I think if Chamberlain had not gushed about “peace in our time” he might not have been judged so harshly when that peace - a delaying action at best - fell apart a year later. The British and French (taking into account French political fragility at the time) had few options for confronting an aggressive Hitler. On the other hand in Ukraine, NATO had many more options to confront an expansionist Putin and used them. Yes, some loudmouths invoked Chamberlain and Biden did not want to be accused of weakness like Obama had been over Syria and Crimea. But I don’t see as direct a connection historically as you do. One additional point, the MAGA right was conflicted because they wanted desperately to paint Biden as Chamberlain but also wanted to appease Putin. Strange times.
As always, I enjoy your thinking and writing. The subscriber “Marc” who attempted to unsubscribe has one subscription and that’s to your Substack. No notes, no likes I can see and no logic in their comment.
Agree. And I think also, the consensus view is that real opposition to Germany's aggression in '38 may have prevented the Nazis from strengthening their strategic and economic position gained from consolidating central/eastern Europe AHEAD of military confrontation. And this is what is so comparable to the Russia-Ukraine today. If Russia were to take Ukraine, particularly without paying any price to do so, then Russia would be considerably strengthened (economically, strategically) and also emboldened to go another step west.
FWIW, I respectfully disagree with the argument here. I think these aggressive, gangster dictators with the hubris-nemesis complex will only stop when they are stopped externally. Weakness invites aggression, particularly with these types, imho.
The part that you're very carefully eliding, in both cases actually, is what came before. The Germans, shortly before the Munich Conference, had invaded their sovereign neighbor, Austria, after sponsoring all manner of thuggish actors within the country, and followed it with a sham referendum.
The extent to which Russia's playbook in annexing Crimea matched that of the Anschluss is somewhat shocking for those whose justification is denazification. Both of these incidents clearly should have demonstrated to any that were paying attention that, indeed, both of these states were addicted to gangsterism. Even before that, and again almost exactly parallel, paramilitary or even official forces associated with both powers had been committing atrocities in a supposedly neutral country in the midst of a civil war (Spain and Syria).
I'll concede that the logic of national self-determination was extremely salient post-Versailles, it being a relatively recent invention, and that this did indicate that the creation of Austria and Czechoslovakia in the forms they took was mostly to punish Germany without regard for the self-determination of the Germans living in those countries. But punishing the defeated power in a war was also fair by the logic of the time; it just happened that the victorious powers miscalculated as to which logic would remain salient, and underestimated the extent to which their own interests would immediately cease to coincide once the military threat of Germany at least temporarily receded.
But really, if Germany had actually wanted to employ the self-determination weapon, we'll call it, in at all a good-faith manner, they would have done (or tried to do) the referenda BEFORE they started moving the army around. Referenda had been used in numerous places post-war to determine borders, not least at the German-Polish border. By the logic of self-determination, Germany could have requested or sponsored referenda in Austria and Czechoslovakia. If, as is likely, those states had refused to hold them, or the victorious powers had tried to forbid them, then Germany would have had a much easier time assuming the moral high ground.
But the Germans had no interest in good faith; they wanted to achieve greater Germany, and all else was secondary at best. They would tolerate no such extrinsic or self-incurred risks to the end goal. So it is with Russia. They wanted to dismember and neutralize their rivals, and aggrandize themselves territorially. I don't know to what extent any free and fair referenda took place or were requested and then blocked in places like Donbass, but I doubt there were any.
Also, don't forget that it was the Soviet Union that dismantled itself, and not on the basis of national self-determination. Obviously, numerous of its constituents had territorial and other disputes with each other when the union broke apart along its internal SSR divisions, and this led to wars and referenda and ethnic cleansing of all kinds (Armenia v. Azerbaijan, Chechnya v. Russia, etc.).
The shape of the union's various SSRs had little, generally, to do with the national or ethnic character of the relevant places (the divisions that did attempt to conform to such generally were only ASSRs and below, entirely within the RFSR, as I recall, none of which have ever been offered or really sought independence) Indeed, as far as I know, these borders were constructed with the specific intent of erasing national and ethnic distinctions in favor of Soviet-ness.
All of which is to say that the time to deal with these problems, especially with the history of the interwar period to educate the interested parties, was when the union broke apart. It was the Soviets, dominated by the RFSR, but often led by non-Russians, who chose to include 'Novorossiya,' so called, and Crimea within Ukraine. It was they, or its successor, the RFSR and later the Federation, that should All of which is to emphasize that Russia's appeal to the supposedly neutral principle of self-determination was a sham, and the principle itself has lost a great deal of its salience due in large part to its victory (most places now conform to it, to a large extent), and as a result most people (especially outside the interested areas) don't have a lot of desire to upset the status quo in favor thereof.
