Customer Reviews

The Runciman Mission to Czechoslovakia, 1938: Prelude to Munich

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The price alone, if nothing else, will keep this important book off the Best-Seller Lists, which is unfortunate since it should be read by everyone who imagines that the Munich conference of 1938 was merely an excercise in appeasment. The efforts of this commission to find a fair settlement to this issue have been so little appreciated that it is difficult to find even a reference to it in the literature. The author's bias (he is a Czech) seeps out from time to time, but it does not seem to affect his reporting, and is easily allowed for. The most interesting feature of this story is the emergence of the character of Henlein. It has been customary to disregard him as just "one of Hitler's creatures" but this book shows him in a different light entirely. In spite of the bitterness associated with the Sudeten attempt to gain the rights that were promised them at Versailles, everyone who negotiated with Henlein actually liked him! Sincerity will do that, I suppose, and no one ever doubted that of Henlein. His love of his native Eger was never in doubt either, and this makes his sincerity entirely plausible, as he would hardly have wished it to become a battleground. Even the author has little good to say of the Czech leaders, especially Benes (it should be remembered that Benes is the author of the term "Ethnic cleansing" with all its brutal implications). One would have hoped that, after complaining for decades about the way Austria-Hungary ruled Bohemia, they would have at least tried to do a better job themselves. If you can't afford to buy this book, try to get your library to acquire it.