few days he lazed around, soaking up sunshine and sea air.
Photographers snapped the Görings buying violets like a happy
honeymoon couple, but the idyll did not last.
Late on the tenth his chief intelligence officer, Colonel
Beppo Schmid, arrived from Berlin with a sealed envelope.*
Göring tore it open and sat down heavily. “Something’s up in
Berlin,” he exclaimed. “No sooner do I leave than something
goes awry. I’ve got to hurry back and straighten things out.”
At this the colonel revealed that the Führer had dictated an
oral postscript on no account was Göring to leave San Remo
before German troops entered Czechoslovakia, so as not to
arouse worldwide suspicions.
Göring choked on this. He knew that Hitler’s only purpose
was to prevent the “old woman” from interfering again.
He sent Schmid back to Berlin with a letter begging Hitler
not to invade Czechoslovakia. Fretting, he then decided to ig-
nore Hitler’s prohibition, told Emmy to leave everything un-
packed at the hotel, and set out by slow train northward to Ber-
lin. Milch met him at the station late on March with word
that it was too late: Keitel had already reported the Wehrmacht
ready to invade Czechoslovakia at : .. The good news,
however, was that once more the British government was just
shrugging its shoulders. Forschungsamt intercept N,
showed Chamberlain instructing Ambassador Henderson that
His Majesty’s government had “no desire to interfere unneces-
sarily in matters with which other governments may be more
directly involved.”
Göring swallowed his distaste and abetted Hitler’s plan.
The elderly Czech president Hácha arrived in Berlin that night.
- A similar message had gone to General Milch, vacationing in Switzerland:
“The Czecho-Slovak state is breaking up. Wehrmacht intervention may be-
come necessary within the next few days.”