I find it a pity, that now, 80 years later, there is almost not a single line in the press about this chapter of British politics....."How horrible, fantastic, incredible it is that we should be digging trenches and trying on gas-masks here because of a quarrel in a far away country (Czechoslovakia) between people of whom we know nothing." "if we have to fight ,it must be on larger issues than that" Remark of Churchill after Chamberlain signed with Hitler the Munich Pact “You were given the choice between war and dishonour. You chose dishonour, and you will have war.”
That's just a clever phrase .If NC got ''dishonour'' it came from the pen of Churcrhill 9who enjoyed war{ and wrote its history} almost as much as …...you know who
@@sandrastarlights indeed, a clever phrase, and the quote from NC is a crisis speech, government does not relate its thoughts to the public and it is relatively pointless quoting official statements, not least the word appeasement!
@@theodorefweitzenbaumsr.4061 Yeah sure let's just ignore the millions who died during WW1, because my name is Theodore and I read a twitter post 5 min ago
@@LeBaron101 Is the potentiality of millions of deaths to destroy fascism of greater misery than the millions that could be caused by fascism? I think not. We should purge fascism with tantalising terror wherever we find it. Not try to reconcile with it.
As a Czech, it's still insulting how they turned back on us. We had a treaty! But why help those who in need when being so small. We have this saying about these talk "About us, without us" cause they didn't even let our representatives to the debate, they just told us F u, welkomen to the third Reich.
A nation such as yours needs to be accountable. Make a military large enough to defend yourself. We shouldn't have to be dragged into your conflict. This agreement didn't give Germany land, it just said Britain wouldn't fight Germany for it. It could have stopped WW2, The holocaust and some of the soviet's domination over east Europe. It was worth a try considering no one had tried it before.
"Apparently a united front had been formed against Hitler’s aggression-but only apparently. Mr. Chamberlain was already beginning to undermine the unity and resolution of this front, and he now received considerable assistance from Bonnet in Paris. This culminated on September 27th when he made a speech on the radio in which he said, “How horrible, fantastic, incredible it is that we should be digging trenches and trying on gas masks here because of a quarrel in a far-away country between people of whom we know nothing . . . a quarrel that has already been settled in principle. . . .” The same day he sent a telegram to Benes that if he did not accept the German demands by 2:00 P.M. the following day (September 28th) Czechoslovakia would be overrun by the German Army, and nothing could save it. This was immediately followed by another message that in such a case Czechoslovakia could not be reconstituted in its frontiers whatever the outcome of the war. Lastly, he sent another note to Hitler. In this he suggested a four-Power conference, and guaranteed that France and Britain would force Czechoslovakia to carry out any agreement if Hitler would only abstain from going to war." [Carroll Quigley] Tragedy and Hope, p. 402
my mum said Chamberlain was supposedly a nice man, but he was weak and he was a doormat to Hitler, and others say he was good domestically, but one thing can be said about him. He just wasn't the man to fight Hitler
Avoiding WW2 would have been quite an achievement indeed. In the end, both Britain and Germany lost. They were each better served by peace. Chamberlain had the foresight and intellect to understand this. Regrettably, the leaders of this time came up short in negotations, in willpower, in imagination, and in humanity. The end result was the war that killed millions and dethroned Europe. WW2 was an abomination that should never have happened, it was far from inevitable.
You're quite correct, PF. Obviously, there was no "avoiding WW2" because Hitler was determined to have his war. Unfortunately, unlike Churchill, Chamberlain lacked the insight & intellect to understand this. No matter how many times Hitler showed/told the world what he was, Chamberlain obstinately refused to believe him. The result was appeasement & war.
@@commonwealthy9384opines: *"In the end, both Britain and Germany lost."* Yet it was Germany that surrendered, leaving Britain to occupy a large swath of Germany. Unfortunately, Hitler wasn't interested in peace nor negotiation, but conquest - thus making ww2 inevitable.
Indeed, he was merely the British Empire, the United States, and other peoples of course, and even Winston himself - who he put in power when he, NC, had to become a National Government too. He just wasn't the man to boast of it.
Your comment makes no sense,@@robertewing3114. Chamberlain was decidedly *NOT* "the United States", nor was he even "the British Empire". He was merely a weak politician, who remains an example of how *not* to respond when confronted by a warmonger despot.
chamberlain was reflecting the attitude of a majority of the british and the french people. after this their attitude changed but [relatively] powerful czechoslovakia was out of the alliance and the ussr knew they couldn't count on the british and the french. should have reoccupied the rhineland in 1936. a right that was won in 1918 at the cost of millions of dead. no more noise with the french in cologne and dortmund, no ww2 3 years later.
