"Si, Senor," Ansaldo said once more. The light plane droned on: toward Spain, toward Burgos, toward victory, toward the birth of a whole new world.

Adolf Hitler was not a happy man. Oh, yes, he was going to get Czechoslovakia. The British and French had come here to hand him his hateful neighbor-what an abortion of a country! one more crime of Versailles!-all trussed up on a silver platter, ready for the slaughter.

But, for all the fuss the Sudeten Germans had kicked up inside Czechoslovakia (fuss orchestrated from the Reich), to Hitler the Slavic state wasn't an end in itself, only a means to an end. The end was dominating Europe. Had that required dropping the Sudeten German Party he'd fed and watered for so long, he would have dropped it like a live grenade.

Getting his hands on Czechoslovakia would be nice, yes. What he really wanted, though, was war.

He was ready. He was convinced the enemy wasn't. Chamberlain and Daladier wouldn't have been so pathetically eager to sell their ally down the river if they were.

The trouble was, they were too damned eager. They kept falling all over themselves to make whatever concessions he demanded. The more they yielded, the less excuse he had to send in the Wehrmacht.

His generals would be relieved if he got what he wanted without fighting. He wasn't happy with the halfhearted way so many of them were readying themselves and their units. And Mussolini, while a good fellow, had more chin than balls. The Duce kept insisting Italy wasn't ready to take on England and France, and wouldn't be for another two or three years.

"Dummkopf," Hitler muttered under his breath. The real point, the point Mussolini didn't get, was that England and France weren't ready. Not only did they not want war, their factories weren't geared up for it. And the Russians were in even worse shape. Every day, it seemed, Stalin knocked off a new general, or a handful of them. When the Reds laid on a purge, they didn't fool around.

General Sanjurjo got it. Spain stood foursquare behind Germany. Well, actually, Spain stood about two-and-a-half-square behind Germany; the Communists and anarchists of the Republic still hung on to the rest of the battered country. But Sanjurjo had a proper Spanish sense of honor and obligation. He would do what he could against his benefactor's enemies.

The time was now. The Fuhrer could feel it in his bones. Of all the gifts a great ruler had, knowing when to strike was one of the most vital. He'd shown he had it when he got rid of Ernst Rohm in the Night of Long Knives, and again when he swallowed Austria in the Anschluss. (Oh, all right-the Beer-Hall Putsch hadn't quite worked out. But that was fifteen years ago now. Back in those days, he was still learning which end was up.)

He was ready to fight. The Wehrmacht and the Luftwaffe were ready, even if some generals tried dragging their feet. Even if the French and English did declare war when he hit Czechoslovakia, he was sure they wouldn't do anything much in the West. They'd wait, they'd dither…and then, as soon as he'd stomped the Czechs into the mud, he'd turn around and smash them, too.

Yes, he was ready. But tall, stork-necked Chamberlain-with Daladier scuttling along in his wake like a squat, swarthy little half-trained puppy-was also ready: ready to hand him Czechoslovakia without any fighting at all. The British Prime Minister was so abject about the whole business, even the hard-bitten Fuhrer would have been embarrassed to order the panzers to roll forward and the bombers to take off. Chamberlain, damn his gawky soul, gave away so much, Hitler couldn't very well demand more. There was no more to give.

And so they played out the charade here in Munich. Hitler and Mussolini, Chamberlain and Daladier sat down together and calmly arranged for the transfer of the Sudetenland-and its mountain barriers and its fortifications, second only to those of the Maginot Line-from Czechoslovakia to Germany. Without those works, the Czechs hadn't a prayer of being able to fight.

They knew it, too. They'd sent a couple of nervous observers to Munich to learn their fate. The Czechs cooled their heels at a distant hotel; the Fuhrer wouldn't let them attend the conference. The Soviet Union was similarly excluded.

On with the farce, then. The Fuhrerbau was the National Socialists' chief office building in Munich. Hitler had taken a major role in its design, but it wasn't a full success. A hundred yards long and fifty deep, it was only three stories high. To an uncharitable observer, it looked like nothing so much as an overgrown barracks hall.

Nevertheless, Hitler thought the big bronze eagle over the entryway particularly fine. Mussolini, Chamberlain, and Daladier were already there by the time the Fuhrer and the interpreter, Paul Otto Schmidt, came in. So was Goring, in a fancy white uniform-he'd motored in with Daladier.

The Duce spoke with Chamberlain in English and Daladier in French. He spoke German, too, after a fashion. Hitler, who knew only his own language, envied his fellow dictator's linguistic skills. He consoled himself by noting how plain the handful of British and French aides in civilian clothes appeared in contrast to his uniformed henchmen, and Mussolini's.

Hitler led the heads of government into his office. The big oblong room had a fireplace at one end, with a portrait of Bismarck above it. Light-colored chairs and a matching sofa faced the fireplace. There were no name tags-not even any pads and pencils for taking notes. There was no agenda. Discussion darted where it would. Everyone already had a good notion of how things would end up.

"Now that we are all here, we must decide soon," Hitler said, and smacked one fist into the palm of the other hand.

But things moved more slowly than he wanted them to. The heads of the two leading democracies had to get their views on record. The Fuhrer supposed that was for domestic consumption. It wouldn't change anything here.

His temper began to fray. "You know nothing of the dreadful tyranny the Czechs exert over the Sudeten Germans," he said loudly. "Nothing, I tell you! They torture them, showing no mercy. They expel them by the thousands, in panic-stricken herds. They have even forced the Sudeten Germans' leader, Konrad Henlein, to flee from his native land."

"One jump ahead of the gendarmes, I shouldn't wonder," Daladier said dryly.

"Joke if you care to, but I-" Hitler stopped in surprise at a loud knock on the door.

"What's going on?" Neville Chamberlain asked.

"I don't know," Hitler answered after Dr. Schmidt translated the question. "I left clear orders that we were not to be disturbed." When he gave orders like that, he expected them to be obeyed, too.

But, even for the Fuhrer, expectations didn't always match reality. The knock came again, louder and more insistent than before. Hitler sprang to his feet and hurried toward the door. Somebody out there in the hallway was going to regret being born.

"Whatever he's selling, tell him we don't want any," Mussolini said in his inimitable German. Daladier and Chamberlain both smiled once the interpreters made them understand the crack. Hitler didn't. He'd never had much of a sense of humor, and the interruption pushed him towards one of his volcanic eruptions of fury.

He flung the door open. There stood Colonel Friedrich Hossbach, his adjutant. "Well?" Hitler growled ominously. "What is the meaning of this-this interruption?"

Hossbach was a stoic man on the far end of middle age. "I'm sorry to bother you, mein Fuhrer, but-"

"But what?" Hitler demanded. "Whatever the devil it is, it had better be important."

"Yes, sir. I believe it is." Hossbach took a sheet of flimsy yellow paper from his left breast pocket. "Here is a telegram we have just received. You will know Herr Henlein has had to take refuge in the Reich because of Czech outrages…"