One of the most challenging aspects of making a movie about World War Two is finding something new to say about it. The seminal event of the 20th century, the war provides excellent grist for nearly every kind of movie: romances, action comedies, Oscar-bait dramas, war epics, spy thrillers, even the occasional horror movie. Because of this wealth of material, the movie industry has ransacked the war almost as thoroughly as the Red Army did East Germany.
In Munich — The Edge of War, director Christian Schwochow revisits the 1938 summit in Munich at which Great Britain and France agreed to let Germany seize a large section of Czechoslovakia. Schwochow adapted Robert Harris’s novel Munich to spice things up with two twists: adding a fictional espionage story and portraying Neville Chamberlain, the British prime minister who mistakenly claimed that capitulation would bring “peace for our time,” as an energetic and thoughtful statesman. Munich — The Edge of War is a competently executed movie, but this version of Chamberlain is as loosely based on reality as is the spy plot.
The movie opens with the main characters celebrating their graduation from Oxford. Paul von Hartmann is an exuberant German thrilled by the new Germany coming into shape in 1932, much to the bemusement of Hugh Legat. Six years later, Legat is a private secretary for Chamberlain, and von Hartmann, who is now disillusioned by the new Germany, is part of a conspiracy to overthrow Hitler. Germany is threatening to invade Czechoslovakia, which will trigger a war with Britain and France that the German military wishes to avoid. The plotters need Britain to stand firm so that Hitler will order the army to attack and force the military leadership to depose Hitler.
To convince the allies that peace with Hitler is impossible, von Hartmann arranges to meet Legat at the Munich summit, give him Hitler’s secret plan for dominating Europe, and convince Chamberlain that appeasement will not work. From there, von Hartmann and Legat attempt to complete the handoff and warn Chamberlain before the agreement is signed.
Schwochow previously directed episodes of the hit Netflix series The Crown, and he clearly knows his way around historical dramas. The production team assembled an impressive trove of research, and it shows: The sets, costumes, and background are immaculate, and everything is there to draw the viewer into the story.
The problem with all movies set around diplomacy is that their subject is inherently, insufferably dull. Although in many cases, such as this one, the stakes are high, the process of arriving at an agreement is usually long, slow, and frustrating. Even Italian dictator Benito Mussolini, who participated in these negotiations, was bored by them. Fortunately, there were some real moments of excitement in this history, such as when Hitler’s message agreeing to the summit arrived while Chamberlain was speaking to Parliament about the imminent war, and the spying story adds some drama. Even so, viewers already familiar with the summit’s outcome are likely to find themselves entertained but not on the edge of their seat.
This is despite the cast’s solid performance. George MacKay plays Legat as an earnest young man in over his head — during a fight, he pauses in surprise at himself after throwing a punch in self-defense — who grasps the severity of his situation but only slowly realizes what he and his country must do to triumph. Jannis Niewohner’s von Hartmann is a tightly coiled spring, his conspiratorial self-control occasionally failing him when he bursts in passionate exhortation. Ulrich Matthes portrays Hitler as quietly intense instead of chewing the scenery with the spittle-flecked rants that could have derailed the movie.
Jeremy Irons, who has won the Oscar-Emmy-Tony triple crown for acting, commands the scenes he’s in. His Chamberlain is confident and morally serious, calmly instructing his generals and admirals and sitting back in his chair composedly while waiting for Hitler’s communiques. As Irons sees it, “our view of Chamberlain is not perhaps what he deserves, and I was glad for that to be turned into a film.”
Unfortunately, his Chamberlain matches the historical record about as closely as does the rest of the film. Irons is correct that Chamberlain wanted peace at any price: Unlike his most adamant critics, such as First Lord of the Admiralty Duff Cooper and future Prime Ministers Winston Churchill, Anthony Eden, and Clement Attlee, he had not fought in the First World War and told his wife he “would gladly stand up against that wall and be shot if only I could prevent war.”
