Tag: Munich Crisis

Churchill, Ripka, Appeasement and the Czech Debacle

Churchill, Ripka, Appeasement and the Czech Debacle

When Ripka said the Czechs would defend themselves, Churchill waxed emotional: “Tomáš.Masaryk was right,” he cried. “Death is better than slavery.” If war did come, he continued, mopping his eyes, this time they must wage it against the Boche so thoroughly that he wouldn’t recover for generations.... After a while he spoke of “Herr Beans,” as he pronounced the name of Czechoslovakia’s president, Edvard Beneš, Ripka continued: "Churchill called him one of the greatest men of our epoch, and praised the resolution of the Czechs to fight for freedom with such vehemence that he began to cry all over again."

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“Munich, The Edge of War,” with Jeremy Irons: Fine Acting, Edgy History

“Munich, The Edge of War,” with Jeremy Irons: Fine Acting, Edgy History

Regardless of whether you like the movie—and Jeremy Irons gives it an authentic, watchable flavor—we know much more about Munich in the light of scholarship since. We know that Soviet Russia was prepared to stand with Czechoslovakia in 1938, and had become a German ally in 1939. We know how—with the help of Czech armaments—Poland was eradicated in three weeks, the Low Countries in eighteen days, France in six weeks. If resisting Hitler was so ludicrous an idea in 1938, what was there about fighting him in 1939-40 that made it preferable? Given what we know, we are obliged to consider Churchill’s opinion—which was, characteristically, far from baseless.

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Munich Reflections: Peace for “a” Time & the Case for Resistance

Munich Reflections: Peace for “a” Time & the Case for Resistance

Jour­nal­ist Leo McKinstry’s Churchill and Attlee is a deft analy­sis of a polit­i­cal odd cou­ple who led Britain’s Sec­ond World War coali­tion gov­ern­ment. Now, eighty years since the death of Neville Cham­ber­lain, he has pub­lished an excel­lent appraisal in The Spec­ta­tor. Churchill’s pre­de­ces­sor as Prime Min­is­ter, Cham­ber­lain nego­ti­at­ed the 1938 Munich agree­ment. “Peace for our time,” he famous­ly referred to it.  In the end, he bought the world peace for a time.

Mr. McK­instry is right to regret that Cham­ber­lain has been rough­ly han­dled by his­to­ry. “The real­i­ty is that in the late 1930s Chamberlain’s approach was a ratio­nal one,” he writes.…

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