As to Churchill’s views on Chamberlain & Munich, it’s worth pointing out that politicians often say one thing in a speech and something very different in private later that same day. Often the private comments are the ones that show their true opinions.
Trying to determine a person’s (or government’s) true thoughts by their press releases is a mug’s game. But it does make for easy research.
Yes, on the subject of Churchill’s opinion of Chamberlain in particular, you can “prove” whatever you want by cherry-picking the appropriate quotes.
I don’t know enough to have an informed opinion about the actual effects of postponing the war by a year, but it seems clear that the “delay favored Germany” people like to talk about tanks, while the “delay favored Britain” camp likes to talk about airplanes.
Politically, the point of Munich was to reassure the British people that their government wasn’t eager to rush into war, and would only do so if there was no alternative. Saying “we expect to be at war next year” undercuts that message.
And what Chamberlain said wasn’t technically a lie. If Hitler had kept his promise to not invade anyone else, and turned his attention to peaceful economic development through international cooperation, he would have gotten away with grabbing Czechslovakia and there would have been no war. Indeed, the whole question of this thread is ultimately about whether Chamberlain actually thought there was a realistic chance of that happening.
Gracious postwar nod to deceased former colleague?
What he said was not that the French were eager to fight, but that any chance of intervention was doomed by the British withholding support.
At that time there were dominant politicians in Europe and the weight of public opinion on the side of avoiding war, so Chamberlin doesn’t get all the blame. Claims that he knew war was coming and was just buying time for Britain to rearm don’t wash.
“But don’t you see, I’ve brought back peace” are words of a “misunderstood hero”?
That’s only an issue if a “Battle of Britain” is fought. Germany could only have launched a major bombing campaign against Britain if France was defeated. And Germany didn’t have the forces to defeat France in 1938.
People have to remember that the German occupation of Czechoslovakia was a two-step process. Hitler originally claimed that he only wanted the “Sudetenland” which was the parts of Czechoslovakia which had a substantial German-speaking population. Hitler argued that these people were actually Germans not Czechoslovakians so the Sudetenland should be incorporated into Germany.
This was the topic of the Munich conference in September 1938. The resulting agreement said that Germany could have the parts of Czechoslovakia where the German speakers lived. This happened to be along Czechoslovakia’s borders, where they had built up their fortifications against an invasion. With the loss of these fortifications, Czechoslovakia was much more vulnerable. Hitler demonstrated this by occupying the remainder of Czechoslovakia in March 1939.
So Hitler was upset because he had wanted all of Czechoslovakia back in September and had to wait until March. Chamberlain was upset because he had made a deal with Germany that they would only take the German-speaking parts of Czechoslovakia and then they took the rest as well.
When Chamberlain claimed he had achieved “peace in our time” he was thinking that Hitler was only seeking to gather together German-speaking areas adjacent to Germany and he had now achieved that with the annexations of Austria and the Sudetenland. The invasion of the rest of Czechoslovakia showed Chamberlain that what Hitler really wanted was a German empire that controlled non-German people.
These kind of discussions are interesting, but not really relevant to the question of whether Chamberlain outwitted Hitler at Munich. Weinberg asserts that Hitler wanted war in 1938 and Chamberlain didn’t; there was no war in 1938, therefore Chamberlain won. It’s possible that what one or both of them wanted was actually not in their own best interest, but that doesn’t affect the question of who “won” at Munich.
No, Churchill said that in 1938, privately to a Czech diplomat. Weinberg discovered that by looking through declassified archives; I can look up his cite if you want, but I doubt it’s the sort of thing you can easily check online.
If Weinberg said that, he was making a pretty dumb argument. Chamberlain wasn’t trying to avoid a war just in 1938; he was trying to avoid a war in general. The fact that the conference moved the war back a few months doesn’t mean Chamberlain won and Hitler lost.
Looking back with what we (and Weinberg) now know, it’s clear that Britain would have been better off fighting Germany in September 1938 when Germany was weaker.
That doesn’t make any sense. Hitler wasn’t demanding all of Czechoslovakia in 1938, he was just demanding the Sudetenland. And Chamberlain gave him exactly what he said he wanted. There was no scenario in which Hitler expected to be immediately given all of Czechoslovakia at Munich – the reason Hitler was upset was that his plans to start a world war had been foiled.
You can keep repeating that all you want, but it’s clearly a disputed issue. Many respectable historians, including Weinberg, disagree.
Sometimes Hitler lied. I know, shocking.
Hitler was publicly saying he wanted the Sudetenland as an excuse to invade Czechoslovakia.
Based on what I’ve read, the strong consensus of historians is that Hitler did not want a world war in 1938, or even in September 1939 when the Nazis invaded Poland.
His expectation, based on appeasement policies and perceived weakness of European opponents, was that he could gobble up territory piecemeal without serious repercussions.
And he wanted to invade Czechoslovakia because he thought that would incite Britain and France to declare war. That’s why Chamberlain’s maneuver was brilliant; he took Hitler’s lies at face value and gave him exactly what he said he wanted, as opposed to what he actually wanted.
Back in 1998-1999, I wrote a webpage titled “That Wacky Century!”.
The entry for 1938 reads as follows:
‘1938 – Realizing that the British Air Force secretly under construction is not yet big enough to challenge Nazi Germany, Neville Chamberlain lets the Nazis invade North Czeckoslovakia, giving some wimpy public excuse about “peace in our time”. This buys Britain time to build more airplanes but gets Chamberlain kicked out of office. His successor burps at Lady Astor a lot. That wacky Appeasement policy!’
I’d heard this story about Chamberlain, too. To this day I’m not sure if it’s true or not.
Churchill, speaking before the House of Commons, October 5th, 1938 in response to the Sudetenland “deal”:
But maybe, Churchill secretly thought Chamberlain was a misunderstood hero who’d gotten a really good deal, even after the rest of Czechoslovakia was swallowed up by Nazi Germany a few months later. 
Well, it’s certainly not as though Churchill would have had any personal motivation to undermine Chamberlain. 
And if Churchill really felt that strongly about the Munich deal, he could have, you know, voted against ratifying it instead of just making speeches.
I tend to agree more with Jackmannii. I don’t think Hitler wanted a war with France and Britain this early. He, like most people, envisioned another war in the west as a repeat of World War I with everybody locked down in trenches and nobody going anywhere.
What Hitler wanted was conquests. He wanted to occupy Czechoslovakia. And then Poland. And then the rest of Eastern Europe. And maybe Scandinavia and Benelux and Turkey. And the Soviet Union was definitely on his list.
Hitler probably figured on tackling Britain and France sometime five or ten years in the future, when Germany had its empire and its military at their peak. Until then, he wanted them to stay afraid of war and willing to appease.
But that worldview implies that Hitler would have been happy with the outcome of the Munich conference. It doesn’t explain why Hitler returned from Munich furious and cursing Chamberlain.