Look at their shoes

Matthew Yglesias recommends Jeffrey Record's monograph, "Appeasement Reconsidered: Investigating the Mythology of the 1930s."

I realize no one is going to read that and think, "Ooooh, a monograph! How exciting!" But if you've got a crazy uncle/co-worker/president who makes a habit of invoking Neville Chamberlain to dismiss any hesitation to invade Iraq/bomb Iran/annihilate Fredonia, then Record's thoughtful separation of reality and myth may come in handy. Record can't be dismissed as a dirty hippy, and his paper was published by the Strategic Studies Institute of the U.S. Army War College -- so he's got the kind of hawkish credentials to which your crazy uncle/co-worker/president likes to pay lip service.

Much of the monograph is remedial history -- an explanation of why what he calls the "Munich Analogy" isn't really applicable even to Munich. But let's jump ahead to Record's conclusion:

Invocations of the Munich Analogy to Justify Use of Force Should Be Closely Examined.

Such invocations have more often than not been misleading because security threats to the United States genuinely Hitlerian in scope and nature have not been replicated since 1945. Though the Munich analogy’s power as a tool of opinion mobilization is undeniable, no enemy since Hitler has, in fact, possessed Nazi Germany’s combination of military might and willingness -- indeed, eagerness -- to employ it for unlimited conquest. This does not mean the United States should withhold resort to force against lesser threats. Nor does it mean that Hitlerian threats are a phenomenon of the past; an al-Qaida armed with deliverable nuclear weapons or usable biological weapons would pose a direct and much more lethal threat to the United States than Nazi Germany ever did.

The problem with seeing Hitler in Stalin, Mao Zedong, Ho Chi Minh, and Saddam Hussein is that it reinforces the presidential tendency since 1945 to overstate threats for the purpose of rallying public and congressional opinion, and overstated threats in turn encourage resort to force in circumstances where deterrence, containment, even negotiation (from strength) might better serve long-term U.S. security interests. Threats that are, in fact, limited tend to be portrayed in Manichaean terms, thus skewing the policy choice toward military action, a policy choice hardly constrained by possession of global conventional military primacy and an inadequate understanding of the limits of that primacy.

If the 1930s reveal the danger of underestimating a security threat, the post-World War II decades contain examples of the danger of overestimating a security threat.

That's all quite thoughtful, reasonable and factually sound. The problem here, though, is that the people Record is responding to don't give a damn about thought, reason or facts. They are not arguing in good faith.

No one who invokes Neville Chamberlain and the Munich Analogy is arguing in good faith. That goes for your crazy uncle, your co-worker, President Bush and John McCain. Just look at their shoes. Are the laces tied? No one smart enough to be capable of tying their own shoelaces is stupid enough to really believe what they're saying when they invoke this analogy.

The one-size-fits-all Munich template requires that we pretend that all diplomacy is capitulation. It requires that we pretend that containment, deterrence, isolation, sanctions, international pressure, inspections, soft power, summit meetings, aid, withholding aid, trade and every other form of possible influence whether political, economical or cultural are all just cowardly euphemisms for surrender.

To really believe that, one would have to be sublimely ignorant of history, geography, politics and the basic vocabulary of the English language. That level of perfect ignorance takes too much effort to achieve and sustain for anyone to master it accidentally.

It is simply not possible that these people are sincere. They do not -- they cannot -- believe what they are saying.

So there's no point in responding to them by patiently attempting to explain that diplomacy does not equal capitulation. Anyone who really required such an explanation wouldn't be capable of understanding it.

Discussions of civility often focus on the superficial, such as avoiding name-calling and not using dirty words. But those minor transgressions against civility are nothing compared to the fundamental duplicity of the sort practiced by those crying "appeasement" and "Chamberlain" at every turn. Such duplicity and dishonesty precludes civility, it makes honest conversation and dialogue impossible.

When confronted with such disingenuousness, then, the only way to defend civility is to put those lying mofos on notice by calling bullshit. That's not a dirty word, it's a precisely accurate and appropriate response.

Comments

[Ursula L]

To add a thought I've had on this matter for a while:

Chamberlain’s "appeasement" is as horrible as it is only with the benefit of hindsight.

But, absent Chamberlain’s attempts to negotiate and compromise, WWII would not have been the "good war" from the Allied perspective - the war of last resort, uncontrovertibly necessary and justified. Rather, it would have been another WWI, a mad rush to war, which, now, we'd be looking back at and wondering if it, and all the associated horrors, could have been averted.

