Posted on 01/12/2009 9:37:01 AM PST by Homer_J_Simpson
Here is an interesting tidbit from yesterday that I wanted to get in. It gives two perspectives on the same incident as first William Shirer and then Winston Churchill quote Count Ciano’s diary.
Since [Munich] not only Hitler but Mussolini had reached the conclusion that the British had become so weak and their Prime Minister, as a consequence, so accommodating that they need pay little further attention to London. On January 11, 1939, Chamberlain, accompanied by Lord Halifax, had journeyed to Rome to seek improvement in Anglo-Italian relations. This writer happened to be at the station in Rome when the two Englishmen arrived and noted in his diary the “fine smirk” on Mussolini’s face as he greeted his guests. “When Mussolini passed me,” I noted as the party left the station, “he was joking with his son-in-law [Ciano], passing wisecracks.” I could not, of course catch what he was saying, but later Ciano, in his diary, revealed the gist of it.
Arrival of Chamberlain. [Ciano wrote on January 11 and 12] . . . How far apart we are from these people! It is another world. We were talking about it after dinner with the Duce. “These men are not made of the same stuff,” he was saying, “as the Francis Drakes and the other magnificent adventurers who created the Empire. These, after all, are the tired sons of a long line of rich men, and they will lose their Empire.”
The British do not want to fight. They try to draw back as slowly as possible, but they do not fight . . . Our conversations with the British have ended. Nothing was accomplished. I have telephoned Ribbentrop that the visit was “a big lemonade” [a farce]. . . .
I accompanied the Duce to the station on the departure of Chamberlain [Ciano wrote on January 14]. . . . Chamberlain’s eyes filled with tears when the train started moving and his countrymen began singing “For He’s a Jolly Good Fellow.” “What is this little song?” the Duce asked.
William L. Shirer, The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich
Mr. Chamberlain continued to believe that he had only to form a personal contact with the Dictators to effect a marked improvement in the world situation. He little knew that their decisions were taken. In a hopeful spirit he proposed that the and Lord Halifax should visit Italy in January. After some delay an invitation was extended, and on January 11 the meeting took place. It makes one flush to read in Ciano’s diary the comments which were made behind the Italian scene about our country and its representatives. “Essentially,” writes Ciano, “the visit was kept in a minor key. . . . Effective contact has not been made. How far apart we are from these people! It is another world. We were talking about it after dinner to the Duce. ‘These men,’ said Mussolini, ‘are not made of the same stuff as Francis Drake and the other magnificent adventurers who created the Empire. They are after all the tired sons of a long line of rich men.’ “The British,” noted Ciano, “do not want to fight. They try to draw back as slowly as possible, but they do not want to fight. . . . Our conversations with the British have ended. Nothing was accomplished. I have telephoned to Ribbentrop saying it was a fiasco, absolutely innocuous. . . . Chamberlain’s eyes filled with tears as the train started moving and his countrymen started singing, ‘For he’s a jolly good fellow’. ‘What is this little song?’ asked Mussolini.”
Winston Churchill, The Gathering Storm
*ping*
Thanks. Jack is very much missed, even among those of us too young to remember him as a living being.
“Mr. Chamberlain continued to believe that he had only to form a personal contact with the Dictators to effect a marked improvement in the world situation. He little knew that their decisions were taken. In a hopeful spirit he proposed that the and Lord Halifax should visit Italy in January. After some delay an invitation was extended, and on January 11 the meeting took place. It makes one flush to read in Ciano’s diary the comments which were made behind the Italian scene about our country and its representatives.”
Sounds oddly familiar somehow...is there a world leader doing the same such things currently?
Yeah, he died when I was just 4 months old.
***Gracie: “Goodnight Gracie!” ***
Loved it! Benny’s writers could not have done better. LOL!
Try as it might to please Hitler, the new pro-German government of Czechoslovakia began to realize as the new year began that the country’s goose was cooked. Just before Christmas, 1938, the Czech cabinet, in order to further appease the Fuehrer, had dissolved the Communist Party and suspended all Jewish teachers in German schools. On January 12, 1939 Foreign Minister Chvalkovsky, in a message to the German Foreign Office, stressed that his government “will endeavor to prove its loyalty and good will by far-reaching fulfillments of Germany’s wishes.” On the same day he brought to the attention of the German charge in Prague the spreading rumors “that the incorporation of Czechoslovakia into the Reich was imminent.”
William L. Shirer, The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich
I think Czechoslovakia pretty much knew their goose was cooked at this point. That actually had a relatively well fortified parameter between themselves and the Germans, but the only problem was that when they lost the Sudetenland they also lost those defensive positions. Now they are left pretty much vulnerable and probably knew if was just a matter time before Germany finished them off.
That has to be a very unnerving.
He was accused and convicted of smuggling? Wow never heard of that.
If you like old time radio and Jack Benny in particular, check out this link:
You’ll have to see if they are in your area. But I had a ball listening to Jack Benny while driving one night a few months ago.
...Pingin...
Thank you. It’s as I remember her...
...All I can say about that is, EEEYYESS...
Pat Buchanan argues ("Unnecessary War") that by surrendering to Germany, the Czechs came out of it far better off than countries like Poland, which tried to stand against the Nazis. Millions fewer Czechs died than Poles, and that's not even counting the Jews.
According to Buchanan, the Brits should have encouraged the Poles to also back down, then helped nudge Hitler into invading the Soviet Union.
It makes my head spin trying to imagine it!
There’s a lot of arguments that Buchanan makes that I would say is suspect. One fact he convienently ignores is that Poland had the largest Jewish population in eastern Europe. It was around 3 million in which the partitian of Poland that Germany occupied initially (the rest going to the Soviets which they would occupy later) contained 2 million of them. Czechoslovakia had a Jewish population of around 350 thousand and that small community was still decimated if I remember right there was a census in 1950(?) that had the Jewish population in Czechoslovakia at around 20 thousand. They didn’t all just move.
Had Czechoslovakia resisted they could have put up a pretty stiff fight with their defensive positions and while I agree that the reprisals from being conquered would have been greater than just copitulating they still would have done some damage to the German war machine that was later used in other areas (ie. Poland). Additionally, there is the possiblity that if the Czech showed that they were putting up a stiff fight perhaps Britian and France would have joined the fray and the 100 some odd French divisions on the German frontier would had crossed the border. Of course its pretty much speculation from there and the senerios expand out into an infinite number of possibilities.
Not only that, but they had the Skoda works to make plenty of munitions.
Poland 1933 - Over 3 million Jews
............1950 - 45,000
Czech. 1933 - 357,000
............1950 - 17,000
I knew I had read that somewhere it was at United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
Good point. I haddent even thought of that. I still think Germany would have overrun Czechoslovakia but it would have been at a pretty stiff price.
Agreed. Buchanan speaks for the tradition of American isolationism, as typified by Ohio Senator Robert Taft, a leading Republican candidate for President in 1940.
Taft was passed over in June 1940, in favor of Wendell Willkie, a businessman, a fiery speaker, and internationalist.
What's not so hard to imagine is: that FDR might decide not to run again in 1940, so Democrats nominate someone like John Nance Garner, the Republicans nominate antiwar Senator Taft, and he wins.
Taft then works hard to appease the Germans & Japanese, as a result of which there is no Pearl Harbor, the Soviet Union falls in 1942, as does Britain in 1943. Hitler dies in 1946, but long before that, all of Europe's Jews are exterminated, along with most Slavs living within the new Greater Germany.
Like I said, it makes my head spin...
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