ALLIED APPEASEMENT OF HITLER AT MUNICH.   Term Paper ID:24341 Click to get this paper

Essay Subject: Analyzes historical, political & military causes & effects of surrender of western Czechoslovakia (Sudetenland) by Britain and France to Hitler's Germany in 1938.... More...

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Paper Abstract: Analyzes historical, political & military causes & effects of surrender of western Czechoslovakia (Sudetenland) by Britain and France to Hitler's Germany in 1938. Paper Introduction: In the history of the Second World War, Munich is a name that carries powerful connotations. It was in Munich that Adolf Hitler launched the abortive Beer-Hall Putscht, his abortive first attempt at power. A decade and a half later, in September of 1938, Hitler had been in power for six years, and Munich became the site of even a more powerfully symbolic event. Here, the Western allied powers faced their last potential decision point short of the one which would confront them with the invasion of Poland a year later. Hitler demanded the right to occupy the Sudetenland, a region of western Czechoslovakia that had a largely German-speaking population. The Czechs were prepared to resist, but despite a fairly powerful army they lacked the means to do so entirely alone. The question was whether the Western Allies, Text of the Paper: The entire text of the paper is shown below. However, the text is somewhat scrambled. We want to give you as much information as we possibly can about our papers and essays, but we cannot give them away for free. In the text below you will find that while disordered, many of the phrases are essentially intact. From this text you will be able to get a solid sense of the writing style, the concepts addressed, and the sources used in the research paper. It thus serves as the justification for the Hitler-Stalin pact.The irony is that the Hitler-Stalin pact itself was far costlier to theSoviet Union than anything determined at Munich, even on the darkestinterpretation. .did not mean peace at any price. French strategic doctrine,formed by the experience of 1914-1918, was purely defensive, symbolized bythe Maginot Line. The real time to stand up to Hitler had alreadypassed, perhaps in the Rhineland in 1936, perhaps in the general course ofevents whereby the Third Reich had been allowed to rearm and to violatesuccessive treaties with impunity. . Heath, 197 ), 65-74. So, too, does the suggestion that some in the Westmight have been happy to see Germany turn eastward. But they were not themen to start a world war. It was in this cast of mind that Neville Chamberlain went to Munichin September of 1938. Munich hasgone down in legend as a great sellout, and "appeasement" as a policy ofsurrender. Hindsight, as is well known, is always 2 /2 . The remainder of this essay addresses that question, not directly,but through critical examination of a variety of works, books and articles,which have considered the Munich conference and the events and issues whichsurrounded it. Hisopponents at Munich, in Eubank's view, did not understand whom they weredealing with. [xiv]Ibid., 129. When all ofCzechoslovakia was siezed in the spring of 1939, the Allies reacted withangry dismay. Heath, 1975), 135-43. The Anschluss with Austria might raise eyebrows, but thereunification was peaceful, and Austria in its post-1918 form was in anycase a somewhat artificial construction, undeniably "German" in languageand heritage. For France, as we know in hindsight,it was useless to buy time; France was no more prepared to resistblitzkrieg tactics in May of 194 than it would have been a year earlier.For Britain, however, it can be argued that the additional year bought atMunich, at however great a moral price, was repaid by the readiness of theRoyal Air Force to face its final hour. [xliv]Ibid., 245. But even the most seasoned Western diplomats in the late summerof 1938 had only relatively limited experience of Adolf Hitler, and noinkling of his full potential as a destroyer. That he did so in hope that it would deter war rather than providereadiness for war is not material to the fact. The great question, of course, is whether this was a wise choice or afoolish one. Heath, 197 ), 51-54. Thus, the only way in which the French army could have made itsweight felt would have been by a counter-invasion of Germany. The only British force in a state of combat readiness wasthe Royal Navy. . Neville Chamberlain, whose name has become a byword in the Anglo-American world for appeasement, was such a statesman. [v]Ibid., 2 2. The Approach of War, 1938-1939. C. "Had war come in1938, the French armies would have remained along the Maginot Line, facingonly eleven German divisions, while the bulk of Hitler's forces slaughteredthe Czechs."[xviii] What, then, asks Eubank rhetorically, were the military prospects inSeptember of 1938?[xix] With France wholly unprepared, either materiallyor morally, to undertake an offensive against Germany, the prospects werefor a Sitzkrieg through the winter of 1938-1939, much as occured in fact ayear later. Lexington, MA: D. Munich: Blunder, Plot, or Tragic Necessity? The Czechsystem of defensive fortifications, though advertised as a "Czech Maginotline," was in fact incomplete and spotty.[xxxiv] It is the opinion of Lieut.-Colonel F. Munich, which has become a legend and byword, was before that anevent. C. Had the Allied leaders stiffened at that moment, and war had come ayear earlier than it did, it is most unlikely that the difference in timingwould have made any difference in the fate of France, but it might wellhave been disastrous for the prospects of Britain. Munich looms so large as symbol that the immediate issues at handtend to be forgotten, and the complex background to those issues even moreforgotten. [lxiv]Ibid. [lvi]Andrew Rothstein, "The Munich Conspiracy," in Dwight E. That is, whileHitler was still making every effort to achieve his ends by the threat offorce rather than the use of force, he was no longer prepared to back downif force was required. TheCzechs were prepared to resist, but despite a fairly powerful army theylacked the means to do so entirely alone. [x]Laurence Thompson, "The Munich Conference," in Keith Eubank, WorldWar II: Roots and Causes (Lexington, MA: D. [xxiv]Ibid., 13 . In fact,"appeasement and 'Munich' were two quite different phenomena," writesMartin Gilbert in the opening line of his article, "Munich and the NewAppeasement."[vi] He continues to argue that "Appeasement was atraditional policy, based upon concessions made from a position ofstrength."