The Politics of the Munich Crisis

On 30 September 1938 the British prime minister Neville Chamberlain climbed out of an aeroplane at Heston aerodrome in London. Waiting for him on the tarmac were journalists and photographers. Chamberlain had just returned from a summit with Adolf Hitler in Munich, and his mood was one of triumph. The prime minister believed he had pulled off a diplomatic coup that would prevent a devastating European war. He brandished a piece of paper bearing Hitler's signature, an image captured by the photographers and destined to become one of the iconic visual records of the century. Later, in Downing Street, Chamberlain boasted that the settlement he negotiated represented nothing less than “peace for our time”.