself will be deprived ofall possibility of organized resistance. The object is the swift occupationof Bohemia and Moravia and the cutting off of Slovakia. 427Slovakia, of course, could be cut off by political means, which might makethe use of German troops unnecessary. For this purpose the German ForeignOffice was put to work. All through the first days of October, Ribbentrop andhis aides urged the Hungarians to press for their share of the spoils in Slovakia.But when Hungary, which hardly needed German prodding to whet itsgreedy appetite, spoke of taking Slovakia outright, the Wilhelmstrasse put itsfoot down. It had other plans for the future of this land. The Prague governmenthad already, immediately after Munich, granted Slovakia a far-reachingautonomy. The German Foreign Office advised ”tolerating” this solution forthe moment. But for the future the German thinking was summed up by Dr.Ernst Woermann, director of the Political Department of the Foreign Office, ina memorandum of October 7. ”An independent Slovakia,” he wrote, ”wouldbe weak constitutionally and would therefore best further the German need forpenetration and settlement in the East.” 428Here is a new turning point for the Third Reich. For the first time Hitleris on the verge of setting out to conquer non-Germanic lands. Over the lastsix weeks he had been assuring Chamberlain, in private and in public, that theSudetenland was his last territorial demand in Europe. And though the BritishPrime Minister was gullible almost beyond comprehension in accepting Hitler’sword, there was some ground for his believing that the German dictator wouldhalt when he had digested the Germans who previously had dwelt outside theReich’s frontier and were now within it. Had not the Fuehrer repeatedly saidthat he wanted no Czechs in the Third Reich? Had he not in Mein Kampfand in countless public speeches reiterated the Nazi theory that a Germany, tobe strong, must be racially pure and therefore must not take in foreign, andespecially Slav, peoples? He had. But also – and perhaps this was forgottenin London – he had preached in many a turgid page in Mein Kampf thatGermany’s future lay in conquering Lebensraum in the East. For more than amillennium this space had been occupied by the Slavs.THE WEEK OF THE BROKEN GLASS