A US-led initiative to end the Russo-Ukraine War is meeting in Munich Germany over the weekend.
More than a few readers of European history have recalled that in 1938 big powers sold out Ukraine’s neighbor Czechoslovakia in an attempt to rein in German dictator Adolf Hitler. That deal was a disaster and became the 20th century’s most notorious case of appeasement and short-sighted diplomacy.
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The match between Munich 1938 and Munich 2025 is not absolutely precise. But there are definite parallels – even through the White House might not like that.
- THE HISTORICAL BACKGROUND:
On Sept. 30 1938 British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain, after meetings with German Führer und Reichskanzler Adolf Hitler, signed a deal that turned over part of the independent state Czechoslovakia to Germany in exchange for a Reich promise to abandon all Reich claims to any other lands or nation on the continent.
Chamberlain hailed the agreement, signed in the pleasant Bavarian capital Munich, as a diplomatic victory that would give the world “Peace in our time.” Chamberlain led a negotiating group made up of most major European states. Czechoslovakia wasn’t permitted in the talks – and it was given the options of bowing down to Germany or fighting a war against Germany alone.
France and Britain went along with the deal because of fears of a major European war and public opinion that Czechoslovakian independence wasn’t worth shedding blood over. Poland, Hungary and the Soviet Union all wound up with bits of Czechoslovak territory. Hitler broke his word and World War II started almost exactly 11 months later.
Ukraine Spills Its Blood for Euro-Atlantic Integration
Nazi Germany had claimed it had the right to dismember and annex a piece of Czechoslovakia because the part of Czechoslovakia that Germany wanted was largely populated by ethnic Germans who were, according to Berlin, oppressed by the Czechs and Slovaks.
This was for the most part not the case. In fact ethnic Germans in Czechoslovakia lived fairly freely and had a higher standard of living in other parts of Czechoslovakia. However, the Sudetenland contained valuable industry and Czechoslovakia’s best defensive terrain.
German secret services manufactured border violence and Reich-controlled media played it up – both in Germany and abroad – as evidence Germany must take over the Sudetenland to protect ethnic Germans living there.
The Kremlin justification for its invasion of Ukraine and takeover and incorporation of Ukrainian territories into the Russian Federation is practically identical to the position Adolf Hitler sold Europe’s great powers at Munich.
Russia says it invaded Ukraine to protect ethic Russians from a Fascist Kyiv government bent on persecuting them. In fact, Ukraine is a democracy and all citizens, no matter ethnicity, have conventional democratic rights. The Ukrainian regions Russia invaded contain most of Ukraine’s heavy industry and its cities were among Ukraine’s richest.
- THE BIG POWER VIEW OF LAND OWNED BY A SMALL COUNTRY:
Based on recent statements by multiple Trump administration officials, the US position regarding Russian claims to Ukrainian territory and the people and property inside it closely matches the appeasement policy towards Nazi Germany pursued by Neville Chamberlain and the European leadership in 1938.
Speaking in Munich on Thursday, US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said the US, its allies, and Ukraine must accept “reality,” and agree that at least some of the Ukrainian territory claimed by Russia will not return to Ukrainian control. Later in the day, President Trump signaled that the US saw higher priorities than preserving Ukrainian territorial integrity, telling Washington D.C. reporters Kyiv should make territorial concessions and that it “will have to do what (it) has to do.”
Later Keith Kellogg, the Trump administration official hired to lead the Munich talks, attempted to walk back Hegseth’s and Trump’s statements declaring the US finds transfer of control of Ukrainian territory from Ukraine to Russia by means of invasion and war acceptable, talking to Fox News, argued that territories occupied by Russia might be treated by the US like the Baltic states during the Cold War – de facto controlled by Moscow, but of course the US will make a declaration those places should be independent and that Russia shouldn’t have taken them over.
But even Kellogg’s moderating comments make clear: Just as major European states saw Czechoslovak territorial integrity and property legitimate currency to trade away for a peace deal in 1938 with Adolf Hitler, so does the Trump administration view Ukrainian territory and sovereignty as something it is acceptable to give away to Vladimir Putin.
Critics of the 1938 Munich agreement have charged that the forced dismemberment of Czechoslovakia and the great powers’ agreement that it is OK to redraw the international borders of a small country at gunpoint for the sake of “peace” was bad policy and appeasement – and led directly to World War II.
- PEOPLE IN A SMALL COUNTRY:
The Trump administration’s stance towards Ukrainians living both in and out of regions of Ukraine claimed by Russia, going into the weekend talks in Munich, thus far appears very similar to major European states’ willingness to wink at devastating changes forced on people living in Czechoslovakia in 1938.
At the time, Czechoslovakia was a relatively democratic European government, offering citizens rights and living standards typical of the era. Once part of the German Reich, those people found themselves living in a police state systematically repressing dissent and, as a matter of national policy, following a doctrine of racial superiority that persecuted minorities. In the German case, most particularly abused were Roma, persons with physical or mental infirmities, and Jews.
