The Munich Agreement: Historical Reality and Contemporary Assessments

The four-power conference between Germany, Italy, France, and Great Britain on September 29–30, 1938, in Munich was the culmination of the policy of appeasing Hitler – a policy that ultimately led to the outbreak of World War II.

As one knows, the Nazi Germany did not content itself with the territorial concessions made to it in Munich. In March 1939, Wehrmacht divisions entered Prague, leading to the partition of Czechoslovakia and the loss of the country’s independence.  The “Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia” administered by a German governor was formed, a puppet Slovak state was created, and the territory of Transcarpathian Ukraine was added to Hungary.

The next target of aggression was Poland, which had up until then participated in the dismemberment of Czechoslovakia by annexing part of Cieszyn Silesia. In March 1939, the Polish state found itself in a situation similar to that of Czechoslovakia after the German Anschluss of Austria: the military threat, which had formerly come from the north and the west, now also emanated from the south. The leadership of the Hitler’s Reich continued to implement its strategy of phased aggression by conquering its opponents one by one. After abandoning Czechoslovakia to its aggressor, France and England did not provide any assistance to their ally Poland, either, when it became Hitler’s next victim on September 1, 1939. They  limited themselves to a formal declaration of war against Germany without undertaking any real military action. This marked the beginning of the so-called “Phoney War” during which the behaviour of Western leaders clearly showed that their main enemy continued to be the Soviet Union rather than Hitlerite Germany.

The continuation of the Munich policy ultimately led to the military defeat and occupation of France and the threat of the invasion of Great Britain. Only the categorical rejection of this approach, the mobilization of all anti-Fascist forces and the creation of an anti-Hitler coalition, made possible by Germany’s invasion of the Soviet Union, saved the world from the “Brown Plague”. The bankruptcy of the Munich policy led to the necessity of making a formal denunciation of the 1938 Munich Agreement that had resulted in the dismemberment and liquidation of Czechoslovakia. However, the British government was quite hesitant to do so, while Free France headed by General de Gaulle acted much more decisively. After Italy withdrew from the war, its new government also condemned the Munich Agreement, one of whose initiators had been the deposed Italian leader Mussolini. The Federal Republic of Germany retained an ambivalent stance longest of all. Only a 1974 agreement between West Germany and Czechoslovakia put an end to the Munich affair that had begun in September 1938.

How did the history or, more precisely, the prehistory of this affair begin?

Its starting point may be considered to be Hitler’s speech at his meeting with the leaders of the German army and diplomatic corps on November 5, 1937. As the British historian and Hitler’s foremost biographer I. Kershaw writes, this was “the first time that the chiefs of staff had been explicitly told of  Hitler’s thoughts  on the likely timing  and circumstances of German expansion into Austria and Czechoslovakia”.[1] As the minutes of the meeting made by Hitler’s adjutant Lieutenant F. Hossbach show, the Führer described England and France as Germany’s sworn enemies as well as noting that “our first objective, in the event of our being embroiled in war, must be to overthrow Czechoslovakia and Austria simultaneously”. At the same time, Hitler “believed that almost certainly Britain, and probably France as well, had already tacitly written off the Czechs and were reconciled to the fact that this question could be cleared up in due course by Germany”.[2] Hitler essentially described the scenario realized a year later in Munich. Some Western historians cast in doubt the authenticity of the Führer’s statements at this meeting, arguing that this summary, known as the “Hossbach Memorandum”, does not represent the official minutes of the meeting but was drafted a few days later, partly from memory, without being read or approved by Hitler. They also advance the conjecture that this document, which was first presented to the public by the US prosecutor at the Nuremberg Trials, was “edited” by the American lawyers working on the case. According to another version, the German military leaders failed to take Hitler’s words seriously or even voiced their objections, which would explain the Führer’s subsequent refusal to read the document compiled by his adjutant. Indeed, the Hossbach Memorandum shows Wehrmacht leaders expressing doubts that Britain and France “had already tacitly written off the Czechs” and pointing to the “strength of the Czech fortifications”, that “would gravely hamper our attack”. Be that as it may, the Wehrmacht’s military plans changed despite all the voiced doubts: instead of focusing on the goal of defending  the Czech-German border “in the event of a conflict with France”, German military leaders now began planning “to conduct an offensive war (Angriffskrieg) against Czechoslovakia and thereby also to carry  the German space problem to a triumphant conclusion, even if one or other great power intervenes against us”.[3]

Although subsequent events largely followed Hitler’s scenario, this thesis is not absolutely true. The Hossbach Memorandum records the Führer’s predictions that an “Anglo-French-Italian war” would being in 1938 and that “military intervention by Russia” (in the event of German aggression) was a “more than doubtful” factor “in view of Japan's attitude”. All of these speculations turned out to be groundless. At the same time, some later events surpassed his expectations: Austria was annexed not through its military “overthrow”, which was to coincide with the invasion of Czechoslovakia, but at an earlier date and in a different way – through an “Anschluss” using the “fifth column”. The same method was decided to use against Czechoslovakia.

On this way ethnic problems that Czechoslovakia had inherited from the Habsburg Empire were full and effective used. In the early 1920s, the newly created country had a population of 13.6 million, less than half of whom were Czechs (6.6 million), followed by Germans (3.2 million), Slovaks (2 million), Hungarians (0.7 million), Rusyns living in Transcarpathian Ukraine (0.5 million), Jews (300,000), Poles (100,000) and other ethnic minorities (Croatians, Gypsies, etc.). The period between the declaration of the Czechoslovak Republic on October 28, 1918, and the signature of the Treaty of Saint-Germain on September 10, 1919, was troubled by a conflict between ethnic Germans living in Czechoslovakia, many of whom wanted to join Austria, and the Czechoslovak government, which ultimately resorted to the use of military force. A leading role in the German resistance was played by the local social-democratic party that had emerged in 1919 after the unification of the party organisations of Moravia, Bohemia and Sudeten Silesia. An accommodation between German political forces and the Czech government was reached only by the mid-1920s. However, the outbreak of the Great Depression led to a revival of tensions, including ethnic strife. The unemployment rate in the Sudetenland became significantly higher than the national average (1/3 as opposed to 1/5).  The Sudeten German Social Democrats headed by their new leader Wenzel Jaksch tried to create a common platform with the Farmers' League and the German Christian Social People's Party to campaign for minority rights in the framework of the existing state structure, calling for the use of the German language in state organisations, the inclusion of Germans into local government, and the allocation of subsidies to German businessmen. They even held a series of mass protests to back their demands. Nevertheless, these parties were soon overtaken by their competitors in the German diaspora who advanced more radical claims. The most prominent among them was the Sudeten German Party (SdP) headed by Konrad Henlein. It became those “fifth column” used by Hitler to undermine Czechoslovakia from within and to prepare international public opinion for its annexation.