Anyone who needed the final destruction of Czechoslovakia, or hypothetically Ukraine, to 'see' that Germany/Russia was addicted to gangsterism would, at best, be extremely morally myopic, not paying attention, or latently hostile. Of course, in the end, it was that gangsterism that ended up attracting some of their most important allies, such as with the Soviet-Nazi alliance. I think that Russia-China follows the same pattern; whatever the Chinese think in an absolute sense about Russian gangsterism is secondary to the fact that their gangsterism has caused them to be extremely diplomatically isolated, which makes them attractive as a target for diplomacy among countries similarly isolated (China, North Korea) or that feel themselves marginalized in some way (Brazil, India), which itself is usually due to their own internal dysfunction, which they choose to externalize. Similar logic applies to Germany and its allies, particularly the Japanese, and I guess the Romanians.
Also, as I recall, the Czechs were in fact not invited to the Munich Conference; not sure why you claim otherwise in this piece without supporting the assertion (the fact that the Czechs were not invited would seem to be one of those well-known myths you seek to debunk). The Ukrainians, again as I recall, were consulted as to whether they wanted to surrender their territorial integrity. Considering the aggression they'd already suffered (not so unlike the Czechs, as with German puppet Freikorps violence in the Sudentland prior to Munich) from the country doing the asking, they quite reasonably said no.
If one were to justify Munich purely in terms of buying time to enable better rearmament by the Allies, I'd say that's not crazy, but I don't believe any of the protagonists viewed it in that fashion, as you acknowledge in footnote 3. Chamberlain really believed his own bullshit. And of course it ended up not really being true. The Germans would never have been able to invade the UK. They never even really tried. The Germans hardly made a serious effort to defeat the UK in the air in the Battle of Britain. This was particularly true once the Germans lost their radio navigation and targeting advantage.
The French ultimately squandered time bought by building mostly okay weapons but using them totally ineffectively. It was they, with their massive, well-equipped, and under-employed land army, that refused to make any significant offensive moves in order to relieve Poland, due to what can only be termed civilizational despair.
I love the unsupported shot at Churchill at the end about Poland. As I recall, Churchill was prepared to risk a war with the Soviets over Poland, after they reneged on the promise of free and fair elections post-war (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Unthinkable).
That failed for numerous reasons, but primarily due to a lack of American support, which is kind of goofy in hindsight considering how much more badly infiltrated with communists the UK was. It's interesting that, essentially, the top level of government in the UK was much more hostile to the Soviets than the rank-and-file, and vice-versa in the US.
This quick take needs longer in the oven, I think.
A quibble: The French did attack Germany in September, 1939 in what is called the Saar Offensive. It was successful as far as it went, being undertaken against hollowed out German forces, but the French almost immediately scampered back to the Maginot line upon the Polish collapse. That didn’t stop them from heaping opprobrium on the British when they, in turn, scampered back across the channel upon the French collapse.
It is impossible to completely understand Churchill's behavior at the time without realizing the debts he owed to Czechs and Jews who had bailed him out of certain bankruptcy.
This is covered well in No More Champagne- Churchill and His Money by David Lough.
A factual note first - it was not the British who began the bombing of civilian targets in WWII, it was the Nazis. They started in Warsaw and Rotterdam.
To the extent that one can usefully analogize between Munich and the current situation in Ukraine, the real "Munich" happened when nothing meaningful was done in response to the Russian invasion and annexation of Ukraine. That was appeasement by default. The West's response to the Russian invasion of Ukraine was - like Britain's and France's respond to the invasion of Poland - essentially inevitable after the invasion of Ukraine proved - as did the the invasion of Poland - that Russia (like Nazi Germany) was motivated purely by expansionist motives, not by notions of "self-determination," and that Russia would continue on that course until stopped.
The difference between the invasions of Poland and Ukraine is that, unlike Poland in 1939, Ukraine's allies were able to provide concrete and meaningful military assistance. And so the war has dragged on in a way that's been devastating for the military strength of the invader.
But the two situations are similar in this sense; both ended with strategic defeat of the aggressor. Russia has already lost this war, even if it makes territorial gains in the end. I don't know how else one could categorize how Russia is now viewed in Europe (even by countries that were willing to stay neutral throughout the Cold War) as anything other than a catastrophic blow to its long-term aim of dominating its periphery.
