Quote:Netflix will soon feature Munich: The Edge of War, an adaptation of British author Robert Harris’ 2017 novel Munich, which portrays British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain as a hero for negotiating what Harris calls his “shrewd” Munich Agreement in September 1938. The Daily Mail’s article on the upcoming movie is titled “The silly old man with his umbrella who SAVED Britain.” Harris calls Chamberlain a “convenient scapegoat,” while the film’s German director, Christian Schwochow, is quoted on BBC News as wishing that today we had more politicians like Chamberlain, whom he praises as a “very silent politician, not like the Trumps of the world.”

Schwochow told the BBC that Chamberlain is a role model because he believed in “the power of diplomacy” and “peace.” He also is quoted as saying that he cannot give an answer as to “whether it would have been a good thing to assassinate Hitler in 1938.” He explained, “Of course, with the knowledge of today, we know a lot of evil would not have happened, but does this entitle us to kill someone?” This is morally imbecilic. No wonder he thinks of Chamberlain as a role model and a hero.

Harris for his part claims that Chamberlain’s “shrewd” agreement at Munich bought England time to prepare for war and “gave [Britain] the moral advantage.” Others have made similar arguments on Chamberlain’s behalf. But it won’t wash.

The Munich Agreement, far from being “shrewd,” was both a moral and strategic defeat for Britain and the world. Chamberlain and his French allies coerced a potentially important strategic ally to surrender important fortifications and industrial strength in return for empty promises. As P. E. Caquet writes in his 2019 book The Bell of Treason: The 1938 Munich Agreement in Czechoslovakia, “A retrospective justification of Munich, among the appeasers themselves and among revisionist historians has been that the agreement bought rearmament time for the Entente powers. This argument … counts neither the forces that the Czechoslovaks brought to the fight nor the contributions their armaments made to Hitler’s armies, after they were bloodlessly conquered.” Even British historian A. J. P. Taylor, no great fan of Churchill’s, judged Munich a failure. What had been “designed by Chamberlain as the impartial redress of justified grievances,” he wrote, “became a capitulation, a surrender to fear. This was largely Chamberlain’s own doing.”

President Franklin Roosevelt, who had little more strategic sense than Chamberlain, initially praised the Munich Agreement — at least while it was popular. It was Winston Churchill, who in the face of the agreement’s popularity in Britain and elsewhere in the world, boldly told the House of Commons that Britain had “suffered a total and unmitigated defeat.” And Churchill spoke to the broader effects of Munich:

We are in the presence of a disaster of the first magnitude which has befallen Great Britain and France. Do not let us blind ourselves to that. It must now be accepted that all the countries of Central and Eastern Europe will make the best terms they can with the triumphant Nazi power. The system of alliances in Central Europe upon which France has relied for her safety has been swept away . . .

In an earlier speech, Churchill had remarked that “The idea that safety can be purchased by throwing a small State to the wolves is a fatal delusion.”

Churchill was not the type of “silent politician” so admired by Munich: The Edge of War’s German director and Robert Harris. He had the courage and fortitude to save Western civilization from what he called a “new Dark Age.” He noisily fought the appeasers of Germany before the war and shortly after he became prime minister when some of them sought to make a deal with Hitler. That is why his top military aide, Field Marshal Sir Alan Brooke, despite his many feuds with Churchill, thanked God for “the fact that occasionally such supermen exist on this earth.”

Perhaps Netflix’s next featured movie can portray President James Buchanan as the real hero of the Civil War.

(01-17-2022 01:16 PM)BigTigerMike Wrote:  To appeased evil is not in anyway heroic. He thought he was doing the right thing considering the horrific nature of WW1 was still fresh on peoples minds but it was still wrong and eventually war still came about

(01-17-2022 02:20 PM)49RFootballNow Wrote:  We benefit from the hindsight of history when judging Chamberlain from 80 years in the future. At that point no one knew Hitler would industrialize genocide the way he did. He was no worse than the Russian Tsars that allowed pogroms to occur under their rule a few decades before to most people.

