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Sidor, who opposed severing all links with the Czechs, stalled for time, but the next morning [March 12] Monsignor Tiso, who had escaped from a monastery where he supposedly was under house arrest, demanded a cabinet meeting, though he was no longer himself in the cabinet. To forestall further interruptions by high German officials and generals, Sidor called the meeting in his own apartment, and when this became unsafe—for German storm troopers were taking over the town—he adjourned it to the offices of a local newspaper. There Tiso informed him that he had just received a telegram from Buerckel inviting him to go at once to see the Fuehrer in Berlin. If he refused the invitation, Buerckel threatened, two German divisions across the Danube from Bratislava would march in and Slovakia would be divided up between Germany and Hungary, Arriving in Vienna the next morning, Monday, March 13, with the intention of proceeding to Berlin by train, the chubby little prelate was packed into a plane by the Germans and flown to the presence of Hitler. For the Fuehrer, there was no time to waste.

When Tiso and Durcansky arrived at the Chancellery in Berlin at 7:40 on the evening of March 13, they found Hitler flanked not only by Ribbentrop but by his two top generals, Brauchitsch, Commander in Chief of the German Army, and Keitel, Chief of OKW. Though they may not have realized it, the Slovaks also found the Fuehrer in a characteristic mood. Here again, thanks to the captured confidential minutes of the meeting, we may peer into the weird mind of the German dictator, rapidly giving way to megalomania, and watch him spinning his fantastic lies and uttering his dire threats in a manner and to an extent which he no doubt was sure would never come to public attention.

"Czechoslovakia," he said, "owed it only to Germany that she had not been mutilated further," The Reich had exhibited "the greatest self-control." Yet the Czechs had not appreciated this. "During recent weeks," he went on, working himself up easily to a fine lather, "conditions have become impossible. The old Benes spirit has come to life again."

The Slovaks had also disappointed him. After Munich he had "fallen out" with his friends the Hungarians by not permitting them to grab Slovakia. He had thought Slovakia wanted to be independent.

He had now summoned Tiso in order to clear up this question in a very short time, . . . The question was: Did Slovakia want to lead an independent existence or not? ... It was a question not of days but of hours. If Slovakia wished to become independent he would support and even guarantee it ... If she hesitated or refused to be separated from Prague, he would leave the fate of Slovakia to events for which he was no longer responsible.

At this point, the German minutes reveal, Ribbentrop "handed to the Fuehrer a report just received, announcing Hungarian troop movements on the Slovak frontier. The Fuehrer read this report, told Tiso of its contents, and expressed the hope that Slovakia would reach a decision soon."

Tiso did not give his decision then. He asked the Fuehrer to "pardon him if, under the impact of the Chancellor's words, he could make no definite decision at once." But the Slovaks, he quickly added, "would prove themselves worthy of the Fuehrer's benevolence."

This they did in a conference which continued far into the night at the Foreign Ministry. According to the Nuremberg testimony of Keppler, who had been Hitler's secret agent in Bratislava, as he had been the year before in Vienna on the eve of the Anschluss, the Germans helped Tiso draft a telegram, which the "Premier" was to send as soon as he returned to Bratislava, proclaiming Slovakia's independence and urgently requesting the Fuehrer to take over the protection of the new state, It is reminiscent of the "telegram" dictated by Goering just a year before in which Seyss-Inquart was to appeal to Hitler to send German troops to Austria. By this time the Nazi "telegram" technique had been perfected. The telegram, considerably abridged, was duly dispatched by Tiso on March 16, and Hitler immediately replied that he would be glad to "take over the protection of the Slovak State."

William L. Shirer, The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich