I think the thing that I'm not convinced about is:
What would have happened if Chamberlain declared war on Germany over the Sudetenland?
France wouldn't have been behind him,
The US wouldn't have been behind him,
The whole 'he would've been assassinated' line is BS, how many times did people try to assassinate Hitler? Remember who took his life in the end.
Armchair historians can say 'Germany would have fallen quickly and easily, Czechoslovakia would have been able to hold out' etc., but going on what? Defense strategists of the time? The defense strategists of the time that thought Poland would hold long enough for France to fully mobilize and invade Germany while the latter was bogged down there?
Beside going to war without allies, how would the world see Britain? Going to war with Germany over reclaiming a land that was mostly German and had been ruled by Germans until 20 years before? Reclaiming a land that could be seen as little more than an unfortunate mistake in the haphazard line redrawing of Versailles? Would Britain be seen as the warmongering bad guy in the '20/20 hindsight' lens of history which tends to forget things like context? Am I supposed to believe that a peace-seeking, fascist-sympathetic US would have slapped Britain on the back with a 'good show, chap'?
What would have happened if Britain did militarily humiliate Germany? Would they have had the authority to remove Hitler? Would Hitler have only been emboldened, with more international support? Even if he had decided to no longer pursue military conquest, if he would have stayed in power what would have happened after the 'Jews in London' stopped him from reuniting the Germans? Actually, there's no need for a question there. We know what Hitler was doing.
Alternatively, if Hitler falls from grace, who comes to power?
The KPD decided in the early thirties that, at least if the fascists came to power, people would realize how stupid fascism and capitalism were once these forces were dismantled and humiliated. After 5 years of persecution and exclusion from political discourse, without the dividing up/occupation of Germany, Hitler's expulsion would've probably been the fascist collapse that the KPD was convinced was coming and would be their cue to take power. Assuming the collapse of Hitler's government, a communist revolution is not only imaginable, but maybe the most likely thing. A very, very powerful and well developed socialist state in the middle of Europe is the last thing western capitalism would want. And certainly two socialist states wouldn't have stood for a reactionary authoritarian state existing between them; the Second Polish Republic was doomed either way.
Waiting until it was too late, knowing well with full certainty what Hitler's imperialistic aims were, and this knowledge giving the high ground in completely dismantling the German government, was maybe (probably?) the best possible outcome after Hitler's rise to power in the 30s.
Anyway, the takeaway people seem to be getting from this is 'stop being a p*ssy and go to war!' which is a pretty broad brush to paint with from the lessons learned from the Second World War. Especially considering WWII is maybe the only example in the 20th century of war being the 'good' option. For every World War II, there is a completely pointless war that costs millions of lives to no constructive outcome (or leaving the world in much worse shape), a la the First World War. On top of that, there are dozens of crises where jingos were crying for scalps and heads but cooler heads, thank god, prevailed: such as the entire Cold War.
'Righteous' wars are held up and heralded and etc. etc., we remember the people who had the 'courage' to start them and fight them. Wars are cataclysmic and traumatizing events and are hard to forget. It's hard to look at wars that are pretty much pointless in an objective manner because we don't want to trivialize the loss of life. But it's extremely easy to forget when the knee was not jerked and, despite the world being on the brink of being turned into a giant glass parking lot, it was not: 'there was never any real danger', we say, and move on.
In closing, referring to Russia, I will say: Putin, while certainly a despot and a crazy nationalist and a warmonger, is maybe the most moderate elected figure in Russian politics today. The LDPR is much much more ultranationalist; the current major socialist party 'a Just Russia' is maybe the most moderate, but it is the result of a merger still centered around a far-right nationalist party, Rodina ('motherland'); the fourth party is the successor to the Soviet communist party, the direct lineage of Lenin's Bolsheviks. There are no other elected parties in Russia. No one knows the solution for dealing with Russia, but it's certainly not a simple one.
Further, no one is sitting in Petersburg 'giving' Putin Crimea or the Donbass the way France and Britain and the US were in Munich 'giving' Hitler the Sudetenland. It's hard to see right now, and it may not be as dramatic as we want to see, but international sanctions have lead to a tanking of the Russian economy, certainly worse than has been seen since the fall of the USSR, and according to some Russians the worst conditions since WWII. This is going to have repercussions some way or another. We'll just have to wait and see how.