The history of the SdP went back to an organisation called the German National Socialist Workers' Party (DNSAP) that was founded in the Austro-Hungarian Empire in 1918. (It may well have inspired Hitler’s later choice of name for his own party – the only difference being the order of the words and the acronym letters: NSDAP instead of DNSAP). After being banned in Czechoslovakia in 1932, the DNSAP reappeared as the “Sudeten German Homeland Front” before adopting its final name “Sudeten German Party” (SdP) in 1935. At the elections in May of the same year, the SdP received 63% of the votes of Sudeten Germans, while the Social Democratic Party, the Farmers' League and the German Christian Social People's Party lost over half of their electorate. After the Austrian Anschluss of March 13, 1938, the leaders of the Farmers' League and the German Christian Social People's Party dissolved their organizations and joined the SdP. The only remaining democratic alternative to the Sudeten German Party was the Social Democratic Party, which continued to lose popularity, however.

What were the causes of the changing attitudes and political orientations of the Sudeten Germans? The historian S. Kretinin from Voronezh has argued that the political ineffectiveness of the Sudeten German Social Democrats resulted from the lack of unity and clear-cut goals among their leaders: the supporters of the previous party leader L. Czech viewed his dismissal as an antisemitic act and covertly opposed Jaksch, while the latter tried, in turn, to enter into contact with Henlein’s associates, albeit without success.[4] Although these complicated processes in the Sudeten German Social Democratic Party may have played a negative role, there were other more important factors. Key among them was the SdP’s superiority in material resources, largely due to the financing that it had received from Germany from 1934 on.

The support accorded to Henlein by Great Britain played a role too. In July 1935, he was approached by the British secret service: Captain (or, by other accounts, Lieutenant) G. Christie, former British air force attaché in Germany, invited Henlein to visit Great Britain, where he met with such prominent intellectual figures as H. Seton-Watson and A. Toynbee and diplomats and politicians R. Vansittart, H. Nicolson and W. Churchill. All these individuals were in opposition to the policies of Chamberlain’s government, and Henlein’s mission was to convince them of the “moderateness” of the SdP’s political programme. This propaganda had a certain amount of success: during a visit to London in May 1938 (after the German-Czech crisis had already broken out), Henlein managed to convince Churchill that the situation in Czechoslovakia resembled the situation in Great Britain in 1913 when the Irish were denied Home Rule,[5] leading to Ireland’s revolt and secession from the United Kingdom. In a speech before the House of Commons on June 3, 1938, Churchill repeated Henlein’s arguments almost word for word.[6]

Henlein’s propaganda mission implemented with the support of a British spy provides clear evidence that British ruling circles, far from being simply intimidated by the aggressive behaviour of Hitler and his puppets, were quite willing to cooperate with them and influence public opinion accordingly, despite their clear awareness of the true intentions of the German leadership. Captain Christie got exhaustive information on this subject from Hitler’s right-hand man H. Goering, who bluntly told his “long-standing British acquaintance” that “Germany must have not simply the Sudetenland, but the whole of Bohemia and Moravia”.[7]

Nevertheless, attempts are still made today to justify the policies of the British government. For example, historians cite a letter from Chamberlain to his sister, which describes his impressions from his first meeting with Hitler in Berchtesgaden on September 15, 1938: “here was a man who could be relied upon when he had  given his word”.[8] The reader is expected to believe that the British Prime Minister was so naïve that he regarded his interlocutor to be interested only in the Sudetenland without casting his eyes on the rest of Czechoslovakia. Yet could Chamberlain have been ignorant of Goering’s aforementioned statement that directly contradicted Hitler’s assertions? It should be said that Goering had the reputation of being a moderate among the Führer’s inner circle.

Quite some time ago, there appeared a different justification of Chamberlain’s behaviour, claiming that he had understood Hitler’s aggressive intentions yet nonetheless made concessions in order to buy time for improving his country’s military capacity that was supposedly vastly inferior to Germany’s by the time of the Munich Agreement, especially in terms of aviation and antiaircraft defence. This version is corroborated at first sight by statements made by the British Prime Minister in a conversation with his French counterpart E. Daladier on April 28, 1938. Saying that “it made his blood boil to see Germany getting away with it time after time and increasing her domination over free peoples”, Chamberlain nevertheless doubted that Britain and France “were sufficiently powerful to make victory certain”, and “his cool judgment told him that the moment had not come when it was safe to adopt such an attitude”.[9] Chamberlain’s stance was described in a similar way by his closest aide H. Wilson in a conversation with Soviet Plenipotentiary Representative to London I. Maisky on May 10, 1938: “Chamberlain is well aware of the possibility of German expansion in Central and Southeast Europe and even of the possibility of the German annexation (in one form or another) of a number of small Central European and Balkan states. Nevertheless, he believes that this would be a lesser evil than fighting a war with Germany in the immediate future. The Prime Minister expects the process of annexation to take a fairly long time, allowing Britain to build up its defences.”[10]

