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The conference at Munich was meant to mark the beginning of an epoch in European affairs. "Versailles" — the system of 1919 — was not only dead, but buried. A new system, based on equality and mutual confidence between the four great European Powers, was to take its place. Chamberlain said: "I believe that it is peace for our time"; Hitler declared: "I have no more territorial demands to make in Europe". There were still great questions to be settled in international affairs. The Spanish civil war was not over. Germany had not recovered her colonies. More remotely, agreements would have to be reached over economic policy and over armaments, before stability was restored in Europe. None of these questions threatened to provoke a general war. The demonstration had been given that Germany could attain by peaceful negotiation the position in Europe to which her resources entitled her. The great hurdle had been successfully surmounted: the system, directed against Germany, had been dismantled by agreement, without a war. Yet, within six months, a new system was being constructed against Germany. Within a year, Great Britain, France, and Germany were at war. Was "Munich" a fraud from the start — for Germany merely a stage in the march towards world conquest, or, on the side of Great Britain and France, merely a device to buy time until their re-armament was more advanced? So it appeared in retrospect. When the policy of Munich failed, everyone announced that he had expected it to fail; and the participants not only accused the others of cheating, but boasted that they had been cheating themselves. In fact, no one was as clear-sighted as he later claimed to have been; and the four men of Munich were all in their different ways sincere, though each had reserves which he concealed from the others.

The French yielded most, and with least hope for the future. They surrendered the position of paramount European power which they had appeared to enjoy since 1919. But what they surrendered was artificial. They yielded to reality rather than to force. They had supposed all along that the advantages won in 1919 and subsequently — the restrictions on Germany and the alliances with East European states — were assets which they could supinely enjoy, not gains which they must fiercely defend. They did not lift a finger to assert the system of Versailles after the occupation of the Ruhr in 1923. They abandoned reparations; they acquiesced in the re-armament of Germany; they allowed the German re-occupation of the Rhineland; they did nothing to protect the independence of Austria. They kept up their alliances in Eastern Europe only from the belief that these would bring them aid if ever they were themselves attacked by Germany. They abandoned their ally, Czechoslovakia, the moment she threatened to bring them risk instead of security. Munich was the logical culmination of French policy, not its reversal. The French recognized that they had lost their predominance in Eastern Europe, and knew that it could not be restored. This is far from saying that they feared for themselves. On the contrary, they accepted the British thesis, preached ever since Locarno, that they were in less danger of war if they withdrew

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behind the Rhine. They had preferred safety to grandeur — an ignoble policy perhaps, but not a dangerous one. Even in 1938, though they feared air bombardment, they did not fear defeat if war were thrust upon them. Gamelin was always emphatic that the democratic powers would win; and the politicians believed him. But what would be the point of war? This was the argument which had prevented French action since 1923, and which prevented it now. Germany, even if defeated, would still be there, great, powerful, determined on redress. War might stop the clock. It could not put it back; and afterwards events would move forward to the same end. The French were therefore willing to surrender everything except their own security, and they did not believe that they had surrendered this at Munich. They had a firm and, as it turned out a well- founded, faith that the Maginot line was impregnable — so much so that they regarded the Siegfried line, less correctly, as impregnable also. They assumed that a stalemate had been established in Western Europe. They could not impede the advance of German power in Eastern Europe; equally Germany could not invade France. The French were humiliated by Munich, not — as they supposed — endangered.

The British position was more complicated. Morality did not enter French calculations, or entered only to be discarded. The French recognized that it was their duty to assist Czechoslovakia; they rejected this duty as either too dangerous or too difficult. Leon Blum expressed French feeling best when he welcomed the agreement of Munich with a mixture of shame and relief. With the British, on the other hand, morality counted for a great deal. The British statesmen used practical arguments: the danger from air attack; the backwardness of their re- armament; the impossibility, even if adequately armed, of helping Czechoslovakia. But these arguments were used to reinforce morality, not to silence it. British policy over Czechoslovakia originated in the belief that Germany had a moral right to the Sudeten German territory, on grounds of national principle; and it drew the further corollary that this victory for self-determination would provide a stabler, more permanent peace in Europe. The British government were not driven to acknowledge the dismemberment of Czechoslovakia solely from fear of war. They deliberately set out to impose this cession of territory on the Czechs before the threat of war raised its head. The settlement at Munich was a triumph for British policy, which had worked precisely to this end; not a triumph for Hitler, who had started with no such clear intention. Nor was it merely a triumph for selfish or cynical British statesmen, indifferent to the fate of far-off peoples or calculating that Hitler might be launched into war against Soviet Russia. It was a triumph for all that was best and most enlightened in British life; a triumph for those who had preached equal justice between peoples; a triumph for those who had courageously denounced the harshness and shortsightedness of Versailles. Brailsford, the leading Socialist authority on foreign affairs, wrote in 1920 of the peace settlement: "The worse offense was the subjection of over three million Germans to Czech rule". This was the offense redressed at Munich. Idealists could claim that British policy had been tardy and hesitant. In 1938 it atoned for these failings. With skill and persistence, Chamberlain brought first the French, and then the Czechs, to follow the moral line. There was a case against ceding Sudeten