Also worth noting is that there was no guarantee at all that Hitler would have actually invaded Czechoslovakia. Hitler made threats, and then waited for his opposition to crumble. The Czech military was arguably equal to the challenge of defending its borders against a German invasion. Had France and Britain stood by Benes (the Czech PM), the outcome could easily have been different.
The anti-appeasers were right. Hitler didn't stop with Austria or Czechoslovakia, which is what Chamberlain hoped (apparently without much confidence though) would happen. He saw what Britain and France did in Munich as weakness, and made the same bet in Poland, without realizing that things had changed. When Göring's told Hitler, regarding the Polish crisis, that it was "time to stop this va banque" - ie to compromise - Hitler replied "it's the only call I ever make."
I understand very well that history is written by the winners and that it is never as neat and tidy as the stories we tell ourselves. However, your take is twisted to fit your pre-existing views and morally indefensible. You conveniently omit all the events before both 1938 and 2022 that showed the expansionist aims of Hitler and Putin. Before 2022, NATO and the West had been very passive with Putin’s aggressions, hoping to avoid confrontation with him, and they still are very cautious (not at all like the macho reaction you conjure). Your assertion that Chamberlain’s master stroke revealed Hitler for who he was is simply not credible. Clear headed people knew well before 1938 what Hitler was up to and that he was not going to stop. On the moral side, you completely brush off the aspirations of peoples like the Ukrainians who had clearly demonstrated that they did not want to be lackeys of the Russian empire (because that is what it is). Right and wrong do matter and we all have to stand for something besides cynical calculations.
I would point out that the Ukrainian people consistently voted for peace with Russia for three decades and PM Zelensky himself was elected on a platform of peace with Russia. Regarding the history of military aggressions, I would highlight the fact that the US keeps invading countries on a regular basis (Yugoslavia 1999, Afghanistan 2001, Iraq 2003, Syria 2014-2024, etc), so any legal, political and moral opinion regarding such actions must account for that fact or be taken as empty, uninformed posturing.
I guess in your world, Maidan never happened or you have a glib way to dismiss it. And moral relativism (you have done wrong so you can’t judge me) is a common and pretty weak argument. Over and out.
Your comparison of Ukraine with pre-WWII Europe is not apt. Comparisons of Putin with Hitler are apt, and the situation is very different today from what it was then. NATO is a strong alliance that is committed to stopping Putin's expansionism and is in a very strong position to do that, which was not the case before. Whether or not Chamberlin was an appeaser, people like you are certainly Putin appeasers.
Fair. I did address the point in response to an earlier comment: 'You are right. Chamberlain delivered his speech weeks after Churchill delivered a similar one. Hitchens’ point was that Churchill’s was not broadcast at the time, but Chamberlain was, so whoever remembered having heard the speech was remembering having heard Chamberlain’s “rather reedy tones.” Both Churchill & Chamberlain, by the way, were probably lifting from Kipling, as David Gilmour shows in his 2002 ‘Imperial’ biography of the writer. The seals in The Jungle Book “fought in the breakers, they fought in the sand, and they fought in the smooth-worn basalt rocks of the nurseries”. Kipling , BTW, was very hostile to Churchill.'
Your whole setup around why Chamberlain was wise to reject war in 1938 apply... literally not at all to the situation around Ukraine in 2022. I was interested in the defense of Chamberlain until that move where suddenly the article tone went from cheeky historical argument to cheeky illogical screed.
The French war plan was not to “put all its troops in the Maginot Line and hope for the best”. It was to garrison the Maginot Line with sub-par conscript divisions and send the elite, mobile core of the army into Belgium to fight a war of movement there.
Which is precisely what they did. Unfortunately, the Germans cut through the hinge between these two halves, cut off and forced surrender of the mobile divisions, and that was that.
I generally respect revisionism along the lines of “let’s not assume people in the past were complete morons”, which to your credit you’ve done here, so maybe it was worth asking whether a French Army that had 20 years before won history’s greatest war had turned into pumpkins in the interim.
Fair. The biggest issue with what ifs regarding the French & the Brits is that we do know what they did a year later to save their good old friend Poland: absolutely nothing.