Another version denying Chamberlain’s naivety and postulating his “realism” was presented at the workshop The Meaning of Munich Fifty Years Later held in 1988 by the US Institute of Peace in Washington, D.C. The brunt of the argument was directed against the pacifists of the 1930s and contemporary opponents to the arms race, stating that, in a situation in which Germany spent 17% of its GDP on armaments in comparison with only 4% by Great Britain, Chamberlain had no chance of opposing Hitler.[11] However, just a year before this workshop, a study published by a British historian argued that the information about German military potential at the disposal of the British intelligence service did not corroborate the thesis of Germany’s overwhelming superiority over Great Britain and its potential allies.[12] It is highly unlikely that this information was not transmitted to the Prime Minister, either. Even if he failed to trust it and continued to hold the view that Great Britain lagged behind Germany in the arms race, the logical conclusion would have been the rapid mobilization of the British military industry. However, nothing of the sort took place. In a conversation with Soviet Plenipotentiary Representative I. Maisky, the British politician Beaverbrook, who supported the Munich policy on account of the “disproportion between the German and British air forces”, said that “Chamberlain believes that there is no direct threat of a big war in the near future and therefore does not plan to make a rapid military build-up… His motto is ‘business as usual’. There is no need to disturb the country’s normal economic life. However, such a disturbance would be inevitable if Britain tries to rearm to the full extent within the required time period.”[13]

Whereas the British government is rightfully seen as the initiator of the Munich policy a policy that began long before the Sudeten crisis of 1938[14] – the stance of France, the other major participant of the Munich betrayal, seems to have been more ambivalent. As shown by the aforementioned transcript (unfortunately incomplete) of the conversation between Chamberlain and Daladier of April 28, 1938, France was in favour of taking a more decisive stance against Nazi aggression. There were several reasons for this. Firstly, France was a lot more vulnerable to the German threat, as the two countries shared a common border. Secondly, France figured as the main enemy in Hitler’s Mein Kampf, the “Bible” of Nazism. Thirdly, France had signed mutual assistance agreements with Czechoslovakia and the USSR (and, ever earlier, with Poland) and was therefore directly affected by the events that began to unfurl along the borders of these states in March 1938. Historians note that the French government made seven official declarations of its adherence to these agreements. However, they also point to the fact that Chamberlain’s first pilgrimage to Berchtesgaden was inspired by a telephone conversation with Daladier on September 13, 1938.[15] The facts show that French “peacemakers” were just as committed to a capitulatory policy as their British colleagues. Their justification was quite similar, too: France was said to lag behind Germany in military capacity. The blame for this was put on the Popular Front, which was accused of having spent money on social interests rather than defence needs. A typical version of this propagandistic view is cited in one of the first Western monographs on the Munich Agreement, Munich: Prologue to Tragedy by the British historian J. Wheeler-Bennett: “At the request of M. Daladier, the American Ambassador, Mr. William C. Bullitt, invited Colonel Lindbergh and M. Guy La Chambre, the Under-Secretary for Air, to dine at his house at Chantilly on the night of September 9. M. La Chambre gave the gloomiest possible picture of French aviation. The position, he said, was desperate; Germany had so long a lead that France could not catch up with her for years, if at all. The Reich was producing between 500 and 800 planes a month, whereas France was only turning out 45 to 50 and Britain about 70 per month… He confirmed M. La Chambre’s views as to German air superiority in general, for he had been forced to the conclusion that the German air fleet was stronger than those of all the other European countries combined.”[16] Wheeler-Bennett embellished this account with a detail of his own: “In August 1938, when the [French] metallurgical workers took their paid holidays, the aircraft output fell to 13.”[17]

In actual fact, the Popular Front government increased state spending on the military. It may be considered a tragic circumstance that the government headed by the Socialist politician L. Blum resigned on the eve of the crisis triggered by the Germans on April 10, 1938. A recent book on the Munich Agreement mentions that the resignation of the Popular Front government evoked the “delight” of British Ambassador to France E. Phipps. Things went further than just emotions. Phipps directly interfered in the formation of the new government: when it appeared that the new Prime Minister E. Daladier might invite the previous Foreign Minister Paul-Boncour to retain his post, the British Ambassador took the “extraordinary step” (with the approval of the Head of the Foreign Office E. Halifax) of informing Daladier that “it would be most unfortunate if Paul-Boncour were to remain”. As a result, “Daladier chose Georges Bonnet, a noted appeaser, to fill the post.”[18]

The policies of the Czech government had been quite ambivalent, too. It failed to take any effective measures against the mass meetings organised by the SdP immediately after the Austrian Anschluss with the motto “One People, One Reich, One Führer” and did not publicize the information at its disposal about the financing received by the SdP from Nazi Germany. In the meanwhile, Henlein was more and more openly acting as the head of the Nazi “fifth column”. On March 28, he secretly came to Berlin where, together with Hitler and officials of the German Ministry of Foreign Affairs, he elaborated a strategy for undermining the Czech state. The strategy consisted of advancing ever more radical demands to the government in Prague, whose rejection would give the German government an excuse to interfere in order to defend the rights of the German diaspora.

The first stage of the implementation of this plan was the adoption on April 24, 1938, of an eight-item programme at the SdP Congress in Karlsbad (present-day Karlovy Vary). Many of these items seemed quite moderate, yet, in the event that the Czech government agreed to them, it was planned to add an unacceptable ninth item that called for the organisation of the Sudeten Germans’ own military units and the withdrawal of Czech divisions from the Sudetenland. Still, the beginning of the crisis was due less to the proclamation of the Karlsbad Programme than to terrorist acts committed by SdP supporters with the help of arms smuggled from Germany. The Czech government reacted quite strongly to the actions of Henlein’s supporters abetted by Hitler’s Reich, ordering a partial mobilization that led to the concentration of major forces (about 180,000 soldiers and officers) in the border zone with Germany.

