So after Chamberlain’s sudden departure for Germany yesterday comes his equally sudden return to Britain. As the above headlines (from The Times, p. 12) hint, it had been expected that he would be gone for several days in order to talk to Hitler. It’s unclear what conclusions, if any, were actually reached, but we do […]
Now events are moving with a startling rapidity: all the more startling because it is Britain’s sober, solid, unexciting prime minister, the 69-year old Neville Chamberlain, who is pushing them along. He has stunned the press by announcing, as can be seen in today’s headlines from The Times above (p. 10), that he will fly
Ultimatum … martial law … 12 dead. These are not good words to be reading in the headlines (Manchester Guardian, p. 9). Yesterday, Hitler’s Nuremberg speech was interpreted as being somewhat worrying, but basically OK: after all, it could have been worse. But in the Sudetenland itself, it led to rioting, and the deaths of
So, Hitler’s big speech — summarised in the Manchester Guardian (p. 11), above — turned out to contain no new demands or proposals, nothing at any rate that was not implicit in Henlein’s Carlsbad speech. But it’s not so much the content as the tone which is worrying: his rhetoric was angry, violent and menacing.
I’m cheating slightly today; the above headlines — from the Daily Mail (p. 7) — aren’t, strictly speaking, about Czechoslovakia, but refer to speeches made by Nazi leaders at the Nuremberg rally on the weekend. But of course they were always going to be interpreted in the light of the continuing Sudeten crisis. Hermann Goering
One of my favourite posts here was one I wrote almost two years ago, about a claim that a certain well-known photo of the London Blitz was faked. Not only for the post itself, but for the ensuing discussion, which led me to change my mind on the issue more than once. My tentative conclusion
Good news, bad news in these headlines from The Times (p. 10) … On the positive side, the Sudeten leaders have agreed to resume negotiations with the Czechoslovakian government. This may be related to a report into the Mährisch-Ostrau incident by a British observer, Major Sutton-Pratt, who concluded that it had been blown out of
The headlines from the Manchester Guardian (p. 11) indicate that the situation is the same as yesterday, or a bit worse. The Sudeten leadership is still refusing to negotiate with the Czechoslovakian government, ostensibly because of the latter’s inability to maintain order in the country. This is despite a meeting between the Sudetens and the
These headlines from the Manchester Guardian (p. 9) could be summarised: Yeah, but no, but yeah … The Sudeten leadership agreed to accept the Czech autonomy proposals (as revealed yesterday) as the basis for negotiations. Which sounds very promising! But at that point, news was received of an incident at Mährisch-Ostrau, where two Sudeten deputies
At last, after all the endless reports of meetings to seemingly no end: actual details! As the above — from the Manchester Guardian (p. 9) — shows, the Czech autonomy proposals (first reported yesterday) were pretty generous. The Sudetens (and presumably other minorities) would get self-government, language equality, their own civil servants and police. I’m
