Munich : Peace in our time

 

On the morning of 28th September 1938, the British of the United Kingdom were occupied with preparations for something they had hoped they would never again be called to face: War.
The Prime Minister, Neville Chamberlain, had twice flown to see the Leader of Germany, Adolf Hitler, he mission was to presuade him to call off his threatened invasion of Czechoslovakia. Correctly interpreting these visits as signs of weakness, Hitler had simply increased his demands. On the 27th, he bluntly stated that if France and Britain supported the Czechs, he would "smash them". Sadly, Chamberlain had authorized the mobilization of the Fleet; and everywhere, last-minute efforts were being made to cope with the ugly consequences of the bombing raids which, it was assumed, would devastate cities when war was declared. Mothers and children got ready to leave for the country, and office workers left their desks to fill sands bags, or help dig slit trenches in the parks.

There was no feeling of moral fervour, as there had been 1914. "Little Belgium", threatened by the Kaiser, had then seemed uncomfortably close. Czechoslovakia, in the Prime Minister's words was 'a faraway country of which we know little", And Hitler undoubtedly had a case: there was a substantial German-speaking minority in the Sudenland, who wanted to return to the German Reich. And what good would a war do? Wouldn't all the countries be the losers? What had victory done for the British people, except bring social stagnation, massive unemployment, and the dole? The Great War, too, was still agonizingly vivid in people's minds, the horrors of trench warfare recalled the plays like Journey's End, and books like All Quiet on the Western Front - which had reached an even wider audience as a film. And the next war would inevitably be far worse. "The bomber" - Chamberlain's predecessor, Stanley Baldwin, had warned - "will always get through"; and the film of H. G. Wells' book The Shape of Things to Come had shown cinema audiences what they could expect when the bomber did get through.

And yet, to give way to Hitler would be cowardly. The policy of appeasing the dictator had been tried, and it had catastrophically failed. Mussolini had conquered Abyssinia. With Hitler, he had helped Franco win the Spanish Civil war. Hitler had seized Austria, and was now poised to take the next step in the course he had mapped out for himself in his book "Mein Kampf". If he were allowed to take the Sudetenland, it cleary would not satisfy him. He would simply be emboldened to demand the next victim on his list. Surely the time to make a stand was now, with the formidable Czech defenses, and the powerful Czech army, still in being?

This was the view held by a small group of Conservatives which had gathered round Winston Churchill - including Anthony Eden, who had been Foreign Secretary, but resigned in disgust at Chamberlain's manoeuvrings. Eden himself hoped to appease the Germans by removing any unnecessary causes of aggravation, left over from the Treaty of Versailles. But now, he felt, "appeasement" was being given a very different, and shameful, meaning. Chamberlain and his new Foreign Secretary, Lord Halifax, were trying to buy the dictators off with concessions that ought not to be made: "paying the Danegeld". But though Eden's stand was admired, Churchill remained suspect; among Conservatives because he had twice broken with the party (" a man can rat", as somebody had put it, "but he can't re-rat"); and among Labour supporters, because of his increasingly reactionary attitudes, notably over granting of greater independence to India. And even if Churchill were right, might not Providence yet intervene? There was no stomach for a fight; instead, as Louis MacNeice put it in his Autumn Journal, only

The heavy panic that cramps the lungs and presses
The collar down the spine

Maybe - the feeling was - we ought to stand up to Hitler; but, please God, let something happen to relieve us of this necessity!

And Something did happen. While Chamberlain was speaking in the Commons, that afternoon of the 28th, a note was passed to him by the Parliamentary Private Secretary Lord Dunglass - later, as Sir Alec Douglas Home, himself to be Prime Minister. It contained an invitation to meet Mussolini (who had intervened as peacemaker), Hitler, and French Premier, Daladier, in Munich. The relief in the Commons was hysterical. Lord Simon saw men who had opposed Chamberlain "cross the floor in tears and unrestrained emotion grasp him by the hand". "I felt sick with enthusiasm, longed to clutch him" - "Chips" Channon, a young Conservative MP recorded in his dairy; "we shouted until we were hoarse . . . a scence of indescribable enthusiasm . . . Peace must now be saved, and with it the world".