What’s so tragic is how soon he died after the events of 1938-1940. He died with all assumptions that Great Britain was about to get steamrolled by the man who gave his word not to ever do.
According to Quigley this was never a real worry. Chamberlain and his associates purposefully overstated the German threat in order to force Czechoslovakia to submit to Hitler's demands and thus to ultimately make possible Britain's wider plans for Europe.
The Munich Agreement never failed. It was Chamberlain's decision to form an unworkable pact with Poland after it had invaded Czechoslovakia in 1938-39 that led to World War II. He should have pressured the anti-Semitic fascist regime in Warsaw more heavily to allow a referendum on Danzig.
There was a powerful desire to avoid war at all costs after the losses of WW1 but it was a grave miscalculation of Hitler who's territorial ambitions were fairly obvious by then
@historicrecord it wasn't Hitler or any German soldiers that started butchering German minorities inside Poland, starting in July 1939 was it? 1000's of innocent German victims of brutality by press-enraged mobs and Polish militia. If you were the leader of a big country and some of your helpless civilians were under attack, would you stand idly by? Or would you take action to stop it?
How much do you get paid to spew Na zi propaganda,@@Smudgeroon74? There wasn't *ANYONE* "butchering German minorities in Poland" but German (and Russian) soldiers butchering Poles in Poland starting in September 1939. Even at the time, it was obvious to the entire world that Hitler's phony pretext for war was a sham.
Your disgraceful lies fooled no one in 1939, and they still don't,@@Smudgeroon74. Poland was attacked by Hitler & Stalin in a conspiracy to steal Poland and its helpless civilians, and divide the booty between themselves.
@@Smudgeroon74Then the German government should have made it possible for those "Germans" to emigrate back to Germany, I mean after all they were in a foreign country, that doesn't give Germany the right to invade a sovereign country and occupy it now does it. And once Germany invaded Poland they didn't go after the Poles, they went after the Jews immediately. So was it really a matter of Germans being harmed, and it's a fact that the numbers of Germans being attacked was small in comparison to the 3.5 million Jews of Poland that the Germans slaughtered.
This courageous man spoke sense in a time of insanity. Eternal thanks must be given to Churchill the warmonger though, for making us loose our Empire and destroy a European neighbour.
Coward Chamberlain sold out the people of Czechoslovakia, and presumably would've surrendered England to Germany without a shot fired, had he not been replaced by war-winner Churchill. Germany destroyed itself.
@rannonlyons6338 in case you aren't fully informed, the Sudetenland Germans were experiencing discrimination and persecution by the authorities in Prague. The Czech president, Benes, was a communist sympathiser and he was more interested in having cordial diplomatic relations with Britain and the Soviet Union, than he was with his nearest neighbour. The boundary that encompassed Czechoslovakia's territory when it was formed as a new country after the Treaty of Versailles in 1919, were formed in such a way that it trapped over 3 million ethnic Germans inside Czech territory. This was the Sudetanland that wanted to join up with Germany.
@@Smudgeroon74 The sudetenland always belonged to the Czechs. I am not saying that you're not right. What happened in the sudetenland was not at all good persecution by authorities and discrimination had indeed existed however the Czechoslovak government at least said that it did happen even tho they could hide it. Now obviously this doesn't make what happened in the Sudetenland better but it's one of the many differences between Putin and the Czechoslovak goverment at the time. But what happened during WW2 was much MUCH worse. Not gonna lie. I personally think the government that came after Masaryk was horrendous. But I think it was better for us to forge good relations with the Soviets, British and French than to become an another member of the Axis.
I don’t find criticizing chamberlain for trying to avoid war. Britain was not ready anyways. A clear conscience is needed when one is driven to war, as it should be. All that could be done was. All human communication is burdened by thoughts of how sincere someone is to the other.
@@MrDaiseymay Are you saying that the combined forces of the UK, France, Czechoslovakia and the Soviet Union would loose against Hitler who's own military personnel was about to overthrow but didn't because he signed the Munich agreement?
@@ItsLunaRegina Maybe because "in the end" the Wermacht was a lot more built up. You cannot take a scenario from before the war and apply it to the end. It's a whole different story then. Because the around 13 million soldiers in the Axis are a lot more than the 2 million in Germany in 1938.
@@lampionmancz You miss the point entirely. You think Britain wasn't struggling a bit too? Great depression, horrors ofww1 still in collective's mind, the decay showing in the seams of the British empire with the realization that war like that would hasten the decay. Tons of variables to consider and not only that, you seem to forget that you and I have the gift of retrospection at this point. Everyone involved back then did not.
