529. The Nazis' Road to War: Showdown in Munich (Part 2)
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I felt quite fresh and was delighted with the enthusiastic welcome of the crowds who were waiting in the rain and who gave me the Nazi salute and shouted Heil at the tops of their voices all the way to the station. There we entered Hitler's special train for the three hours journey to Berchtesgaden. All the way up there were people at the crossings, the stations and at the windows of the houses, all hailing and saluting. We drove to the brown house a good deal higher up the mountain. Halfway down the steps stood the Fuhrer, bareheaded and dressed in a khaki-coloured coat of broadcloth with a red armlet and a swastika on it and the military cross on his breast. He wore black trousers, such as we wear in the evening, and black patent leather lace-up shoes. His hair is brown, not black. his eyes blue, his expression rather disagreeable, especially in repose, and altogether he looks entirely undistinguished. You would never notice him in a crowd, and would take him for the house painter he once was.
After saying some words of welcome, he took me up the steps and introduced me to a number of people, among whom I only distinguished General Keitel, a youngish, pleasant-faced, smart-looking soldier. We then entered the house, and passed along a very bare passage to the celebrated chamber, or rather hall, one end of which is entirely occupied by a vast window. The view towards Salzburg must be magnificent.' But to this day, there were only the valley and the bottoms of the mountains to be seen. That was Neville Chamberlain, who was writing to his sister Ida after his trip to Hitler's mountain lair on Thursday, the 15th of September, 1938. And Dominic, he seems to have been completely obsessed with what Hitler was wearing. Amazing attention to detail.
But I suppose it's a novelty for Chamberlain, Hitler's shoes. Yes, black patent leather lace-up shoes.
Yeah. You would take him for the house painter he once was. Which he wasn't, was he? No, he was never a house painter. He was a postcard painter. The fact that Chamberlain is describing it in such banal detail to his sister, this extraordinary meeting, is a reminder of an unprecedented moment it is, right? People don't normally do this. So in the last episode... the first of our two-part series on Munich, we talked about how rare it is for European statesmen to do this, to fly to each other's countries at the drop of a hat for an emergency summit. This didn't happen in the build-up to the First World War. Chamberlain is doing something extraordinary here. He's boarded his plane. We ended last time at Heston Aerodrome.
He's launching this remarkable kind of diplomatic coup in a desperate attempt to avoid war over Czechoslovakia, a war that Hitler is planning to launch on the 1st of October, which is just two weeks away. And which Chamberlain doesn't know that, of course. No, Chamberlain doesn't know that at all. So just on Chamberlain and his flight, Chamberlain left with the goodwill of the British press kind of ringing in his ears. Every newspaper in Britain said it was brilliant that Chamberlain was doing this. They were so excited. The news from Paris, you know, Paris sent him messages of support. The French are delighted that he's doing it.
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