It wouldn’t be fair to call the Munich Crisis “small.” Certainly it wasn’t small to the almost fifteen million inhabitants of Czechoslovakia. But time and history, especially the history of World War II, have a way of making the betrayal of an entire nation seem tiny. In 1938, Czechoslovakia was twenty years young, guaranteed safety and autonomy by France, and remained the sole functioning democracy in Central Europe. Within a few short months, it became the latest target of Germany’s rolling territorial acquisitions and, after the Sudetenland was traded away to appease Hitler, was carved up between neighbors. The peace purchased with the First Czechoslovak Republic’s dissolution held less than a year.

This is the topic of Petr Mojžíš’s The Bell of Treason, an improbable but evocative title, not to mention a despondent one in an era of renewed imperial aggression against states that have been promised security by feckless global powers. Riffing on Mark Herman’s system from Fort Sumter and Frédéric Serval’s developments from Red Flag Over Paris, it’s also comparatively diminutive for a wargame, with short rules, a compact profile, and a sharp eye for the crisis’s framing. All the better to make its players feel like minnows among sharks.

Read the rest of this entry →