Munich

Robert Harris' latest book, Munich (#729), is a thoughtful political novel about a historic meeting between Adolf Hitler, Benito Mussolini, Neville Chamberlain and Pierre Daladier in a last ditch effort by the Western powers to stave off another catastrophic world war.  The outcome of the meeting was never in doubt.


Baby Boomers like myself tend to think of Neville Chamberlain, if we think of him at all, as being "The Appeaser", willing to cave to Hitler's demands.  Yet this novel does much to illuminate the immense personal courage Chamberlain showed in provoking a last minute meeting on the eve of the Germans marching into Czechoslovakia.  Had England been forced into a war immediately to support its treaty with France, she would have been totally unprepared.  Concessions wrung from the Germans in the Munich Agreement allowed her time to make her own wartime preparations.


Harris has humanized his story by introducing Hugh Legat in the British Foreign Office and Paul von Hartmann, working in the German Foreign Office.  These two have a history; they were friends and classmates at Balliol College at Oxford, but have not seen each other in six years after a falling out.  How each of them winds up attending the conference provides some suspense to the story, and the only real moments of personal danger here.  Each has a secret.


I was glad that I had recently seen the movie about Winston Churchill, The Darkest Hour.  It did help to figure out the roles the men in Munich would subsequently play in World War II.  However, I am even more thankful that I have read former Secretary of State Madeline Albright's memoir Prague Winter (See my post of 12/13/12 ) in which she explains how the Czechoslovakian territorial issues came to be a crisis for that country, and thus, for the rest of Europe.  It's merely a given in Munich, and Mr. Harris doesn't really flesh out details here.


I wouldn't call Munich a page turner in terms of action but it is a compelling read.