Although the Putin regime’s official promotion of the dominant ethnicity – Russian – is not as odious as in Nazi Germany’s, modern Russian state policy prioritizes Great Russian Imperialism, declares Russian values and national integrity not only superior to, but directly threatened by neighboring nations, and singles out minorities challenging that narrative for repression. Modern Russian control and use of mass media is orders of magnitude more wide-reaching than messaging policy pursued by Hitler propaganda boss Goebbels.
In Ukrainian territories occupied by Russia most persecuted have been ethic Tartars, educated persons too young to remember the Soviet Union, followers of Islam, and ethnic Ukrainians unwilling to give up use of the Ukrainian language.
The declared Trump administration policy that abandoning at least some of those Ukrainian citizens to life under Kremlin rule is an acceptable price for a peace deal in eastern Europe, is difficult to distinguish from the positions of the leading European democracies France and Great Britain towards people living in Czechoslovakia during the 1938 Sudeten Crisis.
Most estimates put the present population of Ukrainian territories occupied by Russia at about three million people.
- IN 1938 THE BIG POWERS HAD THE MAJOR LEVER THAT EVERYONE REMEMBERED WWI AND NO ONE WANTED TO REPEAT IT. IN 2025, THE WAR IS ALREADY THREE YEARS OLD.
The key difference between the 1938 Munich Peace Conference and the 2025 Munich Peace Conference is obvious: The second time around a giant war already is in progress.
Germany in 1938 was a rising power with a ballooning economy, and thanks in no small part to state propaganda seemed to outsiders to be absolutely on track to dominate Europe militarily, no matter what any other state could do. German national opinion seemed to outsiders to be in lockstep with the Führer and major news agencies maintained correspondents in Berlin, but almost never Prague.
Any European state contemplating going to war against Germany would not only have to take on that seeming German military colossus but sell that policy move to electorates that had survived World War I trench warfare. Historians later concluded, a good deal of the German military might in 1936-38 was bluff, but the bluff worked.
One well-known Chamberlain line about Czechoslovakia and the Sudetenland is “A quarrel in a faraway country, between people of whom we know nothing.”
A key factor in the Czechoslovakian decision not to resist was that when Germany threatened war, Czechoslovakia’s allies backed out of treaty commitments, leaving Prague in the lurch.
In 2025, the world is awash with information and anyone wanting to believe in unstoppable Russian military might must actively avoid overwhelming evidence to the contrary. The days of the Russian military bluff are long past. Over three years the Ukrainian army has held out against an opponent five times its size. Most democratic states have given Ukraine assistance and – even as the Trump administration has repeatedly declared US money spent on Ukraine wasteful – promised to keep the assistance flowing.
As the diplomats go to work in Munich, Ukraine holds substantial and growing advantage in first-person view (FPV) drones on the battlefield, and is regularly burning airfields and oil refineries deep inside Russia. There is no question Ukrainians would like the fighting to end, but, there is also no question in any delegation at Munich that Ukrainians will fight long and hard to keep Russia from taking over Ukraine – and that they will have help fighting an invader even without the Americans.
- IN 1938 THE PEACE DEAL DEPENDED ON ADOLF HITLER’S WILLINGNESS TO KEEP A PROMISE. IN 2025, PROMISES BY ANYONE COUNT FOR A LOT LESS THAN REAL FIREPOWER.
In 1938, with no fighting in progress and fears of major war driving electorate opinion in most potential Czechoslovakian allies, a policy of waiting and hoping Germany’s territorial ambitions in Europe were sated possibly made sense, and at least could not be definitively proved wrong. Even less clear was how much military force and fighting it would take to stop Germany, were Europe to go to a general war.
In 2025, for the negotiators in Munich – no matter the delegation – there is no need to debate what might stop the Russian army, nor is there much reason to discuss the means.
The Armed Forces of Ukraine (AFU) is on the ground and has held the Russian army for three years. Both sides are taking casualties. The real question is which side is willing to fight harder and longer.
American or Russian negotiators might argue, as their French and British predecessors did, that a peace deal on unpleasant terms is inevitable because it’s obvious a small country can’t hold out against a big country in a major war. But it would be an argument without leverage. The Ukrainians have already proved to themselves and allies – even absent the Americans if need be – that Ukrainian collapse is anything but inevitable.
In 1938 the Munich deal depended on big power perceptions and little power perceptions of isolation. In 2025, in Munich, battlefield reality will replace perception.
The Ukrainian army is fighting on its own ground and as long as it is there, dictating a peace to Ukraine will be difficult for anyone. Ongoing suggestions that a small peacekeeping force or Allied promises of future help, likewise, are unlikely to get the Ukrainians to the peace table. Better than anyone else, Kyiv knows how big an army you need to stop Russia.
Ukraine’s national leadership has for months made clear that for Ukraine, a peace deal that doesn’t credibly deter Russia from another invasion of Ukraine will be rejected by Kyiv outright, because it would be better for Ukrainian national security to fight a weakened Russia and wait for the Kremlin to give up, than give Russia a breathing space and time to arm and refit, and then launch a bigger- and better-organized invasion. For Munich 2025 to get results, someone will have to convince the Ukrainians that the peace terms will absolutely deter Russia.
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