Local Opinion: Munich and Ukraine: True and false analogies

Since the outbreak of World War II in 1939, nearly all defenders of democracy have recoiled at the memory of British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain’s decision in October 1938 to abandon Czechoslovakia to Nazi control.

Disowning his earlier pledge to defend the Czechs, Chamberlain bowed to Adolf Hitler’s demand to seize the vital Sudetenland province, key to Czech security. The Fuhrer dismissed Czechoslovakia as a phony country created by the victorious powers after World War I. He proclaimed himself protector of all German-speaking peoples, many of whom lived in the Sudetenland and elsewhere in Eastern Europe.

In words that still echo painfully, Chamberlain insisted it would have been a grievous mistake to go to war “because of a quarrel in a faraway country between people of whom we know nothing.” The Munich Agreement, he explained, marked the “end of Germany’s territorial claims in Europe,” had secured a “happier future” for the Czechs, and, best of all, achieved “peace in our time.” A few months later, Nazi troops seized all Czechoslovakia and in September attacked Poland – ostensibly to “defend” German speakers. Thus began the bloodiest war in human history.

The bitter legacy of Munich and western appeasement of Hitler became a form of shorthand in American political rhetoric.

In 1950, President Harry Truman invoked it to justify resisting the North Korean invasion of the south. President Lyndon Johnson told aides in 1964 he risked becoming another Chamberlain if he failed to stand up to North Vietnamese leader Ho Chi Minh.

In 1991, President George H.W. Bush compared Saddam Hussein to Hitler and likened the Iraqi seizure of Kuwait to what befell Czechoslovakia.

In the wake of the 9/11 attacks in 2001, President George W. Bush expanded on his father’s warning by labeling Iraq, Iran, and North Korea as an “axis of evil,” invoking the image of the Axis enemies (Germany-Italy-Japan) the U.S. fought in what was often described as the “good war.”

History, as Mark Twain observed, may not repeat itself but often rhymes. Echoes of Munich appeared in the run up to war in Ukraine. For example, Vladimir Putin proclaimed his duty to defend all Russian speakers scattered throughout the lands of the former Soviet Union who faced “cultural genocide.” He called Ukraine the illegitimate spawn of Western victory in the Cold War, humiliatingly imposed on a weakened Russia. With unintended irony, Putin described his mission in Ukraine as “de-Nazification,” ignoring Ukrainian president Volodmyr Zelensky’s Jewish heritage.

But the Russian leader was not the only one to find meaning in the legacy of Munich. While Putin’s words had echoes of Hitler’s, some leading American conservatives channeled the much maligned Chamberlain. Speaking at the convention of the Conservative Political Action Committee (CPAC) in Florida, Charlie Kirk, a rising star on the right, ridiculed those concerned with the fate of Ukraine, a country “5,000 miles away” whose “cities we can’t pronounce” and which “most Americans can’t find on a map.”

J.D. Vance, author of “Hillbilly Elegy” and a GOP senate candidate in Ohio, declared “I don’t really care about what happens to Ukraine, one way or the other.” Trump-whisperer Steve Bannon urged Congress to impeach President Joseph Biden for “instigating this war in Ukraine.” The former president himself praised Vladimir Putin as a “savvy genius” for having “taken over a country” (Ukraine) and paying only “$2 worth of sanctions.” Sounding as if the gravest threat to peace in Europe since 1945 was a potential real estate deal, Trump described Ukraine as a “great piece of land.” Tucker Carlson, the highest-rated personality on Fox News, piled on. He saw no fault in Russia’s aggression and condemned Americans defending Ukraine as “Putin haters.” For Carlson, “Putin-hating” had become the “central theme” of Joseph Biden’s foreign policy because Biden and his son Hunter allegedly profited from Ukraine’s corruption.

Historians hesitate to reason by or advocate policies based on superficial analogies. Not every dictator is Adolf Hitler. Not every aggressive act is as consequential as the aftermath of Munich. Not every diplomatic compromise has the moral stench of appeasement. Invoking Munich is often a lazy and self-serving tactic by political leaders and others who prefer to avoid complexity.

Gauging the impact of the attack on Ukraine is difficult. As Soviet-era academics wryly observed, “history is the art of predicting the past.” Is Putin’s aggression a “one off” or an extension of recent Russian land seizures in Georgia and Crimea? With nominally independent Belarus now a de facto Russian satellite, are the neighboring Baltic states and Poland — all NATO members — next on Putin’s “to do” list? Was it wise for the U.S. to expand NATO eastwards during the 1990s, or was that needlessly provocative? These are but a few of the unknowables we face in coming weeks and months.