At the ‘Führer Building’ in Munich, left to right: Benito Mussolini, Adolf Hitler, Hermann Göring (standing), chief interpreter of the German foreign ministry Paul Otto Schmidt and Neville Chamberlain. In the background: Göring’s chief adjutant, Karl Bodenschatz Heinrich Hoffmann · Ullstein Bild · Getty

The Marquis de Custine, whose family had perished under the guillotine during the French Revolution, sought refuge in autocratic Russia in 1839; later he returned to Paris, disgusted and convinced the Russians were ‘Chinese masquerading as Europeans’. A century later Harold Nicolson, the British writer and diplomat, emerged from lunch at the elegant residence of the Soviet ambassador in London, saying that ‘there was something terribly familiar about it all ... They were playing at being Europeans. They have gone oriental.’

Then, as now, western relations with Russia were governed by ingrained and preconceived ideas, which bred mutual suspicion and sought Russia’s isolation and its exclusion from Europe. Such perceptions, enhanced by the legacy of imperial rivalry, contributed to the calamitous Munich conference that, on 30 September 1938, sacrificed Czechoslovakia for the sake of appeasing Hitler. Its collateral damage was the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, triggering the outbreak of the second world war (1).

Forty years of revisionist historiography have exonerated the ‘guilty men’ in power, and underplayed their traditional Russophobia and ideological bias, while puffing up the ‘objective constraints’ underpinning British and French politics. Analysis of the viable alternative that collaboration with Soviet Union did offer at the time has been conspicuous by its near total absence.

Just a month after the Munich agreement, Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain, an advocate of appeasement, admitted to King George VI that ‘it was significant that neither France nor Russia ever asked each other any questions during the crisis.’ He considered it ‘better to leave the Soviets alone.’ He boasted in a letter to his sister that he would resist any pressure Winston Churchill exerted on him to ‘make a grand alliance against Germany ... Fortunately my nature is ... extremely “obstinate”, & I refuse to change.’

Meanwhile Stalin, despite his obvious ideological predilection, pursued a highly pragmatic and rational foreign policy, based on geopolitical premises of balance of power and spheres of influence. The historiography of the Munich conference has deliberately glossed over the intense efforts of Soviet diplomacy to thwart Hitler’s belligerency in the previous five years.

A warning to Stalin

The Soviet foreign minister Maxim Litvinov had already warned Stalin in autumn 1932 that Weimar Germany was on its last legs and that the advance of Nazism would require a drastic turnabout in relations with Great Britain and France. Louis Barthou, French foreign minister in 1934, welcomed such a shift, which led to the accession of the Soviet Union to the League of Nations. In May 1935 France concluded a treaty of mutual assistance with the Soviet Union, followed by a similar agreement with Czechoslovakia.

There was one significant difference in the otherwise identical agreements, which would render them ineffective in 1938. At the insistence of Edvard Beneš, president of Czechoslovakia, the agreement included a stipulation that any Soviet assistance would be conditional on France acting first. The French position therefore became crucial in 1938: were they not to provide assistance, Czechoslovakia could face Germany alone.

The honeymoon with Moscow proved short-lived when Barthou was assassinated in Marseilles in October 1934. His successor, Pierre Laval, was less well disposed to the Russians over the next four years. The worsening social strife in France throughout the 1930s raised fears in Moscow that the French elite was gradually drifting to the right, and might even turn fascist. Similarly, Ivan Maisky, the Soviet ambassador in London, was frustrated throughout 1934-36 as he failed to break through British hostility. An Anglo-Franco-German agreement at the expense of Russia seemed likely. There were no results from almost two years of frenzied efforts to give the Franco-Soviet agreement real teeth. Stalin tried to shift gears but his hasty, clandestine diplomatic overtures in Berlin to forestall Britain’s appeasement were ignored.

I must confess to the most profound mistrust of Russia ... I have no belief whatever in her ability to maintain an effective offensive even if she wanted to Neville Chamberlain

Chamberlain’s appointment as prime minister in May 1937 coincided with the outbreak of terror in Moscow. Despite this, Soviet foreign policy remained steady. In July 1937 Maisky assured Chamberlain that the Soviet Union had no ideological wish to use the international crisis to impose ‘a communist or any other system’ anywhere in Europe. But it was all to no avail. Chamberlain emerged from the meeting convinced that ‘the Russians [were] stealthily and cunningly pulling all the strings behind the scenes to get us involved in war with Germany’ — a war which, for most Conservatives, implied the expansion of communism. Impervious to warnings of saner voices in the Foreign Office, Chamberlain preferred to follow his inner emotional compass. He wrote to his sister: ‘I must confess to the most profound mistrust of Russia ... I have no belief whatever in her ability to maintain an effective offensive even if she wanted to. And I distrust her motives, motives which seem to me to have little connection with our idea of liberty.’ This was not the same measure he applied to his dealings with Hitler.

The resignation of Anthony Eden as foreign secretary at the end of 1937 was another blow. His successor, Lord Halifax, had a laid-back manner in the conduct of foreign affairs that enabled Chamberlain to bypass the Foreign Office and rely on his own advisers. The Soviet position was further undermined by Britain’s muted reaction to Hitler’s annexation of Austria on 12 March 1938. Maisky, ‘extremely pessimistic’, feared that Chamberlain, whom he believed to be guided exclusively by his ideological bent, would ‘throw overboard’ the League of Nations and try to resuscitate the Four-Power Pact of 1933 ‘excluding the Soviet Union.’

