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If citizens read good books all the time, they might want good government! |
Posted on 04/26/2008 7:26:08 AM PDT by Homer_J_Simpson
Czechoslovakia, in a semi-official statement rejected the Sudeten demand that she give up her alliances. The Henlein domestic program was said to be so lacking in clearness that it gave no basis for negotiation. The government announced it would go ahead unperturbed with its own law to settle nationality problems. The non-Nazi press was hostile to Konrad Henlein’s speech.
The German propaganda machinery swung into line to back Herr Henlein. Prague was warned that “the time for compromises has passed.” The Vienna Reichspost predicted that Czechoslovakia, as at present constituted, would not last another year.
“Henlein’s demands for a change of the country’s foreign policy are unacceptable for the Czechoslovak Government,” the communiqué says. “Under no circumstances can there be any question of a change in the country’s system of alliances. This part of his speech furnishes no basis for discussion.
“As to the eight points of Henlein’s demands, they can be divided into negative and positive. There is little to be said about the negative demands, which consist mainly of complaints that various things are ‘intolerable.’ The positive demands are so unclearly formulated that it is necessary to wait and see whether they are put forward more concretely before they can serve as a basis for negotiation.
“The government will continue unperturbed on its path of seeking a solution of the republic’s national problems through completion of the minority or (as it is now being called in deference to German objections) nationality statute. This embodies the government’s decision to abandon the system of piecemeal solution of nationality problems in favor of an integral solution.
“Rejection of this statute by the Sudeten German leaders, who have no knowledge of its contents, is not hopeful. The government expects the Sudeten party to suspend criticism until the terms of this statute are made known, as will very shortly be the case.”
As to Herr Henlein’s confession of faith in the Nazi ideology, which he bases on the guarantees in the Czechoslovak Constitution of freedom of conscience, official circles disclose that freedom of conscience as conceived in the Constitution applies to all and that therefore profession of the Nazi ideology is permissible only in so far as it does not interfere with the adoption of other ideologies. In other words, freedom of conscience for the Nazi ideology can be accorded only if those who profess it surrender all totalitarian principles.
In the press the greatest indignation was aroused by Herr Henlein’s demand that Czechoslovakia change her foreign policy and come within Berlin’s orbit. Almost equal indignation, however, was caused by his proclamation of his own and his followers’ faith in the full Nazi creed. Several papers express satisfaction that Herr Henlein has at last dropped the mask of democracy and constitutionalism, which he wore so long to win sympathy in the Western democracies.
Under the heading “The Mask Falls,” the Pravo Lidu says:
“The Sudeten party’s mask of democracy and constitutionalism has fallen; the cards are exposed and there can be no doubt that Henlein has placed himself outside the republic’s Constitution and has attacked democracy. Only a year ago Henlein declared before the London International Affairs Institute that he was not a Nazi, but a democrat who took his stand on the basis of the Czechoslovak Constitution. He even asserted that his movement was democratic and that Jews also could take part.
“With these statements Henlein deliberately deceived British public opinion. With his demand that Czechoslovakia should not stand in the way of Drang nach Osten [the German push to the East] he has committed himself to pan-Germanism – that pan-Germanism that threatens to upset the European balance of power.”
The Narodni Listy expresses the expectation that Herr Henlein’s demands will be changed to bring them into line with the interests of the Czechoslovak State.
Among the Czechoslovak German language papers the Prager Mittag declared that the Sudeten party press bureau carefully censored Herr Henlein’s speech in the official account it issued, suppressing notably demands for the introduction here of anti-Semitic racialism on German lines.
The demand for “recognition of the German racial group in Czechoslovakia as a legal personality,” says this paper, really amounts to a demand that the State should recognize Herr Henlein as absolute Fuehrer of all its German Citizens.
The paper adds that Saturday’s and Sunday’s deafening “Sieg Heils” in the streets of Karlsbad will only add to the depression of the famous spa. Already, it says, many foreigners have telegraphed canceling reservations. A large number of Karlsbad’s most celebrated doctors, especially heart specialists, it is declared, are making arrangements to leave as soon as possible for foreign countries.
