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On This Day: Chamberlain declares ‘peace for our time’
The Tory leader was initially praised for getting Adolf Hitler to sign the Munich Agreement, which averted a major war by ceding Czechoslovakia to Germany
SEPTEMBER 30, 1938
: Vilified pro-appeasement Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain falsely declared a German promise not to fight Britain meant ‘peace for our time’ on this day in 1938.
The Tory leader was initially praised for getting Adolf Hitler to sign the Munich Agreement, which averted a major war by ceding Czechoslovakia to Germany.
A British Pathé newsreel shows crowds cheering Chamberlain as he returned to British soil at Heston Aerodrome, Middlesex, waving the historic deal.
He told reporters: 'Here is the paper which bears [Hitler’s] name upon it as well as mine.
'Some of you, perhaps, have already heard what it contains but I would just like to read it to you: ‘We regard the agreement signed last night and the Anglo-German Naval Agreement as symbolic of the desire of our two peoples never to go to war with one another again."'
Later that day, Chamberlain stood outside 10 Downing Street and, referring to Benjamin Disraeli’s return from the 1878 Congress of Berlin, said: 'My good friends, for the second time in our history, a British Prime Minister has returned from Germany bringing peace with honour.
'I believe it is peace for our time. We thank you from the bottom of our hearts. Go home and get a nice quiet sleep.'
The iconic line is often confused as 'peace in our time' rather than 'peace for our time'.
Yet within a year, Britain was at war with Germany and the policy of appeasement –with its Munich agreement signed by Italy, France and Britain – was derided.
The day after Chamberlain’s return, Hitler sent troops to seize the Sudetenland, Czechoslovakia’s ethnic German-dominated border region, as agreed at Munich.
Germany, which had already annexed Austria, walked in unopposed after French premier Edouard Deladier ditched his defence pact with the eastern European country.
This prompted Czechoslovakian President Edvard Benes, who was not invited to the conference that determined his country’s fate, to choose submission over destruction.
But Czechoslovakia was massively weakened after losing 3.5million people, 70% of its heavy industry and, perhaps more crucially, almost all of its defence fortifications.
And, after Slovakia seceded as a pro-Nazi puppet state on March 15, 1939, Hitler ordered his troops to seize the remainder – and subjugate 7.3million Czechs.
[On This Day: WW2 Blitz begins over London]
The invasion made it clear that Hitler was not simply trying to reunite German-speaking people – and instead was bent on occupying more land.
Chamberlain pledged to honour its agreement to declare war on Germany if Hitler invaded Poland – which they did on September 1, 1939.
But, despite the official state of war, he remained committed to appeasing Germany and hoped that there might be a peace agreement.
Chamberlain sent no military assistance to Poland and instead ordered the RAF to drop leaflets rather than bombs on Germany in the early months of the conflict.
But the so-called Phoney War ended in April 1940 when Hitler’s forces quickly seized neutral Norway and Denmark.
Then, a month later, three million battle-hardened German troops invaded the Low Countries, occupied them and within six weeks had forced France to surrender.
The lightning advance on Belgium and Holland forced the resignation of Chamberlain, who died a broken man five months later at age 71.
Winston Churchill, who was one of the few Tories to vigorously oppose appeasement, took over as Prime Minister and helped Britain stave off invasion.
Czechoslovakia would have to wait until 1945 before it was liberated by the Red Army.
But the Soviet forces stationed in the once proud democracy ensured that it would become an authoritarian communist satellite state.
Ethnic Germans, like those who resided in what is now Poland, were also evicted from the Sudetenland and the area was repopulated by Czechs.
It was not until 1989 that democracy was restored following the fall of the Berlin Wall and popular protests known as the Velvet Revolution.
Three years later the Czech Republic and Slovakia separated in the so-called Velvet Divorce.
