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Radio War Nerd EP #578 — Deconstructing "Munich 1938" Pt. 2: 1933-39, feat. Annibale (Patreon)

Published:
2026-02-03 23:32:26
Edited:
2026-02-03 23:34:28
Imported:
2026-02
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Guest: AnnibaleRecorded: January 30, 2026

Part 2 of Annibale's series recovering the actual history of the much-abused "Munich 1938" myth. In this episode, Annibale explains how the western powers were Munich-1938'ing year after year, crisis after crisis, so that by the time the actual Munich conference came around, the outcome was long a done deal.

Further listening:RWN EP #576 - Deconstructing "Munich 1938" Pt. 1: 1919-1933

Annibale's Bibliography:

Steiner, Zara. The Triumph of the Dark: European International History 1933–1939. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011.(Comprehensive structural history of the 1930s showing how repeated crises taught European governments that enforcement was politically impossible/ inconvenient) 

Watt, Donald Cameron. How War Came: The Immediate Origins of the Second World War. New York: Pantheon Books, 1989.(Early work showing that Britain / France restraint and delay reflected conscious political choices, not ignorance of German intentions or miscalculation alone.)

Graham, Helen. The Spanish Republic at War, 1936–1939. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002.(Spanish Civil War as an international crisis that normalized large-scale violence without escalation, reinforcing expectations of non-enforcement.)

Carley, Michael Jabara. 1939: The Alliance That Never Was and the Coming of World War II. Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, 1999.(Study of failed Anglo-French-Soviet negotiations showing how ideological distrust of the USSR decisively narrowed alliance options.)

Mazower, Mark. Dark Continent: Europe’s Twentieth Century. London: Penguin Books, 1998.(Explains why interwar elites often viewed fascism as order-preserving while treating Bolshevism as destabilizing)

Total time: 1:36:22Direct link to this episode's mp3 here

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Buy & review John Dolan's new book, They Should Have Been Hanged: War Nerd Essays on the U.S. Civil War

Subscribe to Radio War Nerd at patreon.com/radiowarnerd

Sound production by Telescope Audio

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Comments

Kamran Husain

annibale has taught me more than any history professor at dartmouth college has in my 9 years of attempting to get a bachelor’s degree

Matt Colston

Uh ohhh Orwellheads will get mad at Annibale for besmirching the beautiful baby Republicans.

drizzly_november

Wonder what Annibale makes of the Robert Harris novel Munich, which posits that Chamberlain secretly understood the Munich Agreement wouldn’t hold, but accepted his ruined reputation as the price to buy Britain time to prepare for war. It’s a pretty silly thriller, but it was the first time in pop culture I’d seen Neville not totally vilified.

aqueous_steve

If you like Catherine O’Hara and Eugene Levy you guys gotta watch Schitt’s Creek.

Annibale

The message I hope will be clear after listening to the episode is that Chamberlain was a fool (or at least someone who made a mistaken assessment of his own diplomatic capacity), but not a fool in the sense he's been portrayed in the post-Churchill era. This means he was not a "coward" and did not "believe in Hitler". This is clear from the evidence we have - in private, Chamberlain often repeated that he did not trust Hitler. Also, his perception that England in 1938 was not in a position to deter Germany was correct. However, implying that Munich was a clever short-term sacrifice to buy England time is just silly (and most of Harris is silly, IMHO). Because Chamberlain (like most European leaders at the time) greatly downplayed the danger Hitler was posing to Europe and - crucially - misread the Soviet position. Until 1940 he was convinced that while deterring Hitler was impossible, "containing him" and preserving British interests was possible. In other words, Chamberlain asked himself this question: How do we avoid a catastrophic war we are not ready to fight? The question was right, but he gave himself the wrong answer. On the other hand, Churchill's position in 1938 was that Germany's power was growing and British interests were best served by finding a way to stop this growth. Again, right question, but unfortunately Churchill too gave himself the wrong answer.