Two points in the Henlein speech, says the Illustrierte Montag, indicate he received instructions beforehand from Berlin. The first is his demand that the Czechs revise their “unfortunate” view that they must form a Slavic bulwark against the Germans’ eastern thrust; the second is the declaration that he had a right “in consideration of recent home and foreign political developments” to make even stronger claims.
The Prager Abendzeitung learns in political circles that it is considered that fulfillment of Herr Henlein’s demands in the field of foreign policy would upset the balance of power, in the maintenance of which all Europe’s great powers are interested. It is impossible, this paper sys, for the Czechoslovak Government to abandon the Czech minority, its democratic German citizens and the Jews in the “German-settled area” to the mercies of a totalitarian regime. Such an abnormality as the creation of a totalitarian system parallel with a democratic system within one State, it adds, would not be realizable without injury to the whole State.
The Zeit am Montag, the Henleinists’ Monday paper, announces that in the future stricter conditions will be imposed for entry into the party. Particularly, exact proof of “Aryan” descent will be required.
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If citizens read good books all the time, they might want good government! |
On March 28 Henlein met with Hitler for three hours. His summary of the Fuehrer's views: "We must always demand so much that we can never be satisfied."
Konrad Henlein was, according to William L. Shirer, "a mild-mannered gymnastics teacher" who became head of the Sudeten German Party in 1933, the year Hitler came to power in Germany. By 1935 the party was subsidized by and under the control of Berlin.
The persuasion included a blunt warning that “the time for compromises has passed” and that any delay in Prague’s decision until after the May and June municipal elections as suggested in the British press proceeds from “false conceptions.” It included also passionate appeals to the Czechoslovak Government to “enrich Europe’s peace with a contribution of inestimable value, which can only enhance Czechoslovak prestige and make millions of people happy and satisfied.”
The National Socialist Angriff ironically recommends that the Prague Government “take the Karlsbad cure.”
Official quarters insisted today that the German Government had not taken diplomatic steps in the Sudeten German question, which so far as the German Foreign Office is concerned is still a Czechoslovak domestic problem. But the official propaganda led by the Diplomatische Korrespondenz, mouthpiece of the Foreign Office, leaves no doubt that Germany regards the Sudeten German problem as an international one in which, according to Chancellor Hitler’s proclamation of Feb. 20, Germany has a special and vital interest that makes diplomatic intervention possible at any time.
In general, the German propaganda passes over entirely Herr Henlein’s proclamation of allegiance to the Nazi ideology and insists, in the words of the Diplomatische Korrespondenz, that all the Sudeten Germans want is “equal rights, security and their own national life within the present State.” Where, as in the Deutsche Allgemeine Zeitung, the Nazi ideology is mentioned, it is argued that while this ideology “naturally cannot halt at the State’s borders,” it supposedly does halt at the racial borders, which factor is advanced as a guarantee for other nations against any German lust for conquest or imperialistic aims.
But the thesis of oppressed nationality rights is rather too simple to stand the test of deeper analysis of the European situation even in the German press. The Allgemeine Zeitung, which yesterday expanded on Great Germany’s new political chances and economic opportunities in Southeastern Europe, today summarizes the issues thus:
“We have freely acknowledged Britain’s overseas position, but we have also demanded for ourselves respect for our Continental position.”
And Czechoslovakia is one of the last obstacles to complete assertion of this Continental position.
The Diplomatische Korrespondenz draws a parallel between conditions in Czechoslovakia and the nationality struggle in the former Turkish, Czarist and Habsburg empires, which the Great European powers were unable to solve and which consequently led first to the Balkan Wars and then to the World War.
“The strange manner in which Wilson’s Fourteen Points were ‘fulfilled,’” the Diplomatische Korrespondenz continues, “made it impossible to lift the curse of the nationality struggle from the nations of Europe. The Czechs, especially, who were foremost in the old Habsburg monarchy to undermine the State’s authority and cohesion, have completely failed in the twenty years at their disposal to administer their new State in conformity with the interests and to the satisfaction of the nationalities entrusted to them.
