Gerhard L. Weinberg is William Rand Kenan, Jr., Professor of History at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He is the author of many books, including Germany and the Soviet Union, 1939-1941, The Foreign Policy of Hitlers Germany (in two volumes, Diplomatic Revolution in Europe, 1933-1936 and Starting World War II, 1937-1939) and World in Balance: Behind the Scenes of World War II.
Half a century after the Munich conference, that event lives in the public memory as a series of interrelated myths. For most people, Munich represents the abandonment of a small country, Czechoslovakia, to the unjust demands of a bullying and powerful neighbor by those who would have done better to defend it. It is believed that the Allies, by the sacrifice of one country, only whetted the appetite of the bully whom they had to fight anyway, later and under more difficult circumstances. The "lesson" derived from this widely held view is that it makes far more sense to take
This article is part of our premium archives.
To continue reading and get full access to our entire archive, you must subscribe.
