Sunday 21 August 2011

What were Winston Churchill's objections to the Munich agreement ?

While
Churchill objected strongly to the Munich agreement, he had earlier made positive statements
about Hitler, saying, according to Richard Holmes's book In the Footsteps of
Hitler
 "I will not pretend that, if I had to choose between communism and
Nazism, I would choose communism" (185). He initially hoped, as many did in the early
1930s, that Hitler, once he settled in and settled down, might prove a good and stabilizing
influence on Germany. Churchill later, of course, changed his mind as Hitler increasingly showed
his true colors and failed to normalize. From the mid to late 1930s, Churchill pushed for
British rearmament, fearing that Germany would attack England. It is worth noting that Churchill
was in his sixties at this point, had vast government experience, was widely traveled, and was
not naive about how the world operated.

When Chamberlain signed the Munich
agreement, essentially giving Czechoslovakia to the Germans in an attempt to prevent a war,
Churchill opposed the pact both because it was dishonorablehe said it brought "shame"
to Englandand because he believed it was only forestalling, not preventing, the war he
recognized was inevitable. He thought it would only make the situation worse later to appease
Hitler rather than confronting him militarily over Czechoslovakia's Sudetenland.
 

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