He also captures Chamberlain’s self-assurance. At the time the movie opens, Chamberlain was enacting “Plan Z,” whereby he would personally snatch peace from the jaws of war by negotiating directly with Hitler. The irony is that Hitler presented demands so unreasonable that he hoped Chamberlain would refuse them and start the war, but try as he might, he could not find the prime minister’s bottom line.
The movie’s revisionist defense of Chamberlain comes mainly in two scenes. The first is when Hitler has announced a deadline for the Czechs to meet his demands, gas masks are being distributed in London, and the war seems inevitable. Chamberlain, conferring with his closest advisers, asks for the day’s newspaper to dredge up a reference Hitler made to his “great friend, Benito Mussolini” in a recent speech. Springing to action, he pens a message to Il Duce, remarking that “if Herr Hitler is not going to listen to me, maybe he’ll listen to his great friend, Benito Mussolini.” A smile flickers across Legat’s face as he grasps the cleverness of Chamberlain’s maneuver.
In reality, Chamberlain’s wife found him at breakfast the morning of the deadline writing two notes: one to Mussolini, which he described as “the one hope left,” and the other to Hitler. These two notes were the “last desperate snatch at the last tuft of grass on the very verge of the precipice.” One young official wrote, “There was an ugly ring in this telegram, something almost effusive in the eagerness to continue the process of surrender.” Schwochow gives it a decidedly prettier ring.
Moreover, that note might well have saved Hitler’s life. At the moment Chamberlain was scribbling away, a group of Hitler opponents in the army had armed themselves and were ready to arrest and try Hitler. (Some of the conspirators had agreed that Hitler would not leave his office alive.) The British government knew that there were plots against Hitler in motion, but Chamberlain discounted them despite his foreign minister’s protests.
The second is on the plane ride home from the summit. After remarking, “If there’s one thing I’ve learned from my dealings with Mr. Hitler, it’s that you can’t play poker with a gangster without any cards up your sleeve,” Chamberlain states that if Hitler breaks his bilateral nonaggression pact with Britain, “the world will see him for who he truly is. And it will unite the Allies. It might even bring the Americans on board.” Looking like a fool would be a “small price to pay.” Returning home, Legat tells his wife the treaty is “just a delay. The PM’s just giving us a chance of winning the damn thing when it happens.”
This is the most common defense of Munich: Chamberlain did tell an aide about the agreement before departing, saying of Hitler, “If he signs it and sticks to it, that will be fine, but if he breaks it, that will convince the Americans of the kind of man he is.” This is contradicted by Sir Horace Wilson, Chamberlain’s closest adviser, who recalled, “Our policy was never designed just to postpone war or enable us to enter war more united. The aim of our appeasement was to avoid war altogether, for all time.” It is not entirely clear which is more reflective of Chamberlain’s thinking.
What is clear is Chamberlain’s subsequent behavior. He repeatedly refused advice to rearm faster, proclaiming that “our foreign policy is one of appeasement.” Shortly before Hitler violated the terms of the agreement and invaded the remainder of Czechoslovakia, Chamberlain crowed, “All the information I get seems to point in the direction of peace & I repeat once more that I believe we have at last got on top of the dictators,” adding magnanimously, “of course that doesn’t mean that I want to bully them as they have tried to bully us.”
At the time of the Munich capitulation, Czechoslovakia had 1.5 million troops to defend its homeland along with its Russian allies, the mobilized French army, and the British fleet. When the allies declared war the next year, Russia fought on Germany’s side against Poland, the German army had grown from 690,000 men to 2,820,000, and one-third of the tanks that invaded were Czech-made. Chamberlain had doubled aircraft production but only grew the army from “two fully equipped divisions to five adequately equipped ones.” Some rearmament.
Chamberlain’s failure is not that he was a mewling coward frightened by Hitler. It was that despite his immense self-regard, he underestimated his enemy, traded real concessions for useless paper promises, and left his country and his allies vulnerable. He did not need to see Hitler’s secret plan: It was all there in Mein Kampf.
Mike Watson is the associate director of Hudson Institute’s Center for the Future of Liberal Society.
