The German Question, Part One Hundred Twenty-Nine

"Hitler Rules Germany" Part Two/B"
Foreign Policy & The German Question" Part Seven
"A Possible Turning Point; Hitler Takes Czechs Into The Reich"

NOTE: I forgot to mention that during the "Sudeten German crisis," the German public was highly apprehensive about going to war, according to the many correspondents there. The hysterical crowds at the 1938 Nazi Party rally in Nuremberg and at a Hitler speech in Berlin* just prior to the Munich Conference were not really representative of the average German (from what is known). While there were no actual public opinion polls, there were many foreign reporters in Germany during that era, including Americans, and virtually all noted the downbeat mood of the German public about the possibility of war.

So now Czechoslovakia was much smaller in size,** but still with problems, primarily now from the Slovaks, who wanted total independence. Hungary had received some territory with substantial Hungarian population as part of a separate agreement made at Vienna the month after the Sudetenland was ceded to Germany, but the Hungarians still harbored ill feelings toward the peace treaties and border adjustments made after World War One, especially as they applied to the rest of Slovakia, which they ruled prior to the end of the war. By March 1939, the Czechs sent troops into Slovakia and Slovak leaders were removed from their positions. The Slovaks declared independence (with Hitler's support and insistence). President Hacha went to meet Hitler in Berlin, where he was told the capital of Prague would be bombed unless he cooperated with Germany. Hacha gave in and German troops crossed into his country later that morning, and Hitler himself followed a bit later. The Czech territories were occupied by Germany and declared the "Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia," and Slovakia was independent, although with foreign policy tied to Germany (as a satellite country, in other words).

During the Sudeten crisis the previous year, Hitler had said Germany wanted "no Czechs." Further, he made the statement that the Sudetenland was his "last territorial demand in Europe."*** These two things and Hitler's signing of Chamberlain's "peace for our time" agreement were not forgotten in other countries, and Hitler, by taking Czechs into Germany, lost any credibility for just being a German patriot who wanted to unite Germans. Other European governments now began to reassess their policies toward Hitler and about how to deal with him.

* In a much anticipated speech given to 20,000 at the Berliner Sportpalast (Berlin Sport Palace), Joseph Goebbels whipped the faithful into a frenzy as he introduced Hitler. The speech was given on September 26, just three days before the Munich Conference, and I believe it was carried on radio throughout various parts of the world. No question in my mind that Goebbels, the propaganda genius, arranged everything to demonstrate German public support for Hitler's demands made on the Czech leaders. Twenty thousand Nazi Party members, however, were not the same as millions of average Germans, but in times of crisis, humans don't always think of such things, and the effect of the speech as it came across on radio with the hysterical crowd shouting "Führer befiehl, wir folgen" ("Führer command, we follow"), served Goebbels' purpose of making the world believe Germans were totally committed to Hitler's policy (although even if they weren't committed, there wasn't a hell of a lot they could do about it in a totalitarian police state).

** Technically, the official name of the country became "Czecho-Slovakia," to indicate the Slovaks had declared self government in the Slovak region, under Jozef Tiso. Edvard Beneš resigned as president of the country and went to England. He was replaced by Emil Hacha.

*** It is hard to believe that others from those times would have accepted this statement about territorial demands, as there were still several contentious issues of Germans living under non-German rule; especially, the city of Danzig, where the population was more than 90% German, and under a League of Nations Commissioner, the Polish Corridor and parts of Silesia where more than a million Germans lived under Polish rule, and in Memel and environs, where a substantial German majority lived under Lithuanian rule.

WORD HISTORY:
Hail-This is not related to "hail"=ice pellets, rather this word is used as a verb, an adjective and an interjection. This is the word used as an old greeting. It is closely related to "health," and indeed, that was the basic meaning lying behind its use as a greeting; that is, "health (to you)." Like its relatives, "health, heal and whole," it goes back to Indo European "koilos/kailo," with the general meaning "healthy, unharmed, in a sound, complete ("whole") condition." This gave its Old Germanic offspring "(k)hailaz," with the same general meaning. This produced Anglo-Saxon (Old English) "hal," also with the same meaning. It "seems" Old English "hal" was then influenced in extended meaning by Old Norse "heill," or more specifically by the Norse expression "ves heill," which meant "be healthy, have good health." This expression gave Old English "wæs hæil," with the same meaning, and it eventually was contracted into "wassail;" that is, "a toast to someone's health," that later came to also be applied to a specific drink used for such a toast. The general idea, however, remained just in the word "haeil," which came to be used as a greeting, and was later spelled "hail." The same idea lies behind the closely related German word "heil," which the Nazis used in greetings "Heil Hitler" and "Sieg heil," the latter meaning "hail to victory." By the way, before English borrowed the word "victory," English had "sige," obviously a close relative to German "Sieg."