[vii] After all, Great Powers have always acceded to treatyadjustments, even in favor of rivals, which such measures were seen asappropriate to keep the peace. Onlythe most blunt, plain, and even brutal language will makes its effect.Moreover, whatever words are used must carry with them the conviction thatthey are spoken in deadly earnest. In the popularlegend, Neville Chamberlain and his umbrella are the natural counterpointto Winston Churchill and his cigar. "The Riddle." In Eubank, Keith, ed., World War II: Rootsand Causes. Arnold Toynbee, the historian best known to the general public forhis sweeping and controversial book, A Study of History, was perhaps betterknown in the professional community for his work on the annual Survey ofInternational Affairs. [xxxviii]J. Fine print and lawyerly argumentscan be marshalled or ignored, according to a government's perception of itsinterests, and the state of public opinion. This consideration could only be strengthened by the calendar, whichpotentially favored the Czechs. Freeport, NY: Books forLibraries, 1969. At Munich, itmay well have been too late to recover the situation, and all that could besought was to buy time. Wheeler-Bennett, "The Drama of Munich," in Munich:Blunder, Plot, or Tragic Necessity? In his view atthat time, a truly forceful statement from the West would offer "goodhopes, if not indeed almost a certainty, of warding off the catastrophewhich may so easily engulf our civilization."[xliii] He should have known better. In his book, Step by Step: 1936-1939, he has compiled his columns of commentary written at the time, andtaken together they form a sober shadow history of what might havebeen.[xli] On September 15, 1939, he wrote that The ordinary smooth and balanced phrases of diplomacy, with all their refinements and reserves, are of little use in dealing with the fierce chiefs of German Nazidom. That summary may be further summarized by saying thatneither was in any very adequate position to do so. A generation of Cold War-era statesmen,shaped by Munich and the terrible war that followed, learned from it thelesson never to yield, never to give into the faintest hint of"appeasement." One price of that lesson was Vietnam, a far less terribleexperience than the Second World War, but one that still casts a shadowover American foreign policy--and indeed all of American public life--ageneration after the event. IfCzechoslovakia did not fall almost at once to a blitzkrieg assault (a typeof warfare as yet untested), the war would drag into the next year, withthe possibility that the French might be emboldened in the face of a mereeleven German divisions facing them. Indeed, in so far as Munich had any decisive effect, it was perhapsto lead Hitler to miscalculate future Anglo-French responses. In short, neither German foreign-policy goals nor German foreign-policy methods had, in the first Hitler years, been fundamentally beyondthe pale of expected Great Power behavior. Czechoslovakia might lack the military means to resist alone, butits military capacity was not negligable, and in Nogueres' view, the Alliesentered war in 1939 in a much poorer relative position than that they wouldhave held in 1938.[lv] The ultimate fact, as Nogueres sees it, is that in1938 the French public was desperately eager to put off what proved to beinevitable. The Western version of the Munich myth is perhaps more directlyrelevant to us. [xxiii]Ibid., 17. As much as statesmen of the Cold War era were formed byMunich itself and the Second World War, and held a deep-rooted belief thatappeasement, any yielding of ground or sign of weakness before anaggressor, would surely lead to disaster, so the statesmen who faced Hitlerwere formed by the First World War, with its aura of miscalculation andavoidability. The questionof French and British military readiness and ability to lend effective aidto the Czechs has already been dealt with, in a summary way, earlier inthis discussion. Munich: Blunder, Plot, or Tragic Necessity? The circumstances in which the outwardly bloodless conquests of these months took place and the ease with which they were accomplished were the work of other men and earlier events.[ii]The post-Versailles map of Europe was potentially unstable at the outset;not without some reason did the Germans give the nickname Saisonstaaten--states doomed to exist only for a season--to the cobbled-together countriesof Central Europe.[iii] Hostilities were complex and overlapping; allalliances were strained. October was very late in the year toinitiate a war in Central Europe; within a few weeks, fall rains and thenwinter slow would bring an end to the effective campaign season,particularly for a force heavily reliant on armor and maneuver. The first two groups shared a Slaviclanguage, but had little enough in common otherwise that they have in the199 s chosen to go their own ways as separate countries. Official advancement was availablechiefly to Czechs; while the Czechoslovak army had a good many SudetenGerman officers, few rose above the rank of captain unless they took Czechnames. Such speculation neednot be taken entirely out of the air; if Churchill in 1938 was without muchinfluence, he was not without a voice. He was certainly wrong,whatever his reasons, to express public belief in "peace for our times." But in the circumstances in which he had placedhimself, he was right to sign the Munich Agreement, though he did itfor all the wrong reasons. "Chamberlain and Hitler--Britain and France." In Lee,Dwight E., ed. While the quality of Czech equipment was very good, themobilized strength included under-equipped reserve divisions, while thequality of the officer corps, including as it did a substantial number ofSudeten German junior officers, was very much open to question. Miksche, author of Blitzkrieg and at that time an artillery captain in the Czechoslovak Army, that if this army had had to fight the Germans, with or without the support of its allies, "the result would have been worse thanPoland."[xxxv] In short, Czechoslovakia was not in fact in any position to mount aviable resistance to a German attack. The conflict which followed was Hitler's; seldom has the way of the aggressor been so inviting. A power player, he assumedthat his rivals were power players like himself. Heath, 1975, pp. [lxi]Ibid., 64. [xx]Ibid. 1, The Originsof World War II, 1933-1939 (Cleveland: World Publishing, 1968). C. Clarification scarcely mattered, since Hitler was already determinedto take Czechoslavakia, whether doing so led to war or not. C. Lexington, MA: D. Telford Taylor, in the concluding chapter of his book, Munich,The Price of Peace, addresses the great hypothetical question of what mighthave happened had the Allies determined to resist Hitler in the fall of1938.[lxv] (As to the prospects of peace by following the course that wasfollowed, Telford argues that even Chamberlain saw them as dim, untilintoxicated by public response to Munich itself.