“Not only the Germans and the Magyars, but also the Slovaks, the Ruthenians and the Poles can testify to this. The Czechs regard the new State as their very own domain, which gives them superior rights over the natives even in the territories they do not inhabit.
“The ‘democratic liberties’ of which Czech statesmen boast abroad are in the last analysis only the privilege of the Czechs, who in the game of parliamentary majority rule are able within the unitary State to enforce desired measures against the other nationalities with the necessary sanction.
“Nobody in the world who has been pained by the unpleasant conditions in the nationality States in the past will be able to set aside the program adopted by the Sudeten Germans at the Karlsbad congress. Least of all the Czechs, who, in their dissatisfaction with the mild regime of the old Habsburg monarchy, went so far as to explode the century-old group of States.”
But the “armament alliance” between the United States, Britain and France, coupled with the Anglo-French conversations with Rome, is also causing some uneasiness here, and the usually aggressive Angriff bitterly remarks:
“The helplessness into which Occidental Europe has manoeuvred itself through the faulty post-war policy is most vividly illustrated by the fact that its future destiny is being determined by two non-European nations and States which are not interested in the maintenance of Europe’s old political, economic and spiritual position in the world, namely, by the United States, the new power center of the other half of the globe, and the Soviet Republic, whose program is the destruction of European culture and its mission. From both come to Europe . . . weapons of destruction designed to strike at the heart of Europe – Germany – unless the latter is ready to relinquish the function of this organ voluntarily.
“From time to time, as now, diplomacy makes an effort to recognize this insanity and to conjure the spirit of community. But under the roar of American and Bolshevist planes this spirit can scarcely flourish.”
VIENNA, April 25 (AP). – The conservative newspaper Riechspost in an apparently inspired front-page editorial said today that Czechoslovakia as now constituted would not last another year.
“The hour of reckoning has come,” it said. “The degree of suffering of Germans in Czechoslovakia has reached its apogee. The Fuehrer [Adolf Hitler] declared before the Reichstag Feb. 20 that he did not desire to tolerate longer the suppression of 10,000,000 Germans outside Germany’s borders.
“Since the freeing of Austria it seems panic has seized Prague officials. The true reason for this is their own bad conscience. . . .
“The national unified State of Czechoslovakia has been barely able to survive for twenty years with force. As a national unified State Czechoslovakia will not live to experience its twenty-first year.”
SHANGHAI, April 25. – The Japanese-dominated “reformed government” of China at Nanking announced today it would not recognize the transfer of the China Merchants Steam Navigation Company’s properties, valued at $25,000,000, to the American concern of William P. Hunt & Co.
This promised to raise issues growing out of the Chinese-Japanese war that might require negotiations between Washington and Tokyo.
The United States Court for China recently handed down a decision that the Hunt company had a right to take over the ships, warehouses and wharves at numerous Chinese ports belonging to the China Merchants company, in which the Chinese Government was a large shareholder.
Early in the war the Japanese had announced they would not recognize thenceforth the transfer of any vessels from Chinese to foreign registry. This was to prevent the sailing of Chinese vessels under foreign flags during the war period.
STOCKHOLM, Sweden, April 25. – Count von Kageneck, another secretary of Franz von Papen, who had been reported executed, announced tonight that he was very much alive.
Also denying reports that he had fled Germany, Count von Kageneck said he had merely gone on leave April 6 to spend a holiday in Sweden as the guest of Count and Countess Douglas at their estate, St. Jaerntorp, in East Gotland.
“I have never heard such nonsense as these reports,” he said. “I am still Colonel von Papen’s secretary, and in fact I shall return to Berlin Tuesday to resume my duties.”
Baron von Ketteler, confidential aide and secretary of Colonel von Papen, former Ambassador to Austria, also disappeared and in Vienna he was reported dead.
BERLIN, April 25. – Joseph Buerckel, a non-Austrian, the National Socialist party Commissioner in Austria, received dictatorial powers under a decree issued here today. He will be responsible for his rule in Austria solely to Chancellor Adolf Hitler.
