Page 145 - Was Hitler a Riddle?

132 The French Diplomats

adversaries. at the same time, their “ambition and appetites” increased
enormously. in their private conversations, the Nazi leaders went so far as
to speak of europe as if it were “their property.” François-Poncet granted
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that the Czechs had mistreated the Germans in their country, but he was
also convinced that the Nazis were behind the unrest among the sudeten
Germans. simply to give in to Hitler would be a mistake, but to oppose
him would lead to war, for which France and Britain were unprepared. at a
meeting with Hitler on september 28, the ambassador presented him with
a memorandum that proposed the following solution to the crisis: Hitler
would be permitted to occupy three parts of the sudetenland on October
1, but an international commission would accompany the German army to
indicate which areas were to be taken over. Other contested areas would be
permitted to decide their future by plebiscite.
the ambassador warned Hitler that if the German army marched into
Czechoslovakia without an agreement with Western powers, “you will be
the aggressor . . . [and] you will provoke war which will become a general
war” involving england, France, and russia. eventually, other countries
such as the United states and some south american nations would join the
conflict and “soon the entire world will be against you.” Hitler remained
calm throughout the one-hour meeting, even while criticizing the Czechs
for persecuting his “compatriots” and expressing surprise that France and
england opposed his occupation of the sudeten territories. Other than
that, Hitler refused to give the ambassador an immediate response on the
proposed settlement. But one day later, after Chamberlain had made an-
87
other quickly arranged trip to Munich, a settlement was reached, and it
contained many of the provisions in François-Poncet’s proposal. it avoided
war, but not for long.
On the whole, François-Poncet was pleased with the outcome of the
deliberations in Munich, but he feared that Hitler’s acquiescence would be
short-lived. the Nazis’ boasts about their victory and constant repetition
that Germany was now a world power—a “nation of 80 million people [sic]
who will not allow themselves to be intimidated by anyone”—made him
uneasy. On October 4, he wrote to Georges Bonnet, the foreign minister,
that Western democracies should learn some important lessons from the
recent crisis. they should reaffirm their desire for peace but also eliminate
the causes of internal weakness in their countries and concentrate on rearm-
ing as quickly as possible. 88
these were not François-Poncet’s only proposals to preserve peace. He
now conceived of a new, and rather far-fetched, diplomatic maneuver. dur-