[lxvi]) But, asks Telford, was time really bought, in terms of militaryreadiness, by a year's delay? They knew it,the French and British knew it, and the Germans knew it. What it symbolized, however, was that British patience wasat least wearing thin. [lviii]Ibid., 84. [xvi]Ibid., 14 . [xli]Winston Churchill, Step by Step: 1936-1939 (Freeport, NY: Booksfor Libraries, 1971; original publication 1939). This in turn bears on the Allies' judgment oftheir viable policy options. He was wrong to try to negotiate from weakness. This,however, was entirely out of the question. (Acomparison may be made to the contemporary view that a strong RussianFederation is a potential guarantor of stability in former Sovietterritory.) Appeasement failed in dealing with Hitler, suggests Gilbert, notbecause appeasement as an element of policy was inherently flawed, butbecause Hitler posed a problem by no means typical in statecraft. But itshould not be forgotten, as one terrible illustration of one type of crisiswhich statesmen may have to face. [xlvi]Ibid., 65. Lexington, MA: D. In the history of the Second World War, Munich is a name that carriespowerful connotations. Either Britain was so ill-armed and undefended that she was, with great reluctance, forced to a certain course of action in order to ensure peace, or she was in a position to fight, and, of her own free will, chose not to do so. [lv]Ibid., 388. In air power, the Allies were badly overmatched. 123-34.Thorne, Christopher. Heath,197 , 75-84.Taylor, Telford. The nature of the materials, which cover much of the sameground, do not lend themselves to a sharp structural division of thisessay. [xv]Keith Eubank, "The Riddle," in Keith Eubank, World War II: Rootsand Causes (Lexington, MA: D. A decadeand a half later, in September of 1938, Hitler had been in power for sixyears, and Munich became the site of even a more powerfully symbolic event. The very fact that a MunichConference was called in the first place is indeed testimony to this stateof affairs. Ethnictensions in the Sudetenland provided the background and pretext forHitler's demands at Munich, while Czechoslovakia did not have frontiersdefensible enough for the Czechs to have any real hope of defendingthemselves against the Wehrmacht. Munich: Blunder, Plot,or Tragic Necessity? This argument, posed earlier in this essay, is rejected byNogueres, who sharply critiques the view that the Allies "bought time" atMunich. (New York: McGrawHill, 1965). The three main components of the population of were the Czechs,the Slovaks, and the Sudeten Germans. A mutual bloodletting of the two might well be welcomed,and a victory by the former seen as less alarming. In the second portion of his discussion, Toynbee addresses therelationship between Britain and France. New York: William Morrow,1968.________. In his book, simply entitled Munich, Eubank presents what may becharacterized as the mainstream Anglo-American view of the MunichAgreement.[xxi] He addresses at the outset the issue of the Sudetens, theGerman-speaking minority group in Czechoslovakia that provided Hitler hispretext. The other notable absentee was the Soviet Union, for which Munich wasto have a decisive impact. [xxi]Eubank, Keith, Munich (Norman: University of Oklahoma, 1963). [xliii]Ibid., 248. In his heart he believed this was the path to peace for millions of innocent people. But thebluff in 1938 was a bluff on Czechoslovakia's part, not Germany's part, andit was a half-hearted bluff at that. Laurence Thompson, in The Greatest Treason, offers a chiefcontribution to the revisionist view of Munich, and in development of thatview he pays significant attention to the Sudetenland and itsbackground.[xxviii] Czechoslovakia had been put together after the FirstWorld War out of various fragments of the defunct Austro-Hungarian Empire.Like almost all of the Eastern European successor states, it had no realprior "national" tradition, and comprised an uneasy combination of ethnicgroups. [vii]Ibid., 35. [lxvii]Ibid., 988.----------------------- 45 The responsibility wasnot."[v] So prominent is the notion of "appeasement" in the image and presumedlessons of Munich that it is worthy of fuller consideration. Having already put themselves in a situation theycould and should have avoided, the Allies in Thompson's view took the bestalternative remaining to them, to sell Czechoslovakia to buy time. 135-43.________. If the issue is placed in the context of realpolitik, then thequestion that must next arise is that of military prospects. Extreme sacrifice wasworthwhile if it would prevent a repetition of 1914-18. Lexington, MA: D. The French airforce had only seven hundred aircraft, a quarter of the Wehrmacht'sstrength, and none of the French planes were modern ones. Inthe event, of course, they did not resist. At Munich, the Allies chose to withhold any promise or threat ofsupport, but instead give their implicit assent to the cession, either inthe hope that it would be the last of Hitler's territorial demands, or thatthey would by the abandonment of Czechoslavakia buy sufficient times tostrengthen their own defenses. [iv]Ibid., 11. Munich: The Price of Peace. To put these years of propaganda into reverse proved as difficult as it wold be today if, forinstance, it suddenly became politically expedient to prove that South African apartheid policies were justified.[xxxii] Until Hitler's rise, the international Communist movement had beenamong those which supported the Sudeten German cause, in part because itwas then thought quite possible that Germany itself would go Communist.After 1933, the Communists reversed field, but liberals continued to havemixed feelings about the issues underlying the Sudeten question. In the end, Thompson cites with approval the young John F. [xxxiv]Ibid. We speculated above on how Churchill might have responded in theMunich crisis, had he been in a position to do so. Lexington, MA: D. O. Perhaps, given time and prosperity, the Czech and the Sudeten Germans would have found the solution. (Lexington, MA: D. It israther a long way from the abstract speculation of conservatives on a Nazi-Soviet war to the deliberate self-humiliation of Western leaders in orderto provide an opening for such a war. 12ff. [xiii]Ibid., 123-24. But Munich was the triggerfor the crucial sequence of events whereby the Soviet Union took itself outof the ring of powers potentially available to contain Nazi Germany bysigning a "separate peace," the notorious Hitler-Stalin pact. W. Heath, 197 , 65-74.Wheeler-Bennett, D. Heath, 197 , 99-1 1.Gilbert, Martin. "Appeasement" may have had a differentmeaning to diplomats of 1938 than it has for us today; its shades ofmeaning will be explored later in this essay. Here, the Western allied powers faced their last potential decision pointshort of the one which would confront them with the invasion of Poland ayear later. Lee, Munich: Blunder,Plot, or Tragic Necessity? [ii]Ibid., 1. [xxix]Ibid., 14. W. [xxxvii]Ibid., 263-64. Thus, theshadow of Munich hung heavy over the disastrous American intervention inVietnam. They would in fact resist the next time. "However, there was no way for the fleet to aidCzechoslovakia because the seacoasts of Bohemia existed only inShakespeare's mind."