Nonfiction review: Munich, 1938

NONFICTION
For students of 20th-century history, the title of this book is shorthand for tragedy and disaster.

It outlines the self-deceptive, smug and misguided efforts of British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain to appease the territorial aims of the greatest criminal in recent history, German dictator Adolf Hitler.

With Chamberlain in the lead, Britain and France ceded to Hitler significant chunks of Czechoslovakia without the Germans having to take military action and without the participation of the Czech government in the dismemberment of its country.

It all took place at a conference in Munich in early fall, 1938, after which Chamberlain flew home and held up a piece of paper that he said meant "peace for our time." It meant anything but. In less than a year, the world was at war.

The author, an Oxford-educated grandson of former British PM Harold Macmillan, is a former Conservative member of Parliament. His book is not an easy read.

It is full of detail, but it offers little in the way of reasons why Chamberlain and, indeed, most of his countrymen were willing to do almost anything, including the humiliation of kowtowing to Hitler, to avoid going to war only 20 years after the end of World War I.

You won't find it in this book, but in the first war British suffered nearly 1 million military dead and 1.7 million wounded. France's losses were 1.7 million dead and 4.3 million wounded.

The British public wanted desperately to believe that Munich provided what Chamberlain said it did. He was greeted as a hero upon his return. But there were those opposed to this devil's bargain.

In a House of Commons debate, Winston Churchill took a hammer to Chamberlain, a member of his own party. "I will begin by saying what everybody would like to ignore or forget," said Churchill, "but which must nevertheless be stated, namely, that we have suffered a total and unmitigated defeat. And do not suppose that this is the end. This is only the beginning of the reckoning. This is only the first sip, the first foretaste of a bitter cup which will be proffered to us year by year unless . . . we arise again and take our stand for freedom as in the olden time."

The House of Commons voted 366-144 to back the Munich agreement.

Little more than a month later, the anti-Jewish pogrom of Kristallnacht took place in Germany. Eleven months after Chamberlain proclaimed "peace for our time," German troops invaded Poland. And the world was at war again, with estimates of the dead, civilian and military, ranging from 62 to 78 million people.

Munich was an expensive lesson for the world to learn.

Bill Millsaps is retired executive editor of The Times-Dispatch.