Moral Basis
2008/09/30
Admonitory Example
The agreement on German annexation of Czechoslovak territory has become a popular "metaphor for the free world's anticipatory capitulation to the cynical viciousness of totalitarian power", according to various German media on the occasion of the 70th anniversary of the signing of the Munich Dictate.[1] The meeting in Munich in 1938 led directly to the Wehrmacht's invasion of the "Sudeten territories" and their incorporation into the German Reich. This crime has now been removed from its historical context and both the Dictate's illegitimate character as well as the British and French connivance with German expansionism are being ignored. It is instead flatly and arbitrarily applied to describe the attitude towards any "aggressor", who "is displaying an excessive disposition to create conflict."[2] The Munich event and its underlying British "Appeasement"-Policy are presented as an "admonitory historical example" on a par with a series of other processes.[3] Therefore actual or assumed aggressors can simply be equated with Nazi-Germany - an easy method used to legitimize foreign policy offensives against these "aggressors".
A New Munich
This is very useful to proponents of an aggressive western foreign policy: those propagating military aggression against Iran, while accusing those opposed of "appeasement", as well as to anti-Russian forces. One German political scientist, for example, alleges that Moscow's "synchronized political class" is a "declared enemy of democracy and the West." Whereas numerous German politicians are shying from open conflict with Russia, thereby engaging in a sort of "preventive Munich 1938" [4], it is "unity that is needed - against Russia", admonishes Professor Claus Leggewie in Giessen. He uses arguments advanced by transatlantic oriented circles since the beginning of the Georgian crises. And already last August, the Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili declared that the Kremlin "considered" the NATO summit in Bucharest "to be a new Munich" because it refused Georgia membership candidate status.[5] Similar assertions can be heard from among Russia's pro-western opposition.[6]
Not Acceptable
The reduction of the Munich Dictate to a metaphor that can arbitrarily be applied is obscuring the fact that this illegitimate agreement is still having an effect in Germany. In 1966 the West German government declared that with the final crushing of Czechoslovakia in March 1939, "Hitler tore up the 'Agreement' and it no longer had any territorial significance."[7] Signed without Czechoslovak government participation, thereby being illegal ("treaty at the expense of a third party"), Berlin is still today refusing to classify that document "null and void ex tunc" (from the outset). The West German government has been assiduously maintaining this legal standpoint. This standpoint was the basis for not respecting the Czechoslovak desire to confirm the recognition of the continuity of the common borders since the founding of Czechoslovakia in 1918 in the 1992 German-Czechoslovakian Treaty on Good Neighborliness and Friendly Cooperation. A Foreign Ministry memo explained that "since such a formulation would have implied recognition of the invalidity from the outset of the Munich Agreements (...), it was rejected as unacceptable by the German government."[8]
For Good Reasons
At the beginning of 2002, a German parliamentarian declared that this decision was made "for good reasons," otherwise the "legal consequences for individuals (...) would be incalculable."[9] Those individuals that the German government does not want to have confronted with the declaration of the Munich dictate being null and void "from the outset," are the German-speaking citizens of Czechoslovakia, who had not fled the invasion of the German Wehrmacht in the fall of 1938. On the contrary, they had enthusiastically welcomed it - and later accepted German citizenship from the Nazi authorities on the basis of the Munich Dictate. If this dictate was "null and void ex tunc," the bestowal of German citizenship to these "Sudeten Germans" would have been illegal, meaning that they, in fact, had remained citizens of Czechoslovakia and that in 1945 Prague was within its rights to dispossess them without reparations. But had the Munich Dictate been declared "null and void" at a later date, this would mean that the Czechoslovak government had dispossessed foreigners, citizens of the German Reich, which would qualify them for reparations.[10]
Interests of Influence
Berlin's stubborn insistence on the "ex tunc" validity of the Munich Dictate corresponds to the standpoint of the German "relocated" associations. Soon after the war, "Sudeten German" organizations painted a "fateful historical picture (...) including the allegation of the Munich Dictate having been legitimately concluded" explained the historian Tobias Weger, in a conversation with german-foreign-policy.com. This has resulted in the "relocated" organizations raising demands for reparations. Tobias Weger has studied the emergence of the "Sudeten German" network of organizations in West Germany immediately following World War II.[11] He learned that among the main founders of the organizations were followers of the "Pan-German League" and former members of ethnic German organizations active during the period between the 2 world wars, particularly those who were "ideologically close to the imperial German Nazis, who had been active in undermining Czechoslovakia in 1938."[12] Berlin has been supportive of the demands raised by the "Sudeten German" organizations previously against Czechoslovakia and now the Czech Republic, because these are vehicles for promoting the interests of German state influence.
Refusal
In terms of international law, German government support for the "Sudeten Germans" corresponds to a similar support for members of other "relocated'" organizations. Claims for restitution of lost property or reparations are being raised by "relocated'" organizations also against Poland and other Eastern and Southeastern European states, and are systematically sustained by the German government. Just as the German government refuses - even 70 years after the fact - to recognize that the signing of the Munich Dictate was illegitimate from the outset, it also refuses a consensual solution with Poland for questions of reparations, in spite of several implicit demands last year from the Polish president. (german-foreign-policy.com reported [13].)
Open Questions
The comments of a political advisor in Berlin have to be taken particularly seriously, because of his prominent position as a consultant on the advisory board of the Federal College for Security Studies.[14] While the Munich Dictate has been reduced to a metaphor in the public debate, his comments clearly indicate a new interpretation of the events in the fall of 1938. "It cannot be denied that the German minority in Czechoslovakia had been refused their right to self-determination after WW I", the professor of political science in Berlin Herfried Münkler, recently declared.[15] Asked in an interview, whether "Hitler's approach in 1938" was not devoid of "a legal basis", Münkler responded: "at least not a moral basis, considering people's right to self-determination." This was the same reason Nazi functionaries used to justify the annexation of Czechoslovak territory. "The question is" Münkler added, "if this right of self-determination has priority - or that of the territorial integrity of nations".
Please read also Interview mit Tobias Weger and Sudetendeutsche Organisationen 1945 bis 1955.
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