Many commentators have likened President Trump’s meeting with Vladimir Putin in Alaska to the 1938 Munich meeting between Adolf Hitler, British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain and French Premier Eduard Daladier over the fate of Czechoslovakia. There certainly are similarities.
The Munich meeting took place without the presence of Czech President Edvard Benes, and the Alaska summit will not include Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. And there is widespread fear, especially in Europe, that Trump will yield to Putin’s demands for Ukrainian territory — both that which his armed forces have already seized in Crimea and the oblasts of Luhansk and Donetsk, and those still held by Ukraine there and in the oblasts of Kherson and Zaporizhzhia.
As the Institute for the Study of War points out, should Putin successfully obtain control of all four oblasts — and especially all of Donetsk, which contains what the Institute terms Ukraine’s “fortress belt” — he would control several potential vectors of attack on the remainder of Ukraine. This would enable Russian forces to seize the country, just as Hitler ultimately took all of Czechoslovakia.
Yet there are significant differences as well. Hitler was determined to seize the Sudetenland, and ultimately all of Czechoslovakia, without firing a shot. He had already effectively incorporated Austria that way in the 1936 Anschluss. And he succeeded in doing so.
While Putin also wants to be handed over territories that his forces have not yet occupied without having to fight for them — in this regard following Hitler’s precedent — he faces a very different set of circumstances.
Russian forces have been fighting a determined Ukrainian military since February 2022. Moreover, despite ceaseless and heavy bombardment of Ukrainian formations and military infrastructure, coupled with terror attacks on cities and civilian institutions, Russia has gained remarkably little territory over the past three years of intense combat.
Furthermore, just as Putin mistakenly thought that a Spetsnaz (special forces) attack on Kyiv at the start of the war would decapitate the Ukrainian leadership and install a pliant pro-Russian regimen, he also appears to have erroneously thought that Russian-speaking Ukrainians, many of them in the four provinces he seeks to annex, would also take Moscow’s side. Yet Russia’s attacks have actually united most of Ukraine’s population, most notably those selfsame Russian speakers who once held positive attitudes toward Moscow.
For its part, Ukraine not only has limited Russian advances in over three years of war, it has inflicted severe damage to Russia’s military infrastructure, hit targets deep inside Russia including Moscow and has killed or wounded hundreds of thousands of Russian soldiers and North Korean personnel.
Still another difference relates to Ukraine’s neighbors and partners. Whereas the leading European powers in 1938 hastily acquiesced to Hitler’s demands, France, Germany, Britain, the Nordic and Baltic states and the European Union have all made it clear that they stand by Kyiv’s determination to preserve its territorial integrity and that Ukraine must have a seat at any table that would determine its future.
In addition, NATO has not closed the door on the prospect, however remote, of Ukrainian accession; Putin wants that door shut tight and permanently.
That Trump has spoken of concessions in the form of land swaps, while Putin has never indicated anything like an exchange of territory, has deepened European concerns that a deal would legitimate a Russian land grab. It also worries Europeans that Trump is so eager to achieve an agreement, regardless of how its terms affect Ukraine, because he covets the Nobel Peace Prize. The prize is awarded by the Norwegian Nobel Committee, whose members are appointed by the Norwegian parliament; since Norwegians generally view Trump unfavorably, it is highly unlikely that the Committee would ever award him the prize.
Hitler interpreted Daladier and Chamberlain’s willingness to fold at Munich as a signal that he would not encounter British opposition to either his seizure of all of Czechoslovakia or his planned attack on Poland. He viewed both men as “poor worms,” and Nazi documents released subsequent to World War II reveal that Hitler viewed Chamberlain as so weak that he worried that British prime minister would preemptively give away Poland, thereby robbing Germany of the ability to seize the country by force.
Trump needs to demonstrate to Putin when they meet in Alaska that he is no Neville Chamberlain. He must avoid any giveaway to the Russian dictator, which would only whet Putin’s clearly insatiable appetite for more conquests, be they remainder of Ukraine, neutral Moldova or one of NATO’s Baltic members.
As Hitler sought “lebensraum” — “living space” for Germans — Putin seeks to restore the Czarist Empire. Whatever the term, the objective was and is the same: territorial expansion.
It took a global war to stop Hitler. Hopefully, a strong-willed Trump will obviate the prospect of another devastating conflict.
Dov S. Zakheim is a senior adviser at the Center for Strategic and International Studies and vice chairman of the board for the Foreign Policy Research Institute. He was undersecretary of Defense (comptroller) and chief financial officer for the Department of Defense from 2001 to 2004 and a deputy undersecretary of Defense from 1985 to 1987.
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