Had always insisted that their interests stopped at the Rhine. Austen Chamberlain had said that no British grenadier would ever die for Danzig —or for anywhere else in Eastern Europe. The British recognized that German predominance would take the place of French. But this did not trouble them. Eastern Europe and the Balkans were no great prize economically. If they absorbed German energies and ambitions, it was all the more likely that Germany would leave Western Europe and the British Empire alone.
Fear of war was also a dominant motive at the Munich conference, but for the Western powers it was war that was feared rather than defeat. The French had confidence in their army, the British in their navy. But while they did not expect the Germans to defeat them, they doubted whether they could defeat Germany —except at a terrible price. There was no way in which the Western powers could give limited aid to the Czechs, as they might have done to the Spanish Republic. The facts of geography stood in the way. It was war on the largest scale or nothing. In those days, everyone believed that aerial bombardment would reduce the cities of Europe to ruin within a few weeks. European civilization would come to an end. This was the peril which Chamberlain sought to avert.
The Czechs themselves shared this fear of war. President Benes believed that Hitler was bluffing and would give way if faced with a firm united opposition. When Hitler did not give way, even Benes in the last resort preferred surrender to war. The Czechs, Benes held, were a small people, who must preserve their lives for a better future. Their country had been occupied before and they had survived. They would survive again. In a sense, his arguments were justified by events. The Czechs were abandoned by the Western powers. Their country fell under Gorman tyranny for six years. But only one or perhaps two hundred thousand of them lost their lives. Prague, their capital was the only great city of Central Europe to remain undamaged in the Second World War, and Czechoslovakia re-emerged with unbroken spirit, at the end. In contrast, Poland was guaranteed by the Western powers, who went to war for her sake. As a result, six million Poles were killed. Warsaw was reduced to a heap of ruins, and Poland, though restored, lost much of her territory and of her independence.
UV/.s Munich a conspiracy?
Did more lie behind? Was the Munich conference not merely a surrender, an abandonment, or even a betrayal of Czechoslovakia? Was it also part of a deliberate attempt to promote a German hegemony and to clear the way for a German attack on Soviet Russia? This is a view strongly held by Soviet and other Communist-inclined historians. The Munich conference was certainly an assertion that Europe could settle its own affairs. Only the purely European powers —France, Germany, Great Britain, and Italy —were represented. The two world powers, Soviet Russia and the United States, were absent. The United States had persistently refused to be involved in European conflicts ever since the end of the First World War. It is likely, too, that the Western powers welcomed the absence of any American representative. If one had attended the conference, he would have preached morality to others without being prepared to act on it himself Great Britain and France looked forward to a time when there might be a great war and they would need American aid. Even with this in mind, they preferred not to be exposed to American reproaches before the time came for action.
Soviet Russia was a different matter. The Western powers never counted on Soviet aid. They did not believe, and quite rightly, that even if Soviet Russia entered a war against Germany she would be fighting either for democracy as they understood it or for the sanctity of treaties. After all, the settlement of 1919 had been made quite as much against Soviet Russia as against Germany, and the Russians would aim to take Germany’s place in Eastern Europe, not to defend the independence of the small states. As well, the Western powers doubted whether Soviet Russia intended to fight Germany seriously or whether she was capable of doing so. They distrusted Soviet Russia quite as much as she distrusted them. Each side suspected the other of pushing it into the front line. Moreover, this was the period of Stalin’s great purges. Nearly all the marshals and generals of the Red Army had been murdered or imprisoned. Under such circumstances, it was hard to believe that Soviet Russia could conduct a successful offensive. Geography stood in Russia’s way even more than in theirs. Soviet Russia could not strike at Germany without crossing the territory of either Poland or Rumania. Both countries refused to allow the passage of Soviet troops —the Poles more rigorously than the Rumanians. The Western powers were supposed to be defending the rights of small nations and could hardly begin their campaign by trampling on the rights of Poland and Rumania.
On paper, the Soviet government had a position of impregnable righteousness. According to the Czech-Soviet treaty of 1935, Soviet Russia was committed to supporting Czechoslovakia only jf France did so first. The Soviet rulers surmised correctly that France would not honour her word. Therefore they were quite safe in declaring that they would honour theirs. Soviet leaders went further. They often hinted that they would be prepared to aid Czechoslovakia even if France did not act. But they would do this only if President Benes and the Czechoslovak government asked them to do so. Here again the Soviet government was quite safe. The Czechoslovak government was predominantly right-wing, and President Benes, though less on the Right, was determined not to fight with Soviet Russia as sole ally. This, he thought, would invite the fate of Republican Spain, and he was not far wrong. Hence we cannot tell what the Soviet government really intended to do. They could promise great things in the secure confidence that they would never be called on to fulfil their promises. Similarly, we do not know whether the Soviet government made any serious preparations for war. Most Western observers reported at the time that the Red Army had taken no measures of mobilization. Nowadays the Soviet spokesmen claim that the Red Army had mobilized thirty divisions. This, even if true, was a derisory force to use against Germany, and suggests that the Soviet government were intending only to seize some Polish territory. But as the Soviet government refuses to release evidence, all statements about its policy are guesswork.
We may dismiss one guess the other way round. Soviet writers then and later Alleged that the Western powers aimed to switch German aggression eastwards, against Soviet Russia. Many Soviet writers even allege that the Western powers dreamed of joining in this aggression themselves. There is virtually no foundation for their theory. The Communists imagined that everyone in the capitalist world was afraid of them and therefore wanted to destroy 'the workers’ state’. In fact. Communism had lost its appeal. Soviet Russia was the best propaganda against Communism —it offered tyranny, starvation, inefficiency. No one in Western Europe feared Soviet Russia any more. Indeed, sensible English people regretted that Soviet Russia was so weak. In the end, German aggression was indeed switched. But it was switched from east to west by the Nazi-Soviet pact. It was not switched from west to east by the conference at Munich.
World History