About Footnote 4: Churchill stealing from Chamberlain for his famous "We shall fight on the beaches" speech is a myth, going back to some Atlantic article by Christopher Hitchens. You can easily check the source given by Hitchens (a book by Keith Feiling) here: https://archive.org/details/lifeofnevillecha0000feil/page/449/mode/2up
Feiling refers to a "June 30 [...] broadcast", which would date it after the original Churchill speech.
You are right. Chamberlain delivered his speech weeks after Churchill delivered a similar one. Hitchens’ point was that Churchill’s was not broadcast at the time, but Chamberlain was, so whoever remembered having heard the speech was remembering having heard Chamberlain’s “rather reedy tones.” Both Churchill & Chamberlain, by the way, were probably lifting from Kipling, as David Gilmour shows in his 2002 ‘Imperial’ biography of the writer. The seals in The Jungle Book “fought in the breakers, they fought in the sand, and they fought in the smooth-worn basalt rocks of the nurseries”. Kipling , BTW, was very hostile to Churchill.
The real absurdity about the use of Munich is not that it’s generally used by Americans to justify whatever military adventure they are engaging in next. Munich turns up for Iraq, Syria, Libya, North Korea, Afghanistan and Iran. Egypt as well I believe. Probably not Vietnam but anti communism would suffice there.
The absurdity is America has preemptively fought all the Hitlers except Hitler. Hitler wasn’t Hitler enough for Americans to get involved in a war against him, until America was invaded by an Axis power and even then Germany had to declare war on the US, for there was no certainty that the US would declare war on Germany.
Calling Chamberlain's handling of Munich a "masterstroke" is a bit of hyperbole in the opposite direction - I can accept the argument that he made the correct choice out of multiple bad ones - but there is no genius in choosing the least worst option, just self-interested common sense.
Also - I think your counterfactual is a tad underwritten, as I'm not sure I understand what you mean - are you suggesting that a rebuke of Hitler in 38 would have led to a set up for future active engagement in early 39 where the sides were UK, France, Russia vs. Germany and Poland?
Chamberlain masterstroke was in securing a promise of non-aggression (a public commitment for everyone to see) from Hitler, when he was playing a terrible hand and had, as you said, only the least bad option available to him. Hitler didn't have to promise anything, but was cajoled into doing so. As for the counterfactual, the idea is the 1939 scenario we got was probably the best possible scenario available, with WW2 starting with a clash between possibly the two most powerful Fascist states in Europe -- Germany and Poland. Another (if this time clearly unintended) masterstroke by Chamberlain.
So if I understand the premise, the masterstroke is based on the assumption that "world opinion" was important in galvanizing UK and France to fight Germany? That is, if counterfactually there wasn't a public decree where Hitler says "I'll be a good boy" only to later act like a bad boy, then there wouldn't have been the same response from UK and France?
Yes, but you needed world opinion not only at home. Also, in the clearest example, the US, where most voters were opposed to join the war. And elsewhere: it's because people became convinced that Hitler was a bully and the Nazis thugs that even within Germany the Allies got great supporters (think of Canaris) and their most effective spy was a Fascist Spaniard (Joan Pujol) and the Indian masses remained quiet during the war instead of launching an uprising that would have killed the British empire right then and there. Chamberlain turned public opinion in favor of the Allies because he made a honest, decent attempt at peace, unlike what happened in early 2022 when NATO's response to Putin's concerns about NATO expansion was go fuck yourself.
1) If the sickle cut didn't work in 1940, which it shouldn't have, the whole narrative of the war would be different.
2) Hitler himself thought he would have had better chances in 1938, because his Air Force was way better vis a vis the allies in 1938 versus 1940 (the German tanks were better in 1940, but it probably wasn't worth the trade with the Air Force).
3) Everyone believed that Air Power would dominate WWII, and that "the bomber will always get through." People envisioned London ending up like Tokyo. They were wrong (about the ability of strategic bombing without air superiority), but generally right about the dominance of air power on the battlefield.
4) The debate in May 1940 between Halifax and Churchill was largely over point #3. Could the Germans destroy the British aircraft factories? If they could, peace made sense. If they couldn't, the Brits could outproduce them (as they did).
Those fighters and factories did not exist in 1938.
"The West was given the chance between war and dishonor, it chose war"
No, dude. Putin chose war. You can tell by the tanks crossing the border on his command.
