Since Kevin James couldn’t do it, I’ll answer Chris Matthews question. What did Neville Chamberlain do wrong in Munich in 1938?
I’m going to gloss over a lot of detail here for brevity’s sake. Adolf Hitler invaded Austria in March 1938 as part of a larger program that was sold as a unification of Germanic peoples. His next step was to demand that a German speaking area of Czechoslovakia (called the Sudetenland) be ceded to Germany. Czechoslovakia had a mutual defense treaty with France, and France had a mutual defense treaty with England. If Germany invaded Czechoslovakia then France was duty-bound to declare war on Germany. And if France found itself at war with Germany, then England was duty-bound to come to France’s aid.
In other words, Hitler’s irresponsible demands were threatening to pull all of Europe into a Second World War. Just twenty years earlier, in the First World War, France had suffered 1.7 million killed and 4.2 million injured, while the U.K. suffered one million killed and 1.7 million injured. In total, the war had cost 20 million people their lives and injured another 22 million. And when it was all over, no one could make a convincing argument for why the war had been necessary. It was in this context that Neville Chamberlain sought to avoid a resumption of a continent-wide war, with new and more powerful weapons. He decided to sell-out the Czechoslovakians, and got France’s agreement to renege on their treaty obligations. Chamberlain and French Prime Minister Édouard Daladier decided to use a strategy of appeasement to prevent war. Here is what happened:
British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain met with Adolf Hitler in Berchtesgaden on 15 September [1938] and agreed to the cession of the Sudetenland. Three days later, French Prime Minister Édouard Daladier did the same. No Czechoslovak representative was invited to these discussions.
Chamberlain met Hitler in Godesberg on September 22 to confirm the agreements. Hitler however, aiming at using the crisis as a pretext for war, now demanded not only the annexation of the Sudetenland but the immediate military occupation of the territories, giving the Czechoslovakian army no time to adapt their defence measures to the new borders. To achieve a solution, Italian prime minister Benito Mussolini suggested a conference of the major powers in Munich and on September 29, Hitler, Daladier and Chamberlain met and agreed to Mussolini’s proposal (actually prepared by Hermann Göring) and signed the Munich Agreement accepting the immediate occupation of the Sudetenland. The Czechoslovak government, though not party to the talks, promised to abide by the agreement on September 30.
The Sudetenland was occupied by Germany between October 1 and October 10, 1938. This unification with the Third Reich was followed by the flight or expulsion of most of the region’s Czech population to areas remaining within Czechoslovakia.
The remaining parts of Czechoslovakia were subsequently invaded and annexed by Germany in March 1939.
The initial reaction to the Munich agreement in England and France was very positive. No one wanted war. But the strategy backfired because it only made Hitler stronger and more ambitious. And it made it much harder to defeat him when war eventually became unavoidable.
Ever since, it has been an article of faith that it is never a good idea to appease your enemies. However, this hard won lesson is being misappropriated by the Bush administration, and McCain and Lieberman, to suggest that simply talking to your enemies is constructively the same as appeasing them. Neville Chamberlain isn’t reviled by history for traveling to Munich and holding discussions with Adolf Hitler. He is reviled for handing over the Sudetenland to Hitler without a fight, as if that would make the problem of National Socialism go away.
Chamberlain made a gamble for peace. He tried to spare the world a catastrophe. And, remember, while Germany lost the war, England lost their empire. Ultimately, Chamberlain made the wrong call. He did so in part because he so wanted to avoid war. He also misjudged his enemy. And that is the real key.
Hitler did not have limited territorial objectives, but nearly boundless territorial ones. And everywhere he sent his armies he intended to commit atrocities of unprecedented and unimaginable savagery. Not only that, but he had the military wherewithal to carry these ambitions out. And the question we need to ask McCain, Lieberman, and Bush is, how does modern day Iran resemble Nazi Germany in any of these respects?
They have no military wherewithal to seize and hold territory. They are making no territorial demands. Their human rights record is fairly deplorable but nothing compared to Saudi Arabia or Zimbabwe. If you ask Iran what they want, they want assurances that we won’t attack them, not the other way around. They would like normalized relations and a lifting of sanctions. It’s hard to see how they have much of anything at all in common with Nazi Germany.