[xvii] The one other force that, theoretically, could counterbalance Germanmilitary strength was the French army. His answer is no. In 1914, SirEdward Grey had failed to clarify British intentions; it must nothappen again.[xxiv] Most of British public opinion felt the same way. If, in the familiar expression, generals always prepare to fight thelast war, it seems that diplomats always attempt to avoid the last war. Setting this aside, however, Gilbert's core point is surely valid.States do from time to time make demands that are more or less reasonable;even Hitler's early demands might be viewed as reasonable, and the peace ofEurope as more likely to be fostered by a strong Germany, behaving as aresponsible Great Power, than by a weak and resentful Germany. And over all hung the dread memory of the FirstWorld War, a more recent event for Europeans of the late 193 s than theVietnam War is for Americans today. The spirit of Munich, as they styled it, had been shattered. There are soundreasons for saying that the Rhineland crisis of 1936 was a bluff onHitler's part, and that the Allies might well have called it. Whether they could haveresisted, or, realistically, should even have made the attempt, is thecentral question of judgment posed by Munich. Lee,Munich: Blunder, Plot, or Tragic Necessity? On March 31, the Chamberlain government pledged support to Poland "in anycrisis which 'clearly threatened Polish independence, and which the Polishgovernment accordingly considered it vital to resist with their nationalforces.'"[xxvi] In fact, Britain could no more take effective directaction in support of Poland than it could have taken it in support ofCzechoslovakia, and Poland was even weaker than Czechoslovakia had been. No doubt leaders and diplomats willalways be influenced most of all by what happened in their own formativeyears. But the misjudgments and paralysiswere not something that suddenly appeared at Munich itself. The fall of France might then have followed in the spring orsummer of 1939, followed by the Battle of Britain. [xviii]Ibid., 138. Thepropagandistic energy, in 1938, was all on the side of the peace party,including its more or less covertly pro-German elements.[liv] Was the success of this party rooted in Allied militaryunpreparedness? The Greatest Treason. (After all, the German Reich itself only dated to 1871;until that time, Germany had had a linguistic and cultural identity, butnot a political one.) A rational German nationalist might even be expectedto concern himself with the condition of a large German minority populationin neighboring Czechoslovakia. Step by Step: 1936-1939. "During the eighteen months before September 1939," writesChristopher Thorne in his book, The Approach of War, 1938-1939,[i] The Great Powers of Europe were nominally at peace; never outside war had the continent known so sustained a period of tension and fear. But "its greatest strengthwas drawn from the deep-seated horror of war which had gripped [Britain]since 1918 and which could point to the subsequent failure of armed Westernintervention in Russia, Turkey and the Ruhr."[iv] Thus, in the end, suggests Thorne, the crucial component at Munich,and in all the events that surrounded it, was that the West entered thecrisis already unnerved, and thus predisposed to believe Adolf Hitler.This belief persisted up until the point, a year after Munich, when thesequence of events had at least removed every shred of possible room ofdoubt about his intentions. The redrawing of borders had cut theindustrial Sudetenland off from its markets, and during the Depression, ofsome 6 , unemployed in Czechoslovakia, over half were in theSudetenland. Isthere any escape from that cycle? C. In turn, public opinion itselfcan be influenced, or even, as Nogueres points out, misled. Their conceptions had beenshaped by 1914, which seemed to teach that the greatest risk reasonablestatesmen faced was blundering into war. But a placein fact it was, and the situation of the Sudeten Germans was in 1939 anissue frought with moral ambiguities that have been forgotten in theaftermath of the Third Reich, the Second World War, and the Holocaust. From event, Munich passed into legend. [lxii]Keith Eubank, "The Myth," in Dwight E. The current writer, it should be noted, has found no reference thatmakes this point, but it is essentially what happened on a vastly largerscale in 1941, when the German blitzkrieg attack against Russia failed toattain its objectives before winter set in. Then, anextended consideration is given to perspectives critical and relativelysupportive of the decision reached by Britain and France, and in particularby Britain, the key Western player at that juncture. New York: McGrawHill, 1965.Rothstein, Andrew. Munich wassimply an expression of an ongoing state of affairs, the Allies'unreadiness to deal with Hitler in the only way that Hitler could be dealtwith. Any German nationalist leader might well have wanted to reassert fullcontrol over German territory (e.g., the Rhineland) and to remove theshackles of Versailles and restore German military capability to GreatPower standards. In the Korean War,"charges of appeasement tended to smother all sane discussion of FarEastern policy."[lxiii] A few years later, "the Geneva Conference in 1954over the division of Indo-China evoked cries of 'another Munich.'"[lxiv] Eubank was writing too early to discuss the war in Vietnam directly.But a decade later, fear of appeasement, and its close cousin, the "dominotheory"--the argument that abandonment of South Vietnam would cause all ofSoutheast Asia to fall, country by country, into Communist hands, asCentral Europe had fallen country by country into Nazi hands. "When the four powers met atMunich, only Germany was prepared to pay the cost of victory--war."[xx]Yet this begs the ultimate question. (Lexington, MA: D.C.Heath, 197 ), 35-39. Yet if it had beenCzechoslovakia instead of Poland that fell in the first stage of the SecondWorld War--even if it fell after a more stubborn resistance than Polandcould offer--might have Stalin have accepted a separate peace in any case?This is an important imponderable, and one which Telford does not address. For this last, Britainwas vastly less ready than it was a year later, and the Germans might wellhave been able to gain the air superiority over the Channel that they werenever able to achieve in the actual event. [lix]James E. [xxvi]Ibid., 266. New York: St.Martin's, 1967.Toynbee, Arnold. C. The French army was strong enough, at any rate on paper, butdue to the basic facts of geography, it was not in a position to intervenedirectly in support of the Czechs. The summer of 1914 has now effectively slipped beyond livingmemory, and it will not be many more years before September of 1938 hasalso passed beyond memory. It is unlikely thatCzechoslovakia could have been saved, but whether it was to be abandoned bythe West with or without a struggle, the Czechs themselves were given nosay--a fact which perhaps preordains the decision reached. C. C.Heath, 197 , 35-39.McSherry, James E. (Lexington, MA:D. Munich. [lxvi]Ibid., 983. He did not intend to capitulate forthwith to Hitler's demands, assome have argued. Britain had onlybegun its modernization program for the RAF; only 93 Hurricane fighterswere available, and no Spitfires, while the British radar defense system,so crucial in the Battle of Britain, was unfinished and its personal notyet fully trained or experienced.