September 1938. Six months earlier, the IIIe Reich annexed Austria. In the heart of London, the authorities organize training to learn how to use gas masks. “It reminds some of the Great War, commented Serge Viallet, documentary maker with a passion for history. In the lawns of Hyde Park, we dig. Trenches and shelters. To protect against air attacks if the country were to go to war. » However, the British Prime Minister at the time, Neville Chamberlain, was reassuring about the negotiations he conducted, at very regular intervals, with Adolf Hitler.
In two weeks, the head of government will travel to Germany three times to meet with the Führer. He wants to seize the Sudetenland, where 3.5 million Czechoslovaks of German origin live, by force if necessary. In this second episode of the sixth and final season of “Mysteries of the archives”, Serge Viallet tells the backstage and the context of the negotiations which will lead, on September 30, 1938, to the signing of the Munich agreements.
Chamberlain’s Peace Speech
Adolf Hitler is determined, and the British Prime Minister is himself convinced that leaving the Sudetenland to the Nazi leader is the only way to calm him down. But Neville Chamberlain does not let the press know about it. He manages to widely publicize a speech of peace and optimism, which he serves to the dozens of journalists who wait for him on the tarmac each time he takes off for Germany or lands in London.
Using rare archival footage, this documentary shows Chamberlain’s inability to change the Nazi leader’s mind and his determination to hide it. While it skims over the involvement of Mussolini’s Italy and France, represented by Édouard Daladier, it nevertheless sheds light on the last moments that preceded these agreements with terrible consequences.