These measures mitigated the crisis somewhat. Germany restrained itself to using “soft power” for the time being. A press campaign was launched against the “Czech atrocities” that had led to the death of two of Henlein’s activists (they were given a solemn funeral at which Hitler laid a wreath on their grave). As we mentioned above, Henlein himself was engaging in a propaganda campaign during his visits to Great Britain. Propaganda also spread among the Sudeten Germans with baleful results. On April 28, 1938, the interim Soviet chargé d’affaires in Germany G. Astakhov reported to the People’s Commissariat of Foreign Affairs about his trip to the Sudetenland: “The German population… is almost wholly brainwashed and ready to greet Hitler as a liberator.”[19] At the local elections of May 22, the SdP received a majority of votes in districts with a predominantly German population.[20]

In the face of the growing threat of German invasion, the Czech government made contradictory declarations. According to Soviet Plenipotentiary Representative in France Y. Surits, his Czech colleague vehemently argued that “the defensive capacity of Czechoslovakia is lot stronger than what people think: in particular, the border with Austria has been fortified a long time ago in anticipation of the Anschluss”.[21] The scenarios were described quite variedly by Czech President E. Beneš. In a conversation with Soviet Plenipotentiary Representative S. Aleksandrovsky on May 18, he said that, even if Czechoslovakia receives no assistance, “it will be able to resist for three or four months by retreating east”. He downplayed the importance of the poor fortification of the borders with Poland and Hungary, saying that Poland would be contained by the USSR, and Hungary by the Little Entente. Recognizing the possibility of a defeat at the hands of the German Wehrmacht, he repeated, “We will fight in any event, making our way east to join forces with the Red Army… If necessary, the Czechs will be ready to violate all foreign borders and territories to save their army” (he was apparently implying that the retreating Czech army would open a corridor through Poland and Romania to the Soviet border). Beneš did not rule out the possibility of reaching an agreement with Hitler yet stressed that he wanted the USSR to act as a guarantor in such an event. However, the day before on May 17, Beneš had said something totally different to the British ambassador B. Newton: “The relations between Czechoslovakia and Russia have always been (and will continue to be) a secondary matter that depends on the position of France and Great Britain. The current ties between Czechoslovakia and Russia are wholly based on the Franco-Russian treaty. If Western Europe loses its interest in Russia, Czechoslovakia will do so, too. Czechoslovakia will always follow Western Europe and collaborate with it. It will never collaborate with Eastern Europe. All ties with Russia will be maintained through Western Europe.” Citing these remarks by Beneš, the Russian scholar V. Maryina writes that he “acted as an experienced diplomat and a pragmatic politician”,[22] which is, of course, an embellishment of the Czech leader’s stance.

For this reason, one cannot absolve the Czech leadership of responsibility for the development of the Sudeten crisis that eventually led to Munich. In June and July, the Czech government engaged in talks with Henlein, making one concession after another. It was in constant touch with Western diplomats yet did not consult the Soviet plenipotentiary representative. The latter was not informed, either, of the British proposal of sending a mediating mission to Czechoslovakia under the leadership of the former President of the British Board of Trade Lord Runciman. Beneš initially spoke out against the British mission yet eventually agreed to it, officially expressing his consent on July 23. Runciman arrived in Prague on August 3, 1938. He was quite sceptical about the possibility of finding a compromise yet approved of Beneš’s Fourth Plan that was close to the Karlsbad Programme. Czechoslovak society took a negative view of these concessions. A million people signed an appeal against ceding to the demands of the German nationalists.

As to Henlein, he and his associates had no intention of discussing the Fourth Plan seriously. Compelled to engage in talks with the government, they strove first and foremost to sabotage them. The occasion soon presented itself. On September 7, a clash took place between Henlein’s supporters and the local Czech population in the town of Moravská Ostrava. Order was restored by the mounted police, which was accused of abusing members of parliament from the SdP that arrived in the town to inquire about the fate of party members that had been arrested for smuggling arms. While the British diplomat who arrived on the scene categorically rejected the version of police brutality and noted that it was the police who had been victims of violence, the Runciman Mission supported the demands made on the Czech government to punish the law enforcement officers involved. These demands were satisfied: the policeman who was accused of giving a stroke of the whip to Henlein’s party leader was fired along with the chief of the local police. The talks did not resume, however.[23]

Although Henlein’s party did its best to escalate relations with the central government, it hesitated to advance an explicit programme of seceding from Czechoslovakia and joining Hitler’s Reich. German leaders, too, refrained from making such appeals. This idea was voiced for the first time at a fairly high level in Great Britain in an editorial published in The Times on September 7, the day of the events in Moravská Ostrava. Much of the article, which bore the inexpressive title “Nuremberg and Aussig”,[24] was devoted to an analysis of the aforementioned “Fourth Plan”, of which it spoke quite highly. The editorial noted, in particular, that the Czechoslovak government had gone quite far in allowing local “self-government” and that it was fully entitled to retain its powers in the spheres of “defence, foreign policy and finance”. However, as a modern specialist on the Munich Agreement has remarked, the “sting” of the article was hidden in its “tail”, i.e., in the closing lines written in “dry, almost academic language”: “If the Sudetens now ask for more than the Czech Government are [sic] apparently ready to give in their latest set of proposals, it can only be inferred that the Germans are going beyond the mere removal of disabilities and do not find themselves at ease within the Czechoslovak Republic. In that case it might be worth while for the Czechoslovak Government to consider whether they should exclude altogether the project, which has found favour in some quarters, of making Czechoslovakia a more homogeneous State by the secession of that fringe of alien populations who are contiguous to the nation with which they are united by race … The advantages to Czechoslovakia of becoming a homogeneous State might conceivably outweigh the obvious disadvantages of losing the Sudeten German districts of the borderland.” Amid the ensuing public outcry, the British Foreign Office quickly issued a statement denying any relation to the article. This did not look particularly convincing, however. To all intents and purposes, Hitler’s government was given carte blanche for the further escalation of the crisis, of which it immediately took advantage.

