The Lesson From Munich: Appeasement Kills!

I was listening to a talk program today and a caller phoned in to say that he thought appeasement of our enemies was the right thing to do. Never mind that to appease Islamic Radicals, we would have to shred the U.S. Constitution with it's protection for women and minority rights and agree to imposition of Sharia Law.

This loon proudly proclaims "peace at any price" and insisted that British Prime Minsister Neville Chamberlain's appeasement of Hitler at Munich was the right thing to do. (Munich documents here)

While we may be reasonably assured that most pacifist appeasers would not go that far, there are a great many who feel at least if you are talking to your enemy, you're not being killed. Never mind that Munich meant that up to sixty million people died and that nightmare might never have happened if someone other than Neville Chamberlain had been sitting at Number 10 Downing Street.

I've been reading Winston Churchill's six volume history of the Second World War. In volume one, after reviewing the events that led up to Munich he sums up the damage as it dawned that appeasement had failed and war would come over Poland:

The Second World War, Volume 1: The Gathering Storm
By Winston S. Churchill
Pages 346-348.

In this sad tale of wrong judgments formed by well-meaning and capable people, we now reach our climax. That we should all have come to this pass makes those responsible, however honourable their motives, blameworthy before history. Look back and see what we had successively accepted or thrownaway: a Germany disarmed by solemn treaty; a Germany re-armed in violation of a solemn treaty; air superiority or even air parity cast away; the Rhineland forcibly occupied and theSiegfried Line built or building; the Berlin-Rome Axis established; Austria devoured and digested by the Reich; Czechoslovakia deserted and ruined by the Munich Pact; its fortressline in German hands; its mighty arsenal of Skoda hencefor-ward making munitions for the German armies; President Roosevelt's effort to stabilise or bring to a head the European situation by the intervention of the United States waved aside with one hand, and Soviet Russia's undoubted willingness to join the Western Powers and go all lengths to save Czechoslovakia ignored on the other; the services of thirty-five Czech divisions against the still unripened German Army cast away, when Great Britain could herself supply only two to strengthen the front in France — all gone with the wind.

And now, when every one of these aids and advantages has been squandered and thrown away. Great Britain advances, leading France by the hand, to guarantee the integrity of Poland - of that very Poland which with hyena appetite had only six months before joined in the pillage and destruction of the Czechoslovak State. There was sense in fighting for CzechoSlovakia in 1938 when the German Army could scarcely put half a dozen trained divisions on the Western Front, when the French with nearly sixty or seventy divisions could most certainly have rolled forward across the Rhine or into the Ruhr. But this had been judged unreasonable, rash, below the level of modern intellectual thought and morality. Yet now at last the two Western Democracies declared themselves ready to stake their lives upon the territorial integrity of Poland. History, which we are told is mainly the record of the crimes, follies, and miseries of mankind, may be scoured and ransacked to find a parallel to this sudden and complete reversal of five or six years' policy of easy-going placatory appeasement, and its transformation almost overnight into a readiness to accept an obviously imminent war on far worse conditions and on the greatest scale.

Moreover, how could we protect Poland and make good our guarantee? Only by declaring war upon Germany and attacking a stronger Western Wall and a more powerful German Army than those from which we had recoiled in September, 1938.
Here is a line of milestones to disaster. Here is a catalogue of surrenders, at first when all was easy and later when things were harder, to the ever-growing German power. But now at last was the end of British and French submission. Here was decision at last, taken at the worst possible moment and on the least satisfactory ground, which must surely lead to the slaughter of tens of millions of people. Here was the righteous cause deliberately and with a refinement of inverted artistry committed to mortal battle after its assets and advantages had been so improvidently squandered. Still, if you will not fight for the right when you can easily win without bloodshed; if you will not fight when your victory will be sure and not too costly you may come to the moment when you will have to fight withall the odds against you and only a precarious chance of survival. There may even be a worse case. You may have to fight when there is no hope of victory, because it is better to perish than live as slaves.

What lesson does the Mike's America reader draw from Munich which applies to the present day?