… The solution to the Czechoslovakian problem that has just been found is, in my opinion, only the prelude to a larger colony in which all Europe can find peace. This morning I had another meeting with the German Chancellor, Mr. Hitler, and this is the document that bears his name, as well as mine. Some of you may have already heard what it contains, but I`d just like to read it to you: ` … We consider the agreement signed last night and the Anglo-German naval agreement as a symbol of the desire of our two peoples never to go to war again. [96] The British public expected an imminent war, and Chamberlain`s „state gesture“ was initially applauded. He was greeted as a hero by the royal family and invited to the balcony of Buckingham Palace before submitting the agreement to the British Parliament. The general positive reaction quickly re-established despite the royal patronage. However, there was resistance from the beginning. Clement Attlee and labor rejected the deal in alliance with the two Conservative MPs Duff Cooper and Vyvyan Adams, who until then had been seen as a hard and reactionary element in the Conservative party. The Munich quotation in foreign policy debates is also common in the 21st century.
[107] During negotiations on the Iran nuclear deal by Secretary of State John Kerry, a Republican representative from Texas called the negotiations „worse than Munich.“ In a speech in France, Kerry himself referred to Munich for military action in Syria: „This is our munich moment.“ [108] As the threats of Germany and a European war became increasingly evident, opinions changed. Chamberlain was awarded for his role as one of the „Men of Munich“ in books such as the Guilty Men of 1940. A rare defence of the wartime accord came in 1944 from Viscount Maugham, who had been the Lord`s chancellor. Maugham regarded the decision to establish a Czechoslovakian state with large German and Hungarian minorities as a „dangerous experiment“ in the face of previous disputes and described the agreement, which stemmed mainly from the need for France to free itself from its contractual obligations in the face of its vagueness to war. [63] After the war, Churchill`s memoirs of that time, The Gathering Storm (1948), claimed that Chamberlain`s appeasement of Hitler had been wrong in Munich, and noted Churchill`s pre-war warnings about Hitler`s plan of attack and Britain`s folly of disarmament after Germany reached air parity with Britain. While acknowledging that Chamberlain was acting for noble reasons, Churchill argued that Hitler should have resisted in Czechoslovakia and that efforts had to be made to involve the Soviet Union.
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