Although we know that the Munich Pact did not bring peace in our time, its actual historical significance is still shrouded in obscurity. It depends upon the answer to the following questions. What would have happened if Chamberlain and Daladier, who dragged after him in reluctant tow, had presented an ultimatum of war to Hitler instead of flying to Munich and coming to terms with him? Would Hitler have marched into the Sudetenland as he later marched into Poland, despite the fact that Russia had not yet assured him that he would have no second front? If he had, would the English and French have been able in the ensuing war to put up a better defence than they did when war came a year later? Was the Czech military strength of greater value than a year won for additional armament—inadequate as the latter was even in 1939? Would a war begun in 1938 have resulted in the overrunning of England before the United States, still largely peace-minded, could enter it? Had war broken out, would the large pacifist and isolationist groups in England and America have seen through the hypocrisy of Hitler’s claims in behalf of the “poor Sudetens” who indisputably were more German than Czech?
Without more data at our command we cannot answer these questions. But we can answer the question whether or not Chamberlain’s capitulation was merely a strategic postponement, forced by lack of preparedness, of the inescapable showdown. This is a matter that is not shrouded in obscurity. If it were true, as some of his defenders have urged, that this is what determined Chamberlain’s historic decision, Chamberlain’s stature as a statesman would be enormously increased. If it were true, and if the Axis goes down to defeat, historians might very well regard him as among the greatest event-making men of his generation. But it is not true. By his unwearied insistence that the peace had been saved, Chamberlain himself provides the evidence that his decision was not motivated by the desire to gain time for preparation. Even if it turns out that the year won by Munich was necessary to eventual victory, Chamberlain did not organize or plan it that way. In the light of the most favourable outcome, he was not the contriver of good fortune but, duped by his fears and made foolish by his self-righteousness, he was at best a happy accident in that good fortune. His judgment was a thousand times wrong even if historians of a later day, writing in a free world, might congratulate themselves on the lucky fact that, by gaining a year’s grace in 1938, England
