September 23, 2014 (Tuesday)
Seventy-six years ago, on this date in 1938, Great Britain’s Prime Minister, Neville Chamberlain boarded a plane for Munich to meet with Adolph Hitler and French and Italian leaders. The purpose of the meeting, from Chamberlain’s point of view, was to do whatever could be done to avoid a second world war. Hitler was demanding German ownership of the Sudetenland, a portion of Czechoslovakia where German was spoken and most occupants were German.
On September 30, 1938, the Munich Pact was signed, essentially giving in to Hitler’s demands in exchange for a promise not to take over all of Czechoslovakia and not to invade Poland, or any other country. Chamberlain’s military leaders told him they needed time to prepare for war, and the British people had no appetite for entering another war only 20 years removed from the last one. America was unprepared militarily and there was a strong movement in the United States to remain neutral toward Europe’s situation.
Chamberlain’s hands were tied, and his one objective became maintaining peace. He was a man of integrity and honor who wanted to believe that Hitler had a hint of those qualities somewhere within his dictatorial heart. And so he reported to his countrymen that the agreement had secured “peace in our time.” What did Hitler then do? Everything he had promised not to do. The Munich Pact was only a piece of paper without meaning.
Chamberlain soon realized that his hopes were based upon Hitler’s lies to him. Hitler took Prague and the Czech heartland in March 1939, signaling a new turn in his plan to conquer the world, for heretofore all his acquisitions had been places with deep German roots, but his new conquests did not meet that criterion. Chamberlain then doubled the size of the Territorial Army (Britain’s version of the National Guard) and, on April 20, established peacetime conscription for the first time in Britain’s history. Then, on Sept. 3, eleven months after Munich, Britain went to war. Chamberlain died of cancer November 9, 1940, and Winston Churchill became Prime Minister. Chamberlain had fought for peace as long as possible, and went to war only when it was the last available option. It’s not such a bad way to be remembered.
Churchill had seen through Hitler’s duplicity early on in the dictator’s rise to power. He had been very impatient with his own country’s hesitancy to oppose Hitler’s policies and his desire to do something to impede the madman’s progress was well known in Great Britain.
The years of war saw Churchill and Roosevelt arm in arm in cooperation. (For all practical purposes, Roosevelt was involved with two wars, one in Europe and the other in the Pacific. Three really, if you include the North African campaign). They worked with Stalin as an ally, but the president and the prime minister were different kinds of men from the Russian dictator. The alliance was necessary, however, and eventually successful. But a “cold war” replaced it.
The war was still raging when Roosevelt was elected to a fourth term in 1944. His health was bad but he worked tirelessly at his job until April 12, 1945, when he died of a cerebral hemorrhage. The Vice-President, Harry Truman, became the president. The war in Europe ended in May and the Pacific War in August. It had been the costliest war in history, in terms of both lives and property.
World War 2 ended 69 years ago, but other wars have come, one after the other, and the clouds of war still threaten. We still long for the day when the lion shall lie down with lamb.