1938: Czechoslovakia -- 1998: Chechnya
The Nazis: A Warning from History
By Laurence Rees
Hitler in Sudetenland in Czechosolovakia
Now Czechoslovakia
The German Foreign Office basked in the glory of the Anschluss. 'The unification of Austria was really a national dream,' Manfred von Schröder told me. 'It was the summit of Hitler's popularity and that influenced everyone in Germany at that time.' The euphoria also affected Hitler, according to von Schröder: 'It must have been an enormous feeling of success and probably it made his megalomania grow.'
Spurred on by the bloodless success of the Anschluss, Hitler now turned to Czechoslovakia. Its strategic geographical position in Europe convinced Hitler that he could not expand further without neutralizing its army. The most obvious way of destabilizing Czechoslovakia was to incite the more than 3 million Germans who lived in the Sudetenland; they had already been calling for greater rights within Czechoslovakia as an ethnic group. Less than three weeks after his triumphant entrance into Austria, Hitler held a meeting in Berlin with the leaders of the Sudeten German Party and told them that he intended to 'settle' the Sudeten problem in the 'not-too-distant-future'. Hitler knew that world opinion would not permit him to attack Czechoslovakia without a pretext, so after approving the Sudeten German Party's tactic of agitation against the Czech government, he left events to escalate without his direct involvement.
The Czechoslovakian government suffered because their country was a creation of the post-World War I settlement. Not only did this mean that the Nazis despised it, but that the country's genesis had created a number of ethnic minorities within it, many of whom were suspicious of each other. To outside observers, such as the British, it seemed that there was some justice in the Nazi dislike of Czechoslovakia and their support for the Sudeten Germans. An editorial in The Times on 7 September 1938 even called for the Sudetenland to be given to the Germans.
As problems with the Sudeten Germans escalated, the British Prime Minister, Neville Chamberlain, intervened to try to solve the crisis. He began by making two visits to Germany to meet Hitler on 15 and 22 September. The dispute was finally resolved at the Munich conference on 29 September at which representatives from Italy, Britain and France agreed that the Sudetenland should be ceded to Germany in stages between 1 and 10 October.
The Czechoslovakian crisis allowed the British to see what sort of statesman Hitler actually was. Chamberlain called him 'the commonest little dog' he had ever seen. The British and the French witnessed the rows, the vacillations, the bullying and the changes of mind that characterized Hitler's diplomacy. Nor was Hitler satisfied with the Munich Agreement. He had doubted all along whether the British and French would really have risked everything over Czechoslovakia and now believed he had been badly advised. He suspected that it had not been necessary for Göring and Mussolini to devise any form of compromise at the conference. Manfred von Schröder, who had been present at the signing of the agreement, heard only the day after the Munich conference that Hitler was saying 'They have robbed me of my war.'
bbc.co.uk
Takeover of Czechoslovakia
Hitler still had not finished with Czechoslovakia. Even though the Nazis now possessed the Sudetenland, and had thus deprived Czechoslovakia of her man-made fortifications and the mountains which were her natural defences, Hitler still saw the rest of Czechoslovakia as a threat. He now used the same tactic to destabilize the remainder of Czechoslovakia that he had used to gain the Sudetenland - he encouraged a minority to revolt. Now he pressed the Slovak leaders to declare full independence from the rest of Czechoslovakia. Their natural inclination to do so was reinforced by threats from Hitler that if they did not do as he wished, he would encourage Hungary to claim Slovakia as her territory. This was diplomacy the Darwinian way: we are stronger than you and if you don't do what we want, then you will be crushed. Treaties, international law, mutual policing of nations through organizations like the League of Nations - all were devices the weak employed to hide from the strong. Hitler practised not the diplomacy of Bismarck but that of the bully. Up to now he had cloaked his brutal bullying in such a way that it was capable of another interpretation - the Anschluss was Austria's wish, the Sudeten Germans were mistreated - but now he was to demonstrate openly the true essence of Nazi philosophy, in which the strong simply 'take over' the weak.
On 14 March 1939 the Slovaks declared independence (reading from a text prepared by Ribbentrop). That night the ageing Czech President, Emil Hácha, arrived in Berlin for talks. Hitler humiliated him, first by keeping him and his entourage waiting for hours, then by making them tramp through hall after hall of the new Chancellery to reach his office, and finally by meeting them at one o'clock in the morning and announcing that at six o'clock, in five hours' time, German troops were going to invade their country.
Hitler was enjoying himself; Hácha was not. As the Czech President tried to telephone Prague, Göring joined in the fun and began describing to him how German planes would bomb the Czech capital. Manfred von Schröder witnessed what happened next: 'Hácha broke down and had a heart failure.' Von Schröder called Hitler's personal physician, Dr Theodor Morrell, who gave Hácha an injection. The Czech President revived sufficiently so that at four o'clock in the morning he signed away the Czech people into Hitler's 'care'.
[snip]
bbc.co.uk
Chechens out in the cold
WP
Thursday, December 19, 2002
After the Moscow theater siege by Chechen extremists, optimists in Moscow and Washington suggested that the tragedy might create an opening for a political settlement in Russia's unwinnable war against the republic. Maybe that could still happen, but for now the aftermath has mainly brought a harder line from President Vladimir Putin and more misery to Chechnya's people.
According to numerous independent reports, sweeps by Russian military forces in towns and villages, which regularly result in the abduction or disappearance of civilians, have been stepped up. Most chilling, Russian forces have resumed efforts to force thousands of Chechen refugees out of camps in the neighboring republic of Ingushetia, even as winter takes hold in the region. Unless it can be stopped, this cruel operation will produce a humanitarian catastrophe.
Putin appeared to hope, after the theater siege, that the world would indulge a new crackdown by his forces. In fact, while the brutal new sweeps inside Chechnya have mostly been ignored internationally, the attempt to deport refugees from Ingushetia has prompted a number of protests and appeals, including several from the Bush administration.
One member of Putin's own human rights commission, Lyudmila Alekseyeva, bravely told him to his face this month that official accounts of a voluntary return of the refugees to Chechnya were "a lie." The president responded by promising to suspend the operation and set up a commission to study solutions for the refugees.
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