I think if Chamberlain had not gushed about “peace in our time” he might not have been judged so harshly when that peace - a delaying action at best - fell apart a year later. The British and French (taking into account French political fragility at the time) had few options for confronting an aggressive Hitler. On the other hand in Ukraine, NATO had many more options to confront an expansionist Putin and used them. Yes, some loudmouths invoked Chamberlain and Biden did not want to be accused of weakness like Obama had been over Syria and Crimea. But I don’t see as direct a connection historically as you do. One additional point, the MAGA right was conflicted because they wanted desperately to paint Biden as Chamberlain but also wanted to appease Putin. Strange times.
As always, I enjoy your thinking and writing. The subscriber “Marc” who attempted to unsubscribe has one subscription and that’s to your Substack. No notes, no likes I can see and no logic in their comment.
Agree. And I think also, the consensus view is that real opposition to Germany's aggression in '38 may have prevented the Nazis from strengthening their strategic and economic position gained from consolidating central/eastern Europe AHEAD of military confrontation. And this is what is so comparable to the Russia-Ukraine today. If Russia were to take Ukraine, particularly without paying any price to do so, then Russia would be considerably strengthened (economically, strategically) and also emboldened to go another step west.
FWIW, I respectfully disagree with the argument here. I think these aggressive, gangster dictators with the hubris-nemesis complex will only stop when they are stopped externally. Weakness invites aggression, particularly with these types, imho.
The part that you're very carefully eliding, in both cases actually, is what came before. The Germans, shortly before the Munich Conference, had invaded their sovereign neighbor, Austria, after sponsoring all manner of thuggish actors within the country, and followed it with a sham referendum.
The extent to which Russia's playbook in annexing Crimea matched that of the Anschluss is somewhat shocking for those whose justification is denazification. Both of these incidents clearly should have demonstrated to any that were paying attention that, indeed, both of these states were addicted to gangsterism. Even before that, and again almost exactly parallel, paramilitary or even official forces associated with both powers had been committing atrocities in a supposedly neutral country in the midst of a civil war (Spain and Syria).
I'll concede that the logic of national self-determination was extremely salient post-Versailles, it being a relatively recent invention, and that this did indicate that the creation of Austria and Czechoslovakia in the forms they took was mostly to punish Germany without regard for the self-determination of the Germans living in those countries. But punishing the defeated power in a war was also fair by the logic of the time; it just happened that the victorious powers miscalculated as to which logic would remain salient, and underestimated the extent to which their own interests would immediately cease to coincide once the military threat of Germany at least temporarily receded.
But really, if Germany had actually wanted to employ the self-determination weapon, we'll call it, in at all a good-faith manner, they would have done (or tried to do) the referenda BEFORE they started moving the army around. Referenda had been used in numerous places post-war to determine borders, not least at the German-Polish border. By the logic of self-determination, Germany could have requested or sponsored referenda in Austria and Czechoslovakia. If, as is likely, those states had refused to hold them, or the victorious powers had tried to forbid them, then Germany would have had a much easier time assuming the moral high ground.
But the Germans had no interest in good faith; they wanted to achieve greater Germany, and all else was secondary at best. They would tolerate no such extrinsic or self-incurred risks to the end goal. So it is with Russia. They wanted to dismember and neutralize their rivals, and aggrandize themselves territorially. I don't know to what extent any free and fair referenda took place or were requested and then blocked in places like Donbass, but I doubt there were any.
Also, don't forget that it was the Soviet Union that dismantled itself, and not on the basis of national self-determination. Obviously, numerous of its constituents had territorial and other disputes with each other when the union broke apart along its internal SSR divisions, and this led to wars and referenda and ethnic cleansing of all kinds (Armenia v. Azerbaijan, Chechnya v. Russia, etc.).
The shape of the union's various SSRs had little, generally, to do with the national or ethnic character of the relevant places (the divisions that did attempt to conform to such generally were only ASSRs and below, entirely within the RFSR, as I recall, none of which have ever been offered or really sought independence) Indeed, as far as I know, these borders were constructed with the specific intent of erasing national and ethnic distinctions in favor of Soviet-ness.
All of which is to say that the time to deal with these problems, especially with the history of the interwar period to educate the interested parties, was when the union broke apart. It was the Soviets, dominated by the RFSR, but often led by non-Russians, who chose to include 'Novorossiya,' so called, and Crimea within Ukraine. It was they, or its successor, the RFSR and later the Federation, that should All of which is to emphasize that Russia's appeal to the supposedly neutral principle of self-determination was a sham, and the principle itself has lost a great deal of its salience due in large part to its victory (most places now conform to it, to a large extent), and as a result most people (especially outside the interested areas) don't have a lot of desire to upset the status quo in favor thereof.