On September 12, Hitler delivered an incendiary speech that essentially served as a call to arms for the German diaspora in Czechoslovakia. Calling the Sudeten Germans “martyrs”, he declared that if they did not get “their rights and support” from Western powers, “they will get both from us… Germans in Czechoslovakia are neither defenceless nor abandoned.” In the night of September 12–13, mass terrorist acts against the Czech population and government officials began in regions inhabited by Sudeten Germans and then spread to 70 localities, mostly in Western areas of the country. The uprising was quickly suppressed. The German historian Werner Röhr cites the following casualties in his study of the SdP: 13 dead and 61 wounded on the Czech side and 10 dead and 14 wounded on the German side by the evening of September 14; 16 dead on the Czech side and 11 dead on the German side by the evening of September 17 (when the putsch had already fallen through). The German Ambassador to Czechoslovakia Eisenlor described the situation among the insurrection leaders as follows: “The headquarters of the SdP resemble a revolutionary committee in the absence of revolution: general confusion and nervousness everywhere.” The SdP was banned, and Henlein fled to Germany, where he called for the creation of the “Sudetendeutsches Freikorps” – an irregular army recruited for engaging in sabotage activities in Czechoslovakia. A total of 41 battalions with 35,000 men in all were formed on German territory. The Freikorps was subordinated to the Wehrmacht High Command. A personal report to Hitler about the activities of the Freikorps of September 27 spoke of 260 “successful acts” that had led to the death of 51 Czechs and the abduction and deportation to Germany of another 1,249. The casualties of the “partisans” were assessed at 32 dead and 61 wounded. By October 1, these figures had increased: 110 dead and 2,029 “prisoners” (a term referring to individuals deported to Germany) on the side of the “enemy” and 52 dead, 65 wounded and 19 missing among the “partisans”.[25]

Despite the small scope of the uprising, its undisputed failure, and the clear evidence of its support from abroad, German newspapers launched a press campaign describing the “general insurrection” of the German population against the Czechoslovak government, the large-scale repressions of the latter, and the mass “exodus” of Sudeten Germans to the Reich.

These were the circumstances surrounding Chamberlain’s first visit to Hitler, after which an appeal was issued by Britain and France to the Czechoslovak government to cede territories with majority German population over 50 percent to Germany immediately and, possibly, other territories in the future. The Anglo-French ultimatum was initially rejected, of which both ambassadors were informed. Later, at 2 a.m. in the night of September 20–21, the ambassadors called for another audience to transmit the demands of their governments for Beneš to accept the ultimatum; they warned that the Wehrmacht might otherwise invade Czechoslovakia without delay and that their countries would do nothing to stop it. According to Beneš, the French ambassador had tears in his eyes, while the British envoy did not raise his eyes during the entire conversation. Beneš convened his cabinet in the morning of September 21, a meeting that he later described as follows: “At first, everyone agreed, with greater or lesser determination, that we couldn’t back down.” However, when the consequences of such a stance were discussed, “opinions began to diverge and gradually changed”, especially after hearing the reports of Inspector General of the Armed Forces J. Syrový and Chief of Staff L. Krejčí. Both generals declared that “we are at best capable of a brief and difficult defence that could not last for long” and spoke of the “ambivalence” of what “the Soviets would do in these circumstances from a military standpoint”.[26]

In actual fact, there was nothing “ambivalent” about the Soviet stance. Below, we will examine in greater detail the role of the USSR in the events preceding and following Munich. Here let us simply say that the motives of the turnabout in the Czechoslovak government’s stance remain unclear to this day. The cabinet had surely been aware of the army command’s views ahead of time, yet this did not affect its initial resolution to oppose the ultimatum. Why did the generals’ reports have such impact in the critical morning of September 21? After the aforementioned cabinet meeting, Czech Foreign Minister Krofta announced at 8:30 p.m. of the same day that the government agreed to the Anglo-French conditions. However, during Chamberlain and Hitler’s second meeting in Bad Godesberg on September 22, the German side advanced even more radical demands. In particular, it spoke out in favour of the territorial claims of Poland and Hungary.

In these conditions, the Czech government made a new about-turn that seemed to indicate a return to the policy of resisting aggression. General mobilization was announced in Czechoslovakia and successfully implemented on September 24–26. The population showed its readiness to defend the Republic. The US government also spoke out for the first time since the beginning of the crisis. On September 26, President Roosevelt called for convening an international conference for discussing the situation with the participation of all interested countries, including the Soviet Union. The latter expressed its support of this initiative through an article published in the newspaper Izvestia on September 27. However, Western powers changed the initiative by including only four countries: Germany, Italy, France and Great Britain. The British envoy to Italy Lord Perth proposed such a format to Mussolini, who, in turn, ordered his ambassador in Berlin to harmonize it with Hitler. This cast the structural foundations of the Munich betrayal.

The course of the Munich Conference and the documents adopted there are well known and do not require further commentary. Let us simply examine a few problems that are still subject to scholarly and even political debate. The first is Poland’s role in the anti-Czechoslovak campaign launched in 1938 and in the process of dismembering Czechoslovakia that began in Munich.

Officially, Polish ruling circles adopted an “equilibrium” approach with regard to their neighbours during the interwar period. In actual fact, Polish policies became increasingly pro-German and anti-Soviet (anti-Czechoslovak) over time. Shortly before the Austrian Anschluss, Goering made a visit to Warsaw, during which he and Polish Foreign Minister J. Beck “agreed on the expediency of coordinating German and Polish policy with regard to Czechoslovakia”. Moreover, Beck “stressed that Poland was interested in ‘certain Czechoslovak territories’ and in the ‘possible means of solving the Czech problem”.[27] The Polish side approved the Anschluss to all intents and purposes and used it to put pressure on Lithuania, with which it had a long-standing diplomatic conflict. The general policy of the Polish government was to become the “leader of the group of countries between Russia and Germany”, to which end it had to “neutralize French influence in the region and destroy Czechoslovakia”.[28]

The “territory” and the “interest” of which Beck spoke was the so-called “Zaolzie” – the area of Cieszyn Silesia that lay beyond the Olza River. This territory with a mixed population (48.6% Poles,[29] approx. 40% Czechs, and 11% Germans) had been occupied by Czech troops in 1919 and then formally incorporated into Czechoslovakia. As the official declaration of the status of the Zaolzie by the Czechoslovak government took place at a moment when the Poles were retreating from the Red Army in 1920, Polish propaganda spoke of a “stab in the back” by Prague and the “unlawful annexation” of this territory. After the outbreak of the Sudeten crisis, the Polish government supported the demands of Henlein’s party even before they were formulated in the “Karlsbad programme”. One of Poland’s first unfriendly acts against its southern neighbour was an interview by Beck of March 21, 1938, in which he declared that Poles living in Zaolzie had the right to “receive the same autonomy that the Sudeten Germans were calling for”.[30] During the aforementioned “May Crisis”, the Polish government adopted a fairly ambivalent attitude; when an article appeared in the British press on May 23 (evidently as a “trial balloon”), claiming that Poland would join Britain and France if the latter took action for defending Czechoslovakia, the Polish side immediately refuted this information. On May 31, the German Foreign Ministry expressed gratitude to Poland “for its friendly attitude towards Berlin”.[31]

After Chamberlain and Hitler’s meeting in Berchtesgaden, the Polish government explicitly raised the question of the transfer of the Zaolzie to Poland and, on the same day, ordered troops to be concentrated along the Czech-Polish border. It also created the task force Śląsk (‘Silesia’), whose mission was to “occupy the Zaolzie, whether by agreement or by the use of force”.

