“I’ve Got it!” 70-Years Later.
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“History is a gallery of pictures in which there are few originals and many copies”. Alexis de Tocqueville
On Sept. 30, 1938, 70 years ago today, Neville Chamberlain visited Adolf Hitler’s apartment in Munich, got his signature on a three-sentence declaration and flew home to Heston Aerodrome.
“I’ve got it,” he shouted to Lord Halifax. “Here is a paper which bears his name.” At the request of King George VI, Chamberlain was driven to Buckingham Palace, where he joined the king on the balcony to take the cheers of the throngs below. An unprecedented honor.
Then it was on to 10 Downing Street, where, to choruses of “For He’s a Jolly Good Fellow,” Chamberlain declared: “This is the second time in our history that there has come back from Germany to Downing Street peace with honor. I believe it is peace for our time.”
This was Munich, the summit of infamy, endlessly invoked as the textbook example of how craven appeasement leads to desperate war. Chamberlain had indeed signed away the Czech-ruled Sudetenland to Germany enslaving 3,250,000 there.
Britain was utterly alone, and completely unprepared. Indeed, FDR had warned, “Those who count on the assured aid of the United States in case of a war in Europe are totally mistaken.”
Comparisons of then to now are eerily similar although some of the players have changed - some have not.
Russians can give you arms but only the United States can give you a solution. Anwar Sadat