If Europe had negotiated in the aftermath of the assassination of Franz Ferdinand, perhaps we'd now be looking back, and saying that the Serbs were betrayed, and that it was a wrong attempt to avoid another, later, war. Or perhaps, both WWI and WWII might have been averted. We can't know.

But we can know that WWII was not avoidable (at least, once Hitler came to power and given the legacy of WWI), and that Hitler would not keep promises made in negotiation. And so, for at least half the combatants involved, it is unambiguously a justified war, and for the other half, it is clearly a war that needed to be lost.

Chamberlain is necessary, so that we can know that Churchill was right.

[Jeff]

Please to note that as Bush and McSame were falsely accusing Obama of "appeaserment", Bush actually was attempting to appease one of the enemies of the United States. Unfortunately, he was as bad at it as he is at everything else, so the Saudis laughed at his efforts. I think further appeasement was made, to get the Saudis to agree.

[David]

I don't usually like Chris Matthews, but anyone who has not yet seen this video must must must watch it. It is the most astonishing slam dunk obliteration of the "appeasement" argument I've ever seen. (All due respect to fred :-P)

Radio Host Kevin James Walks into a Smackdown

[Karen]

I've always thought that the fact that WWII was the lone example in history of a necessary war. All the others, and I do mean all, should have been avoided. It makes us feel good, so even though there can be no lesson learned from a unique and unrepeated event, we keep trying to find one. If we tried to learn the "lesson of 1914," we'd be much better off.

[Ursula L]

Karen - It may be the only one where the right side won.

I can think of other wars that may have been justified, such as some of the wars between the US and Native Americans, that were critical to US expansionism. From the Native American side, they fighting them was certainly justified, as a matter of life and death, national survival, and in the face of horrible exploitation and abuse by the invaders. Unfortunately, the wrong side won, from a moral standpoint.

Focusing on WWII, in the US, as the sole example of justified warfare, serves to hide all the times when the US was in the wrong.

[Karen]

Ursula L, you have a point.

[Robin Z]

David: That was the most impressive thing I've seen today. Very, very topical.

[Doctor Science]

It is simply not possible that these people are sincere

I must respectfully disagree, Fred.

IMHO they *are* sincere. It's not so much that they are ignorant of history, etc., as that they are filtering everything through a narrative. They are telling themselves a story, and I think our own Praline has most accurately nailed it: Macho Sue:

The essential story structure of a Macho Sue tends to revolve around untouchable pride. If love means never having to say you're sorry, being Macho Sue means the whole of reality loves you. Typically, Macho Sue's storyline follows a certain trajectory: he begins by acting egregiously, picking or provoking fights and causing problems. However much the ensuing difficulties can be laid at his door, Macho Sue is not about to apologise, in any way. So the problems continue - only to be salvaged by some immense reversals that give the impression that he was right all along. The man he insulted turns out, suddenly, to be a bad guy. The woman who dislikes him falls into his strong arms when he solves a problem that is not the same problem he caused for her. People change their personalities, storylines shift and flip like a mechanical maze popping up new paths and lowering old gates in order to keep Macho Sue from ever, ever having to backtrack. As John Wayne says, 'Never say sorry - it's a sign of weakness.'

Your crazy uncle/co-worker/President is telling himself a Macho Sue story, he's invoking Munich because he's re-imagined Winston Churchill as the Macho Sue star of WWII, the unshakable fighter who was right all along.

IMHO the parallels to "Left Behind" are exact. It doesn't matter to their fans that LaHaye & Jenkins have re-written or tossed out great swaths of the Bible -- "Left Behind" is a more satisfying, simple narrative for them, so when they do go to the Bible they will read it through the filter of "Left Behind".

I'm starting to think that what we need isn't logic, history, thought, or knowledge; what we need is better *stories*.

[Salamanda]

David, thank you for that.

"HEY! HEY! CHRIS! HEY CHRIS! HEY---WHADDAYA MEAN 'BLANK SLATE'??"

I LOL'd. ^.^

[Tonio]

I was about to describe the Munich Analogy as an insane worship of the macho mystique, but Praline already encapsulated it.

[Kevin James]

It's the EXACT SAME THING! It's the EXACT SAME THING!

[Reynard]

No one who invokes Neville Chamberlain and the Munich Analogy is arguing in good faith(...)

The one-size-fits-all Munich template requires that we pretend that all diplomacy is capitulation. It requires that we pretend that containment, deterrence, isolation, sanctions, international pressure, inspections, soft power, summit meetings, aid, withholding aid, trade and every other form of possible influence whether political, economical or cultural are all just cowardly euphemisms for surrender.

