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by
Tim Bouverie
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August 22 - October 15, 2020
Churchill, on the other hand, thought it “the stupidest thing that has ever been done.”57
“There will be no war,” Mussolini told his son-in-law and Foreign Minister, Count Galeazzo Ciano, but “it is the liquidation of British prestige.”
“Stand by Czechoslovakia! No concessions to Hitler!” But this was a solitary protester, safely behind a barrier.
I am going to meet the German Chancellor because the present situation seems to me to be one in which discussions between him and me may have useful consequences. My policy has always been to try to ensure peace, and the Führer’s ready acceptance of my suggestion encourages me to hope that my visit to him will not be without results.
“You would never notice him in a crowd and would take him for the house painter he once was.”
Chamberlain became indignant. If Hitler had decided on war, why had he allowed him to come all this way? “I have wasted my time.”
The difficulty, he explained to Hitler, was the means, not the end. He was, however, prepared to discuss this with his colleagues and then return to resume their negotiations at a later date.
Chamberlain was pleased by the meeting. Although he detected a “ruthlessness” about Hitler, he felt that he had “established a certain confidence” and that this was “a man who could be relied upon when he had given his word.”
“In international discussions the darkest hour is generally before lunch,” commented Chamberlain cynically.
The two great European democracies were now committed to the dismemberment of the only democracy to the east of the Rhine.
Some of the anti-appeasers with public profiles—such as Bob Boothby, Harold Nicolson, and of course Churchill—published alternative views, mainly in the Daily Telegraph, but these had little impact when compared to the pro-appeasement efforts of The Times, the Observer, the Daily Mail, and the Express.
While thousands gathered in Wenceslas Square—their banners proclaiming “We won’t give the Republic to the German house painter”—the Czech Government drafted its surrender:
was a pathetic document: pitiful in the immediate, tragic given the fate which remained in store.
This was spurred on by Churchill, who responded to the news of the Czech surrender, on the evening of September 21, with an excoriating press release:
The partition of Czechoslovakia under Anglo-French pressure amounts to a complete surrender by the Western democracies to the Nazi threat of force. Such a collapse will not bring peace or safety to Great Britain and France. On the contrary, it will bring both countries into a position of ever-increasing weakness and danger. The neutralisation of Czechoslovakia alone means the liberation of twenty-five German divisions to threaten the Western front. The path to the Black Sea will be laid wide open to triumphant Nazi-ism. Acceptance of Herr Hitler’s terms involves the prostration of Europe
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war power will grow faster than the French and British can complete their preparations for defence.
was here that he had planned the murder of Ernst Röhm and his supporters—the Night of the Long Knives—in June 1934, and it was here that his second meeting with Chamberlain was to take place.
From the Petersberg Hotel, he received the depressing news that Hitler, far from accepting the Anglo-French settlement, was demanding an immediate occupation.
“Even the Germans would not be so stupid as to deprive us of our beloved Prime Minister,” replied Churchill.
As the two men said their farewells, Chamberlain declared his belief that “a relationship of confidence had grown up between himself and the Führer.”14 In fact, he had been blackmailed.
was better to “be beat than dishonoured”
Halifax’s transformation from appeaser into resister was a massive knock for Chamberlain, who implied in a note he passed across the Cabinet table that he would rather resign than lead his country into war:
Chamberlain had been speaking for less than an hour when, 500 yards away in the Foreign Office, the telephone rang. It was Henderson, who reported breathlessly that Hitler had invited Mussolini, Daladier, and Chamberlain to a conference in Munich the following day.
Churchill, Eden, Amery, and Nicolson were among the few who remained seated and were barracked by their colleagues. “Stand up, you brute,” hissed Walter Liddall, the Conservative MP for Lincoln, at Nicolson.
Some wags in the Foreign Office soon satirized this homily as “If at first you can’t concede, fly, fly, fly again.”4 But such cynicism was alien to most people.