Anyone who needed the final destruction of Czechoslovakia, or hypothetically Ukraine, to 'see' that Germany/Russia was addicted to gangsterism would, at best, be extremely morally myopic, not paying attention, or latently hostile. Of course, in the end, it was that gangsterism that ended up attracting some of their most important allies, such as with the Soviet-Nazi alliance. I think that Russia-China follows the same pattern; whatever the Chinese think in an absolute sense about Russian gangsterism is secondary to the fact that their gangsterism has caused them to be extremely diplomatically isolated, which makes them attractive as a target for diplomacy among countries similarly isolated (China, North Korea) or that feel themselves marginalized in some way (Brazil, India), which itself is usually due to their own internal dysfunction, which they choose to externalize. Similar logic applies to Germany and its allies, particularly the Japanese, and I guess the Romanians.
Also, as I recall, the Czechs were in fact not invited to the Munich Conference; not sure why you claim otherwise in this piece without supporting the assertion (the fact that the Czechs were not invited would seem to be one of those well-known myths you seek to debunk). The Ukrainians, again as I recall, were consulted as to whether they wanted to surrender their territorial integrity. Considering the aggression they'd already suffered (not so unlike the Czechs, as with German puppet Freikorps violence in the Sudentland prior to Munich) from the country doing the asking, they quite reasonably said no.
If one were to justify Munich purely in terms of buying time to enable better rearmament by the Allies, I'd say that's not crazy, but I don't believe any of the protagonists viewed it in that fashion, as you acknowledge in footnote 3. Chamberlain really believed his own bullshit. And of course it ended up not really being true. The Germans would never have been able to invade the UK. They never even really tried. The Germans hardly made a serious effort to defeat the UK in the air in the Battle of Britain. This was particularly true once the Germans lost their radio navigation and targeting advantage.
The French ultimately squandered time bought by building mostly okay weapons but using them totally ineffectively. It was they, with their massive, well-equipped, and under-employed land army, that refused to make any significant offensive moves in order to relieve Poland, due to what can only be termed civilizational despair.
I love the unsupported shot at Churchill at the end about Poland. As I recall, Churchill was prepared to risk a war with the Soviets over Poland, after they reneged on the promise of free and fair elections post-war (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Unthinkable).
That failed for numerous reasons, but primarily due to a lack of American support, which is kind of goofy in hindsight considering how much more badly infiltrated with communists the UK was. It's interesting that, essentially, the top level of government in the UK was much more hostile to the Soviets than the rank-and-file, and vice-versa in the US.
This quick take needs longer in the oven, I think.
A quibble: The French did attack Germany in September, 1939 in what is called the Saar Offensive. It was successful as far as it went, being undertaken against hollowed out German forces, but the French almost immediately scampered back to the Maginot line upon the Polish collapse. That didn’t stop them from heaping opprobrium on the British when they, in turn, scampered back across the channel upon the French collapse.
It is impossible to completely understand Churchill's behavior at the time without realizing the debts he owed to Czechs and Jews who had bailed him out of certain bankruptcy.
This is covered well in No More Champagne- Churchill and His Money by David Lough.
A factual note first - it was not the British who began the bombing of civilian targets in WWII, it was the Nazis. They started in Warsaw and Rotterdam.
To the extent that one can usefully analogize between Munich and the current situation in Ukraine, the real "Munich" happened when nothing meaningful was done in response to the Russian invasion and annexation of Ukraine. That was appeasement by default. The West's response to the Russian invasion of Ukraine was - like Britain's and France's respond to the invasion of Poland - essentially inevitable after the invasion of Ukraine proved - as did the the invasion of Poland - that Russia (like Nazi Germany) was motivated purely by expansionist motives, not by notions of "self-determination," and that Russia would continue on that course until stopped.
The difference between the invasions of Poland and Ukraine is that, unlike Poland in 1939, Ukraine's allies were able to provide concrete and meaningful military assistance. And so the war has dragged on in a way that's been devastating for the military strength of the invader.
But the two situations are similar in this sense; both ended with strategic defeat of the aggressor. Russia has already lost this war, even if it makes territorial gains in the end. I don't know how else one could categorize how Russia is now viewed in Europe (even by countries that were willing to stay neutral throughout the Cold War) as anything other than a catastrophic blow to its long-term aim of dominating its periphery.