Annibale

I'm concerned this might reinforce my growing reputation as a tankie or a closet Stalinist. I am definitely neither. My goal is to be honest about understanding history. The current consensus is that, although Orwell provided a detailed, ground-level perspective on Barcelona during the May days, his interpretation of the events was (purposefully?) inaccurate. It is now clear that Stalin wasn't particularly interested in a "Soviet" Spain and would have preferred supporting a strong republican government that was, first, sympathetic to the USSR, and second, acceptable to Britain, France, and the US. Moreover, despite the obvious admiration for the International Brigades, without Soviet organisational support, they might not have lasted as long as they did.

Dino Zaccagna

19 and 27 are my Roulette numbers.

Jennifer Wiren

Huge counter-factual, but, do you think the whole thing would have gone different if France and Britain weren't globe spanning empires at the time? Also was the League of Nations whole deal a kind of 'hoisted by their own petard' thing?

Matt Colston

I totally get that. Im not a Stalinist, but I think your analysis is sound. After all I've read, the situation in Spain was a little more complex than one volunteer's view of it. If one looks at the Soviet policy of the time, I don't see their strategy as make a clone of the USSR in Spain but make a viable government that could look legitimate to the west. I think everyone made mistakes. I also think Spain, at the point when the Soviets were really trying to make a difference, was terminal. The dysfunction of the Republic and its relationship with the many other left factions made it incapable to effectively sustain a war against a highly militarized fascist/nationalist force. I think Orwell also named names at the end of his a life, which is a fact oft over looked by many of his supporters and fans. Convenient for a man who wrote anti-communist books for most of his life.

Annibale

Not exactly. Britain was mainly preoccupied with "defending imperial interests," but other factors like budget issues and post-WWI "war fatigue" were also significant. France, less global than Britain, was genuinely frightened by the idea of another war with Germany. The League of Nations was a late 19th-century concept with some 20th-century polish: it was very Britain- and France-centred, lacked enforcement powers, was unpopular with most public opinion outside those countries, and had a grotesque "all decisions must be unanimous" rule, making effective action against aggression difficult. I believe Wilson sincerely proposed it, but, like much of his work, it showed a poor grasp of European politics. Wilson thought, in a very "liberal Anglo-Saxon Protestant" way, that war was triggered by secret diplomacy and power struggles, that peace could be maintained by diplomatic institutions, that international law could restrain states, and that democracy led to peace. However, he completely misunderstood WWI’s trauma and its lasting impact, misreading US isolationism and Europe colonial legacies.

NYCM&AHole

Krainer went into detail about how big the Czech military was and how the Nazis used it, and a little more into the plotting by purported allies, but less about Stalin. Enjoying both of these

John Waaben

Annibale, what is your opinion of “The Deluge” by Adam Tooze? Also great ep, thanks guys.

William

John the only guy who has dental surgery like most highways have construction

William

You’re going to ask Annibale’s opinion on a tooze book and not mention wages of destruction

John Waaben

I asked him about that other book in the comments of an earlier episode: Barbarossa Part1!

.

Second this. A lot of liberals meme about it and say it’s the best thing ever which can push some away to not watch it but it’s genuinely good and heartwarming. O’Hara puts on a comedic masterclass. Made me laugh so hard my stomach hurt. Just an incredibly funny person. I grew up watching her from home alone to beetlejuice to best in show to schitt’s creek. Was genuinely gutted reading she passed.

Annibale

It's very much in line with Wages, a great book in terms of understanding of the economic history of the period with a lot of new research and some terrific insight, but the political interpretation of the events is on line with Tooze's tendency to overplay US agency and downplay Germany's ideological and political problems.

Xander Udo

Great episode guys. Thank you Annibale, I'm really enjoying the series (as usual). Mark you mentioned you were reading about Indonesia and Dutch colonialism in the interbellum. I'd be curious to know what you are reading. In the Netherlands we were off course taught next to nothing in school or pop culture about colonialism

John Waaben

Thanks Annibale :). What insight stuck out to you the most?

Patrick Link

I’m reading Zara Stiner’s book Triumph of the Darkness so this episode hits!

Xander Udo

Aside: great to be around people who love Space Balls :D

Heather Kim

What is the episode about the origins of neo-liberalism?

