By Shaunak Kulkarni
Heralded as the beginning of lasting harmony for a tense world, the Munich Agreement now stands testament to the undeniable dominance of the very Realpolitik it sought to constrain.
On September 30, 1938, the smiling figure of a lean, bespectacled man emerged through the cramped doorway of the Avro York that had flown him from Munich to London.
Stepping down, the man turned to address the gathered crowd. As he spoke, Neville Chamberlain brandished a sheet of paper and announced the success of the Munich Agreement.
Later that day, on the steps of No. 10, Downing Street, the British Prime Minister presented that same piece of paper as he made the infamous proclamation, “I believe it is peace for our time.”
Exactly eleven months later, the Wehrmacht marched into Poland. It was the final act in an extraordinary play of political brinksmanship, the ripples of which continue to make waves after more than three-quarters of a century.
Heralded as the beginning of lasting harmony for a tense world, the Munich Agreement now stands testament to the undeniable dominance of the very Realpolitik it sought to constrain. The invasion of Poland marked an end to diplomatic posturing, and set the stage for the Second World War. The agreement once signified peace, but is now believed to have been decisive in setting the major powers of Europe on the path to long and protracted conflict.
Given the far-reaching consequences of World War II, we would be living a very different reality had the Munich Agreement not been crafted as it was; but how different would that reality really be?
At its core, the Munich Agreement legitimised political integration (see: annexation) of foreign lands with a large ethnic German population into the German Reich.
This was at a time when the fundamental idea of German ethnicity was being reinvented. Had talks stalled on grounds of effective sociopolitical definition (or lack thereof), a number of issues that contributed to the horrors of the Second World War might have made it to the negotiation table; Europe may well have averted mass conflict altogether.
It is unlikely however, that the leaders at the Munich Conference would have agreed to extend negotiations to address the underlying motivation for political self-determination; not only would taking a stand be diplomatically untenable during a time when colonialism was in its heyday, but parties that would otherwise be expected to raise the issue were conspicuous by their absence.
The Munich Agreement was adopted with much fanfare by leaders of France, Germany, Italy, and the United Kingdom; the Czech government, whose sovereignty over the Sudetenland had been signed away in the interest of the ‘greater good’ was not represented at the meeting in Munich, which was fittingly called the “Four Powers Conference”.
In retrospect, it is evident that the very premise of the Munich Agreement was flawed; insofar as appeasement of the militaristic ambitions of a dictator was concerned, it wasn’t so much the negotiation itself as the precedent of apparently benign inaction that set the world on the path to war.
It would be naïve to assume that governments of France, Italy, and the United Kingdom were all alien to the territorial machinations of the Third Reich. Although the Italian delegation may well have been indifferent to the political posturing of their powerful neighbour, the French and the British were party to the Munich Conference due to their perceived interest in containing the Nazi menace.
The German military had been arming itself at an alarming rate, in direct contravention of numerous restrictive clauses in the Treaty of Versailles. The leaders of Germany had made clear their intention of territorial appropriation by re-occupying the Rhineland in 1936, and annexing Austria only months before the Four Powers Conference. The balance of power was rapidly shifting in favour of the German Reich, and the international community watched with bated breath.
French and British priorities mainly involved averting armed confrontation, as a complex web of alliances and security guarantees ensured that much of Europe would be drawn into any conflict that emerged - however large or small. Historians argue that the Munich Agreement was a last-ditch effort to buy time to prepare for an inevitable, protracted standoff to secure the continent; the events that led to Munich were a standoff in their own right, and Germany stood its ground.
The world blinked, and awoke to realise the Second World War. Had the governments of France and the UK held their ground, it is very likely that the Munich Agreement might never have been signed; the British had provided Czechoslovakia with security guarantees that the Munich Agreement blatantly violated, in the apparent interest of peace.
By virtue of this agreement, the integrity of all British security guarantees came into question; guarantees that had been offered to ‘minor’ states including Belgium and Poland. This doubt surrounding the possibility of retaliation would ultimately serve to boost German conviction of a swift, successful campaign.
Neither the UK, nor France, had the military wherewithal to engage Germany in a decisive war at the time of the Four Powers Conference; it therefore stands to reason that neither party would have pursued the option de-legitimising German annexation of Sudetenland, thereby altering the fundamental outcome of the Munich Agreement.
Had Germany been brought to charge, however, it may well have instigated confrontation; the conflagration that followed could well have been less clinical, and would have served to destabilise the Europe further, possibly taking the world down a destructive vortex of Orwellian conflict.
For better or for worse, the aftermath of the Munich Agreement was pivotal in shaping the latter half of the 20th century. It directly contributed to events that continue to make waves in the development of computing technology, geo-political dynamics, economic thought, medicine, and beyond.
That said, adoption of the Munich Agreement was not so much the origin of these waves as it was a symptom of events that would eventually spur the ripples we see today.
This discussion has presented a one-dimensional perspective that barely scratches the surface of the nuanced undercurrents of the interwar period, yet it is apparent that a different outcome to the Munich Conference could only have been achieved given a very different reality. Munich served as the basis for the ripples that followed; the agreement lay at the centre but was not the source of actions it preceded.
Peace forms the core, but is not the cause of harmony. Leaders of the 20th century pursued peace in their conquest for harmony, only to find conflict in their realisation of peace. The Munich Agreement made waves when it was signed, and the events that followed are making waves to this day.
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