Writing option #1:
Examine and use
documents 52 and 53
Prime Minister Joseph
Chamberlain calls Hitler
a “lunatic” in a letter to
his sister written on
Sept. 11, 1938. He says
he wont let Hitler’s demands over the Sudetenland box Britain into a
war his country wasn’t really prepared to fight. Ten days later he
gives a speech justifying why he will likely
agree to Hitler’s demands since that will keep
the peace in Europe (see the four separately
dated doc.s by Chamberlain within #52). In
Parliament seven days later after
Chamberlain’s return from the Munich
Conference (pictured above), the Prime
Minister holds aloft Hitler’s signature on a
paper (below) stating that this is the last
appeasement the British will have to make.
Churchill, a famous ‘back bench’ member of
Parliament, gives a stirring speech opposing
the Munich agreement, calling it a “disaster.”
(doc. 53).
a) Why call it a disaster? What has been
happening since 1933? (see Churchill’s
rendition of events in his speech, but also
Overfield, p. 221-222).
b) With whom do you agree? Was
appeasement leading up to and including the
Munich agreement a good idea? How does
the additional
material on these
two pages sway
you? (see over as well). In the picture above Chamberlain is waving a
document he got Hitler to sign after the Munich agreement (which gave
Sudetenland to Germany, thus substantially diminishing Czechoslovakia).
The paper he’s waving is called the “Anglo-German Agreement of
September 30, 1938” (see over)
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-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Writing Option 2: Analysis of the Black
Dragon (Amur) Society document from
1930…
Knowing this material about the era
leading to WWI (re-read Overfield 219220) what sense do you have of the
importance of this early (1930)
document? Knowing that the Black
Dragon Society was “against democracy,
capitalism, Americanization, socialism,
party politics, and big business…”, what
within the document suggests what the
BDS was for? And how is this related to the documents 52 and 53 (Munich agreement docs. 1938) eight
years later? (The picture is of members of the BDS with some visiting Korean nationalists.)
Green indicates ‘sphere of influence’ but not formal empire.
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