Historically there are two significant things said in this speech, firstly the bluff that the whole British empire was potentially willing to fight for Czechoslovakia, secondly the concept that Hitlers unreasonableness could be interpreted as an intention to bully and fight his way to world domination. The public are slow to learn what a political speech is, and parts of this speech are often quoted as supposed evidence that Chamberlain was insular and ignorant - wishful thinking for escapism, this was the height of the crisis.
Whatever people say or have said about Chamberlain, Iam convinced that "they" could never stand in his shadow. I had to watch this again because of todays situation with Ukraine - Russia
Yeah but history proves that is a better choice than democracy: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-bPpQBl3lgDg.html Hitler eleminated and become dictator of Germany for the right reasons, as freedom of press was never such as thing
Yes, such a "wonderful" appeasement of a dictator, and a "wonderful" selling-out of the Czechoslovakian people. Consider all of the lives spared by Chamberlain's cowardice!
It is easy to judge him in the context of present. But will you so boldly declare war against Germany? Against the Parliament and the entire population?
@@vinnsterpj unless you have a valid reason to make that comment or support ot with a logical argument, shut up, you have no idea what these people had gone through.
@@sarahcellblockh1562 Logical argument: he witnessed Germany going further and further 10 times over and still thought he wouldn't go to war. The 1935 violation of the treaty of Vienna ought to be enough.
He may have been good and decent (?) ..... but he was naive and blinkered in dealing with the German threat, blindly pursuing peace when war was the only thing on Hitlers mind. It was too late to secure long lasting peace. That opportunity was lost after WW1 thanks to the allies being too harsh on Germany demanding unreasonable reparations and in doing the seeds of discontent were sown for Hitlers rise and popularity leading to the 1938 crisis and later WW2. In 1938 Chamberlain let the Czechs down badly - and then the Poles. The threat and use of military Intervention at either point may have shortened WW2 ? ......but because of his partys failure to grasp the reality of what was happening in Germany, we did not re-arm early enough and Chamberlain's peace at any price policy did not allow him to do the obvious and, with France and Poland, take on Hitler in 1938. Thankfully his own party saw him off and we had Churchill - who was not without his faults, but was the right man at the right time, who had been warning about the German threat for years to deaf ears in Parliament !. Without him and without the Russians, we would all have been speaking German. I accept that Chamberlain was certainly well meaning, and probably genuinely thought he was doing the right thing, but he was like an ostrich with his head in the sand in the late 30s, divorced from the reality and seriousness of the situation he faced. He therefore failed the UK at that time, and a longer, bitter war ensued than might otherwise have been the case.
No one had tried appeasement before so how could anyone know that it wouldn't work. We need to try things in order to see if they should be done more often. This failed, now we know. The power of the German military only increases that need. Also the thing about the trieaty after WW1, the issue wasn't that it was too harsh it was that it wasn't followed. Germany wasn't stopped from making a huge military, nor conscription, nor many other infractions.
Hey Neville, why didn't you invite The Chech Government to the Munich conference? could it be your ego? if the Chechs, Germans, French and Italians decided to give Germany part of Britain without you having any say, would that bother you?
Czech border was an artificially drawn by non-Czech's, extended beyond Czech populated places and existed only since after 1919, less than 20 years before Neville. After centuries suddenly they had to switch to a very different language from German to Czech in that region for some poorly decided border drawn by non-Czechs in the first place? It's all just silly.
@@mtlicq you are either uneducated or you are lying. Sooo to make it clear... borders of Czechoslovakia wasn't artificially drawn. the borders of kingdom of bohemia (modern day Czechoslovakia/Czechia) are formed by mountains which seperate german speaking countries from czechs, they are natural and were unchangable for more than 1000 years! just because a german speaking people lived there doesn't mean that hitler had right to claim the part of the country which never belonged to Germany before
@@zn9215 My ancestors and their relatives included Czech's (from Praha), you might . Go beyond the indoctrination and post-TofV perspective. Look at antique maps. "Bohemia was part of the Kingdom of Germany and/or the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation from the year 1002 to 1806, then again part of the German Confederation from 1815 to 1866. That's 855 years as a German state. During the other 57 years, 1806-15 and 1866-1914, it was part of the Empire of Austria. The Sudeten area, like the condome on around the Western NW & SW edges had been predominantly ethnic teutonic German/Austrian since about the years 1250-1300 and a majority there were." They didn't just move there since a short time. Czech-&-slovakia didn't exist as a nation until Treaty of Versailles borders were drawn around 1919. The guys drawing where borders would be were debating different configurations and finally picked one, and dictated "there", no one allowed to dispute it. Other borders also didn't make sense.
