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It's hard enough to discourage students from using Wikipedia in their end-of-term papers. But to see a presidential candidate appear to crib from the online source in a major foreign policy address?
The Georgia crisis hasn't featured particularly good use of history from commentators, either. Here's Robert Kagan:"Do you recall the precise details of the Sudeten Crisis that led to Nazi Germany's invasion of Czechoslovakia? Of course not, because that morally ambiguous dispute is rightly remembered as a minor part of a much bigger drama."
It's startling, to put it mildly, to see on the pages of the Washington Post the Sudeten Crisis termed a"morally ambiguous dispute." I fully sympathize with those who argue that we need to do what we can to help Georgia. But comparing the current unrest to the"morally ambiguous" Sudeten dispute is an abuse of history.
Kershaw's working very hard to make the "feasible" plausible. Very hard.
Alan Allport -
8/24/2008
Coincidentally, Hitler's biographer Ian Kershaw has just weighed in on this matter in the Guardian. Kershaw's opinion doesn't resolve anything - of course. But I would like to quote the following section, which I think is sympathetic to what I was trying to say:
"Was Chamberlain merely buying time, as he still claimed in 1940, when he remained adamant he had done the right thing? What would have happened had Britain gone to war over Czechoslovakia in the autumn of 1938? No military aid from Britain or France would have been forthcoming for Czechoslovakia. Probably Hitler's forces would have quickly vanquished the Czechs (as war games predicted). Internal opposition in Germany would have come to nothing. A phoney war somewhat similar to 1938-39 would have set in a year earlier. True, German forces and defences in autumn 1938 were nowhere near as strong as they were by spring 1940. But Britain's forces were at that time proportionally still weaker. Given the pressure to act, the weakness of his adversaries, and his own temperament, Hitler would probably have invaded France in 1939, which would have necessitated some (temporary) deal in the east with the Poles or the Russians. The French may well have caved in as they did in 1940.
Whether Churchill would have assumed the premiership in Britain and succeeded in bolstering morale and defiance had war commenced a year earlier cannot, like much else, be known. But without his leadership, Britain might have been tempted to look for a settlement that would have left Germany in the ascendancy in Europe. Who knows? What did not happen is open only to the realms of fantasy, not the methods of historical research. But it is at least feasible that Chamberlain's capitulation at Munich proved ultimately beneficial to Britain - if at the expense of the Czechs and lasting national ignominy."
David Silbey -
8/15/2008
"I think we were lucky peace lasted another year."
A 1938 war with the West in which the Soviet Union remains neutral looks enormously different to Germany than a 1939 war with the West in which the Soviet Union is an ally.
Jonathan Dresner -
8/15/2008
You're right. I forgot how much Kagans like binary power politics, absolute evils.
It's historically ignorant stuff, still, and it includes no actually discussion -- as I said -- of the actual subtleties of either the Sudenten or Ossetian crises, just standard Manichean Kaganism.
Alan Allport -
8/14/2008
Well, the scenario I had in mind was Poland becoming an opportunistic partner-in-crime rather than an enthusiastic paid-up member of the Axis, but anyway, we can agree to differ about that. That's the problem with counterfactuals, of course; once you introduce more than a few variables the outcome becomes completely unpredictable. What we might perhaps agree about however is that the behavior of Poland, Hungary and also the USSR (which we haven't really discussed yet) could have radically altered the course of a war in 1938. For myself, I'm not convinced that the much-vaunted Czech Army and its mountain defences would have been nearly as formidable as the critics of Munich suggest. I think we were lucky peace lasted another year.
David Silbey -
8/14/2008
"The Poles helped themselves to Teschen as part of the Munich carve-up, just as Hungary took some of sub-Carpathian Ruthenia. I don't think it's too much of a stretch to imagine both these countries deciding to grab what they could in a 1938 war"
I think it is quite a stretch, actually. That the Poles helped themselves to Teschen is certainly true, but that's not the same thing as them "join[ing] the Axis," which was your original point.
R.R. Hamilton -
8/14/2008
Here is a series of the most outstandingly astute comments I have ever seen on HNN. Congrats to all.
R.R. Hamilton -
8/14/2008
Here is a series of the most outstandingly astute comments I have ever seen on HNN. Congrats to all.
R.R. Hamilton -
8/14/2008
Oops, I guess you should've read his article first.
Nathanael D. Robinson -
8/12/2008
"Britain and France could easily have found themselves fighting most of Europe east of the Rhine."
But that's what France wanted: to project any eventual conflict with Germany away from its borders and into eastern Europe. This may have seemed illogical in British geo-strategic planning, but it was the war for which France was prepared, and one it could have fought more effectively at any early date before the Wehrmacht built up an armored advantage. Moreover, part of the weakness of France's war in 1940 was that much of the public support to fight had been drained away; they were much more bellicose in 1935, 1936, and 1938. Of course, the French public was hardly in tune with world opinion (not to mention British), as you point out. But it could have been a different nation that went to war in 1938 than 1940.
Alan Allport -
8/12/2008
I'd like to see some evidence that the Poles would have allied themselves with the Germans. I'm skeptical.
The Poles helped themselves to Teschen as part of the Munich carve-up, just as Hungary took some of sub-Carpathian Ruthenia. I don't think it's too much of a stretch to imagine both these countries deciding to grab what they could in a 1938 war, particularly as they were shielded by geography from any Anglo-French retaliation. Certainly in 1938 the Poles were much more anti-Soviet than anti-German.
