Munich: A novel

Mention Neville Chamberlain and Munich in the same breath today, and you're likely to elicit a grimace. The agreement in 1938 between the British Prime Minister and Adolf Hitler to dismember Czechoslovakia is regarded as one of the most shameful and tragic events of the 20th century. But is it fair to condemn Chamberlain without understanding his motivation or the context of the times? The British thriller author Robert Harris has been exploring that question for thirty years. The result is his new novel, Munich. The book is not an alternative history like his popular novel, Fatherland. It's fact-based historical fiction.Why did Neville Chamberlain go to Munich?As Harris paints the picture, Chamberlain's actions in 1938 were not just understandable but possibly admirable. He was not naive about Hitler's intentions. His rush to sign the pact with Nazi Germany responded to almost universal desire to avoid war, the difficulty of refuting Hitler's logic about absorbing the Sudetenland Germans into the Reich, and Chamberlain's passionate desire to avoid repeating the slaughter of World War I. (He had been too old to serve in the military then.)Harris based his novel on extensive reading about the Munich conference and the principal characters involved in it, which he details in a long bibliography in his Acknowledgements. Moreover, recent research suggests that if Britain and France had gone to war against Germany in 1938, the result would have been devastating. It's true that the Nazi invasion of France and the Low Countries in May 1940 and the Battle of Britain that followed were disastrous for the Allies. However, the nearly two-year delay Chamberlain achieved at Munich allowed Britain to equip and staff the Royal Air Force just enough to stave off a German invasion of the island in September 1940. Harris implies that Chamberlain was fully conscious that war would come. He sought only to gain time.An historical novel wrapped in a thrillerHarris builds his story around two central characters, one English, the other German. Hugh Legat is the most junior of Neville Chamberlain's three Private Secretaries; he serves essentially as a gofer but is pressed into service at times as an interpreter and, even more rarely, as a wordsmith. Paul von Hartmann holds a similarly junior post in the German Foreign Ministry; he despises the Nazis and has joined a conspiracy to depose Hitler. The two young men had been classmates and friends at Oxford. They'd last seen each other in 1932 on a vacation in Germany.Von Hartmann has secured a document that proves Hitler's intention to expand Germany's borders through war regardless of any international agreements. With the help of his collaborators in the anti-Nazi conspiracy, he travels from Berlin to Munich in hopes of delivering the document directly to Neville Chamberlain. Through their connections in London, the conspirators have contrived to arrange for Legat to be assigned to attend the conference, too. Von Hartmann expected Legat to help him get to Chamberlain. Harris builds a suspenseful story around the effort to arrange that.Historical figures in a fictional settingLegat and von Hartmann are both fictional characters. However, many of the other figures portrayed in Munich are based on real men. Prominent among them are British Foreign Secretary Lord Halifax and German Foreign Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop, as well as Chamberlain, Hitler, Mussolini, and French Premier Daladier. The author's portrayal of these historical figures is solidly grounded in his research.About the authorRobert Harris is one of the most successful writers in the world today. Most of his work is historical fiction about World War II and Ancient Rome. Beginning with Fatherland in 1992, his novels also include The Ghost (adapted to film as The Ghost Writer) and the three novels in the Cicero trilogy.

Robert Harris is best known for his novel “Fatherland” which offers an alternative history of WWII where Adolph Hitler prevails. It was a good book as was “Enigma” but sadly what Harris offers up here is nothing like his previous work. In the ‘Acknowledgments’ Harris admits to a fascination with the Munich Agreement he’s had for over 30 years. He even explains he made a BBC TV documentary for the 50th anniversary of the conference. In “Munich” readers are presented with a rather pedantic retelling of the events leading up to one of the 20th century’s greatest diplomatic failures. It’s September 1938 and the Nazi’s are poised to invade Czechoslovakia while British Prime Minister, Neville Chamberlain is desperate to prevent another world war. The story unfolds through the eyes of two characters; private secretary to the PM, Hugh Legat and his old college chum Paul von Hartmann who is now a staffer in the German Foreign Office. The story is chock full of real-life historical figures not so artfully blended with our fictitious bureaucrats. Unfortunately it is all so painfully dull that it forced me to do something I rarely do, which is to quit reading after a bit more than a third of it. Harris doesn’t give us anything new; we know how it all ends with Chamberlain’s “peace in our time” misstatement. There’s no suspense, no action, no excitement, just a lot of translating messages and administrative tedium. The most danger our protagonists face is a paper cut or maybe a jammed stapler. In one scene Legat is driving to a meeting with Chamberlain making some corrections to a speech and Legat notes that it’s hard to write in a moving vehicle…no kidding! The number of 5 and 4 star reviews are surprising; how anyone could call this book a ‘thriller’ is beyond me. I skimmed the remaining 200 or so pages and believe me, nothing really happens. I usually enjoy historical fiction, especially set in the WWII period but “Munich” failed to engage me. As I’m getting older life’s too short to waste on reading uninteresting books.

