‘confidently placed the destinies of the Czech people and country’ into Hitler’s hands.160 The first German columns, which had begun to move towards the Czechoslovak frontier in the evening of 11 March, crossed the border before night and reached Prague at about 9 o’clock in the morning of 15 March. D. C. Watt states that the Secret Intelligence Service had given ‘very precise warning of Hitler’s intentions’ concerning Czechoslovakia ‘at least a fortnight earlier’.161 However, he doesn’t support his statement by any archival reference.162 There is no specific information in the official history of British intelligence for that period either.163 As the SIS files are still unavailable for historical research, we can only find out how these prospective intelligence warnings resonated in British political circles and in the Foreign Office. Judged from the available evidence it seems, however, that warnings were coming only from Vansittart’s secret sources, and were correspondingly discounted by Chamberlain, Halifax and Cadogan. British secret services provided their first specific information only on 11 March.164 Vansittart, when commenting on 8 March on Frank Ashton-Gwatkin’s report of his visit to Germany in late February – a mission which sought an economic rapprochement between the two countries but which he himself had vehemently opposed – pointed out that the Germans had practically told Ashton-Gwatkin what he, Vansittart, had foretold Halifax ‘some weeks ago, i.e. that they are going to destroy the remains of Czechoslovakia’. The reference pointed to Ribbentrop’s hint of ‘some adjustment in a part of Europe where England has no business to intervene’. Vansittart further thought that Ashton-Gwatkin should have responded that if the Germans ‘meant any further outrage in regard to 160) Pasák, Tomáš, JUDr. Emil Hácha (1938–1945), Praha, Horizont 1997, pp. 44–51. 161) Watt, How War Came, p. 166. 162) The same applies to D. C. Watt’s ‘British Intelligence and the Coming of the Second World War in Europe’, In: Knowing One‘s Enemies: Intelligence Assessment between the Two World Wars, ed. Ernest R. May, Princeton, Princeton University Press 1984, p. 249. Christopher Hill also points out this discrepancy. See Hill, Cabinet Decisions on Foreign Policy. The British Experience. October 1938 – June 1941, p. 269. 163) Hinsley, Francis Harry, British Intelligence in the Second World War, Vol. 1, London, H.M.S.O. 1979, pp. 58, 83. 164) Christopher Andrew reached a similar tentative conclusion. See Andrew, Christopher, Secret Service: The Making of the British Intelligence Community, London, Sceptre/ Heinemann 1986, pp. 584–586.
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Czechoslovakia, there would be goodbye to any chance of Anglo-German understanding in view of the indignation that it would raise’.165 Ashton-Gwatkin, however, asked Prince Max von Hohenlohe of the meaning of Ribbentrop’s hint. Hohenlohe was sure (from his recent talk with Hitler) ‘that this referred to Czechoslovakia, and to nowhere else – not Hungary or Roumania’. He expected ‘a further extension of German influence over the Czech State’, including a ‘German Resident in Prague who would direct policy’. On 28 February Roberts commented that this bore out ‘recent suggestions that Germany’s next design may now be the complete absorption of Czechoslovakia’.166 Neither Halifax, nor Cadogan, however, read Hohenlohe’s correct predictions. Similarly on 9 March, Vansittart delivered to the Foreign Office a memorandum, compiled by a German officer, containing the main points in a secret lecture by Ribbentrop before a circle of senior officers from about mid-February. It forecasted a German ‘cleaning up operation in Central Europe’, following very probable Hitler’s ultimatum to Prague. Ribbentrop compared recent Chvalkovský‘s visit to that of Austrian Chancellor Schuschnigg last year, and he emphasised, quite rightly, that the Western Powers would not be able to persuade their own people that ‘they must now suddenly fight for the more or less doubtful sovereignty of the Czechoslovak State’. Therefore ‘the Führer was absolutely convinced that he could execute his plan without war’. However, nobody of the senior FO officials read this report and the only departmental minute attached to this very precise information is by Frank Roberts and is dated 17 March!167 This was not the only case of ignored warning of the imminent German aggression: On 7 March the Air Attaché in Prague, A. H. H. MacDonald, reported with the information from the head of the 2ieme Bureau: the Germans were withdrawing numbers of police from all over the country, similarly as they had done before the occupation of Austria and Sudetenland, and a number of indications appeared to show that the Germans were preparing for some offensive around 15 March. The first departmental minute came again from Roberts, and again too 165) PRO, FO 371/22951, C 3938/8/18, Vansittart to Secretary of State, 8 March 1939. 166) PRO, FO 371/22950, C 2345-6/8/18, Holman (Berlin Embassy) to Strang, 23 February; Roberts’ minute, 28 February 1939. 167) PRO, FO 371/22966, C 3096-7/15/18, FO Minute (Sir R. Vansittart), 9 March, Roberts’ minute, 17 March 1939.
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late, on 16 March: ‘Now of historical interest. But the information was very correct.’168 Both these cases could happen by chance. Nonetheless, another congestion of vital information inside the Foreign Office was to occur in mid-August 1939: then a Washington telegram passing on most important U.S. information about the imminent Soviet-German deal was held up for four critical days in the Communication Department. This was done by Francis Herbert King, a Soviet spy in the Foreign Office, who had been providing the Soviet Embassy with top secret British correspondence from early 1939 onwards.169 Already on 20 February, when assessing possibilities of Hitler’s further expansive plans, Vansittart predicted that the German dictator was now ‘thinking of annexing the remainder of Czechoslovakia in April or May’.170 On 9 March he retorted Cadogan’s hope that the German Government did not presage active German mischief in Czecho-Slovakia: ‘They certainly d o .’171 Four days later Vansittart complained to the Secretary of State that he had had no opportunity to interview Halifax on his recent information, which only confirmed what he had been foretelling about German intentions for Czechoslovakia. Vansittart had wanted the government to take action that would have deterred Hitler from a step bringing ‘a further humiliation for the Western Powers’. Nevertheless, even on 13 March Vansittart, with the ‘personal secret service’ at his disposal, was not sure whether the Germans wanted to occupy Prague or ‘bully the Czechs into any further disintegration or serfdom’.172 Similarly the Foreign Office only presumed that the Germans had their hand in the crisis in Slovakia, but gathered it predominantly from the pro-Slovak propaganda of the German press.173 While the Prague government ‘faithfully carried out all the provisions of the Slovak autonomy law’, the Slovak leaders never ceased to attack the Czechs ‘and generally to behave as if they were the leaders of an independent rather 168) PRO, FO 371/22958, C 2837/13/18, Newton to Foreign Office, 7 March 1939, Roberts’ minute, 16 March 1939. 169) Watt, Donald Cameron, Francis Herbert King. A Soviet Source in the Foreign Office, Intelligence and National Security, 1988, No. 3/4, pp. 78–79. 170) PRO, FO 371/22958, C 1822/13/18, Vansittart’s minute, 20 February 1939. 171) PRO, FO 371/22992, C 2319/19/18, Cadogan‘s minute, 7 March, Vansittart’s minute, 9 March 1939. 172) PRO, FO 371/22966, C 3234/15/18, Vansittart to Secretary of State, 13 March 1939. 173) PRO, FO 371/22896, C 3046/7/12, Roberts’ minute, 13 March 1939.
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