As Hitler rose to power and began his march across Europe, British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain made a last-ditch effort to avert the conflict. His attempts to avoid another global conflict led to his historical reputation as a coward whose attempts to appease Hitler only emboldened him, allowing Germany to consolidate power.
But Munich takes a much more sympathetic approach to Chamberlain, painting a portrait of a man desperate to protect his beloved home from the ravages of another world war. Von Hartmann has come into possession of a German memo that lays out a far wider military expansion than the Allies are expecting. He contacts Legat in the hopes that the document will be able to convince Britain to declare war, allowing dissenting German generals to remove Hitler from power.
While Legat and von Hartmann are fictional characters — the creations of speculative history novelist Robert Harris — the situations around them are largely based in reality. The Munich accords, held in September , are regarded today as a shortsighted pit stop along the road to World War II.
Chamberlain was there, as were Hitler and a small army of diplomats. And a group of high-ranking Nazi officials really did plan to overthrow Hitler if he followed through on his threat to declare war on Czechoslovakia, although it remains unclear just how far the plot really reached.
Eleven months later, Britain was at war. Britain lacked powerful allies, a prepared military and, most of all, a committed and passionate public. In the film, Chamberlain is met upon his return from Munich by crowds of people cheering the renewed peace. To ask them to go to war over the obscure and distant borders of Czechoslovakia would have been a difficult errand for any political leader. At the tense Munich Conference, former friends who now work for opposing governments become reluctant spies racing to expose a Nazi secret.
