The Munich Crisis: Five things Netflix doesn’t elaborate on in its new film

As a new film based on the Munich Crisis launches on Netflix , Professor Julie Gottlieb from the Department of History offers insight into the hearts and minds of those living through these times.

In a new video, Professor Gottlieb, a renowned expert on modern British political history, particularly women’s history and the Munich Crisis, discusses five areas of the crisis that are of particular interest, and not really dealt with in the film.

From Royal approval; insight into the personality and legacy of British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain; the merchandising of the crisis; to how throughout Britain and Europe the Munich Agreement led people to feel like they were living on the edge of war and the impact this had on their mental health, Professor Gottlieb discusses some key findings from her research into the Munich Crisis.

In addition to the new video, Professor Gottlieb has also published a comment piece for The Conversation in which she explores women’s role in the Munich Crisis and how this is represented in the new Netflix film.

Munich – The Edge of War: women in historical films are too often unrealistic - written in The Conversation

Professor Gottlieb has also published in the The University of Sheffield History Matters blog:

Netflix’s Munich–The Edge Of War: A Film For Our Time?- written in History Matters

Read more on Professor Gottlieb’s research:

Gottlieb JV (2015) ‘Guilty Women’, Foreign Policy, and Appeasement in Inter-War Britain. London: Palgrave Macmillan.

Gottlieb J, Toye R & Hucker D (Eds.) (2021) The Munich Crisis, politics and the people International, transnational and comparative perspectives. Manchester: Manchester University Press.

Berthezene C & Gottlieb JV (Ed.) (2017) Rethinking Right-Wing Women: Women in the Conservative Party, 1880s to the Present. Manchester, UK: Manchester University Press.

Julie V. Gottlieb,  “Gender and the ‘Jews’ War’: Women, Anti-Semitism, and the Anti-War Campaigns in Britain, 1938-1940,” https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/09592296.2020.1842065