Roosevelt's appeal to Hitler

On the evening of 27 September 1938, Washington time, when in Europe it was already the night before the expected outbreak of war, the President of the United States, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, sent Adolf Hitler his second telegram in two days on the question of Czechoslovakia. In it he asked Germany not to break off negotiations and proposed that, if necessary, they be widened into a conference “of all the nations directly interested in the present controversy”, to be convened at once “in some neutral spot in Europe”. The same day he also asked Benito Mussolini to help preserve the peace, and encouraged American diplomats around the world to urge the governments to which they were accredited to make similar appeals. Hitler did not answer the second telegram. The next day, however, he agreed to a meeting in Munich – though what decided the matter was above all British and Italian diplomacy, not the words from Washington.

It is sometimes said that on 27 September Roosevelt “sent a letter to Hitler seeking peace”. In fact there were two telegrams: the first, of 26 September, addressed simultaneously to Hitler, the President of Czechoslovakia and the Prime Ministers of Britain and France; and the second, of 27 September, addressed to Hitler alone and replying to his answer. The second cannot be understood without the first.

America and Europe

In 1938 Roosevelt’s hands were tied. Between 1935 and 1937 Congress had passed a series of Neutrality Acts, which banned the sale of arms to belligerents and were intended to prevent the United States from going down the road it had taken in 1914–1917. Public opinion was firmly isolationist. When the President suggested in his Quarantine Speech in October 1937 that peace-loving nations should isolate aggressors, the reaction was so cool that he quickly retreated from the idea. At the beginning of September 1938, when the ambassador in Paris, William Bullitt, implied in a speech that France and the United States were united “in war and in peace”, Roosevelt publicly denied that America belonged to any bloc against Hitler.

At the same time the President increasingly saw Germany as a threat. After the Anschluss it was he who had called the Évian Conference on refugees, and his ambassadors in Paris, London and Berlin – Bullitt, Joseph P. Kennedy and Hugh R. Wilson – sent him daily reports on the deepening crisis over the Sudetenland. Kennedy was an ardent supporter of Neville Chamberlain’s policy, while Bullitt warned of the weakness of France and its air force. Roosevelt had no intention of taking on any commitments, but in the last days of September he decided that the voice of the United States might make a difference.

September on the brink of war

The Sudeten crisis (PL) had been building since the spring. Hitler, who at the secret meeting in the Reich Chancellery in November 1937 had named Czechoslovakia as one of his first targets, used Konrad Henlein’s Sudeten German Party to present Prague with unacceptable demands. On 15 September at Berchtesgaden Chamberlain agreed in principle to the cession to Germany of the districts with a German majority, and on 21 September the Czechoslovak government, under pressure from London and Paris, accepted the plan. At their second meeting, at Bad Godesberg on 22–23 September, Hitler demanded more, however: the immediate occupation by the Wehrmacht of the areas marked on a map, with a deadline of 1 October. Prague proclaimed general mobilisation, and France and Britain rejected the Godesberg memorandum and began to prepare for war.

On 25 September the President of Czechoslovakia, Edvard Beneš, summoned the American envoy in Prague, Wilbur Carr, and asked him to pass on a personal appeal to Roosevelt. He said that the Godesberg terms meant “the murder of the state”, that his nation would rather die fighting than accept them, and he asked the President to persuade the British and French not to abandon Czechoslovakia. He added that he could ask for nothing more.

The first appeal: 26 September

The answer was a telegram that Roosevelt sent in the early hours of 26 September, American time, when it was already morning in Europe. Hitler and Beneš received an identical text, as did – through the State Department – Chamberlain and the French Prime Minister, Édouard Daladier, who was then in London. It was also released to the press at once. The President wrote that the “fabric of peace” in Europe was in immediate danger, that in the event of war millions of men, women and children would be killed “under circumstances of unspeakable horror”, and that the economic and social order of every participating nation would be shattered. He recalled that all civilised nations had accepted the obligations of the Kellogg–Briand Pact of 1928, and declared that there was no problem that could not be justly solved by reason rather than force. “On behalf of the 130 millions of people of the United States of America and for the sake of humanity everywhere” he appealed for the negotiations not to be broken off, because once they were, reason would be banished and force would take over. At the same time he stressed that the United States had “no political entanglements”.

Chamberlain, Daladier and Beneš replied the same day, expressing their gratitude. Beneš gave assurances that Czechoslovakia, although it had already made the greatest sacrifices, was not breaking off negotiations and was ready to submit the dispute to arbitration. That evening, in the Berlin Sportpalast, Hitler delivered one of the most aggressive speeches of his career. He heaped abuse on Beneš, declared that the Sudetenland was his “last territorial demand in Europe”, and announced that if Prague did not give way, Germany would take it by force.

Hitler’s reply to Roosevelt reached Washington on the evening of 26 September, when it was already night in Europe. It was long and cold. Hitler said that he appreciated the President’s “lofty intentions” and shared his concern about the consequences of war, but he rejected “all responsibility of the German people and their leaders”. He presented the history of the dispute in his own way: in 1918 Germany had laid down its arms trusting in President Wilson’s principles, and the Paris peace treaties, including the Treaty of Saint-Germain, had betrayed them by creating Czechoslovakia without regard to history or nationality and denying the Sudeten Germans the right of self-determination. He claimed that 214,000 Germans had fled Czechoslovakia to escape a “bloody terror” – a heavily inflated propaganda figure. He concluded that it was not for the German government but for the Czechoslovak government alone to decide whether it wanted peace or war.

