March 15th, 1939 (WEDNESDAY)
UNITED KINGDOM: Destroyer HMS Bedouin commissioned.
CZECHOSLOVAKIA: An exultant Führer was received with cheers, tears and boos as he rode into Prague this afternoon to fulfil what he had proclaimed to be Germany's historic destiny. Czechoslovakia, the first democratic state to arise in central Europe, lies in ruins, Himmler's Gestapo is taking over and Field Marshal Göring is raiding the Czechoslovak National Bank of millions of gold crowns to bail out the near bankrupt Reichsbank.
Some 12 hours earlier, at five minutes to four in the morning, the broken Czechoslovak president, Dr Emil Hacha, had signed away his country's independence after a night of bullying by Hitler, Göring and von Ribbentrop. At one point, when they were chasing him round the room in the Berlin chancellery waving papers for him to sign, Hacha fell unconscious to the floor and Hitler's quack physician, Theodor Morrell, was called to administer injections, which sufficiently revived the president to enable him to put pen to paper and telephone Prague with orders to surrender. Hacha is considered weak and possibly even senile. Hitler has threatened a bombing raid against Prague unless he obtained from Hacha free passage for German troops across Czech borders.
Hitler raced through the chancellery shouting: "This is the greatest day of my life! I shall go down in history as the greatest German!" He claimed that his annexation of the Czech lands, Bohemia and Moravia, and, in effect, Slovakia was perfectly legal, since Germany had been invited to place them under its protection. In fact, Hitler had been planning the takeover even as he was signing the Munich agreement with Chamberlain and Daladier in September last year.
He had said then that he only wanted those parts of Czechoslovakia occupied by Sudeten Germans, and promised to respect the independence of what remained of the country. But secretly he was giving orders to his armed forces to prepare for invasion. He brushed aside the possibility of Anglo-French action, referring to Chamberlain and his ministers as "little worms". Last September Chamberlain told the British people that it was "horrible and fantastic" to think of going to war over a "a quarrel in a faraway country between people of whom we know nothing." Now, less than six months later, the country seems not so far away after all - thanks to the German dictator who is tonight sleeping in Hradzin Castle, the ancient palace of the Bohemian kings.
Another Czech province, Carpatho-Ukraine, declares its independence.