So off Chamberlain flew again to Germany, quoting Shakespeare to the crowd before he left; "out of this nettle, danger, we plunck this flower, safety". And that was precisely what he pluckec - for Britain. Not for the Czechs, who were not consulted. They were told they must give way to Hitler's demsnds; and deprived of French and British backing, they felt they had no choice. They had been betrayed.

The news of the Munich settlement was hailed with heartfelt relief in Britain. When he landed at Heston, Chamberlain waved an agreement which he and Hitler had signed, saying that what had happened was "symbolic of the desire of our two peoples never to go to war with one another again". A voice called "Three cheers for Mr Chamberlain", and they were given with enthusiasm as he drove away. The route to London was filled with ecstatic crowds; the streets (he wrote to tell his sister) "lined from one end to the other, with people of every class shouting themselves hoarse, leaping on the running board, banging on the windows and thrusting their hands into the car to be shaken". From a Downing Street window, sixty years before, Disraeli had described how he had brought back "Peace with Honour",
Chamberlain told the crowd "I believe it is peace for our time".

"Speak for England!"
But it was not to be peace for his time that he and Daladier had bought was a few months' respite; and when the initial euphoria wore off, it was impossible not to realize how heavy a price had been paid for it. Hitler had actually got more, at Munich, than he had demanded when the crisis began. Daladier, weak though he had been, at least had realized this; when he saw the huge crowd which came to welcome him at Le Bourget on his way back from Munich, his first thought had been they must have come to lynch him.
But Chamberlain was under the illusion that he had restrained Hitler. He had not: he had handed over what Hitler would not have dared to take - as the Czech army was too strong for him to risk a confrontation, if France and Britain had stood firm. Asked at the Nuremberg trial after the war whether Germany would have attacked the Czechs if their allies had stood by them, Field Marshal Keitel replied "Certainly not." The object of the excercise, he explained, had simply been to gain time.

And time was what it gained - for Hitler.
The myth was later to gain credence that Chamberlain bought time at Munich for Britain to rearm. But for six months he continued to live in his "peace for our time" fantasy world. On 10th March 1939, he pronounced the International situation satisfactory. There was no cause, he insisted for anxiety. Punch welcomed this assurance, with a Bernard Partridge cartoon of John Bull awakening from a nightmare to find all his fears flying away through the window. Seldom can a cartoon have been more unfortunately timed. On 25th March, the German army, which had occupied the Sudetenland after Munich, marched in to occupy Prague. After Munich, Britain had guaranteed what remained of Czechoslovakia. Now -- Chamberlain had lamely to explain -- as there was nothing left of Czechoslovakia, the guarantee had ceased to apply.

Only then was it recognized that war with Hitler was inevitable -- on worse terms. For the six months after Munich it had been using the time to prepare for it; and the occupation of Czechoslovakia apart from eliminating the Czech army, brought Germany an immense quantity of tanks, guns, and other war material. And it helped convince Mussolini that he was safe to go ahead with his own plans for a new Roman Empire, embracing the entire Eastern Mediterranean. In April, he began in a small way by occupying Albania.

It also brought Hitler an unexpected and -- temporarily, at least -- useful ally. Hitler had two obsessions, with Jews and Communists, and he had risen to power on an anti-semitic and anti-Russian programme. But if he were going to destroy Russia, as he hoped eventually to do, he must first eliminate the threat of a war on two fronts; in other words, he must dispose of France and if necessary of Britain. And until he could do that he must first neutralize Russia, by persuading Stalin that Russia had nothing to fear from Germany. Stalin was willing to listen. France and Britain, he believed, being capitalist countries like Germany, would eventually throw in their lot with Germany, and turn on Russia. If he could come to terms with Hitler, and leave Germany to fight it out with France and Britain, they might destroy each other, leaving Russia to step in and take over Europe for Communism.

In August 1939, Chamberlain so far suppressed his loathing for Russia as to send over a military mission, headed by an old sea dog, Sir Reginald Plunkett Ernle-Erle -Drax. Stalin preferred to do a deal with Hitler. On 23rd August, it was announced that Germany and Russia had signed a non-aggression pact; and Stalin -- whose detestation of Hitler had been as notorious as Hitler's of him -- was r er ported as saying "I know how much the German nation loves its leader. I should therefore like to drink his health."

