In Europe

far …’
    The writer could say a great deal more, that is clear, but at Café Arrien there is a point at which one stops talking.
    Six months later the attacks began again. A new generation had come on the scene.

Chapter TWENTY-FOUR
Munich
    EVER SINCE 29 SEPTEMBER, 1938, DISCUSSIONS ABOUT WAR AND peace in Europe have revolved around the same, fearful question: will this be a Sarajevo or a Munich? In other words: can a great deal of diplomacy achieve a shaky balance, or must evil be crushed by force? We know that, in both cases, a war was the result, we know that everything went wrong afterwards, but each time we come back to those two cities, those contrapuntal reference points for the twentieth century.
    In an out-of-the-way display case in London's Imperial War Museum lies airline ticket number 18249, the British European Airlines ticket with which the British prime minister, Neville Chamberlain, left for Munich on the morning of 29 September, 1938. Hitler had been waving the banner of war on behalf of the ‘oppressed’ Sudeten Germans, Mussolini had organised a conference, Great Britain and France wanted Hitler to guarantee fixed borders, and the Czechoslovakian delegation sat in an ante-room waiting to hear what happened. Under pressure from the Allies, the Czech president, Edvard Benežs, finally offered up part of his country to keep the peace. The rest would soon follow. In that same display case lies the famous documents Chamberlain waved when he arrived home: ‘Peace in our time!’ Here, for the first time, I read the weak-kneed phrases of the agreement: ‘the wish never to wage war against each other again’, ‘this method of consultation will be the manner in which we deal with problems from this day on’.
    Germany annexed the Sudetenland, no guarantee whatsoever was given by Germany for the independence of the rest of Czechoslovakia, but Western Europe was applauding the peace. The French prime minister, Édouard Daladier, thought the crowd waiting for him at the airport uponhis return had come to heckle him. He was stunned when he heard the cheering. ‘These people are mad,’ he told his adjutant. But that was not the case. They were merely gullible, like so many Europeans.
    Munich was a classic case of winning a war that had already been fought. Almost everyone sincerely believed that a new Sarajevo had been pre-empted. In the House of Commons, Harold Nicolson was one of the very few to condemn Chamberlain openly. Chamberlain and Daladier knew their constituency to a tee. In September 1938 nothing would have driven the British or the French to war for the sake of some insignificant piece of the Sudetenland. Their fathers had all fought in the First World War, and they knew enough.
    Besides, both countries were unprepared, both economically and militarily, for a new war. Chamberlain knew that too, all too well. In September 1938, therefore, he had little choice but to reach an accord with Hitler.
    Munich was the greatest triumph of the ‘appeasers’, as Chamberlain's supporters were called. And at the same time it signalled their demise. The agreement allowed Hitler to think that the West, under the guise of peace, would do nothing to arrest his aggression. In fact, the exact opposite was true: after the fiasco of Munich, the West had no more faith in negotiations. A new tone was established. Great Britain had, in the words of Winston Churchill, been presented with the choice between ‘shame or war … This is only the first sip, the first foretaste of a bitter cup which will be proffered to us year by year … We chose shame, and we will reap war.’
    In the anterooms of Munich, the fate of the Spanish Republic was also discussed. The great powers were sick and tired of the war there. Mussolini actually told Chamberlain that he had had enough of Spain, that he had lost tens of thousands of men there, and that Franco had wasted too many chances. Chamberlain wanted to apply his ‘Czechoslovakian solution’ to Spain as well. Stalin had fewer illusions. To him, the agreement at Munich meant nothing but the old democracies’ acquiescence to Hitler. And this new policy line had an immediate effect on the war in Spain. The Soviet arms deliveries dwindled, then finally stopped altogether. The International Brigades were withdrawn.
    The republic allowed the foreign volunteers to leave without muchado. They had served their propagandist function, the most hardened soldiers had either died or