2025-07-09
1 小时 6 分钟Welcome to Intelligent 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?
Intelligent Squared brought together four eminent historians of the Second World War to debate this very question.
Arguing in favour of the motion,
Neville Chamberlain did the right thing, appears Brendan and Sir Richard Evans.
Opposing them were John Charmley and Glen Stone.
The debate was chaired by the historian and Pulitzer Prize-winning author Anne Appelbaum.
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 is John Charmly,