Malkin

Malkin, a Foreign Office lawyer involved in the negotiations surrounding the Munich agreement, brings a legal eye to a crisis increasingly managed through hurried drafts and political signals. His clearest intervention is a warning that the proposed Anglo-German declaration offers goodwill, not a binding guarantee; the distinction gives his cautious voice particular weight amid declarations of peace.

Role in the negotiations

Malkin appears among the officials working on the declaration’s wording. When Strang presents a draft that links the agreement to a desire for peace between the two peoples, Malkin draws attention to its limits: it has no legal force and is only a declaration of goodwill. Wilson replies that Chamberlain understands this. Malkin’s point is not that the text is meaningless, but that its diplomatic reassurance must not be mistaken for a legal obligation.

The draft and Chamberlain

Malkin accompanies Strang and Wilson to Chamberlain with the revised text. Chamberlain notices that the draft omits the Anglo-German Naval Agreement and insists on including it, arguing that such agreements are precisely the sort Britain should pursue with Germany. He also changes the order of the signatories, placing the German Führer and Chancellor first so that the burden of the declaration appears to rest more heavily on him. Malkin’s earlier caution about legal force remains a counterweight to these political calculations: the text may be useful as a signal, but its wording does not make it enforceable.

Return from Munich

On the flight back across the English Channel, Malkin is asleep in the middle row while the exhausted party travels through low cloud. The atmosphere is melancholy, and the hamper from the Regina Palast Hotel remains untouched after Chamberlain orders that no one eat food supplied by the Germans. Malkin’s sleep offers no resolution to the questions he raised over the declaration; it closes his part in the episode with fatigue rather than triumph.