The one area where there is a similarity is in their anti-Semitic pronouncements, and in their aid to groups that commit and have committed lethal acts against innocent Jews. As long as Iran engages in this rhetoric and behavior, they have to be considered as a hostile nation. They cannot be rewarded or appeased for their irresponsible actions. But that doesn’t mean that we can’t talk to them. It means that if we are going to give them anything we must get something in return.
Iran is more powerful because we toppled Saddam Hussein and insisted on letting the Iraqis elect a Shi’ite-dominated government. They now have an ally in Iraq, rather than an implacable foe. That may have been a strategic error on our part, but it not Iran’s fault. We must now live with the consequences of our actions. We have a weaker negotiating hand than we had before Bush became president and ran our foreign policy off the rails. But Iran did not suddenly become as powerful as Nazi Germany. They do not require appeasement, nor do we need to attack them now before they get stronger. They cannot and will not attack Israel, except by proxy. And we have no good reason not to talk to them in the interests of peace.
Yes, they are our enemies and the enemies of Israel. But talking to them is not appeasing them. Neville Chamberlain didn’t make a mistake by talking to Hitler. He made a mistake by caving in to his demands. No one is suggesting that we cave in to Iran’s demands. And Iran isn’t about to conquer half of Central Asia and exterminate 9 million innocent people if we get our strategy wrong. Enough of the warmongering. It’s time to have a little diplomacy for a change.
Neville Chamberlain didn’t collaborate with the Nazis, the way Bush’s grandfather did.
How Bush’s grandfather helped Hitler’s rise to power
This is a Bush scandal that not even Keith Olbermann has dared to mention.
This is not new news, been around for a very long time, but the amnesia of the American people is quite deep. Thanks for reminding us what the history of the Bush/Walker families really are — criminal enterprises.
Actually, it is news now. Because two Auschwitz survivors are now suing the Bush family, based upon new evidence detailing the connection as reported in The Guardian.
Actually, the article is from 2004, but a minor point. It IS the right data to bring up in response.
This is excellent – thank you.
Shouldn’t that be lethal acts against innocent Israelis?
Isn’t there also the point of view that Chamberlain knew quite well that Germany would have won a war at the time of Munich?
Chamberlain was an idiot who stuck his head in the sand because he didn’t think British popular opinion would support a confrontation with Germany. There a lot of documentary evidence that Hitler was bluffing at Munich, and France and Britain’s weak response to his threats only emboldened him.
That said, Iran is no Nazi Germany except in some of the anti-semetic rhetoric emanating from it’s President’s mouth.
Let us not forget the “Cordon Sanitaire.” It was the philosophy of many Western European strategists that Germany was the bulwark between the godless Commies in the USSR and Christendom. That is, Hitler’s rise was the first Cold War strategy against the threats of egalitarianism and socialism.
On yet another level, Chamberlain was of that class that was heavily invested in the rise of the Nazis in Germany (I think that he had lots of his money in chemical companies). Post-WWI, it was the investment of the Brits and Americans that rebuilt Germany. It was a good place to invest. Labor unions were suppressed, so the profits were increased. And it kept the Commies in check.
+++
An aside: It was mentioned repeatedly on the web yesterday about the irony of President Bush condemning people who were like the Nazis’ appeasers when his own grandfather was a stock broker to the Nazis, managing investments (in violation of the Trading With The Enemies Act) through the war until the accounts were seized by the US government.
The world today spins on irony and snark, and yet the entire mainstream media missed this. They didn’t miss it because they missed it. It is one of those topics which are censored in the American press. Think about it. Did Olbermann mention it? (I didn’t watch Olbermann last night so I don’t know.) How about FOX, CNN, ABC, CBS, NBC?
My point is that this fact, that the President’s grandfather collaborated with Nazis, is kept off mainstream media. What the MSM blacks out should be recognized when considering how our media functions.
When I talk to my 82 year-old mother she will not have heard of Prescott Bush cutting deals with the Nazis while the boys she grew up with were dying on the beaches of Anzio. She won’t believe it because she’s never heard it on the radio, or TV, or read it in the Newark Star Ledger.
