END OF CZECHOSLOVAKIA

Press, Volume LXXV, Issue 22673, 30 March 1939, Page 10

END OF CZECHOSLOVAKIA

Hitler’s Plan Unfolds

RUMANIA THE NEXT OBJECTIVE

[By H. WICKHAM STEED.]

Mr Wickham Steed, who was for 20 years the correspondent of “ The Times ” in central Europe, discusses the significance of the

dismemberment of Czechoslovakia,

The smashing of Czechoslovakia can surprise only those who failed to understand what Hitler intended the Munich “agreement” of last September to bring about. It is a consistent and logical step towards the domination of central and south-eastern Europe by Nazi Germany. That domination in its turn is meant to secure for Germany control of the oil, wheat and timber of Rumania, as a preliminary for action against Soviet Russia. No government in Europe with an intelligence service, or even a diplomatic service, worthy of the name ought to have been ignorant of these German aims. ' Russia via Rumania Early in 1936 the economic attache to the German Embassy in Moscow addressed to. the authorities in Berlin a memorandum of great importance. A summary of this document came into my hands. It warned the Berlin authorities that any direct attack upon Soviet Russia would be folly, that even if German forces were to enter the .Ukraine they must not expect to be welcomed or even helped by the local population, and that there was no prospect of economic distress in Russia. The resources of Russia for the provision of food, the memorandum said, had been immensely increased by the tractorisation of ploughing, so that the arable surface of European Russia could be ploughed and sown in a few days whereas, under the old system of horse ploughing, the interval between the harvest and the winter frosts was often too short to allow any similar area to be ploughed and sown. The only way, continued this memorandum, for Germany to conquer Russia would be to get within striking distance of Southern Russia from the region of the Black Sea. Then it might be possible to wreck, cut off, or capture the oil wells of Baku and thus to paralyse both Russian agricultural tractorisation and Russian aviation. The first stage in this programme must, however, be German control of Ru-* manian oil, wheat, and timber, and the removal of obstacles to such control.

A Good Field for Propaganda.

Getting Rid of Titulescu This memorandum made a deep impression in Berlin. It was clearly impossible to carry but its recommendations as long as M. Titulescu should conduct Rumanian foreign policy, and as long as Czechoslovakia should be the mainstay of the Little Entente between Prague, Bucharest, and Belgrade. Besides, Titulescu had reached a close agreement bdth with Soviet Russia and with Turkey; and Turkey, too, was on the best of terms with Moscow.

The first step was therefore to get rid of Titulescu. King Carol of Rumania, who professed and perhaps felt great admiration for Hitler, was induced to dismiss Titulescu. A proGerman Prime Minister, Stoyndinovitch, was installed and supported in Jugoslavia. Then preparations began for the attack upon Czechoslovakia. The attack was shrewdly prepared. German propaganda started by working up the alleged grievances of the Sudeten Germans in Bohemia. Simultaneously the Slovak autonomists, under their clerical leader, the late Father Hlinka, were encouraged to agitate against Prague and the Czechoslovak State. ■ Even the Czech agrarians were persuaded that the policy which President Masaryk and Dr. Benes had followed—that of relying on France and upon the Little Entente —was much less sound than a policy of agreement with Germany would be. ■ Austria and. the Czechs

In these ways some degree of disunion was promoted . within the Czechoslovak State. But the final assault upon the State could not be undertaken until Hitler had annexed Austria. When this had been done, about a year ago, with the mute acquiescence of Great Britain and France, Nazi Germany gained two immense advantages. She was able to threaten the south-western border of Czechoslovakia from . Austrian territory and, by acquiring a common frontier with Hungary, to make sure that the Magyars could not give serious trouble. Hitler and Goring were very anxious lest Czechoslovakia mobilise in support of Austria in case Austria should offer armed resistance to the German invasion. Czechoslovakia did not mobilise, and was effusively thanked by Field-Marshal Gdr-. ing for her peaceful behaviour. At the same time Germany recognised the validity of the treaty of arbitration which had been concluded between Dr. Stresemann and Dr. Benes at the time of the Locarno settlement in October, 1925.