Also worth noting is that there was no guarantee at all that Hitler would have actually invaded Czechoslovakia. Hitler made threats, and then waited for his opposition to crumble. The Czech military was arguably equal to the challenge of defending its borders against a German invasion. Had France and Britain stood by Benes (the Czech PM), the outcome could easily have been different.
The anti-appeasers were right. Hitler didn't stop with Austria or Czechoslovakia, which is what Chamberlain hoped (apparently without much confidence though) would happen. He saw what Britain and France did in Munich as weakness, and made the same bet in Poland, without realizing that things had changed. When Göring's told Hitler, regarding the Polish crisis, that it was "time to stop this va banque" - ie to compromise - Hitler replied "it's the only call I ever make."
I understand very well that history is written by the winners and that it is never as neat and tidy as the stories we tell ourselves. However, your take is twisted to fit your pre-existing views and morally indefensible. You conveniently omit all the events before both 1938 and 2022 that showed the expansionist aims of Hitler and Putin. Before 2022, NATO and the West had been very passive with Putin’s aggressions, hoping to avoid confrontation with him, and they still are very cautious (not at all like the macho reaction you conjure). Your assertion that Chamberlain’s master stroke revealed Hitler for who he was is simply not credible. Clear headed people knew well before 1938 what Hitler was up to and that he was not going to stop. On the moral side, you completely brush off the aspirations of peoples like the Ukrainians who had clearly demonstrated that they did not want to be lackeys of the Russian empire (because that is what it is). Right and wrong do matter and we all have to stand for something besides cynical calculations.
I would point out that the Ukrainian people consistently voted for peace with Russia for three decades and PM Zelensky himself was elected on a platform of peace with Russia. Regarding the history of military aggressions, I would highlight the fact that the US keeps invading countries on a regular basis (Yugoslavia 1999, Afghanistan 2001, Iraq 2003, Syria 2014-2024, etc), so any legal, political and moral opinion regarding such actions must account for that fact or be taken as empty, uninformed posturing.
I guess in your world, Maidan never happened or you have a glib way to dismiss it. And moral relativism (you have done wrong so you can’t judge me) is a common and pretty weak argument. Over and out.
If you are going to pearl clutch Russia invading Ukraine then the Iraq war is pertinent. If Putin is a war criminal then so is George bush.
Maidan was an anti democratic coup, orchestrated by the US.
“Maiden”. The CIA backed coup that turned Ukraine into their vassal state?
Your comparison of Ukraine with pre-WWII Europe is not apt. Comparisons of Putin with Hitler are apt, and the situation is very different today from what it was then. NATO is a strong alliance that is committed to stopping Putin's expansionism and is in a very strong position to do that, which was not the case before. Whether or not Chamberlin was an appeaser, people like you are certainly Putin appeasers.
> we shall fight them on the beaches
Wiki contests your footnote.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/We_shall_fight_on_the_beaches
Fair. I did address the point in response to an earlier comment: 'You are right. Chamberlain delivered his speech weeks after Churchill delivered a similar one. Hitchens’ point was that Churchill’s was not broadcast at the time, but Chamberlain was, so whoever remembered having heard the speech was remembering having heard Chamberlain’s “rather reedy tones.” Both Churchill & Chamberlain, by the way, were probably lifting from Kipling, as David Gilmour shows in his 2002 ‘Imperial’ biography of the writer. The seals in The Jungle Book “fought in the breakers, they fought in the sand, and they fought in the smooth-worn basalt rocks of the nurseries”. Kipling , BTW, was very hostile to Churchill.'
Your whole setup around why Chamberlain was wise to reject war in 1938 apply... literally not at all to the situation around Ukraine in 2022. I was interested in the defense of Chamberlain until that move where suddenly the article tone went from cheeky historical argument to cheeky illogical screed.
The French war plan was not to “put all its troops in the Maginot Line and hope for the best”. It was to garrison the Maginot Line with sub-par conscript divisions and send the elite, mobile core of the army into Belgium to fight a war of movement there.
Which is precisely what they did. Unfortunately, the Germans cut through the hinge between these two halves, cut off and forced surrender of the mobile divisions, and that was that.
I generally respect revisionism along the lines of “let’s not assume people in the past were complete morons”, which to your credit you’ve done here, so maybe it was worth asking whether a French Army that had 20 years before won history’s greatest war had turned into pumpkins in the interim.
Fair. The biggest issue with what ifs regarding the French & the Brits is that we do know what they did a year later to save their good old friend Poland: absolutely nothing.