The convening of the Munich Conference was viewed with misgivings by Polish leaders, who were clearly disappointed of not being invited to it. On the other side the Poles took advantage of the Munich Agreement to issue an ultimatum to Prague on the immediate transfer of the Zaolzie to Poland, claiming that it would be occupied by Germany otherwise. When the ultimatum was discussed by the Polish government, only one person ­(Deputy Prime Minister E. Kwiatkowski) spoke out against it, claiming that it would harm Poland’s image by creating “the impression that Poland is collaborating with Hitlerite aggression both tactically and in substance”. The decision was taken all the same. At a quarter to midnight on September 30, the Polish ambassador in Prague presented the Czechoslovak government with an ultimatum to cede the Zaolzie to Poland. The Czech side was given 12 hours to comply before Poland took military action. In view of the possibility that Prague would reject the ultimatum and turn to the USSR for assistance, Polish leaders asked Berlin about its stance in the event of a Czech-Polish and Soviet-Polish war. Ribbentrop and Goering promised wholehearted support. This turned out to be unnecessary, however, as the ultimatum was accepted, and on October 2, 1938, Polish army units entered the newly annexed territory.

Progressive segments of Polish society condemned the government’s action. The Polish historian S. Zerko notes that “some said that Poland was behaving like a hyena that was attacking the prey of Munich”. He also cites the words of a Polish contemporary to the events that “this annexation is a prelude to a new partition of Poland”.[32]

Let us now take a closer look at the stance and role of the USSR in the events. According to the Soviet-Czechoslovak treaty of 1935, mutual assistance was to be provided “only in the event that assistance is accorded by France to the attacked country on the conditions stipulated in the present treaty”.[33] Nevertheless, at the very beginning of the Sudeten crisis on April 26, 1938, the Soviet side declared that the Soviet-Czechoslovak Treaty “does not prevent any one of the parties from helping the other without waiting for French assistance”.[34] Some historians have argued that this declaration by Chairman of the Praesidium of the Soviet Supreme Soviet M. Kalinin “was intended for domestic use and had no consequences at the diplomatic level”.[35] However, a different interpretation is also possible: given the stringent control over public utterances in the Soviet Union, especially in the foreign policy domain, a statement made by a high-ranking Soviet official cannot be treated lightly. It meant a promise of unconditional support for Czechoslovakia in its resistance to German aggression and probably served as a key factor in the decisive stance taken by Prague during the May Crisis. At the same time, the statement was intended as a trial balloon to test Czechoslovakia’s attitude: was it ready to accept Soviet assistance without harmonizing its stance with France? Finally, the trial balloon may have also been intended for France: was it ready to take joint action to protect Czechoslovakia?

Unfortunately, this “test” of the stance of Western partners showed a negative outcome. In this situation, Soviet diplomacy had to proceed with extreme caution that was subsequently interpreted by some as an “isolationist approach of not interfering in the gathering European crisis”.[36] The true motives of the Soviet stance were described in a letter of instruction from Soviet People’s Commissar of Foreign Affairs M. Litvinov to Soviet Plenipotentiary Representative in Czechoslovakia S. Aleksandrovsky (this document was first discovered and published by the Canadian historian M. Carley): “We are extraordinarily interested in the preservation of the independence of Czechoslovakia, in the blocking of Hitlerite ambitions toward the southeast, but without the western powers we cannot do anything substantial, while they do not consider it necessary to obtain our assistance, they ignore us and between themselves decide everything concerning the German–Czechoslovak conflict. We do not know whether Czechoslovakia itself has at some time pointed out to its western ‘friends’ the necessity of drawing in the USSR. In these circumstances for us publicly and officially to criticise the actions of England and France would provoke accusations of our attempting to block their ‘peaceful action’ in encouraging Czechoslovak inflexibility, and thus would not be of any use to Czechoslovakia itself. ... It is sufficient that I have pointed out the absence of pressure from our side on Czechoslovakia and letting them have their complete freedom of action.”[37]

Beneš inquired about possible assistance from the USSR only after receiving the Anglo-French ultimatum on September 19, 1938. On the same day, he had a conversation with the Soviet plenipotentiary representative. He posed two questions that he wanted Aleksandrovsky to transmit to the Soviet government: “1. Would the Soviet government give immediate assistance to Czechoslovakia in keeping with the treaty if France also did so? 2. In the event of attack, Beneš would immediately send a telegram to the Council of the League of Nations with a request to enforce Articles 16 and 17… Would the Soviet Union as a member of the League of Nations support the Czechoslovak action?”[38] According to one version (which was, in particular, advanced by Beneš), the Soviet answer was positive yet arrived very late (only on September 21), leaving Czechoslovakia with no choice but to accept the Anglo-French ultimatum. This version does not bear scrutiny, however. The Soviet response was communicated to the Czech government on September 20 through two channels simultaneously. On the one hand, a telegram was sent to Aleksandrovsky, who then called Beneš while the latter was still at a cabinet meeting convened to discuss the answer to the western ultimatum. On the other, the stance of the Soviet government was voiced to the Czechoslovak envoy to the USSR Z. Fierlinger, who communicated it to Prague. His telegram was sent at 5:30 p.m., reached Prague at 7:37 p.m., and was deciphered at 8:20 p.m.[39] The reception of this information may well explain the Czech government’s initial rejection of the western ultimatum.