To really believe that, one would have to be sublimely ignorant of history, geography, politics and the basic vocabulary of the English language. That level of perfect ignorance takes too much effort to achieve and sustain for anyone to master it accidentally.

It is simply not possible that these people are sincere. They do not -- they cannot -- believe what they are saying.

Sorry, but they Sincerely, Passionately believe what they're saying. Doctor Science is quite correct in his assessment, but I think it goes a bit further than that. I think that one of the aims behind the Chamberlain/Appeasement argument is to do nothing less than rewrite history -- make it look, as you imply above, as if *ALL* non-military interaction with "unfriendly" foreign powers is "surrender". Bush and his PNAC posse wanted to go to war with Iraq in order to have a (potentially) reliable source of relatively cheap oil. In order to do this, they had to bend every rule of sound diplomacy to the breaking point. One of the ways that they did this, of course, was to magnify the size of the so-called "threat" that Saddam Hussein posed to us all out of proportion to actual reality. And since it worked once, they're trying it again -- only this time, their target is Barack Obama and the Dems. By painting all forms of diplomacy (summit meetings, aid, trade, etc.) and any other sanctions short of war (containment, deterrence, isolation, etc.) as " appeasement", and anyone who advocates anything-short-of-Total-War as "appeasers", they can paint themselves as the Sincere, Passionate, Churchillian Macho Sues; saving the World from the Forces of Evil and fact-based history.

[Technomad]

The thing is---Neville Chamberlain was not just bending over and greasing up. He was playing for time---the UK in the 1930s was by no means ready for another war (they were still recovering from the last one, and the Depression hadn't helped any) and if they'd gone to war over Czechoslovakia, they'd have made a sorry spectacle of themselves.

Also, blaming him for not realizing that Hitler was crazy strikes me as a little unfair---the Germans had a lot closer look and could understand what he said (I studied German in HS and college but can't follow any of the recorded Hitler speeches I've ever heard; I can't pick out one word) and they didn't see it until it was way too late.

[Mark Z.]

David,

I saw that video, and I get a weird pro-wrestling vibe from it. Kevin James comes across as a loud, aggressive blowhard from the beginning, to make sure we all hate him. Matthews announces that he's about to do a "history check", and James inanely repeats his talking points while Matthews demands, over and over, that he answer the question. Then Matthews appears as a guest on another show, on the same network, to talk about what he just did. Who did they kick off at the last minute to make time for Matthews?

I've never heard James' radio show, and it's possible that he really is an idiot. It's also possible that he does his show in character as an idiot, and appeared on Hardball as the same idiot. But it's so out of character for Chris Matthews to stand up to one of his lying scumbag guests that I have to be suspicious.

[alfgifu]

The thing is---Neville Chamberlain was not just bending over and greasing up. He was playing for time---the UK in the 1930s was by no means ready for another war (they were still recovering from the last one, and the Depression hadn't helped any) and if they'd gone to war over Czechoslovakia, they'd have made a sorry spectacle of themselves.

Exactly.

Chamberlain is one of my personal heroes. After WWI, was a huge eternal peace movement in favour of avoiding all wars ever after. Understandably, really. Britain disarmed and concentrated all energies on administration of the Empire and desperately trying to work out what to do about this Gandhi geezer. Even as Hitler began to reject all the treaties he had made, there was a certain amount of sympathy for him from the British public - after all, the Treaty of Versailles had been very rough on Germany and the country was in a shambles. It seemed only fair to give the man who was saving Germany some rope. There were a few voices around in the public sphere who recognised the growing danger - Churchill, G. K. Chesterton - but most of the country was so determined never to go to war again that they convinced themselves that war was not an option.

Chamberlain had the impossible job of trying to stay out of a war with Hitler. That was what the country elected him to do. That was his mandate from the people. He made mistakes, yes, especially at Munich, but he bought time and did begin the process of rearmament which was so necessary. Unlike various other members of the Cabinet at that time, he never considered surrender. Then he died of bowel, six months after leaving office and without having time to really impact the war government, in which he remained a key figure. Churchill said:

It fell to Neville Chamberlain in one of the supreme crises of the world to be contradicted by events, to be disappointed in his hopes, and to be deceived and cheated by a wicked man. But what were these hopes in which he was disappointed? What were these wishes in which he was frustrated? What was that faith that was abused? They were surely among the most noble and benevolent instincts of the human heart-the love of peace, the toil for peace, the strife for peace, the pursuit of peace, even at great peril, and certainly to the utter disdain of popularity or clamour. Whatever else history may or may not say about these terrible, tremendous years, we can be sure that Neville Chamberlain acted with perfect sincerity according to his lights and strove to the utmost of his capacity and authority, which were powerful, to save the world from the awful, devastating struggle in which we are now engaged. This alone will stand him in good stead as far as what is called the verdict of history is concerned.

