Create a new account

It's simple, and free.

Munich

In the history of the Second World War, Munich is a name that carries powerful connotations. It was in Munich that Adolf Hitler launched the abortive Beer-Hall Putscht, his abortive first attempt at power. A decade and a half later, in September of 1938, Hitler had been in power for six years, and Munich became the site of even a more powerfully symbolic event. Here, the Western allied powers faced their last potential decision point short of the one which would confront them with the invasion of Poland a year later.

Hitler demanded the right to occupy the Sudetenland, a region of western Czechoslovakia that had a largely German-speaking population. The Czechs were prepared to resist, but despite a fairly powerful army they lacked the means to do so entirely alone. The question was whether the Western Allies, Britain and France, would come to the aid of Czechoslovakia if attacked, or if they would hold back--in which case there would be no attack as such, but a Czech cession of the Sudetenland.

At Munich, the Allies chose to withhold any promise or threat of support, but instead give their implicit assent to the cession, either in the hope that it would be the last of Hitler's territorial demands, or that they would by the abandonment of Czechoslavakia buy sufficient times to strengthen their own defenses. Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain asserted the former, saying that he had achieved "peace for our times"--a phrase that would ring with bitter irony less than a year later. Munich has gone down in legend as a great sellout, and "appeasement" as a policy of surrender. But was it in fact a surrender, or acknowledgement that at that time and place, no other option was viable? That is the core question of Munich.

The remainder of this essay addresses that question, not directly, but through critical examination of a variety of works, books and articles, which have considered the Munich conference and the even...

Page 1 of 33 Next >

More on Munich...

Loading...
APA     MLA     Chicago
Munich. (1969, December 31). In LotsofEssays.com. Retrieved 15:24, March 28, 2024, from https://www.lotsofessays.com/viewpaper/1707230.html