As indicated when he returned from Munich last week, Chamberlain is to fly back to Germany to meet with Hitler a second time. (Above headlines are from The Times, p. 10.) This time, they are meeting at Godesberg, a spa town in the Rhineland. Chamberlain will take the Anglo-French plan to Hitler, which may be […]
This time it’s the Manchester Guardian which has the scoop (p. 11): in late night meetings last night, the Czechs decided to accept the ‘recommendations’ of the French and British governments, albeit ‘possibly with reservations’. There’s still no official confirmation of what those recommendations are, but the London correspondent has some information from ‘responsible quarters
Another week of crisis begins. How much longer can this go on? The most significant news from the weekend concerns another round of shuttle diplomacy — this time it’s the French Premier, Édouard Daladier, and Foreign Minister, Georges Bonnet, who have flown to London to consult with their British counterparts. The official communique, which can
The 17th Military History Blog Carnival has been posted at Military History and Warfare. (It was posted nearly a week ago, but I’ve been busy …) The most interesting post for me this week is on the Maginot Line, by the carnival host. He points out that, though much-maligned, the Maginot Line did its job:
Once again, the Daily Mail has big news (p. 9) that The Times and Manchester Guardian aren’t carrying (they merely have rather anodyne reports that Chamberlain has returned and has been meeting with colleagues); again I suspect it’s because we’re looking at an afternoon edition. The banner headline is truncated above, so here’s the full
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
