The Unraveling of the Munich Agreement
In September 1938, Europe narrowly averted war over the Sudetenland crisis. The three million ethnic Germans living in the Sudetenland region of Czechoslovakia provided Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler with a convenient pretext for aggression. Hitler claimed they were being persecuted by the Czech government and needed to be "liberated" by annexation to Germany.
British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain, desperate to avoid another catastrophic European war, flew to Hitler‘s mountain retreat at Berchtesgaden to negotiate directly with the Führer. The meeting went poorly, with Hitler browbeating the hapless Chamberlain and demanding the immediate cession of the Sudetenland to Germany.
Chamberlain, along with French Premier Édouard Daladier, ultimately capitulated to Hitler‘s demands at the Munich Conference of September 29-30, 1938. Without even inviting Czechoslovakia to the negotiations, Britain and France agreed to let Germany occupy the Sudetenland starting October 1. In exchange, Hitler signed a declaration that this would be his last territorial claim in Europe. Chamberlain returned to London triumphantly declaring he had achieved "peace for our time."[1]
But the Munich Agreement started unraveling almost immediately. In March 1939, in violation of the accord he had signed less than six months earlier, Hitler ordered the German army to occupy the rest of Czechoslovakia. Bohemia and Moravia were annexed as a protectorate of the Reich, while Slovakia was set up as a puppet state under the Catholic priest Jozef Tiso. Czechoslovakia, as an independent nation, ceased to exist.[2]
Confusion and Panic in London
According to author Tim Bouverie in his book Appeasing Hitler, Chamberlain initially failed to grasp the significance of Hitler‘s move against Czechoslovakia. He thought the country was simply disintegrating from internal pressures and ethnic squabbles. It took several days for the full implications to sink in – that Hitler had flagrantly violated an international agreement and could no longer be trusted to keep his word.[3]
As the shock wore off, the British government was gripped by swirling rumors and panic. Wild reports circulated that Germany was on the verge of invading Poland, Romania, Switzerland, and the Netherlands. Others claimed the Luftwaffe was poised to rain bombs down on London.[4]
"There was a huge desperate scramble to, at the last moment, weld together an anti-Nazi alliance," wrote Bouverie. But Britain found itself with few willing partners. Efforts to bring the Soviet Union on board faltered due to mutual distrust and antipathy. Britain had given Stalin the cold shoulder for years. Now, the Soviets were not interested in pulling London‘s chestnuts out of the fire.[5]
Nor could Britain count on robust support from France, which was wracked by internal divisions and a defensive mindset. The French put their faith in the Maginot Line, a string of fortifications along the German border, rather than offensive action. Daladier had reluctantly gone along with the Munich Agreement and still hoped to avoid war.
Ultimately, Britain unilaterally issued a guarantee of Poland‘s independence and territorial integrity on March 31, 1939. Chamberlain told the House of Commons that if Germany threatened Poland and the Poles resisted, "His Majesty‘s Government would feel bound at once to lend the Polish Government all support in their power."[6] This was a major departure from Chamberlain‘s previous policy of accommodation. Similar guarantees were later extended to Romania, Greece and Turkey.
Why Did Hitler Defy Munich?
What prompted Hitler to tear up the Munich Agreement and risk war with Britain and France? The answer lies in a combination of ideology, hubris, and faulty intelligence.
Hitler was driven by an unshakeable conviction that it was his historic mission to unite all Germans in a Greater German Reich. The Sudetenland and the rest of Czechoslovakia were stepping stones to this goal, not ends in themselves. For Hitler, the real prize lay further east – in Poland and the vast open spaces of the Soviet Union. There, he dreamed of building his racist dystopia, a slave empire of German settler lords ruling over subjugated Slavs.[7]
But in early 1939, time seemed to be running out on Hitler‘s grandiose plans. Both Britain and France had begun crash rearmament programs to close the military gap with Germany. Hitler worried that the advantage was slipping away from him. If he was to achieve his life‘s ambition, he had to act soon. As he told his generals in May 1939: "We are left with the decision to attack Poland at the first suitable opportunity. We cannot expect a repetition of Czechoslovakia. There will be war."[8]
Just as importantly, Hitler didn‘t believe the western democracies had the will to fight, even if pushed to the brink. At Munich, Chamberlain had validated this view by surrendering Czechoslovakia without a shot being fired. When Hitler marched into Prague, he expected more feeble protests but no concrete action.[9]
Hitler‘s foreign minister, Joachim von Ribbentrop, encouraged this delusion. Ribbentrop was a vain, ambitious and deeply Anglophobic Nazi who constantly assured Hitler that the "degenerate" British would never risk a military confrontation with the Third Reich. In the power struggles at the top of the Nazi regime, Ribbentrop was the leading voice for a hardline anti-British policy. More pragmatic and cool-headed officials like foreign office state secretary Ernst von Weizsäcker were shoved aside.[10]
"Peace in Our Time" No More
In the end, Chamberlain‘s policy of appeasement had backfired disastrously. Rather than satisfying Hitler‘s demands, it only whetted his appetite for more. The Munich Agreement became a dead letter overnight when German troops marched into Prague.
Nor did Chamberlain‘s belated efforts to draw a line in the sand deter Hitler. The Nazi leader dismissed Britain‘s unilateral guarantee of Poland as an empty bluff. Ribbentrop had convinced him that the British were too weak and cowardly to back up their words with action.
Only at the very last moment, when Britain delivered its ultimatum in September 1939, did Hitler and Ribbentrop grasp their critical miscalculation. Upon being handed the British declaration of war, Hitler allegedly turned to Ribbentrop and snarled: "What now?" His foreign minister had no good answer.[11]
The dismemberment of Czechoslovakia in March 1939 was the true point of no return. Britain could no longer maintain the illusion that Hitler‘s ambitions were limited or that he could be relied upon to keep his agreements. Appeasement was dead, and Europe began its slide into the abyss of World War II.
Historians have long debated whether a stronger stand against Hitler in 1938 could have prevented the carnage that followed. Chamberlain has become a byword for naive, craven appeasement. But given Britain‘s military weakness and France‘s paralysis, Chamberlain may have made the best of a bad situation at Munich. It bought time for rearmament that would be needed in the titanic struggle to come.
What is certain is that Hitler‘s occupation of Czechoslovakia, in flagrant breach of the Munich accord, was the point of no return. Britain could not simply swallow this unilateral redrawing of the map of Europe, lest other small nations be gobbled up at will. The illusion of "peace in our time" was shattered, irreparably, in March 1939. The road to World War II had been paved.
Sources:
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Munich_Agreement[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_occupation_of_Czechoslovakia
[3] Bouverie, Tim. Appeasement: Chamberlain, Hitler, Churchill, and the Road to War. 2019
[4] Ibid, p.
[5] Ibid, p.
[6] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anglo-Polish_military_alliance
[7] Evans, Richard J. The Third Reich in Power. 2005
[8] Kershaw, Ian. Fateful Choices: Ten Decisions That Changed the World, 1940-1941. 2007
[9] Kochanski, Halik. The Eagle Unbowed: Poland and the Poles in the Second World War. 2012
[10] Weizsäcker, Ernst von, and Leonidas E. Hill. The Weizsäcker Memoirs. 1951
[11] Bouverie, p.