Alas, the verdict of history is shriller and less understanding that Churchill hoped.

[Praline]

It's a curious thing that, despite America having stayed out of the war for such a long time, and only coming in when attacked on their own soil by the Japanese - Japan, not Nazi Germany - American hawks now make a much bigger deal about fighting Hitler than other countries tend to, even countries like the UK that declared war on Hitler without having to be attacked themselves. Seriously, that news guy was talking about Chamberlain being 'American history'; at that point in American history, no war was taking place at all. Chamberlain was trying to broker a peace treaty - trusting too much to the good faith of his adversaries, but at least trying - while America was just staying out, and stayed out for years. The Doctor Seuss limerick comes to mind (it accompanied a cartoon of the American Eagle):

Said a bird in the midst of a Blitz,
'Up to now they've scored very few hitz,
So I'll sit on my canny
Old Star Spangled Fanny...'
And on it he sitz and he sitz. If they want to point fingers, why not at their own politicians?

(I know, they're iggerunt. But it pisses me off when Americans act like the war was between America and Germany.)

As far as Chamberlain comparisons go, it's a rhetorical appeal to emotions, and we could do with some equally emotional analogies from history that are actually appropriate. Can anybody think of any?

That, of course, and calling bullshit.

(Thanks for the cite, Doc.)

[Caravelle]

But, absent Chamberlain’s attempts to negotiate and compromise, WWII would not have been the "good war" from the Allied perspective - the war of last resort, uncontrovertibly necessary and justified. Rather, it would have been another WWI, a mad rush to war, which, now, we'd be looking back at and wondering if it, and all the associated horrors, could have been averted.

If Europe had negotiated in the aftermath of the assassination of Franz Ferdinand, perhaps we'd now be looking back, and saying that the Serbs were betrayed, and that it was a wrong attempt to avoid another, later, war. Or perhaps, both WWI and WWII might have been averted. We can't know.

That's an interesting point, and the funny thing is I don't think it's a coincidence at all. Before WWI some parts of Europe wanted to go to war. A bit like the US with the pre-Iraq maskerade really. So whether they jumped at the assassination as a convenient pretext, or whether they were so prejudiced that they didn't consider for a second there might be a problem, either way negociation would have been pointless.

And on the other hand, Neville Chamberlain's "appeasement" probably came from the very awareness you describe in wanting to avert another WWI.

[Caravelle]

Radio Host Kevin James Walks into a Smackdown

AWESOME. I'd heard of that but hadn't seen it yet (no youtube at work), thanks for linking !

(I know, they're iggerunt. But it pisses me off when Americans act like the war was between America and Germany.)

I kind of give them a pass for that, because it seems to me every country does in. In France we do get the basics on what was going on in Europe, but it mostly concentrates on losing and Vichy and the Resistance and the English and Americans coming over for D-day. As for the war in the Pacific, we hardly learn about that at all. It's sometimes like the "Japan" member of the axis is just there for decoration. As for Japan invading China ? If I learned that in school I forgot it very quickly.

While in the US the Pacific represents half of the war or more; on the other hand the war started in '41.

I heard on the radio a new Franco-German history schoolbook was edited, which basically showed history from both point of views. I think this is great, and should be done with every country in the world.

[Rosina]

Before WWI some parts of Europe wanted to go to war.

This is undoubtedly true, but the story of the days between the assassination and the declarations of war reads like a multiple train crash, with every driver looking in his manual to find out how to stop it, how to divert, what to do next. Messages were not instantaneous, and with all the links and alliances, and military contingency plans, you had to be sure you were not caught on the hop by your friend's enemy's friend. So if country A, which had a treaty with Country B, which had just failed to meet the deadline on the last message you sent them about their relationship with D, sent out letters suggesting that its soldiers start packing their over-night bags, you had better book the trains to take you to the border, just in case they intend to invade. So A goes back and orders their troops to the border to repel the invasion that's actually intended as a defence force, and then the generals think - let's use the Schlieffen Plan. And you're at war. Even if country B was just getting the message onto a train to you.