The second appeal: 27 September

27 September was the day of greatest tension in Europe. At noon Hitler received Chamberlain’s envoy, Sir Horace Wilson, who delivered a warning that if France came to Czechoslovakia’s aid, Britain would stand by her side. Hitler replied that if Prague did not accept his terms he would “smash” the Czechs. In the evening a motorised division drove through Berlin, but the Berliners watched it in silence, which reportedly made an impression on Hitler. Chamberlain said on the radio how “horrible, fantastic, incredible” it was that the British should be digging trenches and trying on gas masks because of a quarrel in a faraway country between people of whom they knew nothing. The British fleet was preparing to mobilise.

In Washington, at 3 p.m., Secretary of State Cordell Hull sent out two telegrams. The first, to the ambassador in Rome, William Phillips, contained Roosevelt’s personal message to Mussolini: the President recalled his appeal of the previous day and asked whether the Duce would be willing to help in the further efforts to settle the dispute by negotiation. The second, a circular to American missions, instructed them to ask the governments of neutral states to send similar appeals to Berlin and Prague, since the “cumulative effect” of such voices might still influence the course of events. Several governments, including some of the Latin American republics, made such appeals.

At 10.18 p.m. Washington time – in the early morning of 28 September in Europe – the second telegram to Hitler went out. In it Roosevelt acknowledged receipt of the reply and dismissed its arguments in a single sentence: “The question before the world today, Mr. Chancellor, is not the question of errors of judgment or of injustices committed in the past; it is the question of the fate of the world today and tomorrow.” He recalled that the Great War had shown the futility of both victory and defeat. He pointed out that, according to the statements of responsible statesmen, agreement in principle between Germany and Czechoslovakia had already been reached, and that the dispute concerned only the timing, method and details of carrying it out, so that the use of force on a scale threatening a general war was “as unnecessary as it is unjustifiable”. He expressed no view on the merits of the dispute, asked only that negotiations continue, and proposed a conference of all the interested nations at a neutral place in Europe. He assured Hitler that if he agreed to a peaceful settlement, “hundreds of millions throughout the world” would recognise it as a historic service to humanity, and wrote that history, and the souls of all who would die in the threatened war, would hold the leaders to account if they neglected any appeal. Finally, he repeated that the United States had no political commitments in Europe and would assume none in the course of the negotiations, but that, as part of a “world of neighbors”, it felt a share of responsibility.

Munich

On the morning of 28 September, a few hours before the expiry of Hitler’s deadline (2 p.m.), Chamberlain sent him a letter proposing another meeting and at the same time asked Mussolini to mediate. The British ambassador in Rome, Lord Perth (James Eric Drummond), called on Galeazzo Ciano at around 10.30 a.m. Mussolini immediately instructed his ambassador in Berlin, Bernardo Attolico, to ask Hitler to postpone action for twenty-four hours. Hitler agreed, and soon afterwards invited Chamberlain, Daladier and Mussolini to Munich. Chamberlain learned of this in the middle of a speech in the House of Commons.

Roosevelt’s role in all this was secondary. Phillips was able to hand the President’s message to Mussolini only at around 4 p.m., when the decision to hold the conference had already been taken – although the ambassador himself noted that the Italian ministry, and probably the Duce too, had known the message was coming before ten in the morning. Mussolini asked that his thanks be conveyed to the President, together with the assurance that he now had every reason to expect a peaceful solution. Nor was the Munich conference what Roosevelt had proposed: it was not held at a neutral place, and neither Czechoslovakia nor the Soviet Union was invited. When Roosevelt learned of the invitation, he sent Chamberlain a short telegram which, in the version most often quoted, consisted of two words: “Good man.”

Significance

The September appeals were Roosevelt’s first such direct intervention in European affairs, and they were received with approval in the United States. They also showed the limits of American policy, however. The President made no threats, promised no help and made it clear from the outset that America would take on no commitments. He appealed to the conscience of a dictator who had already torn up the Treaties of Versailles and Locarno, and he had no means of pressure other than moral authority. What is more, by taking the “agreement in principle” as his starting point, he in practice accepted the cession of the Sudetenland to Germany and added to the pressure on Prague to make further concessions. In this sense his appeals fitted into the policy of appeasement pursued by Chamberlain and Daladier.

Munich brought only an illusory peace. Roosevelt quickly lost his illusions. In the autumn of 1938, after the nationwide pogrom in Germany, he recalled Ambassador Wilson from Berlin for consultations – he never returned – and began to press for an expansion of military aviation, partly with a view to selling aircraft to France and Britain. In April 1939, after Germany had occupied Prague, he sent Hitler and Mussolini another appeal, this time asking for an assurance that they would not attack more than thirty states listed by name. Hitler ridiculed it in a speech to the Reichstag. When Germany invaded Poland on 1 September 1939, Roosevelt again called on the belligerents to spare civilians from bombing, but over the next two years he gradually led the United States from neutrality towards ever more open support for Hitler’s opponents.