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Articles
Did Churchill Waffle in 1938?: The Tale of Hubert Ripka
- By Richard M. Langworth
- | December 8, 2022
- Category: Churchill Between the Wars Truths and Heresies
Who was Hubert Ripka, and what did he say about Munich? Did Ripka prove that Churchill waffled over Czech liberty? No. To be sure, we must look at the complete record,
Not anti-appeasement?
Writing in Engelsberg Ideas on November 28th, Patrick Porter makes a perfectly legitimate point: “Painting the wartime premier only as an heroic anti-appeaser overlooks the many diplomatic ploys he used to disarm a dangerous world.” He correctly quotes Churchill’s 1950 remark: “Appeasement from weakness and fear is alike futile and fatal. Appeasement from strength is magnanimous and noble and might be the surest and perhaps the only path to world peace.”1
Mr. Porter says that Churchill’s wisdom is not evenly portrayed in current debates, such as the question over aid to Ukraine. It is always about “heroic Churchills versus feckless appeasers, in the face of Adolf Hitlers.”
Aid to Ukraine is a question over which reasonable people may differ. Unfortunately, Mr. Porter bolsters his argument with an anecdote involving the 1938 Munich crisis—a partial account which skews our understanding of Churchill’s views over when to compromise and when to stand firm.
We deal here only with Ripka and his account. Readers unfamiliar with the Munich Crisis should consult good books on the Appeasement years, or other links provided here.
Ripka and Churchill
Hubert Ripka (1895-1958) was a Czech lecturer and journalist, owner of the Prague newspaper Lidove Noviny. He was a close friend of his country’s founder Tomáš Masaryk and President Edvard Beneš. Early aware of Hitler’s designs on his country, Ripka labored to spread the alarm. In 1939 and in 1940 he would flee the Nazis in Prague and then Paris, becoming Deputy Foreign Minister of the Czech exile government in London. Returning home in 1945, he soon had to flee again, from the Communists in 1948.
Ripka was introduced to the Churchills by Shiela [sic] Grant Duff, a distant cousin of Clementine’s, in the mid-1930s. Together they kept Churchill informed of events inside Czechoslovakia. Grant Duff implored Churchill to stand with the Czechs. “The crisis has never been so great,” she wrote, “and I am convinced that only a stand on our part can overcome it. Czechoslovakia is, for the moment, almost entirely dependent on us.”2
What Churchill told Ripka
On 13 May 1938, Churchill, Professor Lindemann and Archibald Sinclair met with the Sudeten German leader Konrad Henlein.3 Suave and affable, Henlein urged Churchill to accept the “reasonable” demands of the Sudeten-Deutsch. Henlein insisted he was a loyal Czech who simply wanted Home Rule, such as WSC had helped engineer in Ireland.
A note on this meeting, which Churchill forwarded to Prime Minister Chamberlain, was also sent to Czech Ambassador Jan Masaryk, “who professed himself contented with a settlement on these lines.”4 Chamberlain thanked Churchill, saying, “I agree with you that what you gathered from him was encouraging rather than the reverse.”5
Churchill remained hopeful: “I have good reason to believe that the kind of plans which Herr Henlein described when he was over here would not be unacceptable to the Government of Czechoslovakia.”6 But Churchill was misled. In fact Henlein had promised Hitler he would “make demands that cannot be satisfied.”7 And by the end of May, Hitler ordered the invasion of Czechoslovakia to begin no later than October 1st.8
Mr. Porter would have us believe that Churchill was pro-Appeasement over Czechoslovakia, but he does not quote WSC directly, and his evidence is scanty:
…Churchill came late to outright public opposition. He had supported maximal concessions to the Sudeten separatists within Czech borders. In June that year, as Hitler and his irredentist proxies in the Sudetenland agitated for reunion with the Reich, Churchill privately told Hubert Ripka, confidant of Czech president Edvard Beneš, that if he were in office, he would likely follow Chamberlain’s policy of seeking peaceful compromise.9
This is accurate as far as it goes, but it doesn’t go far enough.
Hubert Ripka’s account
The historian David Irving was broadly criticized for his opinions on Churchill and Hitler. It needs to be said, however, that Irving often referenced singular sources, especially in languages other than English. Readers may judge whether a source is valid. But Porter should have cited Irving, since the following could only have come from him.
On 22 June 1938, Churchill and his colleagues met with Hubert Ripka at the Savoy. The meeting was confirmed the day before by Churchill’s secretary.10 Here Irving produces Ripka’s report from Czech diplomatic papers—the only source I could find for Porter’s conclusion that Churchill was pro-appeasement:
[Churchill] talked of the good impression Henlein had made, and of how he seemed to be keeping his engagements. Ripka choked, and pointed to Henlein’s less roseate interviews with senior Daily Mail journalist G. Ward Price, and Karl Frank’s conversations with British reporters in Prague.
At this Churchill lost his composure: Prague must come to terms with Henlein, he said; it would be an error to rely too “carelessly” on British aid. “We spoke sharply and threateningly with Henlein, because one cannot speak otherwise with a Boche if one wishes to make an impression; but with you [Czechs] we can speak in another language, meaning with complete openness, which you deserve, so that you do not become slaves to an imprudent trust in English assistance. Every one of us leading politicians,” he lectured Ripka, “has to ask ourselves whether we have the right, whether we can in all conscience force our country into war—whether we can permit London to be destroyed, and our Empire to be shaken once more.” He added with rare candour, “I cannot say that I would not act similarly to Mr. Chamberlain, if I had the responsibility as head of government.”11
Porter’s reference ends here. He fails to include the rest of the Ripka-Churchill interview. In fairness to Churchill, it needs to be cited.
