Munich

Robert Harris's novel about the 1938 conference between Hitler and Neville Chamberlain makes compelling reading as fiction but also seems to have the underlying aim of rescuing the British prime minister's reputation from obloquy. While Chamberlain certainly does not emerge from the novel as any kind of hero, he does earn the reader's admiration for his dogged efforts to forestall war. As it happens, Hitler in 1945 said that he should have gone to war in 1938, when Britain's military was in a woeful state. Instead, under Chamberlain's direction, the nation launched a rearmament drive that resulted in a stiffer defense when war did come a year later. Those who continue to call Chamberlain an appeaser must be prepared to answer his question: Should Britain and France have gone to war in 1938 to defend parts of Czechoslovakia where a majority of the population was German and wanted to rejoin Germany?