Chamberlain at Munich, 1938
Chamberlain is remembered as the (British) Prime Minister who fell for Hitler’s lies, repeatedly appeasing him all the way until World War II broke out. Recently I saw this Netflix called Munich – Edge of War about the conference in 1938 where Chamberlain “let” Hitler have the Sudetenland region of Czechoslovakia and then came home to (supposedly) say that it was “peace for our time”. The movie is nothing great, but one aspect that was interesting was Chamberlain’s reasons for appeasing Hitler. One, Chamberlain was quite old (he died soon after World War II started). That meant he had seen the destruction caused by the first World War and did not want that to recur. In his mind, that meant he had to try, to do everything possible to avoid another war. Second, he knew that Britain was nowhere near ready to go to war. A treaty with Hitler would at best get peace; at worst, it would buy Britain time to prepare itself for war. This reason then was sheer pragmatism. ...