[ajay]

alfgifu - generally agree, but there's no evidence that Chamberlain was thinking "Well, I know Hitler will break this agreement, but at least it'll buy us a year to get the Spitfire squadrons operational". It seems that, as Churchill said, Chamberlain sincerely believed that he had secured peace.

Apart from anything else, the Munich agreement also bought Hitler a year to rearm; the Wehrmacht in 1938 was much weaker than in 1939, partly because, by 1939, it had got its hands on the Czech armaments industry.

But before faulting him, it's worth remembering just how terrible the Great War was for the nations of Europe. Almost a million British soldiers died, out of a population of twenty million. As I said elsewhere: imagine that, one day, a maniac walks into your high school and shoots everyone there. Some of his victims will die, and some will survive - in roughly the proportions that the schoolmates of a Great War soldier would have survived the war. By 1918, it was as though that had happened in every high school in Britain.

[Tonio]

Neville Chamberlain was not just bending over and greasing up. He was playing for time...

Did Chamberlain have a prissy personality that would have served as a subtext for the Munich Analogy? Or have I heard too many American homophobes claim that Tom Cruise and Jeff Gordon are gay?

[Michelle]

In general, I find the argument "No intelligent person could truly believe this," to be severely oversimplifying the way people think. Such an argument assumes that people always follow reason thoroughly to its ends, that people always consider all the evidence, and that people don't, in general, have remarkable tunnel vision when it comes to maintaining their precious opinions. My experience is quite to the contrary.

Oh, don't get me wrong--I have no doubt that many who invoke Munich are bullshitting, but I have met too many people who sincerely believe things I thought no intelligent person would believe to back out of my sincere belief in human stupidity.

And as for World War II being the only necessary war? This is only true if you consider WWII an isolated incident, when it seems to me that it was more of an extension of WWII; excepting the first World War, Hitler almost certainly would not have risen to power. If WWI was avoidable, then WWII was likewise avoidable; when we failed to avoid I, II became inevitable.

I'll leave someone else to draw parallels to our current situation.

[Michelle]

Above, I guess I should have clarified also that in my experience, a single person is capable of being remarkably reasonable about one matter while wearing tremendous blinders as to another. I have met religious people who were extremely intelligent and rational about anything until you asked why they believed something, at which point they would retreat behind "faith" as if reason didn't matter.

[Ursula L]

Caravelle wrote: That's an interesting point, and the funny thing is I don't think it's a coincidence at all.

I agree, it wasn't coincedence, and Chamberlain was, in large part, trying to avoid the mistakes that led to WWI.

It's a bit of nasty irony. WWI probably was unnecessary, and could and should have been avoided through diplomacy, but wasn't, WWII was necessary, but many people were harmed in the time it took in diplomatic efforts to be certain of that necessity.

Technomad wrote: The thing is---Neville Chamberlain was not just bending over and greasing up. He was playing for time---the UK in the 1930s was by no means ready for another war (they were still recovering from the last one, and the Depression hadn't helped any) and if they'd gone to war over Czechoslovakia, they'd have made a sorry spectacle of themselves.

That too - he was doing both, trying to avoid war entirely, and trying to avoid war at a time and in a place where he knew a war would be hopeless for his side. Starting the European half of WWII and having the non-German side loosing would have been disaster.

If Hitler had the sense not to invade Poland, quite likely Chamberlain would be looked at as a wise and reasonable diplomat, one who avoided a repeat of WWI.

Looking back what we know about WWII, and how greatly its horrors exceeded WWI, even leaving out the atrocities of the Holocost, we'd say that Chamberlain, if he succeeded would be a humanitarian geneus. Factoring in the Holocost, where most of the atrocities were directed at people left outside Hitler's control after Munich, and the worst was perpetrated only after the stresses of war created a sense of urgency in the Nazi regime , we'd see that greatly reduced, as well.

[Lurker]

Michelle,

I'd like to note that Hitler's rise of power was not by no means determined by the result of WWI. You might say that Weimar Republic was doomed from the start, but the rise of Hitler was more of a quirk of history. After all, almost all Central and Eastern European countries (excepting Chechoslovakia and Finland) stooped to different types of right-wing dictatorships. This was quite bound to happen in Germany, too. This is why Hitler was a respectable negotiation partner: most national leaders in Europe were dictators. However, the other dictators were not nearly as aggressive as Hitler. Even the Soviet Union, headed by madman Stalin, was playing by the rules of traditional diplomacy in 1930's.