David Silbey -
8/12/2008
Sometimes the allegory is pretty close to the truth. There are moral ambiguities to the Sudeten Crisis, but Kagan makes the crisis entirely about the ambiguities, which, as KC Johnson points out, is foolish.
A few of Alan's points:
1. Czechoslovakia (as Jeff Vanke has noted), had both a substantial army and a useful defensive border with Germany. It would have been a very hard nut for the Germans to crack, especially if the French Army loomed to the west.
2. The Czech armaments industry was large and provided a lot of material for the Germans.
3. The Czech crisis helped Stalin think about allying himself with the Germans.
4. I'd like to see some evidence that the Poles would have allied themselves with the Germans. I'm skeptical.
Alan Allport -
8/12/2008
The argument can be made that in 1938, France and Britain -- *with Czechoslovakia* and its natural Sudeten mountain defenses -- had a better chance of defeating Hitler's Germany than they did in 1939 or 1940.
Yes, it can be made; I just don't think it can be made persuasively. The 'optimist' case here assumes that the Czechs would have been formidable opponents. On paper, their army was impressive. But on paper only. One fifth of 'Czech' reservists were German-speaking. Would they have proved reliable soldiers in the event? The Slovaks were of course equally unenthusiatic about their union with the Czechs. And then there are the vultures; if war had broken out in 1938 then Poland and Hungary would probably have joined in the carve-up, as they did diplomatically after Munich. Britain and France could easily have found themselves fighting most of Europe east of the Rhine. I don't find this 'lost opportunity' compelling.
Probably the worst one can say about Munich was that it was humiliating; Britain and France did appear to be weak, and Germany victorious (though as I've said Hitler eventually changed his mind and regarded the deal as a personal defeat). But it established a crucial principle; that the Allies were prepared to make almost any reasonable concession to avoid war. Which meant that when Hitler started to make totally unreasonable demands (such as the occupation of rump Czechoslovakia in March 1939) their moral case for deterrence was all the stronger. Munich meant that in September 1939 the Allies indisputably held the high moral ground in world opinion. It's unlikely that would have been the case if war had broken out a year earlier.
Jeff Vanke -
8/12/2008
Munich was both morally ambiguous, yet clearly betrayal and morally appalling. (There, we can have our cake and eat it, too.)
The Sudetenland was what, 85% German? I once met a Sudeten German (long settled in West Berlin) who was a young man in 1938. I asked him what percentage of Sudeten Germans wanted to join Germany in 1938. He answered, dispassionately, about 85%. (I've also observed the get-our-homes-back Sudeten and East Prussian refugees. This man wasn't one of those.)
Read Ernest May's Strange Victory about armed force balance sheets in 1940. The argument can be made that in 1938, France and Britain -- *with Czechoslovakia* and its natural Sudeten mountain defenses -- had a better chance of defeating Hitler's Germany than they did in 1939 or 1940.
France had a pact with Czechoslovakia. At Munich, it broke that pact. Prime Minister Edouard Daladier, who signed that pact, was ashamed, morally, and as a matter of pragmatism. Daladier's head was not in Chamberlain's sand.
That's what makes the 1938 Sudetenland question retrospectively unambiguous -- it was a good chance to start fighting Hitler, and it was contemporarily unambiguous to some. Still, even though the overarching issue is, and should have been, unambiguous, it certainly was morally ambiguous, thwarting the will of people who only 20 years earlier had been packed off to an ethnic state they did not choose.
Alan Allport -
8/12/2008
Not at all. Was Munich 'wrong'? Well, first of all, do we mean 'wrong' as in 'immoral,' or wrong as in 'unwise'? The former is at least debatable. The latter is certainly debatable; indeed, the Munich agreement was probably the best of a group of bad options in autumn 1938. It delayed the outbreak of WWII by a year, which proved critical in British rearmament. It avoided a war in which the coalitions would have been dangerously unbalanced in favor of the Germans (the Dominions might not have fought for the Allies in 1938; Poland may well have joined the Axis). Hitler, whose opinion is presumably worth something on this point, came to believe that his greatest mistake was not going to war over the Sudetenland: “We were not ready for war. But Britain and France were even less ready.”
Was it justifiable to sacrifice part of Czechoslovakia (a state which fell apart in the end anyway) in order to make the defeat of Germany more likely? Ah, there's the moral ambiguity - which just goes to show what nonsense the OP was.
Ralph E. Luker -
8/12/2008
Retrospectivism, perhaps, not presentism.
Alan Allport -
8/12/2008
What's so startling about this? Seen in its original context, and not as the facile allegory that it's become, Munich was full of moral ambiguities. Was it worth fighting another world war over an obscure regional dispute in which principle (Wilsonian national self-determination) was arguably on the side of the enemy? That was a real dilemma, and to dismiss it just because, well, Hitler was involved, is sheer presentism.
Jonathan Dresner -
8/11/2008
I'm pretty sure I gave up on Kagan as an historian a while back. If I hadn't....
He missed a wonderful opportunity, really, to point out the very direct parallels between the Sudenten crisis and the current situation, but then that would put Putin/Medvedev in the Hitler role, and I'm pretty sure there's some ideological reason Kagans won't do that.