Dr. Arthur Seyss-Inquart, the Governor, under same decree sinks to a subordinate position. He is to administer the laws that Her Buerckel issues and carry out any other measures that he decides on.
The powers under the decree are granted for one year. All government organs in Austria are instructed that as far as they are concerned Herr Buerckel’s directions will have the force of law during the period indicated, after which Dr. Seyss-Inquart will be made a Minister of the Reich Government.
Herr Buerckel is noted for his success in combating recalcitrant Catholics. He effectively crushed Catholic schools in the Saar-Palatinate, a province that he governed.
He is equally known for his uncompromising energy in other fields, and he is one of the most vigorous representatives in Germany of the idea of wholly totalitarian government.
The official title of Herr Buerckel will be Reich Commissioner. Hitler has written to Dr. Seyss-Inquart a public letter explaining the unlimited powers given to Herr Buerckel and pointing out that the Commissioner will work in cooperation with the German Minister of the Interior in matters affecting the subordination of Austrian institutions to Reich institutions.
A complicated decree was also issued providing for the gradual disappearance of Austrian currency, which is being replaced by the Reichsmark. Schilling notes will be called in by banks up to May 15, but thereafter they will still be accepted in exchange for Reichsmarks until the end of the year.
The Austrian National Bank’s note-issuing privileges have been discontinued and the bank will be liquidated. The government announced that means have been found to reimburse stockholders; they will receive twenty-year German Treasury certificates bearing 4 ½ per cent interest, which is considered equivalent to the annual dividends received in recent years.
TIRANA, Albania, April 25. – As a prelude to Wednesday’s wedding of King Zog and Countess Geraldine Apponyi a series of festivities took place in this capital today. In the early morning a salvo of twenty-one guns announced the opening of the three-day celebration.
The festivities included a large parade of Albanians in picturesque costumes through the city’s main streets and a reception this evening at the royal palace. In view of the meager accommodations afforded by Tirana the Albanian court invited only a few foreign guests to the reception.
Count Galeazzo Ciano, Italy’s Foreign Minister, and the Duke of Bergamo, representing the Italian royal family, are expected here tomorrow.
Tribesmen from the mountains are arriving in thousands and encamping around the city.
Police believe the intruder gained access to the Baroness’s second-story bedroom by climbing up a water drain onto a balcony and entering an open window.
The loot, taken from a night table, included a twenty-two-carat diamond ring and a collar of 180 matched pearls.
The Baroness’s husband, Baron Andre de Neuflize, won the United States Distinguished Service Medal during the World War. The two are prominent in Paris society.
LONDON, April 25. – The Royal Academy, which, despite its reputation as the most august body in British art, has been involved in many disputes in past years, today lost one of its most famous members when Augustus John resigned in protest against the academy’s rejection of Wyndham Lewis’s portrait for it s annual exhibition, opening on Monday.
Despite the reputation of the academy, whose annual exhibition opens the London season, not all British artists covet election, which is most difficult to obtain. Indeed, many of the younger and more progressive British artists insist the academy is “dead” and refuse even to send paintings to its hanging committee on the ground that only entirely conventional pictures stand a chance.
However, Mr. Lewis submitted his portrait of T. S. Eliot, which he said he had done in academy style, only to have it rejected.
Following that rejection Mr. John submitted his resignation, saying he had not been in complete sympathy with the academy for some time and that a picture “by a person of Mr. Lewis’s eminence should have been unquestionably exhibited.”
The Academy had no comment today, but Mr. Lewis followed up his attacks yesterday, when his picture was rejected, saying that Mr. John must have been a “fish out of water” in the Academy ranks, as he was “the only great living artist “ who was a member.
Mr. John’s was the third resignation in recent years. Richard Sickert, a full Academician, resigned in 1935 in protest against the Academy’s refusal to take a stand against the removal of Jacob Epstein’s statues from the Rhodesian Government Building on the Strand. The same year Stanley Spencer, an associate, resigned when the Academy rejected some of his pictures for exhibition.
Reply #4 is about reaction to the Henlein speech in the German press. (Henlein good, Czech government bad.)
