Peace for our time?
A warning from history, courtesy of The Times, on how NOT to deal with tyrants who want to annex the country next door.
Below is the text of the Times editorial on October 1, 1938, on the Munich agreement which Neville Chamberlain had negotiated with Adolf Hitler. First a brief recap.
Following the Anschluss in March 1938, when Germany annexed Austria, Hitler turned his attention to Czechoslovakia. Around one in four Czechs were German speakers, mostly living in Sudetenland, close to the German border. With Hitler’s encouragement, the Sudeten Nazi party agitated for autonomy.
In August 1938, Chamberlain, Britain’s Prime Minister, sent Lord Runciman, a pro-Conservative peer, to Czechoslovakia to mediate in the dispute between the Czech government and the Sudeten Nazis. He failed to secure agreement, but concluded that Sudetenland should belong to Germany. Chamberlain and Edouard Daladier, France’s Prime Minister, had bilateral talks with Hitler at which they agreed to the German takeover of Sudetenland. However, they wanted this to be the end of German expansion.
In a speech on September 26, Hitler said: “I thank Mr Chamberlain for his efforts to find a peaceful settlement. I have given him assurances that after the Sudeten German question is regulated we have no further territorial claims to make in Europe. But in the Sudeten German question my patience is at an end.” Hitler issued an ultimatum to the Czech government: hand over Sudetenland or Germany will invade.
To solve the crisis, Italy’s Mussolini proposed a four-power conference, with Germany, Britain, France and Italy. Czechoslovakia was not invited. The conference was held in Munich on September 29, ending in the early hours of September 30, with agreement that Germany could take over the Sudetenland immediately. Lacking support from Britain and France, General Sirovy, the Czech Prime minister, felt he had no choice but to accept the decision.
Chamberlain returned to London and on the steps of Downing Street declared “I believe it is peace for our time”.
The Times, October 1 1938
A NEW DAWN
No conqueror returning from a victory on the battlefield has come home adorned with nobler laurels than Mr Chamberlain from Munich yesterday; and King and people alike have shown by the manner of their reception their sense of his achievement. The terms of the settlement in the Czech-German dispute, reached in the small hours of the morning and published in the later issues of The Times of yesterday, had been seen to deliver the world from a menace of extreme horror while doing rough-and-ready justice between the conflicting claims.
Yet even this great service to humanity was already beginning to appear as the lesser half of the Prime Minister’s work in Munich. He himself announced it as the prelude to a larger settlement, He had not only relegated an agonizing episode to the past; he had found for the nations a new hope for the future. The joint declaration made by Herr Hitler and Mr Chamberlain proclaims that “the desire of the two people never to go to war with one another again” shall henceforth govern the whole of their relationships.
There have been times when such a manifesto could be dismissed as a pious platitude, likely to be forgotten long before an occasion could arise for it to be practically tested. The present, it is fair to think, is not such a time. The two statesmen plainly recognize in their declaration that there are still sources of difference between Great Britain and Germany, which for the sake of then peace of Europe must be settled at an early date; it is in direct relation to these that they pledge themselves to the methods of peaceful consultation, and so demonstrate that they expect to be taken at the full value of their word. By inserting a specific reference to the Anglo-German Naval Agreement, the Fuhrer reminds us of an earnest of his good intentions, which the British people, in the new atmosphere, will readily acknowledge.
Civilisation had been so near to the brink of collapse that any peaceful issue from the dispute of the last months would have been an overwhelming relief; but close examination of the Munich terms, in particular of the geographical adjustments, shows that they constitute not only a settlement but a hopeful settlement. That they should be bitterly resented in Czechoslovakia must add to the profound sympathy which has always been felt in England with one of the smaller and, as it seemed to many, more promising countries emerging from the [post World War One] Peace Treaties. Yet the loss of the Sudeten territories had long been unavoidable, nor was it desirable that it should be avoided.
