Munich Agreement

Well, I’m Pastor Lutzer, and we are here in Munich, Germany. I’m standing on the stairs of a building where the Munich Agreement was signed. It has become very important as people understand the implications of signing a document where the participants don’t really care to keep their word. This place has a special interest for my lovely wife, Rebecca, and me because about 20 years ago, we were here and we got permission to go into the room. There was a man here. I talked to him in broken German. I said, “We’d really like to go to the room,” and he said, “It’s forbidden,” but he took a key off of the back of the wall and gave it to us, and said, “Just 10 minutes.” Well, we were there a little longer, but I knew that if it was the right room, there’d be that tall fireplace, and there it was.

Well, we can’t go in the room today, but the Munich Agreement had to do with this. Hitler wanted to unify all of the German-speaking areas of Europe. In some places, Czechoslovakia was predominantly German-speaking, and he needed what is known in German as Lebensraum, that is to say, “living space.” The Germans had to occupy southern Czechoslovakia because it was German-speaking.

Well, four world leaders met here. They had a meeting originally, but then they ended up here because Chamberlain wanted to meet with Hitler one more time and try to hammer out this agreement. Now, the Czechs were here with their leadership, but they were not allowed to attend the meeting. Hitler was willing to agree that they could be accessible in case they were needed, but they were not needed, even though half of their country was going to be given away. And when Chamberlain from England mentioned that maybe the Czechs should be compensated, Hitler just brushed it off and said, “I have no time for such trivialities.”

So here’s what happened, and this is from Shirer’s book, The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich:

“Shortly after 1:00 AM on September 30, Hitler, Chamberlain, Mussolini (of course, he is from Italy),  and Daladier (who was the Prime Minister of France) affixed their signatures to the Munich Agreement. It provided for the German army to begin its march into Czechoslovakia on October 1 as Hitler wanted.”

In other words, they were saying, “Yeah, you can go into Czechoslovakia. You can take half the country, and we won’t intervene. There will not be a war.” So they all signed it,

Then Shirer writes this (this is why I brought you here):

“I remember from that fateful night, the light of victory in Hitler’s eyes as he strutted down the broad steps of this house after the meeting, the cockiness of Mussolini laced in special militia uniform, the yawns of Chamberlain and his air of pleasant sleepiness as he returned to his hotel.”

All right, the agreement was signed by these four powers. You have France, you have Italy, you have England, and, of course, Germany.

Chamberlain struggles during the night thinking, you know, there could be some real, huge implications for this. I want to go talk to Hitler and see whether or not he will sign an agreement that our countries will not go to war. So he finds him in his hotel. Hitler is very annoyed. “You want me to sign an agreement that our countries are not going to go to war. I’m glad to do that.” So Hitler signed the agreement, Chamberlain signed the agreement. They leave, and Chamberlain goes back to England. This is a very famous victory and peace in our time.

I want to give some lessons to this because obviously Hitler didn’t stop with half of Czechoslovakia. He moved in and took all of Czechoslovakia, and then, of course, later on, he moved into Poland, and World War II began.

Three very important lessons:

• When an enemy can spot a weakness anywhere, whether it’s the devil or whether it’s Hitler, he will exploit it. There’s no doubt that Hitler saw very clearly that Chamberlain was into wanting peace at any cost. He didn’t want to go to war. He wanted to draw a line and say you can’t do this. He wanted appeasement. An enemy will always find a weakness and exploit it. When we look back on history today, we say that Chamberlain was exploited,
• There’s a second very important lesson about agreements. An agreement doesn’t mean anything if there’s no character to back it up. Whether or not it’s an agreement between countries, or whether it’s a marriage agreement, it means nothing unless people are committed to keep that agreement and to keep their word. One day, somebody asked me, “How could your parents live together for 77 years?” Well, they were bound together through the agreement of marriage, but also by character. They were totally committed to each other, totally committed to faithfulness. That’s really what makes the difference.
• There’s a third lesson. When Chamberlain went back to England, held up this piece of paper, waved it in the air, and proclaimed, “Peace in our time,” Churchill said in the House of Commons, “We have sustained a total, unmitigated defeat!” He was forced to pause because there was such a storm of protest against him. Until all of the protests ended, he could not continue his speech. Churchill saw what other people didn’t. He knew Hitler’s character, and he knew that the man by the name of Chamberlain had been deceived. And isn’t this interesting? When Hitler was signing the agreement that we won’t go to war, he and Mussolini had already made plans as to how they were going to go to war against England. So, an agreement means nothing unless it’s signed by someone with character.

Let us keep in mind the importance of standing alone. Churchill ended up being right. Sometimes the majority is wrong.

Thanks so much for joining us directly from Munich. We’re standing on the stairs of the building where the Munich Agreement was signed.