Posted on 02/16/2022 9:27:30 AM PST by Rummyfan
The city name “Munich” is already profoundly associated with cinematic moral confusion. It was the title Steven Spielberg gave his relativistic reflection on the way the Mossad avenged the murder of Israeli athletes in 1972. Now Netflix has given us Munich: The Edge of War, a prestige film that has gained a high-end audience and that has been hailed by many critics. At its heart is a quest to undo the legacy of one of history’s greatest heroes and to lionize one of its weakest statesmen.
The movie seeks nothing less than to celebrate Neville Chamberlain, a man whose name is eternally affiliated with appeasement. It focuses on the meeting between the British prime minister and Hitler when the latter asserted Germany’s right to the Czech territory Germans called the Sudentenland. Chamberlain conceded and returned home brandishing a signed promise by Hitler not to wage war on Britain.
This anti-Churchill thesis has been embraced by Jeremy Irons, the Oscar-winning British actor who plays Chamberlain. He told Variety: “Churchill was able to write the history of that period afterwards. It’s all very easy to look back at history and see what you want to see. But at the time, I believe Chamberlain followed the right path. He tried to prevent war. He tried to appease Hitler and got an agreement with Hitler that he would go no further. That was a canny thing to do because once Hitler did go further, he was able to say to the country, this man is not to be trusted and we’re going to have to fight him. I think Chamberlain should be praised for his pragmatic behavior. We shouldn’t view the Munich Agreement simply as the appeasement of a weak man who was fooled by Hitler. It’s the wrong way to look at it.”
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Chamberlain clearly did believe that he had made peace with Hitler, as did the English elite who cheered him in Parliament when he returned. And we must therefore understand why Churchill saw what so many others missed. The most interesting character in Munich is an aide to Hitler who as a student was enthusiastic about the “new Germany” and then becomes revolted by it. The role is based on Adam von Trott, who later attempted to assassinate Hitler. In the movie, it is the Nazis’ treatment of the Jews that wakes this young man to the danger posed by Hitler. This ironically highlights what is elided in the film. As Andrew Roberts has noted, the Anglo elite refused to fully face up to the horrors of Hitlerism because many of them cared so little for the fate of the Jews of Germany.
Will do.
The actual title is “The One THAT Got Away”.
It's a great flick!
There were many in Great Britain who were more than sympathetic to the Nazi regime. Mosby for instance, and the aforementioned Duke of Windsor. On our side, Lindbergh sung the praises of Germany, and our ambassador to the Court of St James, Joseph Kennedy did too.
After the horrors of World War I no one wanted to go to war again. But if they had stopped Hilter early, repulsed his claiming of the Rhineland for instance, who knows have things might have turned. The German forces were prepared to retreat in that operation if they encountered any resistance. None was offered.
The British ambassador to the Third Reich was pro-Nazi too. Can’t remember his name off hand...
Indeed. Warts and all a man in full.
Not unique for that time and her class. Churchill's children were problematic too. His son's first wife later married Averill Harriman. While she was still married to Randolph she was running around wartime London with Harriman. It was said of Pamela Churchill (later Harriman) that she had seen all the best ceilings in Europe. One daughter was a lush.
That’s another good one. Laurence Olivier as a French Canadian trapper... LOL.
According to what I read in Manchester's biography of Churchill, only Hess knew of it. He had the 110 modified so he could make the flight and practiced flying on his own. He parachuted near the manor of some lord whom he thought would give him an audience.
Did the Germans not target women and children in London? In Sheffield? In Manchester? In Rotterdam? And what they did to Warsaw in 1944.... The point is, once the war starts the genie is out of the bottle and it's no holds barred. If we had lost the war Curtis LeMay would have been hung as a war criminal along with many other senior Allied officers.
This has been an interesting thread. Seems to me that Chamberlain was negotiating from a weak position. So, the question to me is this: Did he follow up on appeasement with a call to mobilization that presupposed a treacherous Hitler?
(I don’t know, just asking.)
Yes I’m just one of those who is a stickler for accuracy. The reason Britain was against Germany was not because of the ghastly attack Germany did in the Blitz. But you are right, Germany should not have started the war or started the attack on civilians. Just worth noting that by today’s standards Churchill would have been prohibited from bombing Dresden the way he did. But war is hell.
I think the real folly was thinking a dictator who wanted to take over the world would be happy with just Czechoslovakia. “Gosh Neville! The dictator broke his promise? Why didn’t we see that coming?” Have to be a serious diplomatic retard to think that play from the “here’s how to appease all dictators” playbook would have seriously worked. At least Churchill possessed some brains!
Hitler pretty much said everything he was going to do in Mein Kampf, right down to the letter.
Goebbels asked for “Totaller Krieg”, and he got it!
He was certainly a unique and very interesting individual. ("I don't always get to fly combat missions. But when I do, I like to shoot down enemy planes." ;>)
One of Churchill’s biggest faults was trying to micromanage the war and war strategy. Being PM and Defense Chief was probably too much.
Even in 1938 the German Command was not ready for war and did think they would be for a few more years, Hitler overrode them in any event. If Germany had waited until say 1943 or 44 it might have been a different outcome, we will never know.
If Hitler had attacked Russia in the Spring, say March or April, instead of June, that outcome may well have been different and Germany may well have captured Moscow and been able to defend their territories.
I liked the Munich with Eric Bana.
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