Customer Reviews

Ghost of Munich

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That question lies at the heart of this fascinating and beautifully written (and translated) novel based on the 13 hours that French President Edouard Daladier spends in Munich one fateful September day in 1938.

The Munich pact lives today as a symbol of infamy; it delivered up Czechoslovakia to the Nazis, and gave the Axis powers an additional year to prepare for war. Even today, seven decades later, political leaders struggle to avoid being labeled an 'appeaser', lest they share the opprobrium we now apply to Chamberlain (and to a much lesser extent, Daladier, who remains a peripheral character for most of us outside France.)

How did Daladier, the "bull of the Vaucluse", a tough politician, end up capitulating to Hitler and Mussolini? That is at the heart of this novel, structured as a series of revelations told by the aged Daladier to a young journalist whose grandmother escaped Czechoslovakia in the wake of Munich. At first, Milena is unsuccessful to get Daladier -- nearly the sole first-hand witness to the meetings -- to talk to her about the events, but he does grant her access to his personal archives. There she discovers, hidden away, briefing notes and jotted recollections about Munich -- and her discovery proves the key to persuading Daladier to talk.

Above all, this is a story of a consummate politician who finally encounters a situation and a personality he cannot understand or fit into any rational frame of reference: Adolf Hitler. At the outset of the Munich talks, Daladier is confident. For starters, he and Hitler -- both men in their 40s, both survivors of horrific trench warfare of the Great War, had taken power only hours apart in 1933. Surely that created a bond between them? Besides, Daladier is able to work with anyone; he prides himself on his judgment. "Bumping into anyone in a market at Carpentras or in the Salle des Quatre Colonnes, Daladier could give him a mental X-ray. He really did know men. He knew in a flash what it was that made them live, love, obey and, of course, vote. Men were Daladier's affair. Everyone."

Everyone, that is, except Hitler and his other negotiating partners, each of whom he misreads in critical ways. Benamou has created a remarkable series of portraits of the other Munich participants, including the hapless Czechs, summoned at the last moment and kept from the direct negotiations. As the British are about to deliver the coup de grace that will "(expel them) from the nations, from the world of the living", one Czech diplomat reaches out to touch the arm of his British counterpart, pleadingly. The Briton reacts by pulling back his arm forcefully. "In that look, that start, that shrinking gesture, there was the horror of a tourist who had been touched by a leper."

By the time Daladier is en route home to Paris, in utter despair and yet greeted by cheering crowds, he knows what has happened to him as a man and as a politician. In what Daladier has thought of throughout the day as a kind of boxing bout -- "he was being pushed into the ring.. there was someone in front of him, probably his adversary, but he couldn't see him" -- he has been outclassed and outmanoeuvered. "I had been KO'd in the ring of the century." The young journalist who finally succeeds in extracting from him his de facto confession ends up playing the role of a Recording Angel of some kind -- particularly since she is of Czech descent. While Daladier has imagined being lynched or assassinated by those he realizes he has betrayed at Munich, that never happened. In Benamou's imagination, the relentless challenging by Milena of Daladier's account serves as an even more agonizing form of justice than those more straightforward ones might have.

This is a powerful novel and the decision to have the narrative revolve around Daladier -- a man whose current life is so obscure that everyone, Milena notes at the outset, believes has already died -- is astute. Even as the reader and Milena pass judgment on this shell of a man, we realize his all-too-human limitations and must question whether we ourselves could have fared better had we been in his shoes in 1938.

This is one of the most compelling novels I have read recently, based on themes that have resonance today. The plot is streamlined, the narrative doesn't have a tinge of purple prose and there isn't a single word or action that causes the reader to question the validity of any one of the book's many characters. This is a triumph; a book that deserves a wide audience.