The story repeated itself on September 30 after the conditions of the Munich Agreement were communicated to the Czech side. Before the cabinet convened to draft a reply to this ultimatum (the second since September 19), Beneš called the Soviet plenipotentiary representative at 9:30 a.m., asking him to confirm the information about possible Soviet assistance and transmit the answer by 6–7 p.m., i.e., 8–9 p.m. Moscow time. It is unclear why such a deadline was fixed, given that three accredited ambassadors in Prague (from Britain, France and Italy) and the German chargé d’affaires were demanding a reply by noon, while a Czechoslovak representative had to be sent to the ambassadors by 5 p.m. to decide on the new border. The telegram reached Moscow only at 5 p.m., while a second telegram arrived 45 minutes later with the information that Beneš had withdrawn his question after the Czechoslovak government’s decision to capitulate. The latter may have used this situation as an alibi of sorts in order to place the responsibility for accepting the Munich ultimatum on the USSR.

As we mentioned above, Czech leaders had motivated their acceptance of the western ultimatum on September 21 in part by the “ambivalence” of the Soviet stance. The same arguments were used to justify the decision of September 30. They were subsequently advanced by Beneš again. The head of his chancellery J. Smutny cited a remark made by Beneš in July 1943: “The Russians never express their final opinion: they only smile politely… They behaved in this way with respect to us during Munich, never saying anything clearly or signing anything… I will never speak openly of this, yet it’s a fact that the Russians had never told us in 1938 that they would assist us.”[40] This argumentation continues to be cited in the modern  historiography.

To this end, uncritical use is made of a conversation of February 17, 1939, between Czech envoy Z. Fierlinger and Aleksandrovsky, who had been recalled from Czechoslovakia by that time. In an attempt to justify the actions of his government, Fierlinger said, “With regard to the Czechoslovak attitudes before the autumn events and Munich, a critical role was played by the reception accorded in Moscow to Air Force Chief General Faifr and especially Artillery Chief General Netik. They (particularly, Netik) were dismayed by the total lack of interest in discussing the issue of ‘assistance to Czechoslovakia together with France, at least in theory’. Faifr kept bringing the matter up yet did not get any response. Netik was deeply disappointed, especially by his conversation with Shaposhnikov, and left with the conviction that the USSR had no intention of providing assistance under any circumstances.”[41] Leaving the question of the veracity of this account aside, let us simply note that, when the two Czechoslovak military leaders came to Moscow in late August 1938, they had no mandates for making military commitments, while a discussion “in theory” did not interest the Soviet side. Moreover, insofar as this matter had to be discussed “together with France”, it required the presence of French military representatives. The earlier Soviet proposal of a trilateral meeting at the level of Chiefs of Staff had not been taken up. As far as we know, Czechoslovakia had not supported this initiative, either. In such conditions, no concrete military agreements between Czechoslovakia and the USSR were possible, and therefore all talks on this matter were meaningless.

Things took a totally different turn when the Czechoslovak government began resisting Hitlerite aggression and rejected the Anglo-French ultimatum (we are speaking here of the short period of September 24–30 – from the declaration of mobilization to the acceptance of the Munich conditions). The aforementioned General J. Faifr described military cooperation with the USSR in the following terms during his testimony at the 1946 trial of R. Beran, head of the post-Munich Czechoslovak government, which is preserved in the Czech archives: “When the headquarters were relocated to Moravia in September 1938 on account of the mobilization, the deputy commander of the Soviet Air Force came there to hold talks with me about the USSR’s readiness to provide 700 airplanes with crews to reinforce our air force. We willingly accepted his proposal and selected the airfields we would put at their disposal. General Vehirek flew with him over the airfields and the anti-aircraft batteries.” The Soviet planes were assigned to Spišská Nová Ves, Sliač and other Slovakian airfields.[42]

S. Prasolov, who published this document in his research, discussed in detail the question of whether it was possible for Soviet planes and Red Army divisions to reach Czechoslovakia through intermediary countries. Whereas the attitude of the Polish government was totally negative, the stance of Romania was less clear. It should be said that the possibility of military cooperation between Moscow and Prague and the use of the Romanian corridor for this purpose have been hotly debated in recent times. V. Maryina speaks of the debate between the German historian I. Pfaff, who cites a letter sent to Litvinov by Romanian Foreign Minister N. Petrescu-Comnen on September 23, 1938, with his assent for Soviet troops to pass through Romanian territory, and the US-based Czech historian M. Hauner, who calls this document a forgery.[43] At the same time, there is evidence that suggests Soviet troops had other means of reaching Czechoslovakia to provide assistance (see the aforementioned study by S. Prasolov).

The only condition for such assistance was that Prague clearly and unambiguously ask Moscow for help. This did not take place, however. By the way, when Beneš tried to explain his refusal of Soviet aid in later conversations with Soviet interlocutors, he never spoke of the “ambivalence” of Soviet policy or the physical impossibility of Soviet-Czechoslovak military cooperation. Two such discussions are known to have taken place: a conversation with V. Molotov during the latter’s visit to Great Britain on June 9, 1942, and a discussion with J. Stalin and K. Voroshilov on December 11, 1943, following the signature of the Soviet-Czechoslovak Treaty on Friendship and Postwar Cooperation. During the first conversation, Beneš compared his decision not to offer military resistance to Hitler to the decision of the Soviet leadership to sign a non-aggression treaty with Germany in August 1939. According to his own recollections of the conversation, he said, “To the question of why I didn’t want to start the war together with them [i.e., the Soviet ally] in 1938, I replied that the problem was the same as in 1939. In 1938, the West could have betrayed us by taking advantage of the conflict between us and Germany to start a war against the Soviet Union. I wanted to avoid this at all costs, as it was already clear to me in 1938 that war was inevitable and that it was going to be a war against Germany on two fronts. This is the only way it could be won. Molotov readily agreed with this.”[44] However, the last fragment of the conversation is missing in the Soviet transcript.[45] Clearly, the Soviet interlocutor had no intention in engaging in a debate with Beneš, who was an ally of the USSR in the anti-Hitler coalition at the time. It is also doubtful that he “readily agreed” with Beneš’s claim of being Europe’s saviour, to all intents and purposes. The analogy between Munich and the 1939 treaty is not convincing, either: the Soviet Union signed the treaty on account of the reluctance of Western powers to cooperate with it, while the Czechoslovak government capitulated despite the willingness of the Soviet side to offer assistance, including military aid, to Czechoslovakia.

