"Munich" as the moral narrative of Czech history : Czech-Jewish views compared to majority attitudes
Abstract
"Munich" (the Munich Agreement of September 29th - 30th, 1938) paved the way for the destruction of the First Republic's liberal democracy. The influence of foreign political powers played a decisive role in this destruction.
Very soon afterward, doubts regarding the sovereignty of the state were even expressed by political representatives of the Second Republic, who understood the "new" Czechoslovakia as part of German Central Europe. Immediately following September 30th, Czech society began to question whether "Munich" was a betrayal by the "immoral" Western powers, who ignored their Allied commitments in exchange for a dubious peace, or perhaps it was a moral punishment from history or even God for the alleged fatal mistakes of First Republic democracy, now being visited upon the citizens of the Second Republic.
At the same time, of course, the public also questioned the morality of the military capitulation of a small nation, an issue which was also repeatedly raised by Czechoslovak historiographers and mass media after the liberation of Czechoslovakia in May of 1945. While after September 30th, 1938 and shortly after the liberation of Czechoslovakia the moral narrative was ideologically and politically structured (the Czech-Jewish movement understood Munich as a moral failure of all of Europe), in the final weeks of the Second Republic, during the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia and after the February coup (with the exception of the Prague Spring), a single "official" view prevailed.
Following the February coup (1948), this view was also adopted by Czech Jews. The objective of this study is to analyse the meaning and ways in which "Munich" was moralized after September 30th, 1938, from May 1945 to February 1948, after the February coup, in the "golden sixties" and during the years of "normalization".
At the same time, it demonstrates that "Munich" was used to legitimize period political interests and create socio-political capital.