Reply #5 is mostly unrelated miscellaneous short articles. It includes some good stuff on a cat burglar and King Zog!
Unfortunately, few people know enough of these times in history to avoid making the same mistakes again.
Maybe we can help to thwart them by keeping alive the lessons of history here at Free Republic and also out in the real world. Which I am pretty sure is out there and looking good this morning. I believe I shall go check it out.
Shoes for the dead!
The creation in 1919 Paris of doomed/disfuntional states such as this, where the MAJORITY of citizens were at best dis-effected or openly hostile minorities, might have seemed like a good idea at the time? Czechoslovakia ,Yugoslavia were eventually held together only by terror, ethnic cleansing and the Red Army. Where are the now?
In our indignation at Chamberlain's weakness we have completely forgotten how Czechoslovakia's own foreign policy played a big role in their demise at Munich.
The Social Democrats kept their government together and suppressed internal ethnic conflicts mainly by fear mongering against Austria. They told the public Austria was conspiring to bring back the empire. Czechoslovakia supported the merger of Austria and Germany on the grounds that it would make Czechoslovakia safer by eliminating the possibility of an Austrian monarchy.
Mussolini was the voice of reason at the time. He pointed out that a simple look at the map should make it obvious that if Austria loses its independence Czechoslovakia will be effectively surrounded. And that if Czechoslovakia falls Poland will be next. At one point he even threatened to invade to prevent a merger between Austria and Germany.
Proposed map of the United States of Greater Austria, by Popovici, 1906
Franz Ferdinand had planned to radically redraw the map of Austria-Hungary creating a number of ethnically and linguistically dominated semi-autonomous "states" who would all be part of a larger confederation renamed the United States of Greater Austria. Under this plan language and cultural identification was encouraged, and the disproportionate balance of power would theoretically be righted somewhat. The idea was set to encounter heavy opposition from the Hungarian part of the Dual Monarchy, since a direct result of the reform would have been a significant territorial loss of Hungary.
* Deutsch-Österreich (German-Austria, present-day Austria and Italy (Alto Adige/Südtirol))
* Deutsch-Böhmen (German-Bohemia, northwestern part of present-day Czech Republic)
* Deutsch-Mähren (German-Moravia, northeastern part of present-day Czech Republic)
* Böhmen (Bohemia, southern and central part of present-day Czech Republic)
* Slowakenland (Slovakia)
* West-Galizien (West Galicia, part of present-day Poland)
* Ost-Galizien (East Galicia, part of present-day Ukraine)
* Ungarn (Hungary, present-day southern Slovakia and northern Vojvodina)
* Seklerland (Szeklerland, part of present-day Romania)
* Siebenbürgen (Transylvania, part of present-day Romania and Ukraine)
* Trento (Trentino, part of present-day Italy)
* Triest (Trieste and Gorizia, parts of present-day Italy, western Istria, part of present-day Croatia and Slovenia)
* Krain (Carniola, present-day Slovenia and southern Carinthia)
* Kroatien (Croatia, Srem in present-day Serbia and Boka Kotorska in present-day Montenegro)
* Woiwodina (Vojvodina, part of present-day Serbia)
IIRC, when Dollfuss was murdered by the Nazis in 1934, Mussolini was the one who prevented anschluss.
That is, at least, what Shirer says.
The title is wrong. This was seventy years ago, not seventy years from now.
Yes. He had troops ready to cross the border. Hitler backed down that time.
Franz Ferdinand had planned to radically redraw the map of Austria-Hungary...
Now if I recall correctly, it was a version of this plan with newly acquired Bosnia penciled in that he was in Sarajevo promoting when he was assassinated.
FF was sympathetic to socialism and was aware that Bismark had used socialist programs to generate loyalty to (dependence on) the German state. I think he thought he could achieve something similar in his empire, making the central government all powerful while rendering the intricate system of heterogeneous rights and privileges obsolete.
The veto power the Hungarians had recently been given in the Empire, sadly damned such efforts, and their national/cultural zeal inflamed the passions of the Slavic minorities.
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