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territory to Germany — the case that economic and geographic ties are more important than those of nationality. This had been the case against breaking up the Habsburg Monarchy; the Czechs who had taken the lead in breaking up the Monarchy could not use this argument, nor could their advocates in Western Europe. The dispute had to be transferred from the field of morality to that of practical considerations — to what is disapprovingly called realpolitik. The most outspoken opponents of Munich, such as Winston Churchill, asserted quite simply that Germany was becoming too powerful in Europe and that she must be stopped by the threat of a great coalition or, if necessary, by force of arms. Self-determination — the principle to which Czechoslovakia owed her existence — was dismissed as a sham. The only moral argument used was that the frontiers of existing states were sacred and that each state could behave as it liked within its own borders. This was the argument of legitimacy; the argument of Metternich and the Congress of Vienna. If accepted, it would have forbidden not only the break- up of the Habsburg Monarchy, but even the winning of independence by the British colonies in America. It was a strange argument for the British Left to use in 1938; and it sat uneasily upon them — hence the hesitations and ineffectiveness of their criticism. Duff Cooper, First Lord of the Admiralty, had no such doubts when he resigned in protest against the Munich settlement. As became an admiring biographer of Talleyrand, he was concerned with the Balance of Power and British honor, not with self-determination or the injustices of Versailles. For him, Czechoslovakia had no more been the real issue in 1938 than Belgium had been in 1914. This argument destroyed the moral validity of the British position in the first World war, but it had an appeal for the Conservative majority in the House of Commons. Chamberlain had to answer it in its own terms of power. He could not stress the unwillingness of the French to fight, which had been the really decisive weakness on the Western side. Therefore he had to make out that Great Britain herself was in no position to fight Germany.

Chamberlain was caught by his own argument. If Great Britain had been too weak to fight, then the government must speed rearmament; and this involved doubt in Hitler's good faith, whether avowed or not. In this way, Chamberlain did more than anyone else to destroy the case for his own policy. Moreover, one suspicion breeds another. It is doubtful whether Hitler ever took Chamberlain's sincerity seriously before Munich; it is certain that he did not do so a few days afterwards. What was meant as appeasement had turned into capitulation, on Chamberlain's own showing. Hitler drew the lesson that threats were his most potent weapon. The temptation to boast of Munich as a triumph of force was too great to be resisted. Hitler no longer expected to make gains by parading his grievances against Versailles; he expected to make them by playing on British and French fears. Thus he confirmed the suspicions of those who attacked Munich as a craven surrender. International morality was at a discount. Paradoxically, Benes was the true victor of Munich in the long run. For, while Czechoslovakia lost territory and later her independence also, Hitler lost the moral advantage which had hitherto made him irresistible. Munich became an emotive word, a symbol of shame, about which men can still not speak dispassionately. What

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was done at Munich mattered less than the way in which it was done; and what was said about it afterwards on both side's counted for still more.

There had been two empty chairs at Munich, or rather chairs were not provided for two Great Powers, though each had claims to an invitation. President Roosevelt, at the height of the crisis, urged a meeting in some neutral capital. He did not indicate whether an American representative would attend; and in any case "the Government of the United States . . . will assume no obligations in the conduct of the present negotiations". Roosevelt applauded Chamberlain on the news of the Munich conference: "Good man". Afterwards, when appeasement turned sour, the Americans rejoiced that they had not been at Munich. They could condemn the British and French for doing what they themselves would have done in their place. Lack of American support had helped towards making the "democratic" powers give way. Yet Americans drew from Munich the moral that they should support these feeble powers still less. Roosevelt, entangled in troubles over domestic policy, had no mind to add to his difficulties by provoking controversy over foreign affairs. Europe could go on its way without America.