‘Very beautiful, but awful rubbish’

In Geneva, however, Litvinov continued to explore the possibility of reviving an anti-Nazi coalition through the League of Nations. But when he met the new French prime minister Léon Blum in April 1938, he saw a man who was uncertain of his future. Litvinov cabled Stalin saying that Blum gave him the impression of ‘weariness, fatalism and doom’. As for the Franco-Soviet military talks, which French had been repeatedly putting off since May 1935, Blum admitted that they were being sabotaged, not only by the generals but also by Edouard Daladier, his powerful defence minister.

The Anglo-French summit in London on 28-29 April 1938 revealed the hegemony of the hosts. Daladier’s advocacy of stiff resistance to Hitler in Czechoslovakia, with Soviet help if necessary, was dismissed in private by Alexander Cadogan, the UK under-secretary of state, as ‘very beautiful, but awful rubbish’. During the king’s visit to Paris, Halifax wrote off Czechoslovakia as an artificial state, telling his French interlocutors he believed Czechoslovakia was incapable of defending itself or receiving assistance from the outside. In candid talks in London, Maisky warned of ‘the incipient movement towards isolation in Russia,’ which was a result of the West’s practice of keeping Russia at arm’s length. He nevertheless vowed that if France and Britain were to assist Czechoslovakia in the event of an invasion of Sudetenland, ‘Russia would come in on our side.’ But Litvinov immediately lamented that without western help, ‘it was hardly possible to do anything substantial while [the West] do not consider it necessary to obtain our assistance. They ignore us and between themselves decide everything concerning the German-Czechoslovak conflict.’

In Paris, Georges Bonnet, the new French foreign minister, believed Russia’s sole desire was ‘to stir up general war’ and then fish in war’s troubled waters. Preparing the ground for the annual meeting at the League of Nations, Litvinov summoned Payart, the French chargé d’affaires in Moscow, on 2 September. To defuse the uncertainty surrounding the Soviet position, Litvinov wished Bonnet to know that, provided France fulfilled its obligations, ‘the USSR was also committed to carry out its obligations under the Soviet-Czech pact.’ He pleaded for immediate military negotiations between representatives of the Soviet, French and Czech armed forces, and for the crisis to be put on the agenda of the Assembly of the League of Nations. For historians, what is most illuminating is the unequivocal conclusion that Maisky drew for himself from the conversations: ‘So, our position in the Czechoslovak crisis has been set out with absolute clarity. We are ready to offer armed assistance to Czechoslovakia, if the others are ready to fulfil their duty. Will they rise to the demands of this terribly serious historical moment?’

Payart, aware of the scepticism of his superiors at the Quai d’Orsay, played down the gist of the message, cynically suggesting that the Soviet commissar was obviously aware that Russia would not be called upon to fulfil its obligations. On 4 September, Maisky, frustrated by the lack of a French response, drove to Churchill’s country home at Chartwell in Kent. He disclosed to Churchill ‘in detail’ Litvinov’s statement to Payart and prodded him to relay the information to Halifax. The response, however, was an idea that was floated by The Times on 7 September on behalf of the inner British cabinet. It urged the Czech government to cede the Sudetenland, as ‘the advantages to Czechoslovakia of becoming a homogeneous state might conceivably outweigh the obvious disadvantages of losing the Sudeten German districts of the borderland.’ To add insult to injury, Halifax summoned Maisky on 8 September, and asked him to convey to Litvinov Halifax’s apologies that the looming crisis in Czechoslovakia ruled out his presence in Geneva. Halifax was obviously eager not to provoke Hitler by engaging with the Reds.

‘Incalculable and disastrous consequences’

The session of the morally bankrupt League, which almost ignored the Czech crisis, coincided with Chamberlain’s announcement, on the evening of 14 September, of his decision to meet Hitler in Berchtesgaden, which led to the Munich conference. All Litvinov could do was to give vent to his frustration in a fiery speech to the Assembly, reiterating Soviet commitment and ending with an ominous warning that Anglo-French capitulation was bound to have ‘incalculable and disastrous consequences’. His demand for an emergency meeting in Paris or London of the military experts of Britain, France and the Soviet Union was dismissed by the Foreign Office as being ‘of little use’, since it was bound to ‘certainly provoke Germany.’

The Red Army meanwhile mobilised and deployed large forces in the Kiev and the Belarusian Special Military Districts between 21 and 23 September. Some 60 infantry divisions, 16 cavalry divisions, three tank corps and 17 air brigades were deployed along the western Soviet frontier. Since there was no common border between Czechoslovakia and Russia, the only feasible routes for Russian assistance to Czechoslovakia were through Romania and Poland. While the Romanian government had tacitly agreed with the Russians that they could fly over the country, no attempts were made by the French to prevail on their ally, Poland, to allow the bulk of the Red Army transit via the far more accessible land route.

Chamberlain’s attitude to Czechoslovakia was vividly revealed in a BBC radio broadcast on 27 September. He told the listeners: ‘How horrible, fantastic, incredible it is that we should be trying on gas masks here because of a quarrel in a faraway country between people of whom we know nothing.’ No wonder that the following day he announced in Parliament his intention to respond favourably to an invitation from Hitler for Chamberlain to visit Munich for a summit meeting. When Chamberlain was already on his way to Munich, Halifax summoned Maisky and made excuses for ‘not raising the question of sending an invitation to the USSR because, firstly, time was terribly short, with not a minute to spare and, secondly and most importantly, it knew beforehand the reply that it would get to such a proposal from Hitler. The last chance to preserve peace could not be wasted because of an argument about the composition of the conference.’