The events of Munich are well-known, and I DID enjoy the presentation of the much maligned British PM's point of view as he desperately looked for peace. But I agree with other reviewers...an appendix listing all the characters would have been helpful. There was too much description as to stairways and cloakrooms and bathrooms (!!!) that was unnecessarily detailed and confusing. The main characters were cardboard cutouts.I like Harris's earlier books about Germany..."Fatherland" and "Enigma" stand out as terrific reads.This reads like a fictionalized docu drama...not fiction. The main characters' STORIES should have been in the forefront, with Munich in the background. It played out the other way, to the detriment of the book.

By Robert Harris' high standards this is a very poor effort. I've read all of his books and this is the worst of the lot. The characters are two dimensional. Plot devices are feeble and contrived. Tension levels are very low. It feels rushed and under-written. Disappointed. I used to really look forward to a new Harris novel being published. Dictator was weaker than its predecessors. Conclave was not great. Munich worst of all. A real shame.

I only got through Munich by a combination of dogged determination and a lifelong dislike of not finishing a book. By the time my Kindle was showing 60% read I was bored and had lost interest in the characters and the story, such as it is. Everybody with a passing interest in 20th century history knows what happened at Munich and how things eventually panned out. Faction is a perfectly respectable literary form but an author of Robert Harris's standing should know better than to graft an inherently implausible "espionage" story about two university pals (one English, one German) on to piles of minutiae about diplomatic to-ing and fro-ing and how Hitler perked up when bread soup was served. Robert Harris's early work was exceptional but I don't seem to be the only reader who has noticed a falling off in his more recent books. I found Munich a big disappointment and I am baffled by the number of five star reviews and the press acclaim it has received.

As a fan of Robert Harris, I found this novel less good than I'd hoped and below his usual standard. Usually Harris has a talent for making even dry subjects into heart-thumping, intelligent thrillers. He had good subject matter here - the setting is the Munich peace accords of 1938, where Neville Chamberlain appeased Hitler by agreeing he should take over the Sudetenland. But despite that, the story never seems to ignite.The novel focusses on two mid-ranking diplomats, one on the German side and one British, and is set over just a few days. This gives insight into the happenings on both sides. Both characters are unobjectionable, but neither is really loveable. I didn't feel a strong connection to either and both seemed quite bland. The supporting characters, both real and imagined, aren't any better. The character I found most interesting was Chamberlain, who gets a sympathetic portrayal. History has often portrayed him as a moral coward, but in this day and age I'm pretty sure we'd be applauding his efforts to avoid a war.One of the difficulties faced by Harris is that readers know the outcome in advance. You don't need to know much about history (and I know very little myself) to know World War II started in 1939. So there's never any doubt for the reader that war will be averted. This takes away a lot of the possible tension. I'd expected more peril for the characters, but there's not even that. For a spy novel, there's little spying, and for a thriller, there are few thrills. You never get the sense of the characters being in real, immediate danger. There's no heart stopping tension or compulsion to read all night.Overall, it's a decent historical novel which I found interesting as it covers a piece of history that is often overlooked by the casual person (like me, who gave up history aged 13). Unlike most of Harris' novels, it doesn't function well as a thriller (political or otherwise) and lacks the tension that most of his novels have in spades. Read it if you're interested in the period and want to know more, but otherwise it's probably not worth it.

Really excellent ,drew me in from the very start,annd didn't let go.I'm glad to see Chamberlain recognised as the figure he actually was,for too long has the ambitious,self serving Churchill been lauded,with little reference to anyone else from the times.They may not be forgotten,but bypassed,and their efforts,which were quiet struggles for peace,deserve to be seen as what they were.Not seeking glory or self promotion,but earnest and honest.I more than liked this book,and feel it to be the best Robert Harris,but then,I'm interested in the period.An easy 5 stars,though,from me.

This is an account of that fearful period of pre-WW2 history when the then Prime Minister, Neville Chamberlain, was striving with the rest of Europe to stop Hitler in his avowed attempt to invade Czechoslovakia, thus triggering WW2. The main characters are portrayed superbly along with a host of 'minor' players in this tense drama. For the first time in my life, I feel less condemnatory of Neville Chamberlain - whose name has been blackened in popular folklore.. Hitler's psychology is described totally convincingly in well-crafted detail.Reading Munich was a little like watching the film Titanic; you KNOW that the story will end in disaster, yet you are gripped by the narrative and hope fervently with the characters that a dire situation will be averted. Did the French at the time really refer to Chamberlain as "J'aime Berlin"? A lovely touch in this extraordinarily gripping narrative.