Is it state-sponsored censorship? Well, technically we don’t have that, do we? So why doesn’t this get mentioned?
But I am also saying that the censor is in each of our heads. This applies to many different things that are avoided because, well, we just don’t go there. Let me give you another example:
A few months ago there was a story about a script or transcript found in a safe in Dallas that alleged Ruby and Oswald were talking about an assassination of the President at Ruby’s nightclub, the Carousel Club, on October 4th, well over a month prior to the actual assassination of JFK. Now if this were true it would open all sorts of doors that our mainstream media do not want opened. But it was dismissed because it was known that Oswald was visiting his wife and baby on that Friday night.
The problem is that there actually was a witness who saw “Oswald” at the Carousel Club that night (although he told the FBI he heard a different conversation)while another “Oswald” was with his family. But there was also yet a third “Oswald” photographed outside of the Soviet embassy on October 4th (the man in the surveillance photograph was clearly not “Oswald”). He was identified at the time in early October as “Lee Harvey Oswald.” The CIA station chief later said it was an impersonator.
But by the official story of JFK’s assassination nobody knew Oswald. He was a nobody. Why would anyone be impersonating a nobody six weeks before the nobody becomes known? And why were there two other Oswalds in the Dallas area on the same day?
Three nobodies is something.
So here’s a story about a President being assassinated. One of the biggest stories of the 20th Century. Six weeks before he’s assassinated there are three different Oswalds in three different places. Why are there two people impersonating Oswald? This immediately suggests that there is some kind of conspiracy to kill the President. Ah, but the MSM is incurious about this. Move along, nothing here.
Okay, now you know. How many of you are moving along? That’s what I mean about the censor inside each of our heads.
The Kennedy assassination IS still an important and mostly censored story.
But the files in the safe? Whatever was interesting there may already be gone.
The Dallas Morning News posted PDFs of scanned docs on their Web site and encouraged people to comment. I read an interesting note from some anonymous person to Ruby referring to “our unmentionable friend”, which sounded intriguing. I sent a note to the DMN about that.
Now that document no longer appears in the numbered doc I wrote down, unless I wrote it down wrong.
That’s frustrating.
Small explanation. My point wasn’t about the authenticity of the transcripts in the safe. In fact, I’d presume that it was a hoax until shown otherwise because it’s so long after the fact.
There already was an FBI interview of a conversation between Ruby and “Oswald” that evening by a witness, as well as the “Oswald” and visiting Marina and the “Oswald” impersonator in Mexico City. They couldn’t all be the same guy.
Therefore, multiple Oswalds six weeks before the assassination proves that something was going on. It wasn’t a lone nut.
I’m pretty sure we agree on this point.
Btw – that conversation was clearly from Jarnigan, and was not credible, in my opinion. There is a lot of evidence that Ruby and Oswald knew each other, but that conversation is not part of that credible evidence!
By the way, someone lying about seeing and overhearing a conversation between Oswald and Ruby when Oswald was supposed to be with Marina and standing outside the Soviet embassy in Mexico City doesn’t clean up the matter.
Actually, no. Germany was in the process of building up its military in 1938. If they were forced to fight, they probably would have lost. Especially if they had to fight the Czechs along with the French and British. The Czechs had an excellent army, and the Sudetenland was a well-fortified frontier zone. Which is part of the reason, if not a major reason, that Hitler coveted it.
Of course, hindsight is 20-20. But this is part of the reason why Munich was considered such a major blunder.
no and no.
Nazis didn’t kill Israelis.
And France and Engaland would have defeated Germany quickly in 1938, unlike in 1939-1940.
the other big factor that gets conveniently forgotten is that both the British and French public were completely, utterly, War weary at the time of Munich. At the time it was seen as a great achievement in avoiding another Europe wide war.
the view of Chamberlain as a bumbling failure was a manufacture of Churchills, there’s a Churchill quote (which I can’t quite find at the moment) along the lines of “He will be viewed badly by History, because I will write it”. I don’t quite think that George has the literary skills to manage the same.
