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apple16
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amyatishkin
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09.12.2004 11:12:01
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Рубрики
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WWII; Флот;
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Широкого профиля :) Судя по имени (Милан) чех из обиженных СССР
Другие его статейки есть по Праге 68 и Афганистану
- т.е. политический специалист
Важно что это добро читают в штатах будующие флотские офицерики.
Could Prague Have Defied Hitler? What Churchill's Courier Learned
Milan Hauner. World Policy Journal. New York: Spring 2004.Vol.21, Iss. 1; pg. 91, 5 pgs
Author(s): Milan Hauner
Iss. 1; pg. 91, 5 pgs
Source type: Periodical
ISSN/ISBN: 07402775
Text Word Count 2435
Abstract (Document Summary)
Hauner questions whether or not Prague could have defied Adolf Hitler. He discusses what Winston Churchill's unknown courier, William F. Deakin, learned.
Full Text (2435 words)
Copyright World Policy Institute Spring 2004
"Mr. Deakin from Oxford received by Mr. President at 11:30." This spare entry, dated April 12, 1938, in the book of audiences of the Czechoslovak president Eduard Benes,1 only hints at a dramatic encounter scarcely known to historians. A month earlier, German troops had occupied Austria in a bloodless union, or Anschluss, that violated the spirit of the Versailles Treaty. The question now was whether Hitler's legions would turn on democratic Czechoslovakia, whose independence was guaranteed by the same treaty and whose nationhood had been proclaimed in 1918 by Thomas Masaryk and his successor as president, Eduard Benes. Could the young republic stand up to the Fuhrer? To find out, Winston Churchill, determined opponent of British appeasers, sent a young and unpretentious Englishman as his private emissary to Prague.
Who was Mr. Deakin? William F. Deakin was a history tutor at Wadham College, Oxford, who at the time was also helping Churchill prepare his multivolume History of the English-Speaking Peoples. Twice a week, Deakin would go down to Chartwell, Churchill's country home, and work from lunchtime until the early hours of the morning, when he would drive back to Oxford to resume his tutorials at 9:00 A.M. The Churchill Archives at Cambridge University contain copies of two letters that Churchill wrote at the time on behalf of Deakin: a letter of introduction to President Benes, dated April 1, 1938, and a second, dated four days later, which contained important instructions to his young assistant.2
Churchill's second letter was a model of brevity and precision. he wanted Deakin to ask the Czechoslovak president how best his British friends could help his country. Above all, he sought answers to four vital questions: Was it true that fortifications were already completed opposite the new Austrian front? (Of course, they were not, but note Churchill's positive phrasing to this important question to which he wanted a "yes" reply.) What were Prague's communications with Romania and Russia? How would he describe relations with Romania and Yugoslavia? Was it worthwhile for the British to propose an alliance with the Danubian states for economic and, ultimately, military purposes?
It would be hard to imagine four more strategically appropriate questions. But could Benes as the head of state give an honest and truthful answer to an unknown courier? The formal answer at the time could have been supplied by the General Staff of the Czechoslovak army. However, Benes was aware that in order to forestall British appeasers, he would have to supply Churchill with ammunition of the heaviest caliber. Moreover, the official Czechoslovak media could supply little help since its editors preferred to deny or trivialize such information for fear that the German press would accuse Czechoslovakia of being a "Bolshevik aircraft carrier."
Winston Churchill had acquired his most recent information about Czechoslovakia's defenses at the time of the Anschluss from a report by his old friend Gen. E. L. Spears, a freelance envoy of the Foreign Office who had just returned from Prague, having talked to President Benes during the Austrian crisis.3 Churchill took it for granted that Germany first had to digest its Austrian victory. But how long would that take? Czechoslovakia's relatively large German-speaking minority (3.5 million out of 15 million people) was becoming more restless with each of Hitler's successes across the border. Increasingly, the republic's democratic system mattered less to them because it could not provide jobs lost during the Depression, which had struck hardest in German-speaking districts. Discontent was further whetted by the stream of National Socialist propaganda from Germany. This led, in 1935, to the emergence of a new German nationalist party led by Konrad Henlein, called the Sudetendeutsche Partei. The SDP soon overtook in size and dynamism all its rivals. By 1938, swayed by its radical wing (Aufbruch}, headed by K. H. Frank, the SDP had become a virtual fifth column inside of Czechoslovakia.
