Capitulation at Munich
In recent decades history revisionists have set to work to improve the image of British Prime Minister, Chamberlain. No longer is he the clueless appeaser who trusted a man like Adolf Hitler, allowing Hitler to take Austria, the Sudetenland and then all of Czechoslovakia without lifting a finger to stop him. Now we are to see him as the man who, acting with great foresight, bought Britain time.
Just last week, in an opinion piece in The Times, Gerard Baker, wrote (28 Jan 2022) regarding the betrayal at Munich that "acceding to the German claims at the time was a necessary precondition to expose the ultimate, wider agenda of Nazism, and to buy time for reinforcing our defences." In other words, Chamberlain knew what he was doing all along. Even Ben Macintyre wrote (31 Dec 2021) that Chamberlain “ did not bring peace in our time but he bought enough peace, for enough time, to build up the forces capable of confronting Hitler”.
This flawed thinking is also the theme of the new film 'Munich: The Edge of War' which uses these same arguments in favour of Chamberlain:
1) He bought time ie we were much better prepared in 1939 for a war than in 1938
2) He knew that only by giving Hitler everything he wanted at Munich could he be sure that, when war came, the British people would be united knowing all possible steps to avoid war had been taken. The British people could no longer be under any illusions as to who Hitler was.
Both these arguments are wrong:
To the first point: Whilst Britain - and in particular the RAF - was undoubtedly better prepared for war a year later, so was Nazi Germany, and Germany's rate of improvement was much faster than that of Britain (and France) so that, in terms of relative strengths, Germany was far better off to fight the war in 1939 than in 1938 compared to the allies. Part of the reason for this was that the Czech resources that Germany was now able to plunder would, in 1939, bolster its own war effort.
To the second point: The assumption implicit here is that, had Britain and France stood up to Hitler at Munich there would have been a war that the public didn't want and would not have supported. But the whole point of the anti-appeasers was that, if Chamberlain had taken such a firm stand, there would have been NO war in 1938 - and possibly never at all.
There is little evidence of a clever Neville Chamberlain outsmarting Hitler. On the contrary, Chamberlain wrote to his sister that he trusted Hitler. During that final week of surrender at Munich at the end of September 1938, the allies made two moves both of which gave Hitler reason to pause and which illustrated how different things might have been: The British First Lord of the Admiralty, Duff Cooper, mobilised the Royal Navy, and the French Army mobilised 14 divisions. A few days later, Hitler confided to a colleague that the reason he had accepted a peaceful solution, rather than the violent outcome he sought, was that he thought the Royal Navy might open fire. Both of these attempts to face Hitler down, initiated by others, were fatally undermined by Chamberlain himself who nullified the threat from his own Navy by dropping Hitler a note assuring him that he could ‘get all essentials without war and without delay.’
The revisionist view would have us believe that ignoring Czechoslovak wishes was unfortunate but necessary. But just as the Czechoslovaks were ignored at the Munich conference, so they continue to be ignored by today's revisionist historians.
For the Czechs had a powerful army in well-defended fortress positions along its borders with Nazi Germany. However better prepared Britain would be in 1939, she would no longer have the well prepared Czechs sitting on Germany's eastern borders and Czechoslovak resources, including its renowned arms industry, would instead be aiding the Nazis. Britain may not have been ready for war but Czechoslovakia had formidable mountain defences in the Sudetenland which Germany’s generals doubted they could penetrate. And behind those fortifications? An army of around 2m men, similar to the size of the German Army at that time; 1,600 aircraft to Germany’s 2,500 and 470 tanks to Germany’s 720. All Czechoslovakia was lacking to fight it out was the support of the Western allies.
Some German generals, believing Hitler to be irrational, were willing to mount a coup should he force them into a war against Czechoslovakia. They never imagined that Hitler would be given everything without the need to fight for it. What Chamberlain achieved, by handing Czechoslovakia to Hitler on a plate at Munich, was to make Hitler seem rational after all. His uncompromising stand had given him the Sudetenland and the Czechoslovakian defence lines - and later all of Czechoslovakia - without the need for a war. This astounding success covered over the fact that Hitler had actually wanted to take that country by force, and not have it given to him without any fighting, and he felt that Chamberlain had cheated him out of his war. The outcome hid Hitler’s irrationality and allowed him to think that the allies would always give way to his bluster and this meant that Poland would now be in his sights.
One further ‘weight’ needs to be thrown onto the scales against Chamberlain’s buying Britain some time: The Soviet Union learnt from the fiasco at Munich that Britain and France would not support her against the Nazis and that it would be in the USSR’s best interests now to make a deal with Hitler in the hope that it would push him to fight in the West not in the East. Munich paved the way for the Nazi-Soviet pact less than a year later.
Far from 'buying time', Chamberlains appeasement meant that a last chance to avoid war completely was thrown away and it led Hitler to believe that British and French fears of war would allow him to always do what he wanted without paying any price.