Although it was Churchill who insisted that Chamberlain stay on in the war cabinet. Which was a wise move – there was a real question after the fall of France as to whether it would be better for Britain to enter into a negotiated peace rather than continue the war. They would have to give up parts of the Empire and would probably lose the navy (and thus cease to be a world power) and there would be a German-approved government – BUT they would save lives. Chamberlain, along with the entire war cabinet, was part of the consensus to fight on (in the hope that finally the US would enter the war).
And the Iranians aren’t threatening European Jews. They are – arguably – threatening Israel.
The sentence you reference is looking for a commonality between Nazi Germany and Iran. That commonality is not that they both are responsible for killing Israelis. It is that they both are responsible for killing Jews.
And that is why Joe Lieberman finds the two to be interchangeable. If they both say anti-semitic things and commit violence against innocent Jews, then they are effectively the same…at least from a certain point of view.
I, obviously, do not think that point of view is valid as a way of judging the threat posed by Iran.
If language is not correct, then what is said is not what is meant; if what is said is not what is meant, then what must be done remains undone; if this remains undone, morals and art will deteriorate; if justice goes astray, the people will stand about in helpless confusion. Hence there must be no arbitrariness in what is said. This matters above everything [Confucius]
So language does matter and if used in the sloppy manner of a Kevin James or a George W. Bush, things kind of come apart, the center does not hold any more, and the civilization starts to crumble. Not a bad summation of where the United States is about now. The clearest threat to the republic stems from the neocons; with leaders like these we need no more enemies.
Don’t program yourself for failure like the neocons are doing to America.
I just figured out what this James guy reminds me of. He reminds me of those people who think that anyone can understand English if you speak it loudly enough. Except in his case he figures if he repeats his talking points at the top of his voice, he will eventually get his message through to you, you ignorant lout.
It would be interesting in a clinical sort of way to hear what James’ show is like today. Not that I would give him the ear time.
Thanks for the history lesson BooMan.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/22425001/vp/24635229#24635229
I am confused. Why all this talk of the past?
Lets just rock.
Because when Bob Marley sang
it didn’t just apply to dreadlock Rasta.
Yes. Bob.
But sometimes
is about love,
and sometimes its about:
Good for Tweety!!!! I’d love to see him do similar more often. Isn’t that why his show is called Hardball.
Another terriffic and educational post – thanks!
In more recent history, another commenter brought up the US’ dirty hands in Shah-era Iranian politics, but even after, US policy on the Iran-Iraq war prob’ly didn’t help…
We would sell more arms to whoever was losing (bad me, no cite — I was a kid at the time), in some sick hope that the two nations would kill each other off. Great plan. That was likely before we were funding bin Laden and other psycho lunatics just to continue our proxy war in Afghanistan.
Funny (and awful) parallel — a friend of mine just went to a history talk at Gettysburg, where they talked about arms deals. After the end of the Civil War, the (Union) Army had more guns than they could use, so they sold ’em.
At Custer’s last stand, part of why he lost, was that the Native American tribes were among the buyers of the new multi-round rifles.
This is head-in-your-hands exasperating. Nazi Germany and Iran are like apples and oranges, or sauerbraten (or maybe even German chocolate cake!) and some kind of kabob, I guess. Most of us are aware in at least general terms of the historical inaccuracies and fallacies the neocons are stupidly seizing on to make their half-assed non-points.
Feeling forced to refute or rebut every asinine, retarded thing that comes out of some neocon’s mouth sucks, although the speed and force of the push back on this has been impressive, and it’s got to be done, sucky or not. And too, this isn’t about being correct for them (and just as well). It never is; it’s about scoring points with a largely unknowing/knee-jerkingly jingoistic public for November. The neocons/Bushies are incredibly ferocious and tenacious, but they’re also just as willfully ignorant. I bet Bush can’t even give an on-the-spot physical description of Chamberlain. (If things had been different, if the War hadn’t happened, wouldn’t he and Churchill have made a good comedy team?: “Well, this is another fine mess you’ve gotten us into, Neville!”)
And like many, I’m mindful of this crap as a rallying cry on the march to conflict with Tehran. Tom Friedman’s drooling over it. I’m not sure the Bushies will be able to resist the urge to pull the trigger before they leave, despite the difficulties and the danger. I feel like it’s a race against the clock to get the power players in Washington switched out before the first strike.