[xvi] The British army was stillinsignificant. But, argues Toynbee, Chamberlain was not thinking of Anglo-German relations in terms of the Balance of Power at all, and--incredible thoughthis would have been to Hitler--he was not even thinking of Germany'sexpansion of her power in Central Europe in terms of "Britishinterests" in the traditional meaning of the term.[xlvii]The revelation of Chamberlain's innocence in international affairs ledHitler to assume, after September of 1938, that the British would not actto defend their interests at all, a misperception Toynbee things surviveduntil the final occupation of Czechoslovakia the following spring.Perhaps, though, Hitler was not even then disabused of the impression hehad gained of total British incapacity, and thus was able to persuadehimself that he would never be called on to pay the military price of hisadventures. (Lexington, MA: D.C. [liii]Ibid. The immediate military question, then, was of the Czechs' owncapacity for resistance. Patrick O'Brian, trans. C. But it detracts nothing from Britishmiscalculations, then or previously, to say that the truly central Alliedplayer at Munich was France. It is not surprising that to English-speakers, Munich is seen asfirst and foremost a British drama and a British failure. Likewise, the Western statesmen at Munich had themselves been shapedby a terrible event, that of the First World War. The Polish guarantee was in fact, for all practical purposes, anempty gesture. C.Heath, 197 , 51-54.----------------------- [i]Christopher Thorne, The Approach of War, 1938-1939 (New York: St.Martin's, 1967). The best schools were Czech.[xxx] Economic conditions added to theSudeten Germans' sense of grievance. But further hindsight shows that the "lesson of Munich" was by nomeans clear and unambiguous. Hitler demanded the right to occupy the Sudetenland, a region ofwestern Czechoslovakia that had a largely German-speaking population. Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain assertedthe former, saying that he had achieved "peace for our times"--a phrasethat would ring with bitter irony less than a year later. The third group, the Sudeten Germans had little in common witheither. "The Drama of Munich." In Lee, Dwight E., ed. [vi]Martin Gilbert, "Munich and the New Appeasement," in Dwight E.Lee, ed., Munich: Blunder, Plot, or Tragic Necessity? Appeasementwas the study and peaceful solution of problems that could cause war. This relationship was in the193 s a sour one, with a good deal less than good faith on either side, anda seeming tendency on both sides to minimize the potential for cooperation. The French army was nomore ready for modern war in 194 than it would have been in 1939 or 1938.Nor were the British much more ready to support their ally in 1939 thanthey would have been in 1938. If the Czech Army could put up a determinedresistance to the Wehrmacht, then Germany might well be dissuaded from therisk of a two-front war, even if--due to France's defensive militaryorientation--the second front would not be immediately active. Wheeler-Bennett in "The Dramaof Munich."[xxxviii] He argues that The apologists for Munich cannot have it both ways. [xxx]Ibid., 16. Because Hitler was head of the German government, Chamberlain reasoned that the Fuehrermust have common sense and would be happy to avoid war if the causes were removed.[xxiii] From a perspective shaped by the experience of the First World War,lacking foresight of what Hitler and Nazism would come to mean, and lackingalso the imagination to see those potentials in Hitler's conduct,Chamberlain's assumptions were not unreasonable. First, the issue of Munich is summarized. McSherry, Stalin, Hitler, and Europe, v. Laurence Thompson, who has written a major "revisionist" account ofthe Munich Conference, to be dealt with later in this essay, provides inhis article "The Munich Conference" (in Keith Eubank, World War II: Rootsand Causes), an impressionistic picture of the conference as it appeared toobservers at the time.[x] Munich was what the following generation wouldhave called a summit conference, but it had little of the pomp or elaboratepreparation that attended later summits. All the evidence in the worksdiscussed above points to the conclusion that Chamberlain in particularbelieved or at least hoped that the Sudetenland was indeed Hitler's "lastterritorial demand," and that he did not anticipate the further Germanmoves to the east that would be the necessary precondition to any warbetween Germany and Russia. It was already there, a result of eight hundred years ofhistory. Munich: Blunder, Plot, or Tragic Necessity? Neither the Paris Peace Conference nor the Versailles Treatyhad created this problem. C. Hitler's policies up to1938 were not all that different from what might have been expected of arational German nationalist. The Origins ofWorld War II, 1933-1939. It was in Munich that Adolf Hitler launched theabortive Beer-Hall Putscht, his abortive first attempt at power. This Sovietdimension is explored by James E. Heath, 1975, pp. By removing these causes, he hoped to avoid the war Another world conflict with millions dead and wounded was, to him, anunspeakable horror, and he was willing to do everything in his power to prevent such a catastrophe. It was in fact called hastily, inthe face of Hitler's ultimatum on the Sudetenland, and was so disorganizedthat the British delegation found it quicker to send messages by carbetween its delegation hotel and the conference site than to use thetelephone.[xi] The delegations could, as Thompson puts it, "be divided into theuniformed and the nonuniformed."[xii] The British and French officialswere in traditional civilian clothing, the Germans and Italians in pseudo-military uniforms--though the desired impression might have been weakened,at least visually, by the circumstance that Goering's and Mussolini'suniforms tended to make their paunches more conspicuous.