Their hindsight was WWI, and they judged the world though that lens. We don't really talk or learn about the utter hell of the trenches since we can bathe in the afterglow of WWII and a more mobile form of victory against a truly evil opponent, but those that witnessed it first-hand were traumatized by industrialized warfare of WWI.

They meant it when they called it "The War to End All Wars", so Hitler (and Mussolini, Stalin, and the Japanese) got a lot more leash than than they would in today's environment or pre-WWI times.

No one wanted WWI again, so they did everything they could to avoid it.

Ever wonder why neither Hitler nor Stalin used poison gas?

(01-17-2022 02:27 PM)bullet Wrote:  

(01-17-2022 02:20 PM)49RFootballNow Wrote:  We benefit from the hindsight of history when judging Chamberlain from 80 years in the future. At that point no one knew Hitler would industrialize genocide the way he did. He was no worse than the Russian Tsars that allowed pogroms to occur under their rule a few decades before to most people.

Their hindsight was WWI, and they judged the world though that lens. We don't really talk or learn about the utter hell of the trenches since we can bathe in the afterglow of WWII and a more mobile form of victory against a truly evil opponent, but those that witnessed it first-hand were traumatized by industrialized warfare of WWI.

They meant it when they called it "The War to End All Wars", so Hitler (and Mussolini, Stalin, and the Japanese) got a lot more leash than than they would in today's environment or pre-WWI times.

No one wanted WWI again, so they did everything they could to avoid it.

Ever wonder why neither Hitler nor Stalin used poison gas?

The lesson is that people often get stuck in a paradigm from their past. That is very obvious in politics today.

(01-17-2022 02:20 PM)49RFootballNow Wrote:  Ever wonder why neither Hitler nor Stalin used poison gas?

(01-17-2022 02:29 PM)49RFootballNow Wrote:  

(01-17-2022 02:27 PM)bullet Wrote:  

(01-17-2022 02:20 PM)49RFootballNow Wrote:  We benefit from the hindsight of history when judging Chamberlain from 80 years in the future. At that point no one knew Hitler would industrialize genocide the way he did. He was no worse than the Russian Tsars that allowed pogroms to occur under their rule a few decades before to most people.

Their hindsight was WWI, and they judged the world though that lens. We don't really talk or learn about the utter hell of the trenches since we can bathe in the afterglow of WWII and a more mobile form of victory against a truly evil opponent, but those that witnessed it first-hand were traumatized by industrialized warfare of WWI.

They meant it when they called it "The War to End All Wars", so Hitler (and Mussolini, Stalin, and the Japanese) got a lot more leash than than they would in today's environment or pre-WWI times.

No one wanted WWI again, so they did everything they could to avoid it.

Ever wonder why neither Hitler nor Stalin used poison gas?

The lesson is that people often get stuck in a paradigm from their past. That is very obvious in politics today.

What's the saying? "You're always preparing to fight the last war."

Apropos.

I'm one of those folks that think WWI was a huge mistake and that it only got worse when first Britain and much later the U.S. joined a war we had no real skin in beyond financial benefit.

Even with Carter and now Biden, Wilson is still the worst President in U.S. history and not just because of WWI.

(01-17-2022 02:29 PM)49RFootballNow Wrote:  

(01-17-2022 02:27 PM)bullet Wrote:  

(01-17-2022 02:20 PM)49RFootballNow Wrote:  We benefit from the hindsight of history when judging Chamberlain from 80 years in the future. At that point no one knew Hitler would industrialize genocide the way he did. He was no worse than the Russian Tsars that allowed pogroms to occur under their rule a few decades before to most people.

Their hindsight was WWI, and they judged the world though that lens. We don't really talk or learn about the utter hell of the trenches since we can bathe in the afterglow of WWII and a more mobile form of victory against a truly evil opponent, but those that witnessed it first-hand were traumatized by industrialized warfare of WWI.

