Interwar · Film · 2021
Munich – The Edge of War
Two Oxford friends, one in Chamberlain's office and one in Hitler's foreign ministry, meet again at the Munich conference with a document that could change its outcome.
Where it happened
Follow the story across 4 places.
Stop 1: Oxford
Hugh Legat and his German friend Paul von Hartmann celebrate their graduation, with Paul full of enthusiasm for a 'new Germany'.
Stop 2: 10 Downing Street, London
Now one of Chamberlain's private secretaries, Legat is asked by British intelligence to meet his old friend in Munich.
Stop 3: Wilhelmstraße, Berlin
At the Foreign Office, Paul joins officers plotting to topple Hitler and obtains a secret record of his plans for war.
Stop 4: Führerbau, Munich
Key location
As the conference opens, the two friends try to get the evidence into Chamberlain's hands before he signs.
What really happened
In September 1938 Hitler threatened war to seize the Sudetenland, the German-speaking border regions of Czechoslovakia. After two meetings with Neville Chamberlain, a conference in Munich on 29-30 September brought together Britain, France, Germany and Italy, which agreed to hand the territory to Germany without Czechoslovakia at the table. Chamberlain returned promising 'peace for our time'; in March 1939 Hitler occupied the rest of the Czech lands.
The film adapts Robert Harris's novel. Legat and Hartmann are fictional, but a real circle of officers and diplomats, the Oster conspiracy, was ready to arrest Hitler if he went to war that autumn. The Hossbach Memorandum on Hitler's war plans is also real, though it was never smuggled to Chamberlain. The film presents Chamberlain sympathetically, as a leader buying time for rearmament.
Where to watch
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Full details
- Original title
- Munich – The Edge of War
- Directed by
- Christian Schwochow
- Countries
- United Kingdom
- Languages
- English, German
- Released
- 2021
- Period
- –
- Theaters of war
- Western Europe
- Themes
- Politics
- Espionage
