Appeasing: Chapter Four: The Teppichfresser
The pressure over Czechoslovakia brought Hitler to chewing the carpet, but Chamberlain continued to appease him so the Führer just kept raising the stakes and Chamberlain went on agreeing.
Author’s Note: Welcome to Chapter Four of “Appeasing,” the seven-chapter episode of how the leaders of Britain and France collapsed before Hitler’s demands for the right to seize Czechoslovakia. Their faith in appeasement knew no bounds, resulting in the historical stain known as “Munich”. “Appeasing” is taken from “Seeking the Hinge,” my story of Harry Hopkins’s historic role in 1940-41 in forming the partnership of Franklin Roosevelt, Winston Churchill, and Joseph Stalin that won World War Two.
I am presenting “Appeasing” on Substack where it may be read, free, one chapter each day for seven consecutive days at terryholland.substack.com. Substack replaces each day’s chapter with the next one, depositing the previous day’s chapter in the Archives where they are available without restriction for a reader who takes a subscription, which can cost as little as $2.50/month. Such a subscription earns the access to all my work and also permits email correspondence with me in guiding the reader through the pathways of the Archives. Each chapter will also be presented on my Facebook page (facebook.com/terryholland100).
The seven chapters of “Appeasing” and their appearance dates are:
Conspiring to Stop Hitler: Wednesday, December 18, Reading time: Eleven minutes
Plan Z: Thursday, December 19, Reading time: Eleven minutes
“The Commonest Little Dog”: Friday, December 20, Reading time: Fourteen minutes
The Teppichfresser: Saturday, December 21, Reading time: Eleven minutes
“Thank God for the Prime Minister!”: Sunday, December 22, Reading time: ten minutes
Munich: Monday, December 23, Reading time: Eight minutes
Aftermath: Tuesday, December 24, Reading time: Sixteen minutes
••••
Reading time: Eleven minutes
Bill Shirer was in Godesberg to cover the conference for CBS. He was having breakfast in the garden of the Dreesen Hotel, Hitler’s headquarters, Thursday morning when Chamberlain had not yet arrived. Shirer wrote in his diary, “The great man suddenly appeared, strode past me, and went down to the edge of the Rhine to inspect his river yacht. X, one of Germany’s leading editors who secretly despises the regime (Shirer used codes for the names of those he considered in jeopardy) nudged me: ‘Look at his walk!’ On inspection it was a very curious walk indeed. In the first place, it was very ladylike. Dainty little steps. In the second place, every few steps he cocked his right shoulder nervously, his left leg snapping up as he did so. I watched him closely as he came back past us. The same nervous tic. He had ugly black patches under his eyes. I think the man is on the edge of a nervous breakdown. And now I understood the meaning of an expression the party hacks were using when we sat around drinking in the Dreesen last night. They kept talking about the ‘Teppichfresser,’ the ‘carpet-eater.’ At first I didn’t get it, and then another reporter explained it in a whisper. He said Hitler has been having some of his nervous crises lately and that in recent days they’ve taken a strange form. Whenever he goes on a rampage about Beneš or the Czechs he flings himself to the floor and chews the edges of the carpet, hence the Teppichfresser. After seeing him this morning I can believe it.”
Chamberlain told Hitler of his pleasure that Daladier, and even Beneš, had joined with him in acceptance of the terms he had set forth at Berchtesgaden. Hitler said, “I am very sorry, but that is no longer possible. I insist that Warsaw and Budapest are right in insisting on claims on Czech territory. These claims must be met!”
Chamberlain said, “I come carrying no position whatever on those claims and they are not an element of the agreement I hope to reach with you.”
“But your government does not agree. Furthermore, time has now detrimentally lapsed. The issue before us must be resolved by October 1 or I will take appropriate action.”
Chamberlain was aghast. He said, “I have risked my political career to bring to you an agreement that meets the terms you set forth at our previous meeting. And now this!” Hitler just stared at him. Chamberlain groped for new ground, for the place where men doing business stood. He said, “My friend …” And Hitler shrieked, “We are not friends! Friends do not betray!”
Chamberlain advanced to flabbergasted. He said, “Betray? Where is the betrayal? You asked for an acceptance of terms and I have brought it to you.”
