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After the British and French Ministers had conferred for another full day, the British Foreign Office announced this week, "It is still possible [to find a peaceful solution] by negotiation. Germany's claim to transfer of the Sudeten areas has already been conceded by the French, British and Czechoslovak Governments. But if, in spite of all efforts made by the British Prime Minister, a German attack is made upon Czechoslovakia, the immediate result must be that France will be bound to come to her assistance, and Great Britain and Russia will certainly stand by France." The Comintern station at Moscow, official propagator of "The World Revolution of the World Proletariat," helped out by hurling in the German language high-powered appeals to the German lower classes to revolt at once against Hitler.
"Wir Folgen!" From Godesberg this week the Führer returned unobtrusively to Berlin, got to work on a speech which he presently delivered to 15,000 Nazis jam-packing the Sport-Palast.
Cried the No. 3 Nazi, Dr. Paul Joseph Goebbels, introducing No. 1: "Führer be-fiehl! Wir folgen!" ("Leader, command! We follow!")
With 1,500,000 German troops mobilized at that moment in various parts of the Reich, Orator Hitler began by recalling his offer to reduce the German Army to 200,000 men if each of the other Great Powers would accept this same limitation, and he reminded Europe that his offer had been without takers. He recalled that Germany made a peace pact with Poland, a naval limitations treaty with Britain and renounced any claim to Alsace-Lorraine, shouted: "It is not one Führer or one man who is speaking—it is the entire German nation!"
The Führer continued: "Our aims are not unlimited. . . . The Sudetenland is the last territorial claim I have to make in Europe, but it is one on which I shall not yield. . . . This Herr Benes was at Versailles and assured European statesmen that there was such a thing as a 'Czechoslovak nation.' Those geographically ignorant statesmen omitted to check up on his statements— instead of realizing that there is no such thing as a Czechoslovak nation! . . ."
"While I sympathize with all the nationalities of Czechoslovakia, I am speaking here only for the oppressed Germans ..." Herr Hitler went on, thus putting a damper on rumors that he had faced Mr. Chamberlain with Polish and Hungarian claims as well as Germany's. "Upon the threats of Great Britain and France, Herr Benes finally admitted that the Sudetenland must be ceded to Germany," continued Hitler. "The play is now ended. . . . THE FINAL GERMAN DEMANDS CONTAIN ONLY WHAT BENES HAS ALREADY PROMISED."
"After German territory has gone to Germany, and each of the other terrorized peoples has decided where it wants to belong, Germany is even ready to guarantee the frontiers of the remaining Czech State. . . . When Mr. Chamberlain asked me to agree to have plebiscites not in all parts of Czechoslovakia but only in the German districts I GAVE IN ! I also agreed to a German-Czech commission to supervise the plebiscite. ... I would also have accepted international police control! It was all only the practical realization of what Benes had already promised."