World Wars, Past and Possible
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As American and Russian negotiators converge today in Munich for a major security conference, carrying in their briefcases various plans about Ukraine without Ukraine, the temptation is to recall another meeting in that city. Appeasement of the aggressor seems to be the plan now, as it was with Germany in 1938.
But the resemblances between that moment and this go deeper, and it worth pausing to consider them. The symmetry between Germany-Czechoslovakia in 1938 and Russia-Ukraine in 2022 is uncanny, and pausing for a moment on the resemblances might help us to take a broader view of today. We are prisoners, now more than ever, of the rumors and disinformation and emotions of the moment. History can give us at least a calmer perspective. And so consider:
Hitler denied the legitimacy of the Czechoslovak state. As German chancellor, he systematically denied that it had a right to exist. Although its leaders were democratically elected, he claimed that they had no right to rule. Because its people spoke various languages, he claimed that there was no such thing as a body of Czechoslovak citizens. Hitler argued that Czechoslovakia itself was artificial, the result of a historical turning point that never should have happened, the settlement after the First World War. He claimed that the existence of national minority gave him the right to intervene in Czechoslovak politics. In May 1938, he ordered his army to make preparations for a quick strike on Czechoslovakia. He also activiated his agents inside the country. On September 12thHitler gave a rousing speech to Germans about the entirely fictional extermination of the German minority in Czechoslovakia. We know what comes next: Britain and France, together with Germany and Italy, decided in Munich on September 30ththat Czechoslovakia should cede crucial border territories to Germany. These were the most defensible parts of the country. Czechoslovakia’s leaders, although they were not consulted, chose to accept the partition of their country.
To see where we are now, it might help, though, to imagine how things might have gone differently. And so, a counterfactual paragraph, in italics:
Czechoslovak’s leaders chose to resist. Though President Benes was generally expected to flee to a foreign capital and form a government in exile, he remained in Prague. His position was stronger than it might have seemed. Although it was a new state and little known to the European powers, Czechoslovakia was a successful democracy and an industrial power. It had the best arms industry in Europe, and a series of fortifications improved the natural defense provided by the mountain range on its border with Germany. Although in the capitals of Europe, the wise heads expected the Germans to reach Prague in three days, in fact the Wehrmacht stuttered in the mountains. The Sudeten War was underway. European public opinion turned against the aggressors. Germany was forced to bring troops from other sectors, and then to mobilize more soldiers. In the midst of a war with an unsure outcome, this was unpopular. Seeing the success of the Czechoslovak resistance, the British and the French began to provide aid, financial and then military. The Americans helped the British to help the Czechoslovaks. France reoccupied the territories that it had allowed Germany to take a few years earlier. A year into what was called the Sudetenland War, Hitler decided that he needed a quick victory to secure his domestic position and intimidate the European powers. Under the cover of another mobilization, he ordered an invasion of Poland’s Baltic territories. But he was unable to keep the operation a secret. Germans began to protest. The Poles had time to move troops from their eastern border. Hitler had to call off the operation. Meanwhile, the Czechoslovaks exploited the chaos to launch a series of paratroop drops behind German lines. Germans took to the streets to demand peace. The Sudeten War was over.
To be sure, we cannot say in detail what might have been. Had Czechoslovakia resisted, however, we can be reasonably confident that there would have been no Second World War, at least not of the sort that Europe experienced beginning in September 1939.
A war against Czechoslovakia in 1938 really would have been hard going for the Germans. Hitler was not bluffing, but his army was not ready. The partition of Czechoslovakia without a fight made matters much easier for him. When Germany invaded Poland in September 1939, it used intact Czechoslovakia tanks and other Czechoslovak arms. He also controlled Czechoslovak economic and human resources. Had Czechoslovakia resisted, that would not have been the case. Even assuming that Czechoslovakia were eventually defeated by Germany, there is no way Germany would have been able to move so quickly against Poland. Also: when Germany invaded Poland in September 1939, it depended on its alliance with the Soviet Union, sealed that August in agreements remembered as the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact. Had Czechoslovakia resisted, the much harder for the Soviets to have chosen that most active form of appeasement of the Nazis. It is not clear that Germany would have dared to invade Poland at all without Soviet support.