Churchill himself was not fully aware of this and had agreed to meet Henlein, who insisted he was still a loyal Czechoslovak citizen and not Hitler's stooge, during the latter's upcoming visit to England in May 1938 to court the British appeasers. Benes knew in his bones that Henlein was working not only for the absorption of the Sudetenland into the Reich but also for the disintegration of Czechoslovakia. Although the president's instincts proved correct, he could not document his fears since the evidence of Henlein's duplicity was found only after the war.
In any event, Churchill wanted to update his knowledge of the strategic realities in Central Europe. The British government, he knew, had conducted a review of the situation, but he was not privy to the document. On March 21, pressured by Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain and barely a week after the Anschluss, the Chiefs of Staff and the Foreign Office had jointly produced a comprehensive document, The Military Implications of German Aggression against Czechoslovakia, which ended with this ominous conclusion:
No pressure that we and our possible allies [France, Yugoslavia, Romania, Turkey, and Greece were cited-but not the Soviet Union or the United States] can bring to bear either by sea, on land, or in the air, could prevent Germany from invading and overrunning Bohemia and from inflicting a decisive defeat on the Czechoslovak Army. We would then be faced with the necessity of undertaking a war against Germany for the purpose of restoring Czechoslovakia's lost integrity and this object would only be achieved by the defeat of Germany and as the outcome of a prolonged struggle.... If such a struggle were to take place, it is more than probable that both Italy and Japan would seize the opportunity to further their own ends, and that in consequence the problem we have to envisage is not that of a limited European war only, but of a world war.4
The next day, this gloomy document, which was to serve as the guideline for Britain's appeasement strategy until mid-September, was discussed by the Cabinet. The views held by Chamberlain and Lord Halifax, the foreign secretary, prevailed. No guarantees were to be given to Czechoslovakia. The same message was sent that day to the French, who were urged to abandon their pledge of military aid to Czechoslovakia. Nazi Germany was to be further appeased in a joint Anglo-French effort to settle peacefully the conflict between the Czechoslovak government and its German minority. If these grievances were the main source of the present crisis, then no effort should be spared in bringing about a settlement between the government and its estranged German minority.
On March 24, Prime Minster Chamberlain appeared before Parliament to defend his policy of noncommitment to Czechoslovakia. It was Churchill who replied, evoking the hope of a "Great Alliance" (that is, adding the United States and the Soviet Union to the Anglo-French alliance) to preserve the peace in Europe by means of "an accumulation of deterrents against the aggressor."
This was not the first time Churchill had mentioned the idea of the "Great Alliance." Neville Chamberlain, in a letter to his sister on March 20, had criticized it, anticipating the verdict of the government's experts, namely that, however attractive the idea, it would evaporate under scrutiny. Consequently, Chamberlain concluded, nothing could possibly save Czechoslovakia from being overrun by the Germans, if they wanted to attack. he decided, therefore, to abandon any notion of giving guarantees to Czechoslovakia, or to cover for the French if they were to rush to help Czechoslovakia under a German attack. In his memoirs, written years later, Churchill could not resist responding mockingly. he begins by agreeing completely with Chamberlain, that indeed as could be determined on the map, neither the British Navy nor the French army could have been deployed in the Bohemian mountains to resist Hitler's Wehrmacht. But what the experts should also have told Chamberlain was that the prospect of a general European war "might well even at that date have deterred or delayed Hitler's next assault." Was it not a bitter irony, Churchill noted, to give similar guarantees to Poland within a year after "all the strategic value of Czechoslovakia had been cast away, and Hitler's power and prestige had almost doubled!"5 At the time, Churchill found it deplorable that no effective military convention between Britain and France had yet been concluded that went beyond the narrow interpretation of assisting France only in the event of a direct German attack. Thus, in contrast to the appeasers, he drew from a negative assessment of Czechoslovakia's strategic position the opposite conclusion, namely that Great Britain ought to have done all it could to impress upon Hitler that an invasion of Czechoslovakia would lead directly to an all-European war, which Germany, facing the Great Alliance, could not win.
What Deakin Learned
This was almost surely the larger framework for Churchill's strategic thinking following Hitler's Anschluss with Austria. The details had to be probed and scrutinized by trusted observers such as General Spears and Mr. Deakin. Since Churchill was not a member of the Cabinet, he could challenge the government only in the press and in Parliament. But he needed to have hard facts to challenge the government's figures, especially on the Luftwaffe, which the military chiefs had a notorious tendency to exaggerate. By contrast, the strength and preparedness of the Czechoslovak armed forces and its fortifications-in spite of the positive assessments that Lt. Col. H. C. T. Stronge, the British military attache in Prague, kept sending in-tended to be underrated by the same chiefs. At the same time, Stronge's superior, the British minister in Prague, Basil Newton, fully supported Chamberlain's appeasement course.