[xiii] Followingan initial session in which the participants presented their positions, along evening session was held in which the conferees broke into workinggroups. Lexington, MA D. From the German perspective--and therefore, indirectly, from the Allied perspective--a great dealdepended on whether or not the Czechs could, without direct support fromthe West, hold out long enough to stall a blitzkrieg until winter. Rather,Munich posed a choice between two alternative conceptions of realpolitik;whether to put the "German question" to the test then and there, byresolving to go to war if need be to resist a German action, or to defersettlement of the German question to another day. "The timing and circumstances [of the adventof war] had been to a certain degree fortuitous. Original publication, 1939.Eubank, Keith. [liv]Ibid., 363. The title of Keith Eubank's "The Riddle," in the same author's WorldWar II: Roots and Causes, refers to this core question. Because they had not found it, Adolf Hitler had an issue that opened Central Europe to his armies.[xxii] This paragraph is a metaphor for Eubank's work as a whole; hisargument can be summarized by saying that it all came down to Hitler. Heath,197 ), 75-84. A Soviet perspective on Munich is presented byAndrew Rothstein, at that time a correspondent for TASS, the Soviet newsagency, in "The Munich Conspiracy."[lvi] As suggested by the title,Rothstein views the events of Munich as a Western (particularly British)scheme to direct the aggressive energies of the German Reich eastward, withthe ultimate objective of engineering a German-Soviet war. Heath, 197 ), 99-1 1. [xxxix]Ibid., 53-54. But, argues Eubank, speculation over the possible course of a warstarting in 1938 is purely hypothetical, because the Allied leaders werenot willing to put themselves to the test. [xxxii]Ibid., 13. "The Munich Conference." In Eubank, Keith, ed., World War II:Roots and Causes. The Czechoslovakarmy, by itself, was not strong enough even on paper to put up an adequateresistance. No one knew this better than the Germans, who were ableto reduce their forces in the west to a minimal cordon. At some point, heassumed, they would go to war to protect their vital interests; the onlyquestion was when. The Soviets were not participants at Munich, and the Soviet dimensionof the events of 1938-39 is often de-emphasized in discussions of Munichitself, where the focus tends to be on the argument over the nature andwisdom or folly of the Western response there. But, as noted earlier in thisdiscussion, Chamberlain had in fact called for rearmament long beforeMunich. Stalin, Hitler, and Europe. Heath, 1975), 123-34. Kennedy'sdefense of Munich in Why England Slept.[xxxvi] This is not to say thatThompson approves of the Allied leaders' conduct as a whole: Chamberlain was wrong to become involved in the affairs of Czechoslovakia in the first place. The great weakness of Chamberlain was his failure to comprehend that a head of government would deliberately plan a world war. [xlviii]Ibid., 7 . A conventional-minded statesmanlike Chamberlain could readily persuade himself that Germany's not-altogether-unreasonable foreign policy demands were met, that Germany wouldthen be content to accept its gains, and certainly not to risk all by adeliberate repetition of the disasters of twenty years before. Garden City, NY:Doubleday, 1979.Thompson, Laurence. [xix]Ibid., 142. A very concise and trenchant weighing of the alternativeinterpretations of Munich is offered by J. Russiacan take care of herself."[lxi] In hindsight, this Soviet view was not without logic; the Germaninvasion of Russia was indeed a disastrous miscalculation. "British ministers, ontheir side, continued to carry on the inter-war British activity ofbreaking French hearts for the sake of preserving the fatuous luxury ofuttering words as empty as any that issued from French lips."[xlix] AdolfHitler could scarcely have formulated a policy better calculated to drivethe French further toward defeatism. [lxv]Telford Taylor, Munich: The Price of Peace (Garden City, NY:Doubleday, 1979), 979ff. It is veryprobably true that if by some miracle Winston Churchill had become PrimeMinister on September 14, 1938, he would not have gone to Munich, or if hehad gone, he would have had something very different to say to Hitler thananything the Fuhrer actually heard there. In particular, "the Sudetenland," has with time and legendbecome the name of a pretext rather than the name of a place. 1. [iii]Ibid., 2. He does, however, address the nature of the strategic situation.The Wehrmacht was preparing to invade Czechoslovakia. The British and French, however, had argued forincorporation of the Sudetenland in order to provide Czechoslovakia withdefensible frontiers.[xxix] What was achieved proved to the the worst of all worlds. He had stated forcefully that he would move into theSudetenland within days; it was up to the Allies, with minimal time to planor even consider options, to decide whether or not they would resist. [viii]Ibid. In neither case is there cause for self- approbation,but there is less ground for contrition in the first than the second.[xxxix]He goes on to observe that the justification offered for Munich changedentirely within months of the event; it is, after all, a very long distancefrom "peace for our times" to buying time for rearmament, and concludesthat "whichever claim is made for Munich, it was a failure."[xl] This, however, is not a complete answer to the question. But by1938, while he was blustering, he was no longer bluffing. If Western intervention was to be threatenedin response to a German move against Czechoslovakia, it was first andforemost France that would have to make the move. That is the core question ofMunich. Froma Western liberal perspective, shaped for a generation by the ideal ofnational self-determination, the Sudeten Germans had a just grievance. But was it in fact a surrender, or acknowledgement that at thattime and place, no other option was viable? [lii]Ibid., 359. [xvii]Ibid., 139. Rothstein, however, wishes to rather further than this, and arguethat Munich was positively engineered to give the Germans a green light tomove east.[lviii] For this argument he gives no positive evidence. But it provednearly as great a miscalculation on the Soviets' part to assume that Hitlerwould never make the attempt. Attention is thengiven to perspectives on French behavior and policy, and then to those ofthe Soviet Union, the one European Great Power not represented at Munich.Finally, alternative possible outcomes are considered, conclusing with thiswriter's own evaluation of Munich and its significance. McSherry in the first volume of his work,Stalin, Hitler, and Europe.[lix] In the spring of 1938, Soviet diplomats correctly foresaw thatCzechoslovakia was at risk, and informed their Western counterparts that"the USSR would come to the aid of Czechoslovakia if France did."