The Munich Analogy Redux
The Bush administration once again is turning to the Munich analogy and the bloody shirt of appeasement to discredit critics and shut off consideration of alternatives to staying the course in Iraq. But if there’s anything worse than not learning from history, it’s drawing the wrong lessons. Munich was Munich; British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain’s policy towards Hitler was deeply flawed, all too tragically so. But no historical analogy has been more misapplied than this one. Remember Vietnam?
President Lyndon B. Johnson: “Everything I know about history told me that if I got out of Vietnam and let Ho Chi Minh run through the streets of Saigon, then I’d be doing exactly what Chamberlain did in WWII. I’d be giving a big fat reward for aggression.”
President Richard M. Nixon: "There are those who will say that this picture is much too dark. Like Neville Chamberlain, who in 1938 described Czechoslovakia as a little-known and far away country, they deride the importance of South Vietnam and scoff at the suggestion that to lose one more major segment of Asia means to lose it all. Such optimists contend that we should reach an agreement with our adversaries--as Chamberlain reached an agreement with Hitler at Munich in 1938."
National Security Advisor and Secretary of State Henry Kissinger: “In 1938 the Munich agreement made Chamberlain widely popular and cast Churchill in the role of alarmist troublemaker; eighteen months later Chamberlain was finished because the Munich agreement was discredited. With the Vietnam War the problem was more complex. Rightly or wrongly – I am still thoroughly convinced rightly—we thought that capitulation or steps that amounted to it would usher in a period of disintegrating American credibility that could only accelerate the world’s instability.”
Senator Henry M. Jackson (for those a bit too rose-colored in their look back at Senator Jackson as a model for Democrats today): “We think the world might have been spared enormous misfortunes if Japan had not been permitted to succeed in Manchuria, or Mussolini in Ethiopia, or Hitler in Czechoslovakia or in the Rhineland. And we think that our sacrifices in this dirty war in little Vietnam will make a dirtier and bigger war less likely.”
Comments (19)
Ugh. I have been writing about this very topic lately. The level of abuse of reputational-rhetoric by this administration is reaching Vietnam-era levels, and we all know how well that turned out.
August 30, 2006 7:19 AM | Reply | Permalink
Considering the state of the British military, Chamberlain could only have tried to bluff Hitler at Munich about the Sudetenland issue.
August 30, 2006 8:01 AM | Reply | Permalink
The "lesson" of Munich is merely that we aren't good at predicting the behavior of others. The only bad result was personal, for Chamberlain.
As rwcox123 points out, what army was going to impede Hitler? Even after Czechoslovakia and Poland, and no one was fooling themselves about Hitler's intent, France and the UK were unable to stop the advance. The US was completely useless at that time.
The inverse of Munich could perhaps have been a certainty that Hitler was planning war and a responsive military buildup by the UK, France, and the US. Who had the money or political strength? And who could have divined the future with enough certainly to warrant the effort? Sometimes you just have to wait and see what direction the hurricane goes.
There is no lesson from Munich worth the name.
August 30, 2006 8:18 AM | Reply | Permalink
The British and French armies ould have imeded Hilter. You are mistaken. Given that the British in particular did not want to fight another war they hoped they could buy off Hilter.
Daniel A. Greenbaum
August 30, 2006 8:39 AM | Reply | Permalink
Hitler is the patron saint of foreign policy conservatism. Whenever anyone advocates a policy that conservatives disagree with-- ie, urging Israel to kill and displace fewer civilians in Lebanon, not starting another two or three wars-- conservatives invoke St. Hitler to justify their preferred course.
This helps deflect rational argument and empiricism, which conservatives discount in favor of rhetoric.
August 30, 2006 8:55 AM | Reply | Permalink
But this is irrelevant when it comes to the lessons of Munich. The issue with Munich is that some believe that by showing ‘weakness’ or lack of resolve Hitler was emboldened and demanded more. We know this is false for several reasons: Hitler never had limited demands or goals and was already preparing for a larger scale conflict, and there is no empirical evidence that his decisions were based on the reputations or past actions of the French and British.
Whether or not the Allies should have attacked Hitler first is not the issue when people speak about the Lessons of Munich, it is the issue of reputation and how it can affect the actions and calculations of one’s enemies.
August 30, 2006 8:55 AM | Reply | Permalink
Sure, the Brits impeded Hitler all the way to Dunkirk. But I'm sure your point about not wanting another war is true.
The deeper problem is we are not omniscient and can't see the future. We can't prepare for a war that hasn't happened yet. We can convict Iran a priori but will we be correct? Note the results of convicting Iraq before the fact.
Applying the "lesson" would justified the Soviets attacking us pre-emptively, since we supported proxies (like Hezbollah) against them and spoke in a bellicose manner ("Evil Empire"). Similarly, we could have used Munich (it has been suggested we should have) to attack the Soviets. Damned lucky we didn't.