Hitler went into a harangue that his interpreter struggled to keep up with. For an hour he ranted while Chamberlain went pale. The man was mad, he thought. Angry as well, but truly unhinged. For another hour Hitler stormed about while Chamberlain seized the pauses to ask questions and respond to what he was hearing but Hitler went on as though he hadn’t heard a word the prime minister uttered. Finally, Chamberlain asked for an adjournment.
“Adjourn? What is the point? You are willing to bring on war and I am willing to wage it. Herr Chamberlain, it is time for us to go our separate ways. Time for each of us to prepare for what you have done!”
Chamberlain insisted for the meeting to be allowed to resume the next morning so that he could confer with his government in London. Hitler snorted something about “More confer! More delay!” but agreed. They would reconvene the next day, Friday, at 11:30 a.m.
In those twenty-fours real betrayal occurred. A modest battalion of German troops, just enough to provoke, advanced into the Sudetenland and took up battle stations. Beneš sent the news to both the Foreign Office in London and to Godesberg with a request for approval of his own mobilization in response. His was a sovereign state and needed no such approval; he was being unnecessarily polite. Henderson intercepted the message in Godesberg and responded with “Wait awhile.” Halifax, with an uninvited but welcome Churchill beside him, approved the Czech response. Wilson, in Godesberg, intercepted the interception and countermanded Halifax “on the authority of the Prime Minister” who was so overwrought from his conversation that Wilson chose to not tell him what was happening. Beneš hesitated. Prompted by Churchill, Halifax asked his ambassador in Moscow to inform Litvinov, the Soviet Foreign Secretary, that the conflict in the Sudetenland was about to erupt. He next sent a message to Chamberlain saying that the Nazi incursion, about which Chamberlain still knew nothing, “had the effect of hardening the cabinet to the feeling that we have gone to the limit and that you should inform the Chancellor that his rejection of Czech concessions would be an unpardonable crime against humanity.” Anxious hours passed before Chamberlain responded to Halifax by saying “Hitler’s demands are consistent with the attainment of a lasting European peace.” How was that possible, Halifax wondered, but he did not respond.
The Friday morning resumption of talks was put on hold while letters were exchanged. Hitler gave nothing in his notes and letters since nothing had always been good enough for Chamberlain. They met again at 10:30 p.m. Friday. Chamberlain was presented with a document demanding that the Czechs “begin evacuation of the Sudetenland” by 8:00 a.m. of the coming Monday, the 26th. It stipulated that “all those who remained” after 8:00 a.m. Wednesday, the 28th, would “be arrested or shot as trespassers on soil of the German Reich.” The evacuation would be “supervised by troops of the Wehrmacht.”
That was very nearly more gall than even Chamberlain could swallow. He said the document was “an ultimatum” and he was “appalled by the behavior of its presentation.” Hitler said, “It is not an ultimatum. It is a memorandum. See there at the top. Memorandum!”
An adjutant entered the room with the news that Beneš had just announced the mobilization of his troops, which were awaiting only his command before firing on the German positions. The room went quiet and Chamberlain said, “What German positions?” When he was told, he rose and said the meeting was over and he was going home to “prepare for the next step.” Hitler said, “Is that to be war? Your next step?” Chamberlain was too devastated to give an answer, even if he had one.
Hitler said, “Very well, Herr Chamberlain, I will make a concession. In all my years I have never before done such a thing but now I will offer you a concession.” He would delay the beginning of the evacuation until Wednesday, the 28th, at 2:00 p.m. and extend the end to Saturday, October 1st, three days rather than two for it to be complete. It was an offer that reached new heights of disingenuousness because Halder, the Wehrmacht Chief of Staff, had already told Hitler that it would take that long to have the necessary troops in position to police the evacuation. Halder was buying time to trigger his coup.
Chamberlain was delighted and said so. He had known all along it would come to this, the moment when Hitler would turn his way. They parted with an exuberant farewell. As he left, Shirer heard a reporter ask Chamberlain if the situation was hopeless. He said, “I would not like to say that. It is up to the Czechs now.” All they had to do was agree with their own extinction. He flew back to London, convinced he had turned the tide.
