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At dusk his car climbed the hill to ancient Hradschin Castle. Slowly he ascended its stairs to his suite, rooms used by Thomas Masaryk and Eduard Benes, founders of the republic. Adolf Hitler's personal gold-bordered swastika was unfurled overhead, he stepped to a window and looked down on the twinkling lights of another subject city.
Thursday he announced the previously devised organization of Bohemia and Moravia as a protectorate. Konrad Henlein, who did yeoman service as the whiplash of the Sudeten Germans, was named civil administrator of Bohemia; and Joseph Bürckel, Nazi deputy leader in Austria, of Moravia.
Thus the campaign was completed, all but the mopping up operations. On Thursday morning Chancellor Hitler announced receipt of a telegram from Dr. Jozef Tiso, for two days stooge President of newly "independent" Slovakia. "In supreme confidence in you," it said, ". . . the Slovak State places itself under your protection." With equally supreme confidence in himself, Adolf Hitler swallowed Slovakia whole. Now Germany had a common border with Carpatho-Ukraine, which Hungary announced she was annexing (see col. 3).
Just before leaving Prague, Herr Hitler wired his army: CONGRATULATIONS ON RESTORING PEACE AND ORDER IN BOHEMIA IN SPITE OF INCLEMENT WEATHER. Continuing his triumphal tour, Herr Hitler drove to Brünn.
From Brünn he went by special train not as expected to Bratislava, capital of Slovakia, but to Vienna ; and from there back to Berlin.
To celebrate his fourth successful, large-scale occupation by intimidation the Führer was given a fireworks display and the plaudits of 1,000,000 Berliners. Field Marshal Hermann Goring was beside him self as he eulogized his leader's latest accomplishment. "Your proudest,"he significantly called it, "so far."