After all, with better luck, it might have been the Stahlhelm or some other right-wing extremist block instead of NSDAP that got the power in Germany. Then, Germany would have had a usual run-of-the-mill dictator like Pilsudski, Päts or Horthy. With such a man, negotiation would have been possible. Chamberlain had no way of knowing Hitler was a madman.

[Tonio]

the Wehrmacht in 1938 was much weaker than in 1939

William Shirer's memoir "The Nightmare Years" excoriates the British and French leadership during those years. Shirer argued that the Wehrmacht's weakness was so great the two nations could have stopped Hitler easily. He said that when Germany reoccupied the Rhineland, it had provided for only one defense strategy in case the nations tried to enforce the Versailles Treaty - quick retreat. But from my reading, Shirer wasn't taking the Macho Sue approach with Munich.

[Don]

Having -- finally -- finished reading the last book I recall you recommending (War is a Force That Gives Us Meaning), I have a better understanding of the risk of an overstated threat. Once things have reached a point where there is a them, it is much easier to view them as a threat. If the threat is already accepted, it's ever so much easier to overstate it.

[twig]

a single person is capable of being remarkably reasonable about one matter while wearing tremendous blinders as to another. I have met religious people who were extremely intelligent and rational about anything until you asked why they believed something, at which point they would retreat behind "faith" as if reason didn't matter.

I don't want to send the entire conversation thread off topic, but I don't think this is really fair, to try to make an analogy between irrationality about war and supposed irrationality about faith. The difference between a person irrationally arguing for a war that will kill thousands or millions of people and a person who just can't put into words where their faith comes from are really two different things.

[Tonio]

The difference between a person irrationally arguing for a war that will kill thousands or millions of people and a person who just can't put into words where their faith comes from are really two different things.

The first person probably doesn't know that his stance is irrational one. His stance may be driven from a belief about humanity or an emotional issue, and he may not be aware of this or he simply refuses to question the basis for the belief or issue.

For the second person, I can only guess from looking at the outside. Maybe the distinction between believers like Fred and believers like James Dobson is simply one of self-awareness - perhaps the former recognize that they cannot explain where their faith comes from. Would that be accurate or fair?

[Tonio]

I love the way that Ray Bradbury's "A Sound of Thunder" criticizes the Macho Sue mentality.

[hapax]

an analogy between irrationality about war and supposed irrationality about faith.

As both a pacifist and an irrational faith-monger, I didn't read Michelle's comment that way at all. Just as I can accept that a person can rationally support the necessity of organized armed violence, so long as they begin with different premises than I do, so I must sadly recognize many devoutly religious people will blindly support conclusions that contradict the premises of their sincere faith, because they have a greater emotional investment in those conclusions than in the premises.

[hapax]

Oh, as I should make clear -- I do not use the word "rational" to mean "empirically demonstrable", but in the original sense of "reasoned logically from the stated premise."

It is only in this way that religious faith (or foreign policy) can be either rational or irrational.

[Ian]

Technomad, Ursula, I have to disagree -- Chamberlain's policy was very unwise, even without the benefit of hindsight.

First, it seems quite possible, IMHO, that Chamberlain really did think that he had secured "peace in our time." At least, at the end of that round of negotiations he was publicly very proud of the peace deal he'd hammered out, a rather silly and reputation destroying thing to do if he secretly expected a war.

Second, if Chamberlain was playing for time, he did so quite badly. As Tonio was saying, even if Britain was ill prepared, its ally France had its big, clumsy military together while at the same time Germany was quite weak -- remember that Germany'd been demilitarized not long prior to the war. Once Hitler'd gobbled up the rest of Czechoslovakia in violation of his agreement with Chamberlain, he was able to rearm Germany much faster than he otherwise could have. The Czechs had a very strong munitions industry, including the Krupp Arms Works which was deservingly famous for making both the best artillery in the world and cutting-edge tanks...

"Peace in our time" also accelerated Germany's preparations for war by getting the competent little Czech army out of the way. Who knows, simultaneously fighting on three fronts (Western, Polish, Czech) might have slowed down the blitz, reduced the fear of German invincibility, and maybe ameliorated the panic which led to the collapse of the French military.

/war nerd

The problem with Chamberlain is not that he was an appeaser but that he was a credulous appeaser -- he gave up a huge military concession in exchange for empty words. He might rightly have expected Germany to behave like other, saner dictatorships, but he should not have given away the store. Chamberlain gave a very good diplomatic strategy a bad name.

---------------------------

Note: "peace in our time" is a phrase from the Anglican liturgy: "give peace in our time O Lord, and evermore mightily defend us."