August 30, 2006 9:06 AM | Reply | Permalink
The real lesson of Munich was not lost on the British or the French. Prior to Munich, the focus of foreign diplomacy had been naval disarmament treaties (the equivalent of today's SALT). The US actually had to scrap some of its battleships to comply. Subsequent to Munich both knew another war was inevitable and immediately began rearming. So did the United States. To say that Hitler (or Japan) could have been stopped in 1938 is and always has been revisionism. No great power could have fought a war against Germany in central Europe or Japan in northeast Asia in 1938 except in their dreams. However, there is a danger in raising these analogies. When I saw Rumsfeld's comments, I could not avoid wondering: if this is 1938, who does the rest of the world see as playing the role of Germany?
August 30, 2006 9:07 AM | Reply | Permalink
All this Hitler mongering is a little dishonest, isn't it? America didn't lift a finger until the Japanese attacked us at Pearl Harbor. It was the Japanese that got us into WWII, not because we wanted to save the world from the Third Reich.
Besides, this WWII comparison completely misses the fact that the Middle east is the gas pump of America the world, and we have a strange habit of butting in to the affairs of petro-rich states. We're just junkies who are guarding the stash.
The only freedom that Bush & Co. wants is the freedom to pump oil into capital markets. There is nothing more noble about it, everything else is icing on the cake.
August 30, 2006 9:45 AM | Reply | Permalink
Actually, I could almost buy Munich analogies. Only one side advocated preemptive war, and it was Hitler. Only one side used its population's fears for the nation's political, economic, and military status as an excuse to turn toward totally unrelated other nations and other ethnic groups. That was Hitler, too.
Well, ok, I can't really go along with the analogy. It'd make Lieberman into Chamberlain, and that sounds so silly I better just give up. Best to think of Cheney's and Rumsfeld's rhetoric as what the NYRB article on AIPAC that Stirling recommends calls "background noise."
And again, last thing we want to do is let such noise distract us into thinking that we have to convert liberalism into a new vision akin to realism or, alternately, a military imposition of human rights that'd be the mirror image of neoconservatism. As the other thread kept pointing out, that's a false choice.
John
http://www.haberarts.com/
August 30, 2006 9:45 AM | Reply | Permalink
Given the definition of fascism:
"a governmental system led by a dictator having complete power, forcibly suppressing opposition and criticism, regimenting all industry, commerce, etc., and emphasizing an aggressive nationalism and often racism."
Dictionary.com. Dictionary.com Unabridged (v 1.0.1), Based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2006. http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=fascism (accessed: August 30, 2006).
And such things as Mr. Bush's "signing statements," illegal NSA Surveillance attempts, unlawful unilateral warmongering and militarization, the plundering of the national pocketbook by corporate entities, and the overwhelming attempt to wrap every action undertaken in the government in terms of "national security," "homeland" and "patriotism" as well as blatant use of flag and other national symbols to challenge dissent -- I'd say most of the world and a few of us here in the U.S. of A. would conclude that it is is the we that draw closer to a fascist regime every day King George the mad remains in power.
August 30, 2006 9:48 AM | Reply | Permalink
Actually Britain had begun rearming a few years before 1938. In the year ending march 1938 (ie before munich) british defence sending was approximately 5 times what it had been 4 years earlier. The income tax rate had been raised by around 25% to help pay for this.
As for what would have happened without a munich agreement , i think it's quite likely that germany
would have run into serious problems very quickly.
The Czechs had a good and well armed military and it had an excellent defensive network without a maginot-like flank for the germans to go round.
They had a very large & good arms industry (which is one of the reasons the germans wanted their country).
It's very likely that the germans would have found themselves entangled in a bloody shambles on the czech border.
Without outside help the czechs would eventually have lost(which is why they gave in after munich) but the german army could have been gutted in the process. With the UK & france in the war germany would have been in a truly desperate situation.
Munich was very much a case of bluffing by hitler.
August 30, 2006 10:08 AM | Reply | Permalink
I agree that learning the wrong lesson is worse than learning nothing. So what's the right lesson of Munich?
Obviously, the agreement had a bad outcome. But that wasn't because of any universal truth, of the sort that good analogies require.
The reasons are empirical. Hitler had the intention and capability of conquering Europe, and Europe did not have the capability to stop him.
So Hitler conquered Europe and held most of it until he was dumb enough to invade Russia in the winter.
In other words, Hitler failed to learn the lesson of Napoleon, which isn't an analogy-sustaining universal truth either. Rather, it's a simple fact: Russia's cold winters make it really hard to capture Moscow.
So if there must be a lesson, to satisfy our human craving for such things, let it be this:
Empiricism is the only hope. Don't be so confused by your own, individual prejudices that you fail to understand the specific, unique facts of the situation at hand.
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-- All successful revolutions are the kicking in of a rotten door. (John Kenneth Galbraith) --
August 30, 2006 11:53 AM | Reply | Permalink
You are correct. Britain was already rearming. But the lag between budget appropriations and hardware can take years. The Czechs certainly may have put up a good fight (look at what the Finns did to the Russians a couple of years later). But neither France nor England could guarantee any military contribution, possibly for years.