So it does seem reasonable to presume, at a minimum, that Germany would have been, at the very least, slowed down, and denied the prestige and self-confidence that came from the succeeding lightening victories over Poland in 1939 and then France in 1940. Czechoslovak resistance would have made appeasement of Hitler, until then the major drift of European policy, all but impossible.
Now let us consider some of the deeper resemblances between 1938 and 2022. The coincidence of two meetings at Munich is part of two longer stories, eerily similar.
Putin denied the legitimacy of the Ukrainian state. Although its leaders were democratically elected, he claimed that they had no right to rule. Because its people spoke various languages, he claimed that there was no such thing as a body of Ukrainian citizens. Hitler argued that Ukraine itself was artificial, the result of a historical turning point that never should have happened, the collapse of the Soviet Union. He claimed that the existence of national minority gave him the right to intervene in Ukraine politics. At some point in 2021, he ordered his army to make preparations for a quick strike on Ukraine. He also activated his agents inside the country. In a series of speeches that December, Putin provided pretexts for a coming invasion of Ukraine.
Here the timeline turns in a different way. Something happened in early 2022 that few people beyond Ukraine expected to happen.
Ukraine’s leaders chose to resist. Though President Zelens’kyi was generally expected to flee to a foreign capital and form a government in exile, he remained in Kyiv. His position was stronger than it might have seemed. Although it was a new state and little known to the European powers, Ukraine was a democracy and an industrial power. It had one of the best arms industries in Europe, and its commanders had a plan to allow Russian forces to penetrate and then to surround and destroy them. Although the wise heads in Moscow and Washington expected the Russians to reach Kyiv in three days, in fact the Russians were defeated at Kharkiv and Kyiv, although they made meaningful gains in the southeast. By the end of 2022 Ukraine had taken back about half the territories Russia took in the first weeks of the war. European public opinion turned against the aggressors. Appeasement of Russia became difficult. Russia was forced to bring troops from other sectors, and then to seek help from China, Iran, and North Korea.
No italics this time: that is how it happened. And these events give us a sense of what we have to lose.
Three years in, the outcome of the war remains uncertain. What is certain is that no wider war began. Ukraine has destroyed much of the Russian armed forces, and drawn Russian troops away from NATO borders. With some help from allies, it is, in effect, fulfilling the entire NATO mission with its own armed forces, and without NATO membership. Indirectly but meaningfully, Ukraine contributed to the fall of Assad in Syria, by drawing away the Russian air forces and other forces.
Ukraine also, by resisting, has made less likely other wars of aggression. Although this went largely unnoticed, the Ukrainians also held back nuclear proliferation. Russia used nuclear bluffs throughout the war. By ignoring them and resisting a conventional invasion with conventional power, Ukraine communicated to the world that nuclear weapons were not necessary to resist a nuclear power. That, like so much else, depended upon Ukraine’s continuing ability to fight.
Although one can never be sure exactly where a counter-factual example leads, the events in Czechoslovakia in 1938 help to clarify the stakes of the war in Ukraine. In the first case, a timeline led to a world war, because unnecessary concessions to Hitler created opportunities he would not otherwise have had. The Czechoslovaks, of course, were not chiefly to blame. Had Britain and France not joined Italy and Germany in the Munich agreement, it would have been far easier for Czechoslovakia to resist. In my view, Czechoslovakia still might have done so, and in so doing would have prevented a world war. But it is important to see that the great powers also bear responsibility.
Had Czechoslovakia acted to prevent a world war, it is very unlikely that anyone’s imagination would have reached that far. It is very unlikely that anyone would have thanked to Czechoslovaks for preventing what did not happen. History would have recorded instead a Sudeten War, or a Central European War, or something along those lines. This is worth bearing in mind. We do not appreciate what the Ukrainians have prevented. We lack the imagination, or perhaps the generosity, that is needed to see our own interests.
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No one in the heights of Musk-Trump, I would suppose, gives a thought to what would have happened had Ukraine not resisted, or what will happen if American policy makes that resistance impossible. For whatever reason, most of the high officials in the Trump administration have taken something that resembles Russia’s view of the war. But Russia can only win if it is appeased, which is to say helped. Three years in, Americans seem to be rushing to Munich appease the aggressor. (Except for Secretary of State Marco Rubio, whose plane, it is reported, had a mechanical problem.)