The second conversation is known in J. Smutny’s account: “Stalin spoke about Munich and attacked Beneš [with the question of] why we didn’t fight in 1938. Dr. Beneš was somewhat surprised yet tried to explain with a smile what Munich was all about… Stalin used the Munich intermezzo [in the conversation] to praise the Czechoslovak army. Voroshilov helped him. ‘Your army’, he said, ‘was better than the Polish army. It was the best in Central Europe.’ Stalin added, ‘But you were afraid of us.’ He meant to say: afraid of the Bolsheviks. Beneš retorted, ‘If we were afraid of you, I wouldn’t be here today.’ He explained to Stalin why we didn’t begin the war. He wanted a war, but a war on two fronts. A war exclusively with Russian help would have been a war on one front only. The rest of Europe would have passively looked on and perhaps even helped Germany. Stalin and Voroshilov listened with an ironic smile, showing they held a different opinion on the matter.” Clearly, the Soviet interlocutors disagreed with Beneš’s implied assertion that even the joint forces of Czechoslovakia and the Soviet Union could not have defeated the Wehrmacht in 1938. To corroborate their stance, they invited the Czechoslovak guests to view a film that demonstrated the power of the Red Army at the time. Smutny continued his transcript by noting that, upon his return to London, Beneš said that “everyone had stuck to his opinion”.[46]

New information about the strategic deployment of the Soviet armed forces on the eve of Munich supports the plausibility of the viewpoint that the USSR was capable of opposing Hitler on the battlefield at the time.[47] In addition, historians have conjectured that, had Hitler faced the combined military potential of Czechoslovakia and the USSR, he would have refrained from using force.[48]

The Munich betrayal led Czechoslovakia to lose 38% of its territory, including its principal defensive installations and main industrial centres and military plants. The demographic losses were also high: in addition to the German population, the territories annexed by Germany had, by different estimates, between 500 and 750 thousand Czech inhabitants. Over 100,000 ethnic Czechs and about 30,000 ethnic Germans fled from the Hitler’s invadors. About 2,000 German anti-Fascists from the Sudetenland were sent to Dachau Concentration Camp. As the German historian J. Zarusky noted with bitter irony, “for them the motto ‘Heim ins Reich’ [Back home to the Reich] acquired a very peculiar and fairly cynical meaning”.[49] For Hitler, Munich created ideal conditions for interfering in the domestic affairs of the now virtually defenceless Czechoslovak state. In particular, Berlin issued an ultimatum to the Czech president to step down, hinting that Germany would reduce its territorial claims if he did so. As a result, Beneš resigned on October 5 and left the country on October 22, first going to London (where he was given a fairly cold reception) and then to the USA. However, Germany made no territorial concessions in response: Hitler had simply duped the Czechs. On November 30, the former Chairman of the Supreme Court and 66-year-old law professor E. Hácha became President of Czechoslovakia. The new foreign minister was F. Chvalkovský, who had a long-standing reputation for pro-German views. Civil rights and liberties began to be curtailed. The Soviet Embassy was put under tight police surveillance, and an anti-Soviet campaign was launched in the press, which called, among others, for officially denouncing the Soviet-Czechoslovak treaty of 1935. In a conversation with Aleksandrovsky on October 22, Chvalkovský stated that his government had signed the treaty against its will. At the same time, he rejected the proposal of the Soviet government for the USSR to serve as one of the guarantors of the new borders of Czecho-Slovakia (the name of the state was now written with a dash to stress the new autonomy of Slovakia).

In Munich there was predestined the depriving Czechoslovakia of territories along its southern borders. The Czech government was summoned to solve the so-called “Hungarian question”, either through an agreement with Hungary or through the arbitration of states that had signed the Munich Agreement. Nevertheless, the decision was subsequently made single-handedly by the German and Italian foreign ministers at a meeting in Vienna on November 2, 1938, which became known as the “First Vienna Award”. They ruled that territories with a total area of 11,927 sq.km. and a population of over a million would be ceded to Hungary: the southern Slovak districts (approx. 10,000 sq.km.) and the southwestern districts of Transcarpathian Ukraine (approx. 2,000 sq.km.). France and Great Britain did not protest against this decision, which marked the further dismantlement of the Versailles system. Furthermore, on December 6, 1938, France signed an agreement with Germany that signified to all intents and purposes the final abandonment of the idea of collective security (Chamberlain had signed a similar treaty with Hitler earlier, just before leaving Munich).

The Munich redesign of the European status quo culminated in the events of March 1939. On March 11, A. Seyss-Inquart, the Nazi governor (Reichsstatthalter) of Austria (renamed “Ostmark” after the Anschluss), came to a cabinet meeting of the autonomous Slovakian government and called for proclaiming the “independence” of the Slovak state, which was done three days later on March 14.[50] Pro-Fascist politicians in Transcarpathian Ukraine also tried to declare “independence”. At this time, the international press actively implemented a propaganda campaign describing the activities of Ukrainian nationalists in Transcarpathian Ukraine and speculating about the idea of launching a “war of liberation” from its territory against Soviet Ukraine. However, Berlin decided not to aggravate Soviet-German relations for the time being and ceded the whole territory of Transcarpathian Ukraine to Hungary. Slovakia became a German satellite, while the remainder of the former Czechoslovak state was stripped of its sovereignty and turned into the “Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia”. The entry of the Wehrmacht into Prague on March 15, 1939, put a definitive end to the Versailles world order and served as a stern verdict for the Munich policy of appeasing Hitler’s aggression.

Aleksey Filitov, C.Sc. in History

English translation D. Dynin