Another possible contributing factor is that the borders of Czechoslovakia were less that 20 years old in 1938 and many on both sides may have viewed it as potentially Austrian territory. Empires were used to redrawing borders at will in those days. It was not seen as being as serious an issue as it looks today using modern concepts of borders. To the British, sacrificing the Sudenten area for two more years of preparation time was probably considered to be not too bad a deal. Of course, after the war it could not be presented that way...
August 30, 2006 11:58 AM | Reply | Permalink
I don't think the analogies between Vietnam or Munich are apt.
This has more of a feel of Operation Barbarossa or the Napoleonic invasion of Russia. Where the Soviets/Russians retreated drawing their enemy in, then when the enemy couldn't logistically sustain the attack anymore the Soviets/Russians counterattacked and defeated their opponents. While not completely analogous to our current situation in Iraq I see, in Iraq, the US falling into the same trap as Hitler and Napolean did in Russia. We are overreaching and fighting in multiple theaters, exposing weaknesses in our forces and tactics. Which could give potential opponents inside and outside the ME valuable insight into how to defeat us.
August 30, 2006 12:38 PM | Reply | Permalink
bruce, fair enough but tell me why you would have thought at the time that appeasement was wrong. Hitler promised to stop, said he wanted a grand bargain, and the public was against a general war. It wasn't clear in 1938 that Hitler was insatiable. The point is just that it's fine to say that Munich was a once off but if it is repeated it will also not be clear at the time that accommodation or waiting is blatantly wrong.
Overall, those who worry about Munich essentially want to run a high risk of medium costs rather than a low risk of high costs. In this view, the costs in Vietnam and Iraq are very low compared to what could come from inaction. While every death is a tragedy, Iraq, and even Vietnam, remains very low in terms of the costs of a general or nuclear war.
you need to say why this world view is demonstrably wrong, not just saying that Vietnam happened. After all, if Britain and France had gone to war in 1938, the war would have been costly and lots of people would have said it was unnecessary, that hitler could have been accommodated if he was just given the german speaking lands, something back then alot of folks agreed with, including many Brits and non nazis.
August 30, 2006 12:58 PM | Reply | Permalink
The Czechs had a good and well armed military and it had an excellent defensive network . . . . denspark
But would Good Soldier Schwejk have gone to war?
August 30, 2006 1:28 PM | Reply | Permalink
Some might find it interesting to look at the discussion of the invasion of Czechoslovakia at the Nuremberg Tribunal of the German High Command. In particular, look at the conflicting testimony of Field Marshal Rundstedt, who agreed the invasion was a treaty violation.
Postwar analysis and documents establish fairly well that Hitler had almost nothing to go into the Sudetenland and still was very marginal for invading Czechoslovakia, especially if the Czech military had any foreign reinforcement. Still, it is well to note that "power projection" is a relatively recent term. Czechoslovakia is landlocked. Assuming the British or French were to intervene, they would have had to get permission from additional countries to march through them, and possibly land troops at their ports and then march. At that time, air transport was not mature enough to send significant reinforcements of material or troops.
Hungary was in a similar situation in 1956. While the US encouraged revolt, it couldn't reinforce Hungary. Even though it was physically possible, by then, to send some reinforcements by air, there was no direct route. Any flights would have to have gone through neutral Austrian airspace, or fight its way through Soviet-bloc territory.
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Howard
*equal opportunity offense to both extremes*
August 30, 2006 2:18 PM | Reply | Permalink
The Munich analogy would be 100% entirely accurate if in 1936:
1. England had several hundred thousand troops in Germany.
2. Instead of having a dynamic industrial economy and burgeoning war machine, Germany had a basket case economy characterized by indolence, graft, embezzlement and incompetence.
3.Instead of turning out legions of world class scientists, engineers and military technicians from a linup of polytechnics and univerities that were the envy of the world, most Germans who had university educations went to those universities to study theology.
4.Instead of possessing a state of the art fleet of fighter jets, submarines, tanks and missiles the Germans had car bombs and rifles.
5. Nazis, communists, anarchists and radical Catholic and Lutheran fanatics spent their days slaughtering each other on the streets of Berlin, and were too busy with each other to worry about conquering anybody.
6.The British were threatening to sanction and invade Poland, and had military bases and forces in almost every country bordering Poland.
7. The German government, such as it was, consisted of a bunch of warlords and militia leaders heading local city-states, and at least one breakawy republic, while Hitler, Goebbels and friends protected themselves from their "people" by hiding in a bunker in Berlin - a bunker built and guarded by the British.
8. Troublesome Germans were routinely picked up off the street by the British and disappeared to a chain of interrogation and torture dungeons around the world.
Honestly, who the fuck does Bush think he is kidding? What's going on in the Middle East is a problem. But 1936? It's nothing like that problem. Go back to school junior.
August 30, 2006 4:01 PM | Reply | Permalink