[twig]

Maybe the distinction between believers like Fred and believers like James Dobson is simply one of self-awareness

Self-awareness is good. Hapax is probably right, that I misinterpreted the original point, but self-awareness isn't a bad conclusion. The ability to recognize that ones own personal experiences and beliefs aren't solely enough information to go out and tell the rest of the world how to live. Humility, in a way.

Also, whoever it was who reccommended Gjetost (the 'cheese fudge') a while back - it's fantastic. Thanks.

[Tonio]

The Czechs had a very strong munitions industry

I didn't know that. I wondered for a second if Hitler's talk about unifying the German peoples was really a pretense for seizing the munitions industry. But that would presume that Hitler wasn't a madman.

[Ursula L]

Ian,

Your points are still mostly hindsight and speculation - not certainty, at the time, that Chamberlain was wrong.

Britain and France were unprepared. So was Germany. Which was better prepared isn't clear, particularly since, at that time, a war would have meant invading Germany, and fighting on German soil, with all the problems that come with trying to be the aggressor in an invasion, and a populace that resents the occupiers. "Better prepared" is not the same as well enough prepared to do the job, as the US has discovered in Iraq.

That Hitler would continue to militarize, that he would take the rest of Czechoslovakia, are all matters of hindsight.

As for the French army breaking down - that had as much or more to do with the legacy of WWI, with its insane charges over the top, the years of trench warfare, etc. There is no reason to believe that the memory of that horror would have been less powerful several years closer to the fact. From Chamberlain's perspective he had to remember that the French army had already pretty much collapsed by the end of WWI, with soldiers actively refusing orders to attack. The collective social trauma was sufficent that you couldn't expect the French to put up a significant fighting effort.

[Ursula L]

Thoughts I forgot to add to the last post:

The French army was not Chamberlain's to commit. I'm not sure it would have been possible to persuade the French to start a war at that time - and without their willingness, any agressive inclination by Britain towards Germany was impossible.

There was no way for Britain, alone, to engage Germany without going through another nation. A focused, narrow war, just to protect Czechoslovakia, may have been politically feasible, and morally justified, at that point, but it would have been utterly impossible for Britain to, on its own, reach it. (The equivalent of driving Iraq out of Kuwait.) General war with Germany was both politically more difficult to swallow, and harder to morally justify.

I wondered for a second if Hitler's talk about unifying the German peoples was really a pretense for seizing the munitions industry. But that would presume that Hitler wasn't a madman.

"Madman" isn't a synonym for "idiot;" contemporaries and biographers alike agree that Hitler was highy intelligent, but uneducated and prone to superstition and paranoia.

That said, the talk of unifying the German people and restoring Germany to glory and world-power status was no pretense, but the choice to go after the Sudetenland first and the Polish corridor later may have been motivated by a desire to capture the munitions industry.

[Lauren]

That would have been me @ 12:40

[J]

...annihilate Fredonia

But some of my friends went to school there!

[J]

Oh and something else: If we're going to talk about Hitler, may I humbly offer the resource I have been helping, as an employee of the Cornell University Law Library, to build for the past couple of months: the Donovan Nuremburg Trials Collection: Digital scans, indexed, of General William Donovan's papers during his stint as prosecutor at Nuremburg.

[Caravelle]

As for the French army breaking down - that had as much or more to do with the legacy of WWI, with its insane charges over the top, the years of trench warfare, etc. There is no reason to believe that the memory of that horror would have been less powerful several years closer to the fact.

From what I understood, a big big problem with the French army was (as usual I want to say) being very prepared for the previous war. Which in this case meant heavily fortifying the Franco-German border. Except that the Germans completely bypassed that by going through Belgium.
I don't know what that implies for a what-if situation where France and Britain had attacked a few years earlier, but it's possible that if they had been on the offensive this kind of manoeuver wouldn't have been possible, or as surprising.

[Richard Hershberger]

Regarding the question of "are these people [involing Chamberlain] lying?" I think the answer is clearly yes. But the next question is who are they lying to? The answer often is that they are lying to themselves. These people are far more dangerous. They are the ones who can stick a shiv through your kidney while telling themselves they are doing it for your own good.

An honest liar is willing to sacrifice truth in the pursuit of his goal, but he is simply using truth and untruth as tools. This leaves open the possibility of negotiation (with verification and enforcement). A self-liar is far harder to deal with. There is no common ground for communication or negotiation, since his internal reality is disconnected from external reality.