Now there could no longer be any doubt that Hitler was going to make fresh demands. His patience as he liked to say, was "exhausted". Nor was there any doubt what they were to be. All that summer of 1939, the propaganda machine had been pouring out a stream of hysterical abuse of the Poles -- just as it had of the Czechs, as the year before -- claiming that the German minority in the "Polish Corridor" (granted to Poland at the Treaty of Versailles to give access to the Baltic sea) was being discriminated against, beaten up, murdered. It could only be a matter of time, obviously, before Hitler sent his armies into Poland -- unless there was another Munich.

But the British people were in no mood for another Munich. It had not taken them long to realize how humiliating was the price paid for the flower, safety the selling of the Czechs into Nazi slavery. There might be little that Britain could do to save Poland from distruction; but this time Hitler must be left in no doubt that, if he attacked, Britain and France would declare war, and fight it out to the end.

But he was left in doubt -- for a number of reasons. To begin with, he could not believe that if Britain were serious in her determination to stop him, Chamberlain, Halifax, Hore - Belisha and the rest would still be in office. He had bluffed them before, and could again. And the British people did not give the impression they were ready for war. On the contrary, they carried on as if there were nothing to fear. That summer, for example, the West End was enjoying one of its popular seasons, with packed audiences for Ivor Novello's 'The Dancing Years'; Lupino Lane in 'Me and my Gal' (featuring "The Lambeth Wall"); Jack Hulbert and Cicely Courtneidge in 'Under Your Hat'; two long running reviews, Farjeon's 'The Gate'; and J.B. Priestly's 'When We Are Married'; and Dodie Smith's 'Dear Octopus'. There was also Bernard Shaw's 'Geneva', which made out that the dictators were quite shrewd people really; and The Green Table by the Ballet Jooss, its pacifist message underlined by sombre music.

The great depression of the early 1930's was past; and although unemployment was still high -- and the dole still a pittance -- the well-off were better off than they had been since the 1920's. This was an era of big orchestras, when people dined and danced (and listened endlessly, on the the BBC) to the music of Ambrose, Geraldo, Henry Hall, Harry Roy and other famous bands playing the latest Cole Porter, Gershwin or Berlin hits; playing "Thanks for the memory", "Now it can be told" -- or playing some of the scatty songs of the time: -- "A-tiskek, a tasket "; "Jeepers Creepers" and "The Three Little Fishes (in an Itty Bitty Poo)" -- who swam and swan, right over the dam. And before the evening was out, the assembled dancers would be called upon to go through the ritual motions of the Lambeth Walk, the Palais Glide, or a newcomer, Boomps-a-daisy.

The cinema also flourished. It was still Hollywood dominated by adolescents, with Mickey Rooney and Judy Garland; and the fresh-voiced Deanna Durbin, who won a Hollywood award for being the "personification of youth". Yet there were also encouraging signs of a breakthrough by English studios, with Goodbye Mr. Chips, and Hitchcock's - 'The Lady Vanishes'.

But if the British people were having as if there was nothing to worry about, this was only because that was the way they traditionally behaved when there was something to worry about. There were no heroics, but there was no wavering -- not even after the news of Hitler's deal with Stalin. It merely confirmed the view that the Russians could not be trusted. The sandbags were filled again, the slit trenches cleaned out, and hospitals prepared for evacuation, the black-out curtains inspected for moth holes. But this time, it was with a sense of inevitability, and without alarm. Britain had fallen still further behind in the arms race since Munich, but in one vital respect she was far better prepared: psychologically. The uncertainty, the defeatism, of the year before had disappeared.

Hitler struck on 01st September. Having pledged themselves to go to Poland's assistance if she were attacked, the British and French governments delivered an ultimatum calling him to withdraw his forces. They were not withdrawn. On 02nd September, the rumor got around at Westminister that the British government was contemplating another Munich, but the temper of the Conservative backbenchers was against any further backsliding. When Arthur Greenwood rose to speak for the Labour opposition, Leo Amery called across to him "Speak for England!"; and he did. The following day, listeners who had tuned in to the BBC were told that at 11:15 -- following the scheduled talk, on how to make the most of tinned foods -- the Prime Minister would broadcast to the nation. Quietly, Chamberlain announced that Britain was at war.