There Are No Chamberlains in This Story
In 1938, British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain arrived home from a conference in Munich. He and other leaders had met with Hitler; they had agreed to allow the German army to annex a slice of Czechoslovakia; in exchange, Hitler offered more dialogue, and promised not to fight any further. To the cheering crowd that had gathered to welcome his plane, Chamberlain happily declared that the threat of war had passed: He had obtained “peace with honor … peace for our time.”
As it turned out, Hitler was not satisfied with that slice of Czechoslovakia. He wanted all of Czechoslovakia—and then all of Poland, all of Belgium, all of the Netherlands, all of France. In light of the blood, death, and tragedy that followed 1938, Chamberlain’s deal came to be. Chamberlain is remembered not for the peace he negotiated, but for the war that followed.