About Footnote 4: Churchill stealing from Chamberlain for his famous "We shall fight on the beaches" speech is a myth, going back to some Atlantic article by Christopher Hitchens. You can easily check the source given by Hitchens (a book by Keith Feiling) here: https://archive.org/details/lifeofnevillecha0000feil/page/449/mode/2up
Feiling refers to a "June 30 [...] broadcast", which would date it after the original Churchill speech.
You are right. Chamberlain delivered his speech weeks after Churchill delivered a similar one. Hitchens’ point was that Churchill’s was not broadcast at the time, but Chamberlain was, so whoever remembered having heard the speech was remembering having heard Chamberlain’s “rather reedy tones.” Both Churchill & Chamberlain, by the way, were probably lifting from Kipling, as David Gilmour shows in his 2002 ‘Imperial’ biography of the writer. The seals in The Jungle Book “fought in the breakers, they fought in the sand, and they fought in the smooth-worn basalt rocks of the nurseries”. Kipling , BTW, was very hostile to Churchill.
The real absurdity about the use of Munich is not that it’s generally used by Americans to justify whatever military adventure they are engaging in next. Munich turns up for Iraq, Syria, Libya, North Korea, Afghanistan and Iran. Egypt as well I believe. Probably not Vietnam but anti communism would suffice there.
The absurdity is America has preemptively fought all the Hitlers except Hitler. Hitler wasn’t Hitler enough for Americans to get involved in a war against him, until America was invaded by an Axis power and even then Germany had to declare war on the US, for there was no certainty that the US would declare war on Germany.
Calling Chamberlain's handling of Munich a "masterstroke" is a bit of hyperbole in the opposite direction - I can accept the argument that he made the correct choice out of multiple bad ones - but there is no genius in choosing the least worst option, just self-interested common sense.
Also - I think your counterfactual is a tad underwritten, as I'm not sure I understand what you mean - are you suggesting that a rebuke of Hitler in 38 would have led to a set up for future active engagement in early 39 where the sides were UK, France, Russia vs. Germany and Poland?
Chamberlain masterstroke was in securing a promise of non-aggression (a public commitment for everyone to see) from Hitler, when he was playing a terrible hand and had, as you said, only the least bad option available to him. Hitler didn't have to promise anything, but was cajoled into doing so. As for the counterfactual, the idea is the 1939 scenario we got was probably the best possible scenario available, with WW2 starting with a clash between possibly the two most powerful Fascist states in Europe -- Germany and Poland. Another (if this time clearly unintended) masterstroke by Chamberlain.
Thanks for the reply:
So if I understand the premise, the masterstroke is based on the assumption that "world opinion" was important in galvanizing UK and France to fight Germany? That is, if counterfactually there wasn't a public decree where Hitler says "I'll be a good boy" only to later act like a bad boy, then there wouldn't have been the same response from UK and France?
Yes, but you needed world opinion not only at home. Also, in the clearest example, the US, where most voters were opposed to join the war. And elsewhere: it's because people became convinced that Hitler was a bully and the Nazis thugs that even within Germany the Allies got great supporters (think of Canaris) and their most effective spy was a Fascist Spaniard (Joan Pujol) and the Indian masses remained quiet during the war instead of launching an uprising that would have killed the British empire right then and there. Chamberlain turned public opinion in favor of the Allies because he made a honest, decent attempt at peace, unlike what happened in early 2022 when NATO's response to Putin's concerns about NATO expansion was go fuck yourself.
Was this position informed by Darryl Cooper’s recent interview?
I don't even know who Darryl Cooper is
Excellent piece man. Some of the pearl-clutching in this comment section is hilarious.
1) If the sickle cut didn't work in 1940, which it shouldn't have, the whole narrative of the war would be different.
2) Hitler himself thought he would have had better chances in 1938, because his Air Force was way better vis a vis the allies in 1938 versus 1940 (the German tanks were better in 1940, but it probably wasn't worth the trade with the Air Force).
3) Everyone believed that Air Power would dominate WWII, and that "the bomber will always get through." People envisioned London ending up like Tokyo. They were wrong (about the ability of strategic bombing without air superiority), but generally right about the dominance of air power on the battlefield.
4) The debate in May 1940 between Halifax and Churchill was largely over point #3. Could the Germans destroy the British aircraft factories? If they could, peace made sense. If they couldn't, the Brits could outproduce them (as they did).
Those fighters and factories did not exist in 1938.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JY_S9X5HdOM