Classic Debate: Neville Chamberlain Did The Right Thing

Welcome to Intelligence Squared, where great minds meet. Today we're bringing you a classic debate from 2013. The Munich Agreement has been regarded as the most shameful episode in modern British history, but has history judged Chamberlain too harshly? Intelligence Squared brought together four eminent historians of the Second World War to debate This very question.

Arguing in favor of the motion, Neville Chamberlain did the right thing were Piers Brendan and Sir Richard Evans. Opposing them were John Charmley and Glenn Stone. The debate was chaired by the historian and Pulitzer Prize-winning author Anne Applebaum. Now let's join Anne with more. Now it is my turn to welcome you to Intelligence Squared and to a debate among four extremely distinguished historians about one of the most controversial moments in 20th century history.

In September of 1938, Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain, together with his French counterpart, agreed to let Adolf Hitler occupy the Sudetenland, an ethnically German part of Czechoslovakia, calling the crisis a quarrel in a faraway country between people of whom we know nothing. He returned home waving a promise in that picture up there signed by Hitler not to pursue war any further. So, was he right to do so? Those in support of this motion will argue yes, and those against will argue no. Our first speaker for the motion for the motion is John Charmley, Professor of Modern History at the University of East Anglia, and he is the author of Chamberlain and the Lost Peace, as well as Churchill The End of Glory.

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