The Ghost of Munich

by Shaun Whiteside (Translator), Georges-Marc Benamou (Author)

• Used

  Hardcover
  2008

  $3.47

  September 29th 1938. The day the fate of Czechoslovakia was sealed by the Munich Agreement. Hitler, Mussolini, Chamberlain and - the phantom of Munich, Edouard Daladier, president of the French Council. Summer 1968. A mysterious American journalist, young, female, Czech in origin - lands on a small island in the Rhone river. Her mission is to find Edouard Daladier, who is widely believed to be dead and to persuade him, as the only living witness to the events of Munich to let her have access to his extraordinary archive and to tell her his secrets.Daladier is a recluse, obsessed with history and his part in it but the journalist succeeds in drawing from him the astonishing story of the betrayal of a nation. Scene by scene, hour by hour the reader accompanies Daladier from his departure to Munich to his triumphant, but ultimately tragic return to Paris. In Munich we sit with him and the other leaders at the negotiation table, at lunch, in and out of each other's seats, hotel rooms and cars. The tensions of the fateful day build up, the political twists and turns and the personal intensities are described with insight and humour. The Ghost of Munich has the sharpness of a film, the drama of tragedy and the truth of history.

• Used

  Paperback
  2009

  $3.96

  On September 29th 1938 the fate of a country was sealed at Munich. Hitler, Mussolini, Neville Chamberlain and the President of France, Edouard Daladier negotiated the handover to Germany of the Sudetenlands, and with it came the betrayal of a nation by the great European powers. Chamberlain claimed 'Peace with honour'. Daladier returned to Paris a hero, the man who saved France from another disastrous war with Germany. Yet he knew he had failed. 'I had been knocked out of the ring,' he says in this extraordinary novel, based upon detailed historical research. Scene by scene, hour by hour the reader accompanies Daladier from his departure to Munich to his triumphant but ultimately tragic return to Paris. In Germany we sit with him and the other leaders at the conference table, and as the tensions of the fateful day build up, the political twists and turns and the personal animosities intensify. History made Daladier the Ghost of Munich, the forgotten dupe, the fool cast to oblivion for his role in a thirteen hour blackmail. This is his story. The Ghost of Munich has the sharpness of film, the drama of tragedy and the truth of history.