Munich – The Edge Of War: Official Netflix trailer

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Neville Chamberlain served as Prime Minister from 1937 until May 1940. Best known for his foreign policy of appeasement, he played a crucial role in the Munich Agreement of September 1938, which handed the German-speaking Sudetenland region of Czechoslovakia to Germany. Chamberlain famously declared “peace for our time” as he was photographed waving an agreement with Adolf Hitler in the air. The Munich Agreement is the subject of a new film ‘Munich: The Edge of War’, an adaptation of Robert Harris’ bestselling novel ‘Munich’.

World War 2 began less than a year later when Germany invaded Poland on September 1, 1939.

Chamberlain announced the declaration of war on Germany two days later, leading the United Kingdom through the first eight months of the war until May 1940.

The first eight months were dubbed the ‘Phoney War’, since there was just one limited military land operation on the Western Front.

The period ended with the German invasion of France and the Low Countries on May 10, 1940.

Chamberlain stepped down on the very same day, after the Norway Debate, which had left him with a drastically reduced parliamentary majority.

According to historian and journalist Leo McKinstry, Chamberlain intervened to ensure Winston Churchill succeeded him in Downing Street.

King George VI, much of the Cabinet and the majority of Tory MPs wanted Lord Halifax, then Foreign Secretary, to take over, but Chamberlain felt otherwise.

Mr McKinstry wrote in The Telegraph in 2018: “Chamberlain, despite his personal antipathy to Churchill, put the cause of the nation above his own feelings and party politics.

“After a series of meetings on May 10 and 11, he decided to tell the King that Churchill was the only possible choice.”

Churchill himself recognised the role Chamberlain had played in him becoming Prime Minister.

Soon after his premiership began, he told the Manchester Guardian journalist WP Crozier: “I owe something to Chamberlain.

“When he resigned, he could have advised the King to send for Halifax and he didn’t.”

Chamberlain died of bowel cancer on November 9, 1940 at the age of 1971.

His funeral took place five days later at Westminster Abbey, though details were not widely publicised due to wartime security concerns.

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Both Churchill and Halifax acted as pallbearers.

Churchill gave a fitting farewell in the House of Commons three days after his death.

He said the “bitter controversies” which had plagued Chamberlain had been “hushed” by news he had cancer, and “silenced” by his sad death.

He said his predecessor had the most “noble and benevolent instincts of the human heart, the love of peace, the toil for peace, the strife for peace, the pursuit of peace, even at great peril”.

He added: “Whatever else history may or may not say about these terrible, tremendous years, we can be sure that Neville Chamberlain acted with perfect sincerity according to his lights and strove to the utmost of his capacity and authority, which were powerful, to save the world from the awful, devastating struggle in which we are now engaged.

“This alone will stand him in good stead as far as what is called the verdict of history is concerned.”

Later in the eulogy, Churchill said Chamberlain followed wartime affairs “with keenness, interest and tenacity” in his final days.

“If he grieved at all, it was that he could not be a spectator of our victory; but I think he died with the comfort of knowing that his country had, at least, turned the corner.”

Chamberlain saw the RAF’s first defeat of the Third Reich in the Battle of Britain, something he can take an enormous amount of credit for.

Without his intervention in the years beforehand, much of the rearmament focus would have gone on funding more bombers.

Chamberlain intervened, prioritising fighter planes. Expenditure on the production of single-seat Spitfire and Hurricanes was massively increased from 1936, the planes that ultimately played an enormous role in Allied victory in the Battle of Britain.

‘Munich: The Edge of War’ is in select cinemas now and will be available on Netflix from January 21.

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