In September 1938, Britain, Germany, Italy and France met in Munich as a new European war loomed. Hitler was demanding to annex the Sudetenland in western Czechoslovakia so in a bid to avoid war the Four Powers Agreement was signed and Czechoslovakia would surrender its border regions and defences. British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain had Hitler sign a separate Anglo-German agreement and triumphantly called it “peace for our time”. Known as the Munich crisis, this event was the climax of appeasement.
A new film, Munich — The Edge of War, is not a dramatisation of this pivotal event but a work of “what if” historical fiction, based on Robert Harris’s 2017 political thriller of the same name. The fictional male leads Hugh Legat and Paul von Hartmann are loosely based on the British AL Rowse and the German Adam von Trott, a good deal of poetic licence taken regarding their respective political insights, foresight and proximity to the centre stage of diplomatic events. The suspense of the story hinges on whether they together can change the course of events.
The film aims to be relatable by subtly framing the strategic and ethical quandaries faced by the appeasers and the would-be anti-Nazi resistors in ways that will resonate with audiences in our own age of crisis and rising extremism. Indeed, in the news now Russia is massing troops on the border of Ukraine to prevent it joining NATO, and some commentators are comparing this to the Munich Crisis of 1938.