Brian Gonnella

Annibale's accounting of the Spanish Civil War would make a great series on its own. Curious if you have ever heard the take that the May Day crisis between POUM and the Spanish Communist Party was actually the result of Trotsky's meddling in exile?

Annibale

Trotsky played a political and rhetorical role in condemning the Soviet actions in Spain. Still, the reality is that while POUM was considered "Trotsky-friendly", Trotsky and Andreu Nin weren't getting along at all. The most credible reading of the May Day crisis was that POUM was naive, easily manipulable, even by the VERY limited operations done by Western intelligence, and mostly wrong about a cold, rational strategy to keep the republic alive. But they weren't a fifth column and the NKVD-led repression was almost entirely based on fabrication and paranoia. Again, this doesn't mean Orwell was right in its reading of the crisis.

Brian Gonnella

While I agree with your assessment of Andreu Nin, the case of Grandizo Munis is a bit more dubious in my opinion. He was a key agitator of a tiny section of Trotskyites known as the Seccion Bolshevik-Leninista that seemed to take instruction directly from Trotsky and was pushing POUM internally against the Popular Front. More curious to me is that after Munis was arrested, he was able to escape prison and cross the Franco controlled border into France before then fleeing to Mexico in 1940 to rendezvous with Trotsky once more before his death.

Annibale

The Munis case should be assessed in a differently light, IMHO. It's tempting to compare Munis with Italian figures from the Years of Lead, like Toni Negri. However, like their Italian counterparts, Munis's "credibility" should be judged primarily by the reliability of his international sponsors, particularly Rosmer and Neville. Although both were under constant surveillance by the French police, it's unlikely they were compromised. I believe Munis was simply a classic "pure revolutionary" who ultimately harmed his own cause by prioritising purity over power.

Brian Gonnella

"Purity over power" perhaps the esssential contradiction of Trotskyism. I think Munis was indeed a "pure revolutionary", and while I think the NKVD fifth column conspiracy is also perhaps greatly exaggerated, I still must admit it does seem like Trotsky was up to something. He took a lot of strange meetings, at least. Imo, the most likely motivation was to secure leadership in another European communist party and set up a "true" workers state. He famously tried this in France, and agitation against the Popular Front by Trotskyite sections were happening globally at the time of the May Day Crisis at his instruction. So, Munis on the payroll of fascist or western intelligence? Probably not. Munis acting perhaps *too enthusiastically* to secure a revolutionary base for his idol via internal coup? I wonder...

Xander Udo

Ep 205 Listen now also :)

Peter Z

Reminds me to read The Jakarta Method

Mark Ames

Revolusi by David Van Reybrouck. Pretty much the only thing out there. He's Dutch I believe, and he spends some time in the book on how well buried this story is in Holland.

Xander Udo

Ah, yes, that one was pretty well known whem it came out. And very recent. Thanks! I'm afraid I'm not aware of much else myself. He's Belgian btw. He also wrote that book on Congo which you have mentioned in an earlier African episode (you didn't like it :D)

Annibale

Sorry for the late reply. Wages of Destruction is one of the most sophisticated economic analyses of the Third Reich ever written. I am less persuaded by the way economic constraint sometimes becomes narratively causal in diplomatic history. There is a recurring tendency to frame events as though Western actions forced Hitler into responses, rather than recognising that, in most major crises of the 1930s, Hitler initiated escalation, and the Western powers reacted Munich is a good example. Tooze portrays it as a Western strategic move that Hitler had to respond to. That inversion is difficult to sustain. The Sudeten crisis was created by German pressure; Munich was an attempt—misguided or not—to manage an escalation already initiated in Berlin. It also downplays Soviet strategic positioning before 1938 and treats the diplomatic field as primarily Anglo-German, when in fact the exclusion of Moscow and the fragmentation of Eastern alliances were central to the failure of deterrence. Finally, while Wages shows that the German regime operated under severe budgetary and resource constraints, the emphasis on fiscal crisis risks overshadows the active political and financial support Hitler received from large and medium-sized German businesses. Wages is a hybrid of great economic insight combined with a framing that sometimes reproduces older, West-centric or constraint-driven interpretations of the 1930s.