[lx] Howthe Soviets could take any active role was in fact vague, however, sincethey had no common frontier with either Germany or Czechoslovakia. [xlv]Arnold Toynbee, "Chamberlain and Hitler--Britain and France," inDwight E. Tohim, "Appeasement". (Lexington, MA: D. From it they learnedthat terrible consequences could stem from events and diplomatic stepsthat, in the summer of 1914, had seemed to threaten nothing of the sort.Neville Chamberlain may well have been, as Toynbee suggests, a businessmanwho lacked deep experience of international affairs and knowledge ofdiplomacy. In retrospect, it isplain that the Allied leaderships, and the British and French publics, madea tragic and catastrophic failure of judgment and leadership, perhaps notso much at Munich itself as in the events that led up to it. Lexington,MA: D. In a general way, however, an attempt has been made to organize thediscussion as follows. [xxxv]Ibid., 76. C. A nation thatfeared that war was at hand breathed a sigh of relief; the Poet Laureate,John Masefield, wrote in the Times of London that Chamberlain was going toBerlin To ask that young men's bodies, not yet dead Be given from the battle not begun.[xxv] There was, to be sure, a fundamental difference between 1914 and1938, a difference apart even from the personality and intentions of AdolfHitler. [l]Henri Nogueres, Munich, Patrick O'Brian, tr. V. Hitler did not create the Sudeten-Czech hostility. He had previously noted in the sameessay that if German forces were "dispersed without some clear triumph, theNazi regime, already the object of much criticism in Germany, will havesustained a rebuff which may affect its future life."[xliv] Whether or notChurchill was correct in his assessment of the potential instability of theNazi regime, it should have been clear from his own argument that Hitlercould not allow himself to be stopped, but would take action at whateverrisk to himself, Germany, and the world. By 1938, France, which in the earlier interwar years had been mostinclined to take a hard line toward Germany, "had now ceased, whether forgood or for evil, to carry on with her onerous fatigue duty of standingsentinal over 'the statute of Europe.'"[xlviii] Strategically, France waspassive, huddled behind the Maginot line; politically, it was deeplydivided, with the French Right openly declaring "better Hitler than Blum." In this environment, it is perhaps not surprising that Britishleaders would not have the greatest of confidence in their French ally.But whenever the French did indicate some readiness to take a stand, theBritish hastened to disassociate themselves from it, staunchly refusing togive the French any assurances of cooperation. [xxviii]Laurence Thompson, The Greatest Treason (New York: WilliamMorrow, 1968), p. Cleveland: World Publishing, 1968.Nogueres, Henri. [xlix]Ibid., 73. [ix]Ibid., 39. [xxxiii]Ibid., 75. The Italian [Count] Ciano found it agreeable: "This allowed a more intimate way of thinking, and it broke the conversational ice." Hitler showed his opinion of these proceedings by sitting moodily apart, from time to time glancing ominously at his watch.[xiv] Whether deliberate, or simply a reflection of his personality,Hitler's impression of haste and impatience aptly symbolized the atmosphereof the conference. Supreme among the absentees was of courseCzechoslovakia, whose fate was immediately at issue. From the perspectiveof Western conservatives, the relative threats of Germany and the SovietUnion might well appear comparable to those of Iraq and Iran to an Americanstatesman today; the former led by a gangster, the latter the champion of ahostile ideology. C. The Sudeten Germans found themselves something of an oppressedpopulation in the new Czechoslovakia. Telford acknowledges that Britain's airdefenses were much better in 1939 than in 1938, but "in every otherimportant military respect, they would have been better off had they foughtin support of Czechoslovakia in 1938 instead of throwing her to thewolves."[lxvii] Perhaps the most important difference that a stand in 1938 would havemade, suggests Telford, is that there would have been no Hitler-Stalinpact, and thus Germany would not have been able to draw down its forces inthe East in order to throw its entire strength against France in ahypothetical Battle of France in the spring of 1939. He thus assumed theBritish had written off Czechoslovakia as indefensible in practical terms. [xlii]Ibid., 247. Eubank, in this brief article, doesnot address the great imponderable of the effective fighting quality offorces, something that ultimately could be determined only in the test ofbattle. "The Munich Conspiracy." In Lee, Dwight E., ed.Munich: Blunder, Plot, or Tragic Necessity? Was the MunichConference a colossal bluncer, a surrender to Hitler's bluff, or was it a"tragic necessity," rendered necessary by the Allies' military unreadinessand their need to buy time for rearmament?[xv] On paper, the combinedAllied and Czechoslovak forces were a credible match for the Germans, butwas this the case in practice? Munich. Munich was certainly a product of poor decision making on the part ofthe Allied leaders, and in the case of France of a paralysis that wouldprove fatal less than two years later. At thesame time, Soviet leaders have little sign of regarding Hitler as a directthreat to themselves; even if Germany should become dominant in CentralEurope, "Great Britain and France are the ones in real danger. [lvii]Ibid., 78. [xxv]Ibid., 131. Norman: University of Oklahoma, 1963.________. "The Myth." In Lee, Dwight E., ed. [xxii]Ibid., 7. Lee, Munich: Blunder, Plot, or Tragic Necessity? It was never a misguided policy, even if it became, by 1938, temporarily an unrealisticone. Hitler did not understand this; he had rolled theAllies before and had no reason to suppose he could not roll them again."The men I got to know in Munich," said Hitler, "are not the kind thatwould start a new world war."[xxvii] As it turned out he was wrong, on twocounts. In 1914, Sir Edward Grey had failed to clarify Britain's intentionto go to war if provoked. The character of that legendwas suggested at the beginning of this essay; it is also explored by KeithEubank in "The Myth."[lxii] The Soviet version of the myth, likeRothstein's discussion covered above, was that the West offeredCzechoslovakia to Hitler as an appetizer to direct him toward the SovietUnion. But the study of history remains the one tool by which memory can beextended, however imperfectly. [xxxvi]Ibid., 263. . Sudeten Germans looking for jobs found them across the frontier inGermany, and began to contrast the stagnant villages of the Sudetenlandwith the economic miracle apparently being achieved in Germany underHitler.