Word: municheer
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...fact that it started in the first place. Certainly, little that occurred during World War II seems more terrible in retrospect than the blunders that led up to it-not only at Versailles but during the deadly political charade that immediately preceded 1939. Neville Chamberlain tap-tapping to Munich with his umbrella, Hitler screaming hatred from peaceful Berchtesgaden-these cliché figures still have a power to disturb that few living villains can match...
With near-perfect mistiming, Daladier panicked and Chamberlain crumbled when Hitler was bluffing, as in the 1938 confrontation over the Sudetenland, which led to the Munich sellout. On the other hand, less than a month before the outbreak of World War II, Chamberlain was placidly grouse shooting in Scotland. Almost to the end, the old Tory was more indignant about radicals at home than fascists abroad...
...Mosley carries his argument: that history provided moments of decision, and most of the choices were flubbed-out of stupidity, cowardice and petty self-interest. Churchill's words after Munich today read flamboyant but true: "The government had to choose between shame and war. They chose shame and they will get war." Curiously, Hitler once pointed to the same moral-that one's character finally becomes one's destiny. When he discovered how formidable the Czech bunkers might have proved, he said: "What does it matter how strong the concrete is so long as the will...
...public tragedies tend to become cautionary tales. Survivors of Munich have learned a lesson by heart: appeasement is a loser's game. But today, most men are not so sure as they once were of just what constitutes "appeasement"-or whether a policy of "get tough" is a winner's game either. Still, if the tactical lessons of Munich seem less and less simple to apply, its moral implications are not. The tragic events of history, so often in retrospect accepted as inevitable, were shaped by human will and wisdom-or the lack of them...
...Germany as it struggled to survive the chaos of surrender. Absorbed in private rancors, busy reshuffling peoples and national borders, the Allied statesmen paid little heed to the German scene. Historians have tended to follow their lead. Yet the obscure skirmishes for power that went on in Berlin and Munich may have done almost as much as the Versailles Treaty to shape the future course of Germany and Europe. The far left was pitted against the far right with hapless moderates caught in a dreadful crossfire...