Hácha in Berlin

On the evening of 14 March 1939, the Czecho-Slovak president Emil Hácha, an elderly jurist in fragile health, is summoned urgently to Berlin. Slovakia has just proclaimed its independence, and the Reich is about to fall upon the Czech lands.

Received in the dead of night at the Chancellery, Hácha endures hours of pressure from Hitler, Göring and Ribbentrop. He is told that, failing an agreement, hundreds of bombers will raze Prague at dawn. Around four in the morning, he is presented with the act handing his country "into the hands of the Führer" and ordered to decide.

Hácha has, in reality, almost no room to manoeuvre. To give in is to avoid the bombing and immediate deaths, but to hand his people over to occupation and to ratify the end of the Czech state. To refuse is honour and defiance, but perhaps Prague in flames. Trying to play for time seems futile against the ultimatum. The decision involves the lives of civilians and the sovereignty of a nation.