SECRET ARMIES
26
On
February 19, Hitler, tired of waiting, bluntly de
manded that he be removed, and with the newspaper campaign
in full swing, Chamberlain
response to public opinion"
thing.
"in
removed him the very next day.
The amiable Lord Halifax was appointed Foreign Secretary.
Pro-fascists like A. L. Lennon-Boyd, stanch supporter of Franco
and admirer of Hitler and Mussolini, were given ministerial
pos ts.
The
Austrian invasion was delayed for three weeks because of
the difficulty in getting Eden out. When the news flashed to a
startled world that Nazi troops were thundering into a country
whose independence Hitler had promised to respect, M. Corbin,
still unsuspecting French Ambassador, rushed to the Foreign
Office to arrange for swift joint action. This was at four o clock
the
March 11, 1938. Instead of receiving him
Lord Halifax kept him waiting until nine o clock
immediately,
in the evening. By that time Austria was Nazi territory. There
was nothing to do but protest; so Lord Halifax, with a straight
in the afternoon of
face,
week
joined France in a "strong protest." It was not until a
after Austria had been absorbed that the French Intelli
gence Service learned the details of the Halifax deal and finally
understood why England had side-stepped the pleas for joint
action and why the French Ambassador had been kept cooling his
heels until the occupation of Austria was completed.
Austria Hitler got more men for his army, large deposits
of magnesite, timber forests and enormous water-power resources
for electricity. From Czechoslovakia, if he could get it, Hitler
would have the Skoda armament works, one of the biggest in
From
the world, factories in the Sudeten area, be next door to Hun
garian wheat and Rumanian oil, dominate the Balkans, destroy
and troop bases in Central Europe, and
Nazi troops within a few miles of the Soviet border and the
place
Ukrainian wheat fields he has eyed so long.
potential Russian air