But the annexation and occupation of Austria were hardly completed when the real onslaught upon Czechoslovakia began. Herr Henlein was ordered by Hitler to intensify his agitation about Sudeten German grievances. German troops were quietly concentrated last May against the Czechoslovakian frontiers. The prompt mobilisation of a part of the Czechoslovak army early on May 21, and the persistent inquiries which the British Ambassador in Berlin was instructed to make on that day about the meaning of these troop movements compelled Hitler to beat a retreat. This he did, while ordering Henlein to demand autonomy for the Sudeten Germans, and instructing the Slovak autonomists to show as much active discontent as possible. The Slovaks Who are the Slovaks? They are a practically pure Slav race whose language is akin to Polish. It has strong resemblances to Czech and. especially in the Carpathian regions bordering on Poland, equally strong affinities with the speech of the Polish highlanders. Except for the comparatively small fraction of 'the Slovaks who lived in Moravia, on the Austrian side of the Austro-Hungarian border, the Slovaks were a people without political experience—since they have never had a State of their own—and, as regards the masses, uncultivated and largely illiterate.

Thomas Masaryk was an Austrian Slovak who had grown up under conditions that did allow a certain degree of political and linguistic freedom to the various Austrian races. But the two and a quarter million Slovak* who lived under Hungary possessed no rights whatever. They were a merry, soft, lovable, artistic people of labourers and peasants whose standing in the eyes of their Magyar masters was indicated by the Hungarian proverb. “A Slovak is not a human being.” The bulk of the people were led by and were subservient to their priests. Only a few of the better-to-do and more cultivated Slovaks cherished political aspirations and ideas that could be described as Western. All these intellectual leaders of the Slovaks looked towards the Czechs as the mainstay of the Czechoslovak family, however little they might relish the greater efficiency and the dourness of the Czech character.

Upon such a people as this it was easy for interested foreign propaganda to work. It was also easy to arouse resentment among them against the harsher efficiency of the Czech officials and teachers who had to be sent into Slovakia, after independence and union had been won in 1918, to organise and to educate the Hungarian Slovaks. The trouble was that there were no Slovak officials or teachers to do this work because Hungary never admitted Slovaks, as Slovaks, to the service of the Magyar State, whereas Austria had admitted large numbers of Czechs into the Austrian service. By degrees, as a new generation of Slovaks were educated to carry on this educative work, many of the Czech officials and teachers were withdrawn. But Father Hlinka and his associates, under German influence, agitated fanatically for complete Slovak autonomy, without ever realising that, politically, the Slovaks were centuries behind the Czechs.

So when the time was ripe. Hitler could prepare the final phase of his onslaught. This phase ended at Munich, where the faithlessness of France to her alliance with Czechoslovakia and the pressure put upon France by a British Government which closed its eyes to the folly of destroying the chief obstacle to Hitlerite domination of Central and South-East-ern Europe, brought about the destruction of Czechoslovak territory and opened the way for complete German contrtjl over Bohemia, "Moravia, ’ Slovakia, and Sub-Carpathian Ruthenia as a road to the riches of Rumania. It is this control which is now being established.

The Future There remain, of course, possibilities of friction between Hungary, Poland, and Italy, on the one hand, and Germany on the other. Hungary and Poland, who played the part of-jackals to the German lion last autumn, are eager to get a common frontier through Slovakia or Sub-Carpathian Huthenia so as to be able to stand together one day as a barrier to the German advance. Mussolini would like-to encourage them, if he dared. Should he encourage them there 'would be little chance of his getting German support for Italian demands upon So he will probably be prudent, while Hitler gets his own way. All the same, this latest phase of the « Central European crisis is not without its dangers. It may have unexpected repercussions. For the moment it makes the recent idyllic prognostications of Sir Samuel Hoare, the British Home Secretary, look rather foolish; and it has exposed the British Primp Minister, Mr Neville Chamberlain, to some embarrassing questions in the House of Commons about the value of thd Franco-British moral guarantee of the post-Munich frontiers of the mutilated Czechoslovakian State. I, who have observed the Slovaks for more than 30 years, and knew something of the ideals which inspired President Masaryk and E»r. Benes. decline to make any prophecy about the immediate or ulterior consequences of Hitler’s latest offensive. The cup of European suffering is already very fulL Not many more drops may be needed to make it overflow in directions which even Hitler, crafty gangster though he be, may not have foreseen. (World Copyright 1939 by Co-opera-tion. Reproduction even in part strictly forbidden.)