[jamoche]

Czechoslovakia also had the most convenient uranium mines, which contributed to the worry that the Germans might have a viable nuclear program even though they'd driven off most of the top scientists.

[danAlwyn]

I don't usually comment, but I have to say I disagree with Ian's analysis and agree with Ursula's on a purely practical level, in that Britain may not have been ready to protect its own shores in May of 1938. Chamberlain did quite well in the time he bought, and with what he had.

Between the final resolution of the Czech crisis in Sep 1938, and Germany's starting of the war a year later, a lot changed for Britain. The Supermarine Spitfire, first introduced into active service in June 1938, following the introduction of the Hawker Hurricane in December of 1937. These fighters were available in paltry numbers in May when the decision to negotiate was doubtless made, but by January of 1939, the RAF had swelled to 135 squadrons of active aircraft. The Chain Home radar system went online in September of 1938 and provided the cornerstone for the RAF's defense of Britain. The Ark Royal finished fitting out in late 1938. The first of the King George V battleships had been launched, even if they had not yet been commissioned. The Town class cruisers began to come into use. Barrage balloons were deployed. The Territorial Army doubled in size following Munich, along with the framework of its support services. War production had been diversified (the Bromwich Spitfire factory was completed in late 1939).

This allowed Britain to defend themselves from a German force that was already distressingly superior. The German's main fighter aircraft, the Bf 109, had already entered service before the Munich crisis, and had seen action in the Spanish Civil War. The German bomber fleet had been tested there too, and the RAF was worried that they would not be able to protect Britain. The intervening year did see the production of more German fighters and bombers. However, the gains in German naval strength increased a rate commensurate to the British, and the British increased their strength in modern fighters from essentially zero to a formidable force. I would say that on a strictly Britain vs. Germany level, Britain gained in ability to defend Britain against German air and sea attack between 1938 and 1939 by perhaps a decisive amount.

Just my two cents though.

[The Navigator]

One thing to remember in debates with knee-jerk pro-war interlocutors is that with "appeasement," just as with abortion, gay rights, any number of issues, it's not a question of heading down a slippery slope to a bad end - we're (almost) always on the slippery slope already. We're currently "appeasing" North Korea, for instance. Utterly unlike Iraq, North Korea has been actively and recently engaged in a serious way in global nuclear proliferation, e.g. A. Q. Khan's network in Pakistan, the Syrian plant that Israel attacked. North Korea is, in just about every way, the evil nation AND global threat that Bush tried to argue Saddam was. Yet, we have not invaded North Korea - in fact, we're negotiating with them.

Likewise, we have not invaded Saudi Arabia, or Sudan, or Burma, or China, or Syria, or Pakistan, or any other nation that has caused us problems. Rather, we have tried to deal with those nations by talking, and in several cases, have explicitly refrained from taking a maximalist position and thus either directly or indirectly allowed those countries to do things we would like them not to do. Thus, if appeasement has any of the meaning that the right is trying to ascribe to it, we are presently appeasing a whole host of countries.

Apologies if this point was made above - I didn't have time to read the whole thread.

[hapax]

I just have to congratulate everyone involved in a serious and thoughtful discussion on an internet thread that repeatedly invokes Hitler in relevant, pertinent, and constructive ways.

And on a Thursday, no less!

"Madman" isn't a synonym for "idiot"...the choice to go after the Sudetenland first and the Polish corridor later may have been motivated by a desire to capture the munitions industry.

I agree. My point about Hitler's madness had to do with his goal of unification, not with the logic of his strategy for trying to achieve it. I was suggesting that if Hitler wasn't mad, he may have pursued the munitions for their own sake and used the unification idea as a propaganda tool, in an almost Bismarckian approach.

[Hawker Hurricane]

Caravelle: preparing for the last war fought is something every nation does. You learn what was done right, what was done wrong, and adjust. The fortifications on the German border the French built (Maginot Line) was dedicated to forcing any German attack on France to march through Belgium, thereby guarenteeing the support of the Belgians and the French. It worked. As fortifications go, they were successful.
The problem in France and Britain in 1936-39 was a political problem: the people didn't want war, and elected governments who promised to avoid it. Chamberlains actions at Munich was a mix of wishful thinking and buying time... "We'll give him what he wants and he'll stop, BUT if he doesn't we'll have our Air Force and (then secret) radar defenses up to protect our cities from devastation!"
(danAlwin covered this very well, but I refuse to delete! I will post this!)

[Caravelle]

@Hawker Hurricane : hey, it seems you're right. Funny that my high school teachers got that wrong, unless I got that idea somewhere else.