Munich

Set against the September 1938 Munich Conference, the novel interweaves the stories of two fictional protagonists on opposite sides of one of the 20th century's most consequential diplomatic crises: the agreement by which Britain and France ceded the Sudetenland, a German-speaking region of Czechoslovakia, to Adolf Hitler's Germany in an effort to avert war.

On Tuesday, 27 September, Hugh Legat, a 28-year-old private secretary to Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain, is lunching with his wife Pamela at the Ritz when he is called back to 10 Downing Street. Talks with Hitler in Berlin have broken down. Legat rushes through a London preparing for war. At Number 10, he takes notes as Chamberlain meets with the military chiefs, who report that only six Royal Air Force (RAF) squadrons have modern aircraft and anti-aircraft defenses are woefully inadequate. Chamberlain authorizes the immediate mobilization of the Royal Navy, and that evening broadcasts to the nation, calling the crisis "horrible, fantastic, incredible." At a full Cabinet meeting, Foreign Secretary Lord Halifax refuses to support a proposal to pressure the Czechs into accepting Hitler's terms, arguing it would make Britain complicit in aggression. Chamberlain writes directly to the Italian dictator Mussolini, bypassing the Foreign Office, asking him to intervene with Hitler.

In Berlin, the parallel story follows Paul von Hartmann, a 29-year-old Third Secretary in the German Foreign Ministry. A former Rhodes Scholar who studied at Oxford alongside Legat, Hartmann has grown to despise the Nazi regime from within. He works under Foreign Minister Ribbentrop while secretly conspiring to overthrow Hitler. That evening, he attends a clandestine meeting where former Chief of the General Staff Ludwig Beck and Colonel Oster of the Abwehr, the military intelligence service, outline a plan: If Hitler issues the mobilization order, armed men will storm the Chancellery and arrest him, with the Army then maintaining order. Later that night, Hartmann visits Frau Winter, State Secretary Weizsäcker's senior secretary, with whom he is having an affair. She gives him a sealed document and tells him to show it to the English. Meanwhile, a copy of Hitler's secret military directive for the invasion of Czechoslovakia is anonymously delivered to Legat's London home. He takes it to Sir Alexander Cadogan, the Permanent Under-Secretary at the Foreign Office, who confirms it appears genuine.

On Day Two, Wednesday the 28th, the conspiracy collapses. Hartmann enters the Reich Chancellery with a concealed pistol, assessing security as he waits in the lobby. But the Italian Ambassador arrives with Mussolini's message urging Hitler to postpone mobilization. Hitler agrees, and without the certainty of imminent war, the generals will not act. In London, Legat relays the news to Chamberlain, who uses it as the climax of his speech to Parliament. A note then reaches the Prime Minister: Hitler has invited him, Mussolini, and French Premier Édouard Daladier to a four-power conference in Munich the following morning. The House of Commons erupts in ovation.

That evening, the demoralized conspirators regroup. Hartmann argues that preventing an agreement at Munich is their only remaining chance, reveals he has a second, more important document, and discloses that he knows one of Chamberlain's private secretaries from Oxford. Weizsäcker adds Hartmann to the German delegation as a translator, and Hartmann boards Hitler's special train that night. Separately, Cadogan and Colonel Menzies of the Secret Intelligence Service reveal to Legat that Hartmann is the source of the earlier document. They ask Legat to travel to Munich and meet his old friend, warning that it constitutes espionage on foreign soil and that the Prime Minister must not know. Legat agrees. That night, he calls Pamela and discovers evidence of her infidelity.

On Day Three, Thursday the 29th, both men converge on Munich. Aboard Hitler's train, Hartmann hides his pistol behind the lavatory plumbing before Sauer, an SS officer who has been monitoring his movements, searches his suitcase. Summoned to present a press summary, Hartmann is briefly alone with Hitler but cannot bring himself to act. At the conference, held in the Führerbau, the monumental Nazi party building in Munich, the four leaders negotiate the transfer of the Sudetenland. Legat, sidelined at the British delegation's hotel, translates the Italian draft agreement while the talks proceed. When he learns that Czech representatives have been confined to their hotel room by the Gestapo, he walks to the Führerbau and finds Hartmann, who leads him to a nearby beer garden. Hartmann passes him a document concealed inside a newspaper: the minutes of a secret 1937 conference in which Hitler declared his resolve to acquire living space by force, identifying Austria and Czechoslovakia as the first targets. This document is known as the Hossbach Memorandum.

Legat reads the memorandum at the hotel and rushes to the Führerbau, but Chamberlain brushes him off. Later, Hartmann appears at the hotel and demands to see the Prime Minister. Legat brings him into Chamberlain's suite for a tense five-minute audience. Hartmann presents the memorandum and urges Chamberlain not to sign, arguing that firmness will embolden the German opposition. Chamberlain refuses, maintaining that self-determination for the Sudeten Germans is irrefutable and that walking away would be catastrophic. When Chamberlain tries to return the document, Hartmann will not take it back. The Prime Minister orders Legat to dispose of it, declaring himself "extremely disappointed." The Munich Agreement is signed shortly after midnight. Legat watches each leader sign and notices Hartmann standing in the shadows, his face blank with exhaustion.

In the early hours of Day Four, Hartmann drives Legat past the Dachau concentration camp, its watchtowers and searchlights visible against the sky, and then to a nursing home where Leyna, their mutual friend from Oxford and Hartmann's former girlfriend, has severe brain damage and is unresponsive. A flashback reveals that in the summer of 1932, the three visited Munich together. Leyna shouted abuse at Hitler outside his apartment, provoking a chase by Brownshirts, the Nazi paramilitary thugs. Legat and Leyna had a brief sexual encounter, after which Legat fled Munich in guilt. Hartmann explains that Leyna later became a communist activist, was arrested by the Nazis, and was tortured so severely that she sustained irreversible brain damage. On the drive back, Hartmann articulates his central conviction: The regime's anti-Semitism cannot be separated from its other ambitions, and its capacity for such cruelty means it is capable of anything.

That morning, Chamberlain arranges a private meeting with Hitler at the dictator's Munich apartment, without informing the Cabinet or the Foreign Secretary. He presents a joint Anglo-German declaration committing both nations to resolve future disputes through consultation; Hitler, recognizing his own public statements in the text, grudgingly signs. Legat discovers that the Hossbach Memorandum, the secret record of Hitler's 1937 conference that Hartmann passed to him, has been stolen from his hotel room. He whispers a warning to Hartmann and learns that Frau Winter has been arrested by the Gestapo, the likely means by which the document was traced. Chamberlain flies home to a hero's welcome at Heston Aerodrome, holding the declaration aloft. On the plane, Joan, a secretary from Chamberlain's Garden Room secretarial staff, reveals she works for Colonel Menzies and rescued the memorandum from Legat's room before the Gestapo could find it.

Hartmann returns to Berlin expecting arrest but arrives unharmed. He visits Frau Winter, who has been released with a warning. The narrative reveals in a brief flash-forward that Hartmann will be executed on 20 August 1944 in Plötzensee Prison, but that he will continue to resist until then. Legat returns home, where Pamela is waiting. He tells her he is considering joining the RAF. When she observes that Chamberlain has just declared peace, Legat replies that the Prime Minister regretted the words the moment they left his mouth. He describes the agreement not as a guarantee of peace but as a tripwire Hitler will inevitably cross, and leaves for his club, walking through streets filled with celebrating crowds and fireworks.