With all the talk of European summits, failed and otherwise, it might be difficult to remember that the first European summit – the disastrous Munich summit where Neville Chamberlain met Hitler and gave away a large chunk of Czechoslovakia – was exactly 80 years ago this weekend.

Of course, there had been other meetings of leaders before, laborious affairs after long journeys by train or on horseback. But Munich, and its two pre-meetings in the weeks before at Berchtesgaden and Godesberg, were the first modern ones where leaders of nations got into aeroplanes and tried to wrestle with issues face to face.

It may sound glib to suggest parallels between those momentous events and Theresa May’s failed Salzburg summit – but there are some. Perhaps most of all between Chamberlain and May herself: both were embattled prime ministers, leading divided parties, disastrously seeking to impose their view of events on Europe.

Chamberlain was utterly single-minded, and somewhat deluded in his single-minded belief that he could talk Hitler round. There may be no parallel between the people they have to negotiate with, but the bull-headed determination that the world should be a certain way seems to hold the two prime ministers together.

It made me wonder what advice Chamberlain could have left behind for his beleaguered successor about how European summits ought to be conducted. How about these?

Lesson 1: Don’t try to please the crowds

Chamberlain was convinced by the cheering crowds which greeted him home that he was right. He was not.

Chamberlain and his French counterpart, Édouard Daladier, returned to cheering crowds in London and Paris on 30 September 1938 – and Daladier was the least deluded of the two (he called the crowd “morons”). But, as it turned out, Munich marked the high tide of appeasing the dictators – when Hitler tore up the agreement and marched into the rest of Czechoslovakia six months later that became horribly clear.

Lesson 2: Don’t abandon your allies

Chamberlain’s actions at Munich threw a powerful potential ally to the wolves – the tanks which surrounded the British at Dunkirk were mainly taken over from the Czech army. He ignored the Soviets and drove them temporarily into the arms of the Nazis. It may be that May is also loosening ties with allies, just when we might need them.

Lesson 3: Have a plan

Chamberlain believed that, given the chance to be alone with him, he could win over Hitler and he had thought little beyond than that. May has a plan, but it might have helped perhaps to have had one a bit earlier.

Lesson 4: Don’t try to bypass the Foreign Office

Chamberlain’s original idea for the summit – known in Whitehall as “Plan Z” – was that he should be able to talk to Hitler with as little mediation as possible, especially from diplomats who did not see things his way. He therefore ended up without his own translator, or – in the final meeting in Munich – had Mussolini translate for him (Hitler spoke only German, Chamberlain only English and Daladier only French, but Mussolini spoke all three). The Salzburg summit was packed with translators, I’m sure, but the negotiations are being handled primarily by the Department for Exiting the EU, not the professionals.

Lesson 5: Nothing is quite what it seems

Chamberlain had been told about the plot to depose Hitler by elements in his army and discounted it. Sportingly, he didn’t want to condone treason. But his decision to fly to meet Hitler meant that the armed team waiting around Hitler’s Chancellery, and waiting for orders to storm in and kill him, were stood down. If he had not flown out from Heston airfield that September morning, Hitler would probably have been shot.

It is hard to see parallels here. But when national survival is at stake, as it was at both Salzburg and Munich, it makes sense always to be clear about the differences between a nation and its citizens.

You can certainly press the comparisons too far. But two more occur to me. First, the leaders present at both summits ganged up on the least powerful player in the room: in 1938, it was the Czechs (actually, they were locked in another room so they could not interfere with the partitioning of their country). In 2018, that looks horribly like the UK.

Second, Michael Foot and his friends responded to Munich with an anonymous bestseller called Guilty Men. After Salzburg, we might imagine another book with the same title describing those – mainly men – who urged us to leave the European Union without apparently ever wondering how.

• David Boyle is the author of Munich 1938: Prelude to War