Raoul Wallenberg: Part 5

Note: Read Part 4.

World War II Begins

“I would say to the House, as I said to those who have joined this Government, I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears and sweat. We have before us an ordeal of the most grievous kind. We have before us many long months of toil and struggle.

“You ask what is our policy. I will say, it is to wage war with all our might, with all the strength that God can give us, to wage war against a monstrous tyranny never surpassed in the dark, lamentable catalogue of human crime.

“You ask what is our aim? I can answer in one word: Victory. Victory at all costs. Victory in spite of all terror. Victory however long and hard the road may be. For without victory there is no survival.”¹

- Winston Churchill, May 13, 1940, in his first speech as Prime Minister

The question was how to keep the peace. And British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain wanted peace. He had seen what war does. Had lost family members to it. He knew the grief that settled into people as a result. So did many in Britain. The streets were full of men who walked with canes, their lungs scarred by gas, their faces by shrapnel. Women still wore black for sons who never came home. The Great War had left its mark. The people didn't want another one. They wanted diplomacy.

Neville Chamberlain, circa 1915

On the other side stood Hitler. He wanted conquest. And he sought to fulfill his vision of Lebensraum - the idea that the German people needed “living space,” which could only be gained by seizing territory. He had already expanded Germany since coming to power. No real fights or resistance had come his way in doing so. His publicly stated intentions ran much broader, though, and his next target was now set: the Sudetenland region of Czechoslovakia.

Formed after World War I from the collapse of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, Czechoslovakia became home to over three million ethnic Germans in the Sudetenland. Hitler saw them as an ideal justification for Germany's expansion. Under the pretense of protecting German-speaking people, he stirred unrest in the region, fueling Sudeten German nationalist demands for separation. He promised to bring them into the Reich. By force if necessary. As he would say to Chamberlain in a conversation between the two: