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.

 

And lastly, Chamberlain hoped (prayed?) that Hitler would stop with Sudetenland. Surely, Hitler would be rational enough to not continue to annex more and more regions and risk a war with France and Britain.

 

When you look at those reasons, without the benefit of hindsight, Chamberlain doesn’t come out as naïve at all. A bit idealistic perhaps in his first reason, realistic and pragmatic in the second, and assuming a rational enemy in his third reason. None of his reasons sound dumb, when seen from that point in time.

 

But even with hindsight, Chamberlain didn’t fail entirely. Yes, his first and third reasons (peace at all costs; and the hope Hitler would stop) were proved spectacularly wrong. But the second time, the extra time he bought Britain to prepare did help. After all, unlike the rest of Europe, Britain was able to hold on, if barely, against the Nazis. Yes, being across the sea helped a lot, but to assume that the British didn’t use the time the treaty had bought to prepare themselves isn’t correct either.

 

On the other hand, it’s also possible that yielding to Hitler at Munich only emboldened Hitler even more, making him even more confident that he could grab what he liked, and maybe it also led Hitler to conclude that the Allies were too averse to war and scared of the Germans.

 

Reality is grey, one can’t be totally sure of anyone’s reasons or how people interpret other people’s actions. And it is in that fog of assumptions, hopes and misunderstandings, events occur.