On Saturday, the 24th, Chamberlain met with his cabinet and regaled them with talk of his “breakthrough.” He said, “It is clear that I have established some degree of personal influence over Hitler. The concession, something he had never done before, is evidence of that. He said to me that if we solve this question without conflict it would be a turning point in Anglo-German relations. He further reiterated to me that this would be the last territorial demand he would make. I took the opportunity to have it written for me in German. Here it is.” He waved it and struggled manfully, though pitifully, to pronounce it in German. It read “die letzte territoriale Forderung” — “the last territorial demand.” He also showed them the Hitler memorandum and a map of the regions to be evacuated. He concluded with, “Herr Hitler was not prompted by anyone in these conversations and he spoke, if I may say, with great earnestness. We should accept these terms and should advise the Czechs to also comply.” With the exception of Alfred Duff Cooper, the First Lord of the Admiralty, the cabinet concurred.
Chamberlain thought it was time to prepare the people for the worst, or, if the worst were avoided by his success, help them see the horror he had prevented for them. With the help of a willing press the people were told that if the “unthinkable” should occur, that “just around the corner, air attacks beyond all imagination bringing civilian casualties of a colossal scale” could be expected. When an official notice was issued that “infants under the age of two should be brought to designated centers where they would be fitted with gas masks,” the people appropriately panicked. Some dug trenches on their own initiative.
On Sunday, Halifax informed the French of his opinion that “It can be taken for granted that the only hope of preventing or at least localizing war is for His Majesty’s Government to make it absolutely clear to the Czechs that they must accept the German plan or forfeit claim to further support from the Western Powers.” Chamberlain, suddenly feeling his oats as a prince of peace, decided to send Wilson back to Berlin on Monday with a request that the annexation be managed by a commission of Germans, Czechs, and English. If Hitler would not agree, Wilson was authorized to inform him that France and England would fight with the Czechs. The proposition was absurd on its face, but not to Chamberlain. He thought his friend Adolf Hitler would see it as gentlemen doing business, making deals.
Winston was busy. On Monday, as Wilson flew, he went to Halifax and persuaded him to issue a communiqué reading “If a German attack is made upon Czechoslovakia, France will be bound to come to her assistance, and Great Britain and Russia will certainly stand by France.” Halifax agreed to issue it but would not sign it, by way of standing on both sides of the fence. Without the signature, Winston thought it was better than nothing. But not by much.
In Berlin, when Wilson brought up the idea of the commission, Hitler gave him the teppichfresser. He shrieked, raged, and fell to the floor and chewed on the carpet. Wilson decided not to mention Chamberlain’s warning if he did not agree. That night he was provided a choice seat for a Hitler speech in one of the venues built for the Olympics of 1936.
Shirer had an even better seat. He broadcast the speech and wrote in his diary: “Hitler has finally burned his last bridges. Shouting and shrieking in the worst state of excitement I’ve ever seen him in, he stated in the Sportpalast tonight that he would have his Sudetenland by October 1, next Saturday, today being Monday. If Beneš doesn’t hand it over to him he will go to war, this Saturday. Curious audience, the fifteen thousand party Bonzen [fat cats] packed into the hall. They applauded his words with the usual enthusiasm. Yet there was no war fever. The crowd was good-natured, as if it didn’t realize what his words meant. Twice Hitler screamed that this is absolutely his last territorial demand in Europe. Speaking of his assurances to Chamberlain, he said: ‘I further assured him that when the Czechs have reconciled themselves with their other minorities, the Czech state no longer interests me and that, if you please, I would give him another guarantee. We do not want any Czechs.’ At the end Hitler had the impudence to place responsibility for peace or war exclusively on Beneš!”
Shirer’s diary entry continued, “I broadcast the scene from a seat in the balcony just above Hitler. He’s still got that nervous tic. All during his speech he kept cocking his shoulder, and the opposite leg from the knee down would bounce up. Audience couldn’t see it but I could. As a matter of fact, for the first time in all the years I’ve observed him he seemed tonight to have completely lost control of himself. When he sat down after his talk, Goebbels sprang up and shouted: ‘One thing is sure: 1918 will never be repeated!’ Hitler looked up to him, a wild, eager expression in his eyes, as if those were the words which he had been searching for all evening and hadn’t quite found. He leaped to his feet and with a fanatical fire in his eyes that I shall never forget brought his right hand, after a grand sweep, pounding down on the table and yelled with all the power in his mighty lungs: ‘Ja!’ Then he slumped into his chair exhausted.”
Chamberlain listened from London and said to the press the next day, “I have read the speech of the German Chancellor and I appreciate his references to the efforts I have made to save the peace.” As one good prince of peace would say of a compliment from another.