They meant it when they called it "The War to End All Wars", so Hitler (and Mussolini, Stalin, and the Japanese) got a lot more leash than than they would in today's environment or pre-WWI times.

No one wanted WWI again, so they did everything they could to avoid it.

Ever wonder why neither Hitler nor Stalin used poison gas?

The lesson is that people often get stuck in a paradigm from their past. That is very obvious in politics today.

What's the saying? "You're always preparing to fight the last war."

Apropos.

I'm one of those folks that think WWI was a huge mistake and that it only got worse when first Britain and much later the U.S. joined a war we had no real skin in beyond financial benefit.

Even with Carter and now Biden, Wilson is still the worst President in U.S. history and not just because of WWI.

(01-17-2022 03:08 PM)B_Hawk06 Wrote:  

(01-17-2022 02:20 PM)49RFootballNow Wrote:  Ever wonder why neither Hitler nor Stalin used poison gas?

Ummmm. Hitler absolutely DID use poison gas, just saying. Where do you think he got the idea?

Furthermore, sure we can look at Chamberlain through our 80 year lens. Or we can take into account the fact the Brits decided AT THE TIME to hold a vote of no confidence in him because he governed out of fear.

The defense of him you just constructed may all be very well and true, but none of it equals heroism. That’s for sure.


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(01-17-2022 02:20 PM)49RFootballNow Wrote:  We benefit from the hindsight of history when judging Chamberlain from 80 years in the future. At that point no one knew Hitler would industrialize genocide the way he did. He was no worse than the Russian Tsars that allowed pogroms to occur under their rule a few decades before to most people.

Their hindsight was WWI, and they judged the world though that lens. We don't really talk or learn about the utter hell of the trenches since we can bathe in the afterglow of WWII and a more mobile form of victory against a truly evil opponent, but those that witnessed it first-hand were traumatized by industrialized warfare of WWI.

They meant it when they called it "The War to End All Wars", so Hitler (and Mussolini, Stalin, and the Japanese) got a lot more leash than than they would in today's environment or pre-WWI times.

No one wanted WWI again, so they did everything they could to avoid it.

Ever wonder why neither Hitler nor Stalin used poison gas?

(01-17-2022 03:29 PM)bullet Wrote:  

(01-17-2022 03:08 PM)B_Hawk06 Wrote:  

(01-17-2022 02:20 PM)49RFootballNow Wrote:  Ever wonder why neither Hitler nor Stalin used poison gas?

Ummmm. Hitler absolutely DID use poison gas, just saying. Where do you think he got the idea?

Furthermore, sure we can look at Chamberlain through our 80 year lens. Or we can take into account the fact the Brits decided AT THE TIME to hold a vote of no confidence in him because he governed out of fear.

The defense of him you just constructed may all be very well and true, but none of it equals heroism. That’s for sure.


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Hitler only used it against imprisoned civilians, not in battle.

(01-17-2022 03:31 PM)olliebaba Wrote:  In the eyes of a Frenchman he might be regarded as a hero. A hero in the likes of Slow Joe, nothing there to be thought of as a hero. He gave the Germans free rein when he appeased Hitler. A total dud, just like Kerry with the Iranians and that great treaty with them. I'm being facetious here about it being great.

(01-17-2022 06:09 PM)B_Hawk06 Wrote:  

(01-17-2022 03:31 PM)olliebaba Wrote:  In the eyes of a Frenchman he might be regarded as a hero. A hero in the likes of Slow Joe, nothing there to be thought of as a hero. He gave the Germans free rein when he appeased Hitler. A total dud, just like Kerry with the Iranians and that great treaty with them. I'm being facetious here about it being great.

Exactly. He wasn’t exactly hiding it. Jews from all over Europe were fleeing the continent because of his actions.


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