Recounting the subsequent meeting to his sister Hilda, Chamberlain described the conversation as “very friendly and pleasant.”33 The interpreter Paul Schmidt, on the other hand, thought Hitler “moody” and absentminded.34 Certainly, it was the Prime Minister who led the Führer through a variety of topics, including Spain, economic relations in southeastern Europe, and aerial disarmament. At the end, he produced the joint statement from his pocket, the crucial passage of which was the declaration that the two leaders regarded the Munich Agreement “as symbolic of the desire of our two peoples
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“Oh, don’t take it all so seriously…That piece of paper is of no significance whatsoever.”38
Then, raising the slender sheet of paper so that it flapped in the wind, he read the declaration which bore the signature of the German Chancellor, Herr Hitler, “as well as mine.”
the first-floor window opened and the Prime Minister appeared to deliver the words which were to haunt him and his reputation forever more: My good friends, this is the second time in our history that there has come back from Germany to Downing Street peace with honour. I believe it is peace for our time. We thank you from the bottom of our hearts…Now I recommend you go home and sleep quietly
Beneš was in his bath when he learned the news. “It’s a betrayal which will be its own punishment,” he predicted. “They [the Western democracies] think that they will save themselves from war and revolution at our expense.
They are wrong.”
All that the Munich Agreement had changed, he insisted, was that the German dictator, “instead of snatching his victuals from the table, has been content to have them served to him course by course.”
They should know that we have sustained a defeat without a war, the consequences of which will travel far with us along our road; they should know that we have passed an awful milestone in our history, when the whole equilibrium of Europe has been deranged, and that the terrible words have for the time being been pronounced against the Western democracies: “Thou art weighed in the balance and found wanting.” And do not suppose that this is the end. This is only the beginning of the reckoning. This is only the first sip, the first foretaste of a bitter cup which will be proffered to us year by
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Munich was—and remains—one of the most controversial agreements ever negotiated. A dishonorable surrender, “a triumph for all that was best and most enlightened,” a vital breathing space: the debate has raged for over eighty years.*6
The Czechs suffered under the Nazis, but the Poles suffered more.
Last but not least, though he was not to know this, the Munich Conference destroyed a plot by the German opposition to remove Hitler from office the moment he gave the orders to march.
From the perspective of the Western Powers, the principal defense of the Munich Agreement has rested on the fact that neither Britain nor France was ready for war in 1938 and that Munich granted them an extra year in which to prepare—the so-called breathing space.
What this argument ignores, however, is that Germany was in no position to launch the Battle of Britain in 1938.
According to her husband, Duff, it was the husbands who tended to support Munich and the wives who opposed
Mass-Observation tended to support this view. According to an overview of opinions collected during the crisis, men were more in favor of “standing up to Hitler,” while women tended to support Chamberlain and his efforts for peace.
most of the young people were anti-Munich, while their parents, who remembered the Great War, were steadfast in its defense.
The greatest anger was directed toward those Tory MPs who refused to vote for the Munich Agreement and openly attacked the Prime Minister.
Most of the jokes were aimed at the British Prime Minister—exemplified by Dorothy Parker’s crack that Chamberlain was “the first Prime Minister in history to crawl at 250 miles an hour”—while
On October 14, just two weeks after the Munich Conference, Göring announced a massive expansion of German rearmament (including a fivefold increase in the size of the Luftwaffe) and, at the beginning of December, the German Government gave formal notice that it intended to exercise a clause in the Anglo-German Naval Treaty which allowed it to build up to 100 percent of the total of British submarines.
on the following morning the citizens of Prague woke to see the swastika fluttering above the balustrade.
The invasion of Czechoslovakia—the most flagrant violation of the Munich Agreement—caused outrage in Britain.
The consensus that appeasement was now dead was instantaneous.
Even more shocking, he declared his intention to continue with his policy of appeasement. This caused an instant backlash.
while Chamberlain’s opponents in Parliament—the Labour Party, Lloyd George, and Churchill—had never wavered from what the Prime Minister described as their “pathetic belief that in Russia is the key to our salvation.”
Meanwhile, the “bring back Churchill” campaign was reaching its peak. On July 3, 1939, after lobbying by Nicolson, Anthony Eden, and Lord Astor (transformed, since Munich, into the most resolute of resisters),