One way to consider the current state of events is this: the Ukrainians have kept us in a kind of suspended 1938, a 1938 that has lasted three years. The year 1938 was far from ideal, but it was much better than 1939, and world war. By resisting, essentially on their own, the Ukrainians have created a timeline that would not otherwise have existed. The rest of us, although we live in that timeline, have done little to deserve it.
Whatever the Trump administration’s other motives in appeasing Russia, that lack of appreciation is among them. Trump himself, his vice-president, the man who holds power (Musk), and their milieux in general all tend to treat Ukraine as a kind of irritant, as a problem rather than as a solution. They are very far away from understanding that Ukraine has held off chaos and war well beyond its borders. Or, perhaps, in some cases, they blame Ukraine for that very achievement, because what they want is war and chaos.
However that may be, Trump’s policy, at least in the last few days, has been a race to appeasement. He has tried to make it normal to speak to Putin. His administration has publicly said what Ukraine has to do. And, again, whatever the motives, the operative logic is one of appeasement: granting land to the aggressor, reducing the sovereignty of the country attacked.
History can help us to remember certain patterns of causality. It can also, perhaps more importantly, remind us that many things are possible, including things that, for better or worse, did not actually happen. Upon the decisions of a few people at a critical time can hang the passage of one chain of events to another.
Any irony will be lost on American and Russian negotiators at Munich. Russian diplomats have been trained to believe that 1938 was directed against the Soviet Union, and thus that they were the true victims — which is pretty much the Putinist interpretation of history in general. The people who instructed the American team is unlikely to know what happened in Munich in September 1938, sad to say.
But one does not need irony, or even history, to see the essentially logical problem of appeasing Putin now.
Russia is the aggressor. Russia says openly that its war aims extend far beyond what it has achieved now. Russia has an interest in a pause in the war because it is doing poorly and because its leaders believe, reasonably, that a ceasefire will end US support of Ukraine, distract the Europeans, and make it harder for Ukraine to mobilize its population and resources a second time for a later Russian strike. Russia also naturally has an interest in American leaders putatively granting it Ukrainian territory, including territory which it does not even occupy. This sets a precedent that international law does not matter and/or that Ukraine is not a legitimate state protected by such law.
Appeasing Russia, if it leads to Russian victory now or later, could very well create the conditions for a world war. A Russia that destroys Ukraine, in effect with American assistance, would be a very different country. Ukrainian resources, like Czechoslovakia resources in 1938, would make of the aggressor a much stronger power. This is an uncomfortable point, but one that must be considered. Ukraine has the best army in Europe, and the most battle-hardened one. It is the only country in the West to have fought a major war in this decade. It is innovating faster than others can copy. All of this, and the agriculture, and the minerals, and the ports, can be lost to Russia. And then, after a time of course, Europe faces a far more powerful country, one made for war, one whose leaders believe that war works.
A Russian victory, especially one enabled by American diplomacy, opens the world not just to further Russian aggression in Europe, but to wars of aggression everywhere. It also almost certainly means nuclear proliferation, since future aggressors and those who fear them will both learn the lesson that nuclear weapons are necessary.
The Russo-Ukrainian War is horrible, and should be brought to an end. But appeasement is an apparent shortcut that leads to longer and bloodier conflict. It would not be that difficult, at least in normal conditions, to apply American power to end Russia’s war in Ukraine. The logic is simple: make things harder for Russia, and make things easier for Ukraine.
At the moment, American policy is the opposite.
Musk-Trump is making it harder for the Ukrainians to keep us in our extended 1938. Of course, that does not mean that American policy will be consistent, let alone succeed. The war cannot actually be halted without Ukrainian and indeed European participation. The desire for a quick resolution is more likely than not to lead to unexpected consequences, for which the Americans will likely lack the patience.The desire for a quick deal leads to a haste that overlooks important aspects of the problem.
Given the general level of distress across the federal government, it is hard to imagine that the Americans are very well prepared for these meetings — although the Russians will be. The Americans cannot get official planes off the ground. Lower-ranking officials are right now trying to qualify the more radically appeasing concessions that Trump and his secretaries of defense and state have made in public. The American vice-president was going to meet with the Ukrainian president at Munich. But then again now perhaps he is not. There is a distressing “who knows” quality to all of this.
But however things turn out, the first American move under Musk-Trump has been to endorse appeasement. Knowingly or not, and I do not presume to say which, that choice pushes us one step towards 1939.
11:35am Munich time, 14 February 2025
