By Steven Flagg
Guest Column
From Munich in 1938 to today’s debate over Ukraine, appeasement offers not security, but a dangerous invitation to future war.
I first learned about Neville Chamberlain in high school history, the British Prime Minister who returned from Munich waving an agreement and declaring, “I believe it is peace for our time.” It sounded noble in the textbook, but history quickly revealed the truth: within months Hitler seized the rest of Czechoslovakia, and within a year, Europe was at war. Peace had been an illusion, bought at the expense of another nation’s sovereignty.
That lesson has stayed with me. When I hear talk of conceding land to aggressors today, my mind goes straight to Hitler, Munich, 1938.
The Sudetenland was not just a strip of borderland. It was home to three million ethnic Germans, and it was also Czechoslovakia’s defensive shield. Hitler claimed the Germans there were persecuted, and German propaganda amplified those grievances into a supposed humanitarian crisis. Western leaders convinced themselves that handing it over would preserve peace. Instead, they had surrendered Czechoslovakia’s modern defensive fortifications and left the country exposed to invasion.
Fast forward eighty-seven years, and Vladimir Putin is playing the same game in Ukraine’s Donbas. Roughly 39 percent of the population there identified as Russian in the 2001 census, with Russian widely spoken in its cities. Putin insists these people face persecution, even alleging “genocide.” There is no credible evidence for these claims, but they have provided a ready excuse for supporting separatists and then launching a full-scale invasion.
The pattern is identical: inflate grievances, stir unrest, and cloak territorial ambitions in the language of protecting the vulnerable.
For Ukraine, the Donbas is more than symbolic. It is home to key industry and, most importantly, defensive positions like the Kramatorsk–Sloviansk fortress belt. If ceded, Ukraine would lose not just territory, industrial capacity, and population but its best shield against invasion. The new border would be militarily brittle, with few natural obstacles between Russian forces and Ukraine’s heartland.
At the Alaska summit this past August, President Trump suggested Ukraine cede the Donbas to Russia. Even raising the idea echoed Munich. Imagine being Ukrainian, hearing outsiders debate your nation’s future without your consent. That sense of betrayal would cut as deeply as the concession itself.
Appeasement often feels tempting because it promises to postpone conflict. But history shows what it really does: it multiplies the cost later. Hitler learned in 1938 that the West lacked resolve. Putin is likely to draw the same conclusion if the Donbas were handed over as a bargaining chip.
Ceding the Donbas would not end Putin’s war. It would give him a victory to trumpet as proof that aggression works. It would consolidate his control over eastern Ukraine, providing resources, manpower, and a staging ground for the next offensive. Far from freezing the conflict, it would thaw the path for another, larger war.
The lesson of Munich is not only that Hitler lied, though he did. It is that authoritarian expansion thrives when democracies doubt their own principles. In 1938, the democratic powers failed to stand firm for the sovereignty of a small democracy. The cost was World War II.
In 2025, we face a similar test. Ukraine’s fight is not just about Donetsk or Luhansk. It is about whether borders in Europe can be redrawn by tanks, whether smaller nations have the right to exist free from the dictates of their larger neighbors, and whether we have learned anything from the last century’s blood-soaked lessons.
If we choose the option of appeasement, we may buy the illusion of peace only to set the stage for a wider war that is unavoidable.