It was to this diplomat that Churchill now sent his assistant. How was he received? Fortunately, I was able to interview the 90-year-old Sir William Deakin, whose memory remains fresh. he told me the legation staff had from the beginning sought to sabotage his meeting with President Benes. When he arrived at the legation on April 11 to collect Churchill's letter of introduction to the president, Newton and his staff refused to receive him, presumably to demonstrate their profound disapproval of Churchill's anti-appeasement activities. Deakin was eventually able to collect the letter. But when he asked to be introduced to the president, no one obliged him. Frustrated and worn out, he asked whether the legation would at least show him where the president's residence was and how he could get there. "Ask the porter," came the reply. That part of Deakin's mission turned out to be easier than he expected. The porter merely stepped out of the gate, turned his eyes toward the heavens, and said, "Over there," pointing upward toward the royal castle on the hill. In less than ten minutes, Deakin found himself in the castle's first courtyard. he began asking, in German, to see Herr President, and eventually an official from the Chancellery took Deakin's letter and disappeared. In half an hour he returned and said, "Mr. President will receive you tomorrow morning at 11:30."
Churchill's most up-to-date information about the state of Czechoslovak fortifications and air forces had come from General Spears, as mentioned above, who had visited President Benes only a month before Deakin. In speaking with the general, Benes strove to give an optimal picture of Czechoslovak preparedness. he said the Czechs could mobilize 17 active and 17 reserve divisions, with enough supplies to enable them to resist for five months. Furthermore, the French general staff had assured him that France would invade Germany if the latter attacked the Czechs. he said that the Soviets had promised only the day before to provide the Czechs with at least a thousand Russian airplanes, for which airfields were already constructed. he was certain that neither Poland nor Hungary would join Germany in attacking, and that Germany's overall strategic situation was weaker than it had been in 1914. The morale of his own people, the president said, was staunch, and he was convinced that France stood firmly behind Czechoslovakia. But if the western powers did nothing, he would be forced to negotiate with Germany. The Czech nation, he insisted, would prefer to fight than to become a puppet of Nazi Germany, whose ideology it despised as "pure barbarism and savagery." "We are prepared to fight to the last," Benes concluded, "but we must make sure that this people do not get massacred in vain and be utterly destroyed for nothing!" If the western powers were to allow Germany to absorb Czechoslovakia, he accurately prophesied, Germany would be strong enough to tackle France, the "ultimate enemy," in 1940, as foreshadowed in Hitler's Mein Kampf.
Deakin is quite certain that he had prepared a report for Churchill on his conversation with Benes and that he had kept a copy. he invited me to visit him at his home in southern France and help find it. We spent two days combing his files, most of them having to do with the most dramatic period in Deakin's life, namely his activities as the British liaison officer with the Yugoslav partisans.6 However, we were unable to find the report and I asked him if he had other recollections of his mission. he recalled one more episode.
Eager to provide Churchill with the most recent information about the communications between Czechoslovakia and Russia via Romania, Deakin suggested to Benes that he himself would like to inspect the Czechoslovak-Romanian border. Benes went pale. The Czech president did not like the idea at all, fearing that he might be confronted with a German newspaper with Deakin's picture on the front page under the headline, "Churchill's secretary Inquiring on Czechoslovak-Romanian Border about Transit of Soviet Tanks." Deakin acknowledged that his proposed trip might prove counterproductive. In hindsight, Czechoslovak diplomacy might have more effectively exploited Churchill's interest. True, Churchill was invited to attend the Sokol Gymnastic Festival in Prague in summer 1938, but he prudently declined the invitation. His primary task, after all, was to fight appeasement at home.
[Footnote]
Notes
1. Archiv KPR (Prague Castle): 445/38.
2. see Martin Gilbert, Winston S. Churchill, vol. 5, The Coming of War, 1936-1939 (London: Heinemann, 1982), pp. 969, 979.
3. "Conversation between Pres. Benes and Gen. E. L. Spears on 14 March 1938," PRO/FO 371/21716/C3225.
4. Committee of Imperial Defence, C.O.S. 698 (CAB 27/627).
5. Winston S. Churchill, The second World War, vol. 1, The Gathering Storm (London: Cassell, 1948), p. 214.
6. see F. W. Deakin, The Embattled Mountain (London: Oxford University Press, 1971).
[Author Affiliation]
Milan Hauner, a historian, is the author of six books and more than a hundred scholarly articles on the history of Germany, India, Central Asia, Czechoslovakia, and Russia. he is affiliated with the University of Wisconsin, Madison.