The Russians had been more precise in their plan for a conference. They had wanted a meeting of the "peace- loving Powers" to co-ordinate resistance against the aggressor. They, too, could assume an attitude of moral superiority. Parading their own loyalty to treaty obligations, they laid all the blame on French weakness. One Soviet diplomatist said on 30 September: "We nearly put our foot on a rotten plank. Now we are going elsewhere." Potyomkin, the assistant commissar, made the meaning of this clear when he said to Coulondre: "My poor friend, what have you done? For us I see no other way out than a fourth partition of Poland." The Russians professed to have no fears for their own security. Litvinov told Coulondre: "Hitler will be able to attack Great Britain or the U.S.S.R. He will choose the first solution, .... and to carry this enterprise through successfully he will prefer to reach an understanding with the U.S.S.R." Inwardly the Russians were less confident. No approach came from Hitler; instead the claim that he had saved Europe from Bolshevism. Ingenious observers expected Hitler's next move to be into the Ukraine — a move expected by Western statesmen with some pleasure, by Soviet statesmen with dread. The Soviet rulers would have liked to isolate themselves from Europe; but they were by no means sure that Europe would isolate itself from them. Hence, after a short period of recrimination, they had to renew the call for a Popular Front and for collective security against aggression. It is hard to believe that they expected this policy to succeed.

Everyone talked of Hitler's next move in one direction or another. The man who talked, and apparently thought, of it least was Hitler himself. The precise timetable attributed to him by many writers — Munich in September 1938, Prague in March 1939, Danzig in September rests on no contemporary evidence. After his dazzling success at Munich, Hitler returned to the Berghof, where he spent his time drawing dream-plans for the rebuilding of Linz, the Austrian town where he went to school. Occasionally he grumbled at being denied a war

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against Czechoslovakia. But men must be judged by what they do, not by what they say afterwards. Once more he waited for events to provide him with future success. The military leaders sought a directive for their next activities. Hitler replied on 21 October: "The Wehrmacht must at all times be prepared for the following: (i) securing the frontiers of the German Reich and protection against surprise air attacks, (ii) Liquidation of the remainder of the Czech state". These were measures of precaution, not plans for aggression. The continuation of the directive makes this clear: "It must be possible to smash the remainder of the Czech state, should it pursue an anti-German policy". On 17 December the Wehrmacht was told: "Outwardly it must be quite clear that it is only a peaceful action and not a warlike undertaking". These directives have often been quoted as proof that Hitler was never sincere in accepting the Munich settlement. The truth is rather that Hitler doubted whether the settlement would work. Though often regarded as politically ignorant, he understood better than other European statesmen the problem of Bohemia; and believed, without sinister intention, that independent Czechoslovakia could not survive, when deprived of her natural frontiers and with Czech prestige broken. This was not a wish for Czechoslovakia's destruction. It was a belief held also by Masaryk and Benes, when they created Czechoslovakia in 1918; it was the principle on which Czechoslovak independence had rested from first to last.

If Czechoslovakia fell to pieces, what should take its place? At Godesberg, during the Czech crisis, Hitler had favored a lavish distribution of Czechoslovak territory to Hungary and Poland, as a reward for their taking the initiative. Afterwards he changed his mind. Both countries had held back until the crisis was almost over; both obviously still hoped to play with both sides. He told a Hungarian representative on 14 October: "I am not annoyed with Hungary, but she has missed the bus". A subservient Czechoslovakia now seemed preferable to him. Hitler was a rational, though no doubt a wicked, statesman. His object was the steady extension of German power, not theatrical displays of glory. For this purpose, satellites were more useful than the direct annexation of territory; and he accumulated satellites with great patience. They were a different version of his favorite method by which others did his work for him. Immediately after Munich, the German representatives on the International Commission applied the rules, fabricated by themselves, so ruthlessly in favor of the Sudetens that Czechoslovakia actually lost more territory than she would have done under the demands made at Godesberg. It was another story when Ribbentrop and Ciano met at Vienna to settle the new frontier between Hungary and Czechoslovakia. Ciano had the characteristically subtle and futile idea of building up Hungary as a barrier against Germany. Ribbentrop saw through this policy at once, and backed the Slovak case so strongly that Ciano complained: "You are now using in favor of Czechoslovakia all the arguments you used against her in September". The Slovaks were a new element in Hitler's calculations: free both from the Czech devotion to democracy, and from the Hungarian illusions of greatness. "He regretted that he had not known earlier of the Slovak struggle for independence." It is often held that Hitler favored Slovakia as a route for invading the Ukraine. Geography really made this as impracticable as the reverse idea that Soviet Russia could threaten

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Germany through Czechoslovakia. Hitler backed Slovakia for her own sake — a steady, reliable satellite, as she proved to be throughout the second World war.