“Peace for our time” was the promise made by British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain when he signed the Munich Agreement with Hitler on September 30, 1938. On that fateful day fifty years ago, the West agreed to give Hitler one-fifth of Czechoslovakia in return for his signature on a piece of paper and his statement that this was “the last territorial claim I have to make in Europe.”
Eleven months later, Nazi troops invaded Poland and World War II had begun. The lesson of Munich is that peace cannot be bought with treaties, appeasement, weakness, or a renunciation of violence.
Each act of Western appeasement during the 1930s tended to convince Hitler that the West would not fight. As it turned out, that was a false conclusion; but it took 50 million deaths to prove that it was false.
Munich was not an aberration on the course of history. In the context of 1938, Munich was simply the denouement of an era in which those who should have known better closed their eyes to the ruthlessness of a determined aggressor and focused instead on paper promises.
The Czechs were excluded from Munich’s carving up of their country. The policy of the mighty was to let the aggressor feed on small countries whose absorption did not endanger major Western interests, hoping that the hungry bear would be satisfied.
The Munich peace-at-any-price syndrome rested on the notion that civilized mores could be maintained so long as military violence was avoided. If the aggressor grabbed his booty in a bloodless maneuver, then Western sensibilities would not be disturbed.
However, letting it be known that a great nation shrinks from any use of force leads to dangerous miscalculations by the enemy. Hitler was encouraged, indeed led, to believe that Western Europe would wash its hands of the fate of Central Europe and that America would not become involved.
Munich was very popular when it happened. The Gallup Poll reported 59 percent approval. President Franklin Roosevelt cabled his congratulations. Walter Lippmann, that oracle of establishment rectitude, praised it. Gertrude Stein said Hitler should be given the Nobel Peace Prize.
After the awesomeness of World War II sunk into the American consciousness, “Munich” became a word-symbol as “bad” as “Pearl Harbor.” Munich became synonymous with appeasement of an international criminal, retreat from reality, and a spinelessness that was definitely un-American.
Unfortunately, most current history textbooks don’t bother to teach the historical lessons of Munich. If today’s young people do not learn the lesson of Munich, they may be doomed to repeat its mistakes.
It was not a new lesson, then or now. Those who had studied history already knew the lesson from reading about an ancient nation called Carthage. That famous city on the Mediterranean foolishly thought its commercial prosperity and peace-loving policies would enable it to ignore the military threat from Rome and the fact that the Roman Senator Cato ended each speech with the threat, Carthago delenda est (Carthage must be destroyed).
To show good faith, Carthage disarmed, moved the city back from the sea, and finally sent the sons from its leading families as hostages to Rome. After Carthage was hopelessly weakened, the Roman legions attacked, burned the city, killed the men, enslaved the women and children, poured salt into the soil, and a whole nation disappeared from the face of the earth.
The destruction of Carthage taught those wise enough to listen that merchant ships are no defense against battleships, and that commodities cannot substitute for weapons. It takes two sides to trade but, unfortunately, only one side to make war.
The military defense of a nation is the basic ingredient of its commercial prosperity. The road to peace has never been through unilateral disarmament, appeasement, or negotiation from weakness, but is instead through military strength and a national will to survive in freedom and independence.
In the twilight of the Reagan Administration, we appear to be entering a period when our relations with the Soviets are circumscribed by treaties, trade, and television. Our national honor and our national security demand that we focus on the power and the potential of the Soviets’ military arsenal rather than on their paper promises of peace and purchases.
