“What is it, Fuhrer?” Mussolini asked. “By the look in your eye, it is truly important, whatever it is.”

“Ja,” Hitler said, and the pause that followed gave him the chance to pull his thoughts together and figure out how best to use the extraordinary opportunity that had fallen into his lap. “Truly important, indeed. Colonel Hossbach brings me word that Konrad Henlein, whom I mentioned only a few minutes ago, has been viciously and brutally assassinated. Assassinated by one Jaroslav Stribny, of Prague. Not content with forcing him out of the Sudetenland, the Czechs followed him into Germany and finished him off here.”

“Dio mio!” Mussolini exclaimed, eyes bulging in astonishment.

Dr. Schmidt translated for Chamberlain. Daladier had his own interpreter. The leaders of the two democracies gaped at the Fuhrer. Chamberlain murmured something. Hitler looked sharply at Schmidt. “He says he can hardly believe it, mein Fuhrer,” the translator said.

“Well, I can hardly believe it, either,” Hitler said. “I can hardly believe the perfidy of the Czech government, the perfidy of the whole Czech race, that has brought things to such a pass. You can surely see that we in the Reich did everything we could to be reasonable, to be generous, toward Czechoslovakia. But what thanks do we get? Murder! And I am afraid, gentlemen, that I see no choice but to avenge the insult with blood.”

Edouard Daladier frowned. Hitler almost told him how ridiculous he looked, with a few long, pathetic strands of hair combed over a vast bald pate. “This seems too convenient for words,” Daladier said. “Too convenient for you, too convenient for your aggression.”

Hitler almost told him he hadn’t rubbed out Henlein for just that reason. But, while he might have been so frank with Mussolini, whom he esteemed, he felt only contempt for the miserable little Frenchman. “Before God and before the spirit of history, I had nothing to do with it,” he declared.