Sometimes life imitates art and other times art imitates life.
French journalist Georges-Marc Benamou presented his new novel The Ghost of Munich at the French Institute Sept. 22, just days before the 70th anniversary of the fateful Munich Agreement. The book recounts one of the darkest moments in European history, when France and United Kingdom abandoned Czechoslovakia Sept. 30, 1938, and signed an agreement with Hitler and Mussolini giving them control over Czechoslovak border regions. The novel is to be dramatized by playwright and former President Václav Havel along with Oscar-winning director Miloš Forman.“It is important to stand up to our past mistakes. The French betrayed their allies in Czechoslovakia and would like to forget about it. The least I can do is tell the truth. But even after 70 years my book annoyed most readers even though critics and other authors liked it,” Benamou said.Parallels to the Munich Agreement are often drawn in contemporary politics — usually referencing futile appeasement policies or cited as a rationale for pre-emptive military action. Russia’s recent war with Georgia to protect a Russian-speaking minority drew comparisons to Hitler’s policy of defending and assimilating all Germans living in neighboring countries, which was one of the causes of the Munich tragedy. “In a world of empires, we will always live in fear of another Munich. Munich was about feeding the beast. The hungry German war machine had need of Czechoslovak industry; it had need of its people and its natural resources. Similar battles for the control of national riches are fought today in the Middle East,” Benamou said.Forman and Havel attended the reading and discussion about the book but came only as members of the audience. “We would like to take this piece of historical fiction and use it as a starting point for our film,” Forman said.The discussion ended on a lighter note when someone in the audience asked Havel about his recollections of the Munich days. “I was only 2 years old at the time. However, I remember that my parents sent me off to Moravia to live with my grandfather. That was the first time I flew in an airplane. That flight was much more important than any political impact at the time,” Havel said.For the Czechs, the Munich tragedy lives on in the national subconsciousness even 70 years after the events took place. There are references to it in daily life as well as in politics. However, the field where one would expect the Munich Agreement to be the hot topic for conversation ignores it the most. “It is surprising how little research has been done into these events on both sides of the Iron Curtain during the Cold War,” said Eva Hahn from the Historical Institute at Oldenburg University in Germany. Systematic study was abandoned and gave way to political propaganda.“To this day, German textbooks say founding Czechoslovakia was a mistake from the start, because Germans were oppressed here. In that light, Munich is viewed as a legitimate agreement,” says Hahn, who is trying to open up the debate about revising this segment of German history.Dead men’s storiesThe Institute for the Study of Totalitarian Regimes has initiated some of the first systematic work concerning Munich. However, their job is not an easy one. Reconstructing all events that took place in those agitated days after so many years is tedious work. “Police, military and even national archives have been destroyed during the war several times. We are left with only pieces and fragments,” said Ladislav Kudrna, a historian at the institute.Kudrna specializes in history of the common man. He has searched the archives for stories of Czechoslovak soldiers killed in the weeks surrounding the Munich Agreement. Altogether, there were 262 of them. Hitler had no intention of attacking Czechoslovakia before the war, realizing that he did not have the military and economic power in 1938. Instead, his crack troops in the SS and SA trained paramilitary Freikorps units that were formed from Sudeten Germans, an organization totaling some 40,000 men before the war. Using partisan warfare asymmetric tactics they started an armed rebellion Sept. 14, 1938. “I was surprised to find that even Germans in the Czechoslovak Army fought and died in battles against Freikorps. Some of them took their own lives because they could not bear the weight of the betrayal that their fellow Germans committed against their own country,” Kudrna said. “Each dead man has a captivating story to tell even if only expressed in the cold and precise language of military reports.” From historical records, it is clear the Czechoslovak people were ready to defend their country even at the cost of their own lives. President Edvard Beneš had the support of the people and of the army. Nevertheless, he ordered the army to stand down after the Munich Agreement was signed. Betrayed by his allies and left alone, he faced utter destruction of the country for which he worked his whole life. “We could have and should have and wanted to defend ourselves right up to Munich. Beneš was at the head of this patriotic movement. Our defense capability was sufficient to last at least until our allies joined in. Beneš gave in only after he was betrayed by the French and thrown to Hitler as a peace offering,” said Václav Kural, a Czech historian specializing in the Munich days. “He knew that he would be hated by his contemporaries and even future generations, but Beneš was a great visionary. He knew even at the time that he had lost a battle but that he will win the war.”
(Prague Post)
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