[xxxi] Such, in outline, was the internal situation in Czechoslovakia. Chamberlain'sincomprehension was, broadly speaking, that which has already been dealtwith above: he assumed to Hitler to be a man with whom he could "dobusiness." Toynbee, however, puts a particular point to that expression.He observes that Chamberlain's background was not in diplomacy, but incommerce. [lxiii]Ibid., 1 . [xi]Ibid., 124-25. Ironically, the United Statesrepresentatives at Versailles had been opposed to the inclusion of most ofthe Sudetenland in Czechoslovakia, as contrary to the Wilsonian ideal ofself-determination. Britain's intention in 1938 was not to go towar. [xxxi]Ibid. By this method he would clarify the position of GreatBritain and avoid confusion over his government's views. The longera war with Czechoslovakia dragged out, particularly if attended byunexpected setbacks for the Germans, the more the French might beemboldened to take a more active hand. The Munich conference was defined as much by those who were not thereas by those who were. "Munich and the New Appeasement." In Lee, Dwight E.,ed. [xii]Ibid., 124. To many of those who in 1938 grasped that there was a differencebetween Czechs and Sudeten Germans, it seemed eminently reasonablethat what was represented to them as an oppressed minority should be given its independence. Thus, in moral terms, Munich was not quite, as often presented, achoice between the moral defense of principle and resistance againstaggression on the one hand, or cynical realpolitik on the other. Therefore, Hitler's objective was to choose what alater generation's diplomacy called a window of opportunity; to gain asmuch as he could without war, till Germany's own military preparations werecomplete, while not deferring war so long the Britain in particular wouldbe able to call on its resources to surpass Germany. Although appeasement failed when confronted with the aggressive, irresponsible behavior of Nazi Germany, it did not, because of this failure become retrospectively mistaken. A French perspective on Munich is offered by Henri Nogueres in hisbook of the same name.[l] France, he observes, had Reserved to herself the right to be the first, and practicallythe sole, judge of then these obligations [for the defense of Czechoslovakia] that had been undertaken by herself and the USSR should have to be fulfilled.This right of selecting the proper moment was all the more readily accepted by the leaders of theCzechoslovak Republic since it was to be exercised by France, a countrywhose international prestige was then based upon a long and splendidtradition of scrupulous respect for obligations assumed, for the givenword, and for the signature at the bottom of a contract.[li]But every contract has its fine print, and in the course of 1938, Frenchofficial opinion increasingly assumed a "restrictive interpretation" ofFrance's treaty obligations.[lii] It was argued that the French-Czechoslovak treaty was contingent on the Locarno pact, which had alreadycollapsed; therefore the French obligations were null and void.[liii] The question, of course, is why? [xxvii]Ibid., 271. [xlvii]Ibid., 68. [lx]Ibid., 58. A national leadership that foresees any prospect of defendingitself against an invasion does not call on its allies in advance; itresists, and so confronts its allies and enemy alike with a fait accompli.But the Czechs in 1938 could put up no more real resistance than theBelgians in 1914; "a scrap of paper" was their only hope. Endnotes BibliographyWinston Churchill. Munich need not--and cannot--dominate theminds of statesmen in the 2 s the way it dominated the minds of statesmenin the 195 s, the 196 s, or even as recently as the early 199 s. But the norm of international affairs remains the assumption that agreement is possible.[ix] Munich failed, that is to day, because the normal practice ofstatecraft was simply not a practice that could be followed in dealing withAdolf Hitler. This is no time to bluff.[xlii] Churchill, however, was almost surely wrong on one crucial point.While he understood Hitler better than most, he himself still seemed to beof the opinion that Hitler was ultimately bluffing himself. Throughout the Cold War years, "Munich" and "appeasement"were offered by hard-liners--and, to a large degree, generally accepted bypolicy makers and public--as warnings against making any concessionwhatsover to the Soviets or any other Communist force. In the narrowest sense they were neither Germans nor Austrians intwentieth-century terms, but were a German-speaking population that hadbeen part of the dominant ethnic group of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, leftstranded when the latter broke up. The question was whether theWestern Allies, Britain and France, would come to the aid of Czechoslovakiaif attacked, or if they would hold back--in which case there would be noattack as such, but a Czech cession of the Sudetenland. But what was the actual state of the Czechs' military capabilities?"The Czechoslovak Army, according to Benes, was one of the best in Europe.According to Churchill it had a mobilized strength of 4 divisions.Neither of these appreciations was accurate."[xxxiii] In fact, the fullmobilization strength of the Czech army was rather less than thirtydivisions. He took it for granted that methods which, in his personal business experience, had proved fruitful in dealing with other business men would serve him equally well in the international arena in a gladiatorial encounter there with Hitler.[xlvi] Hitler's incomprehension was subtler. Hitler himself was. As suggested by its bifurcated title, his"Chamberlain and Hitler--Britain and France" deals with two types ofmisunderstanding in the events leading up to Munich, a personalmisunderstanding between Chamberlain and Hitler and a nationalmisunderstanding between the two Western allies.[xlv] In the first portion of his essay, Toynbee argues for a mutualincomprehension between Chamberlain and Hitler. He was, as Eubankobserves, no pacifist; he had introduced rearmament bills in the 193 s. International affairs do from time to time reach an impasse on account of the total impossibility of agreement between two conflicting States. [li]Ibid., 358-59. To be sure, Gilbert casts a shadow of doubton his own thesis by giving British policy "at the time of the AmericanRevolution"[viii] as an instance of strength, though in fact Britainacceded to American independence because it had become politicallyimpossible and militarily implausible for Britain to further sustain thewar. [xl]Ibid., 54. To argue otherwise presupposes that Hitler wasbluffing.[xxxvii] In the Rhineland in 1936, Hitler had indeed been bluffing. He observesthat "on all sides, during these fatal months, responsible people weretelling each other how dangerous it was for them to go to war, because theSoviet Union and Communism would be likely to win it."[lvii] In light of the experience of 1914-1918, in the aftermath of whichRussia did go Communist and Germany might well have, this argument has acertain plausibility. If this paper is not what you are looking for, you can search again: Search for: or Click here to request an essay written just for you.

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