That was the opinion not only of all who believed in the theory of self-determination, but of Lord Runciman, who had acquired, from a position of unique and informed detachment, an intimate knowledge of the whole problem in practice. At any rate – the Prague Government, the only dissentient, having been induced to acquiesce in secession – the issue was narrowed down to finding the means for an orderly execution of an agreed plan.
That on such an issue then whole world should be plunged into war was the monstrous prospect that had to be contemplated until less than three days ago. It would inevitably have been realized if Herr Hitler had insisted on a spectacular “conquest” of the Sudetenland by German troops. The Czechs would certainly have resisted in arms, not would any Power have had the right to dissuade them. France would have been drawn in by direct obligations to Czechoslovakia; Great Britain and the Soviet Union would have been certain to come to the aid of France; and so the widening conflict would have involved all those peoples throughout the world who watched with ever-increasing revulsions the development of brutal methods of national aggrandisement, and thought the time had come to make a stand against them.
These methods have been publicly renounced by their principal exponents, to whom the peace-loving peoples should be ready to give full credit for their professions. But, at the moment when the current racing towards then precipice seemed irresistible, it was the leadership of the British Prime Minister that showed how immense were then forces ranged on the side of reason against violence.
The gathering urgency of persuasion was reinforced by unmistakeable proofs of resolution for defence. France mobilized her army and manned her impregnable lines, Preparation in England though slower in starting, as is the national habit, became at the crucial moment universal and formidable. The Fleet was mobilized; the anti-aircraft forces were brought into readiness; and civilians, taking post for emergency under voluntary as well as official schemes, showed plainly that the nation would not flinch. There is no doubt that the evidence that Mr Chamberlain offered concession from strength and not from weakness won him a respect that might not otherwise have been accorded.
Meanwhile other authoritative voices were uplifted for peace: the President of the United States spoke out for humanity, and the Italian Duce [Mussolini], responding to the Prime Minister’s leadership, acknowledged that peace is a supreme interest to dictators as to other national rulers. Herr Hitler deferred, as no man should be ashamed of doing, to the protest of the whole world against war.
This was the crucial moment. That peace would follow the Munich negotiations was almost a foregone conclusion once a dictator had made the difficult renunciation of consenting to treat after he had announced his last word. The message so dramatically brought to Mr Chamberlain in the House of Commons marked the true climax and ended the threat of war. In the upshot both sides have made concessions. Herr Hitler has yielded important points of substance…. By granting so much, the Czechs suffer no practical loss, and they gain much by the acceptance of international control for the plebiscites that are to be held in areas of mixed race.
By the terms thus concluded the most dangerous threat of war in Europe is at last removed, and by the joint declaration we are given the hope that others will be peacefully eliminated. That twofold achievement, by common consent, we owe first and foremost to the Prime Minister. Had the Government of the United Kingdom been in less resolute hands it is as certain as it can be that war, incalculable in its range, would have broken out against the wishes of every people concerned.
The horror of such a catastrophe was not least in Germany. So much is clear from the immense popular enthusiasm with which Mr Chamberlain was greeted on each of his three visits; a crowd of that disciplined nation does not break through a police cordon to acclaim a foreign statesman out of conventional politeness. Indeed these visits seem to have increased the Fuhrer’s understanding of his own people’s sentiments, with a definite effect upon his policy, Let us hope that he may go on to see the wisdom of allowing them at all times to know the sentiments of other people instead of imposing between them a smoke-screen of ignorance and propaganda.
For our nation it remains to show our gratitude to Mr Chamberlain, chiefly by learning the lessons taught by the great dangers through which we have been so finely led – that only a people prepared to face the worst can through their leaders cause peace to prevail in a crisis; but that the threat of ruin to civilization will recur unless injustices are faced and removed in quiet times, instead of being left to fester until it ius too late for remedy. If these manifest truths, always recognized yet so seldom applied, are allowed to guide the diplomacy of the coming months, then we may at last expel from men’s minds the deadly doctrine of preventive war and labour with confidence for a preventive peace.
Five months later, Germany took over the rest of Czechoslovakia. Less than 12 months after the Munich Conference, Hitler invaded Poland. On September 3, 1939, Britain and France declared war on Germany.