The rest of the story
The balance of Ripka’s report undermines Porter’s argument that Churchill counseled appeasement in the Czech crisis:
Ripka stammered that the Czechs would defend themselves, and were no longer vulnerable to a sudden mechanized thrust across the frontiers. Tears shot into Winston’s eyes. “Masaryk was right,” he cried, referring to Jan’s father Tomáš. “Death is better than slavery.” If war did come, he continued, mopping his eyes, this time they must wage it against the Boche so thoroughly that he wouldn’t recover for generations. “We’ll smash them to smithereens,” he snarled, “so they don’t trouble us for a century or more.”
After a while he spoke of “Herr Beans,” as he pronounced the name of Czechoslovakia’s president, Edvard Beneš. Churchill called him one of the greatest men of our epoch, and praised the resolution of the Czechs to fight for freedom with such vehemence that he began to cry all over again.12
Over the summer, the Sudeten crisis deepened. The Czech government rejected autonomy; Henlein’s Nazis increased acts of violence; Hitler’s demands became strident. By mid-September, Shiela Grant Duff was writing Ripka:
[Churchill] has the impression that there is some “miserable plan” which Chamberlain and the Government will try and get accepted. He is confident that if Chamberlain tries now to get you to capitulate to the Nazis, that it will let loose a tremendous campaign here and that the country will split…. Churchill says everything depends on the willingness of the Czechs to fight at all costs.In that case, Germany will attack you and the situation here will change immediately. He thinks Germany may attack any time, and the more you establish order in the Sudeten German districts, the more necessary this aggression becomes. In the case of a German attack, it is absolutely certain that we will march.13
In the event, the Czechs refused to fight at all costs, and “we” did not march. There was no split in Britain. Returning with the Munich agreement, Chamberlain was feted as a hero.
Did Churchill waffle?
Porter’s reference to what WSC told Ripka, though without attribution, must come from Irving. It appears nowhere else among in our 80-million-word Churchill digital canon. Irving’s source, in turn, was Czech diplomatic papers, which are not in our scans. But assume they are genuine. Are they damning? Evidently not.
In June 1938, three months before Hitler’s demands reached crisis-level, Churchill was correctly warning Ripka there was no guarantee Britain and France would fight alongside the Czechs. Having accepted Henlein’s assurances, he still hoped for peaceful compromise. Henlein had been careful to adopt a conciliatory attitude when he talked to Churchill. Assuming Churchill’s words are what he said—and who knows, since Ripka is the only reporter?—they sound more like caution than desertion. Churchill was also trying to be supportive of Chamberlain, hoping to buck him up if matters got worse. Which indeed they did.
All other documents and references suggest that Churchill supported Czech liberty, even at the risk of war. He spoke out for this view despite warnings that France would not fight, and that absent France, Britain wouldn’t either. It is right to observe that in other crises Churchill sometimes counseled compromise. But not over Czechoslovakia in September 1938.
Endnotes
1 Winston S. Churchill (hereinafter WSC), House of Commons, 14 December 1950, in Richard M. Langworth, ed., Churchill By Himself: In His Own Words (New York, Rosetta, 2016), 262.
2 Shiela Grant Duff to WSC, in Mary Soames, A Daughter’s Tale: The Memoirs of Winston and Clementine Churchill’s Youngest Child (London: Transworld, 2011), 110.
3 See Martin Gilbert, ed., The Churchill Documents, vol. 13, The Coming of War 1936-1939 (Hillsdale, Mich.: Hillsdale College Press, 2009, 1023-24.
4 Ibid., 1024.
5 Ibid., 1025.
6 WSC, Chingford, Essex, 23 May 1938, in Robert Rhodes James, ed., Winston S. Churchill: His Complete Speeches 1897-1963, 8 vols. (New York: Bowker, 1974), VI: 5965.
7 Gerhard Weinberg, The Foreign Policy of Hitler’s Germany: Starting World War Two, 1937-1939 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1980), 335-36.
8 J. Noakes & G. Pridham, Nazism 1919–1945: Foreign Policy, War, and Racial Extermination, vol. 3 (Devon: University of Exeter Press, 2001, 2nd ed. 2010), III: 102.
9 Patrick Porter, “Winston Churchill, arch-pragmatist,” Englesberg Ideas, 28 November 2022, accessed 6 December 2022. The actual 22 June Ripka-Churchill conversation is reported only in David Irving, Churchill’s War; see note 11.
10 Kathleen Hill to WSC, 21 June 1938, in Martin Gilbert, The Coming of War, 1070. “…a Mr. Ripka is in London for two or three days, and [Ambassador Masaryk] would appreciate it if you could possibly give him a short interview.”
11 David Irving, Churchill’s War, vol. 1, The Struggle for Power (Bullsbrook, Australia: Veritas, 1986), 119. Irving references London reports of 21-23 June in Václav Král (ed.), Das Abkommen von München 1938: Tschechoslovakische Diplomatische Documente 1937-1939 (Prague, 1968). My colleague Colin Brown at the Hillsdale Churchill Project kindly ran down the original Czech document and confirms that the quote is verbatim.
12 Ibid., 119-20.
13 Shiela Grant Duff to Hubert Ripka, 18 September 1938, in Gilbert, The Coming of War, 1165.