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The Munich
conference was held on September 29-30, 1938, at a hotel in the
Bavarian capital. The participants were Adolf Hitler, French Prime
Minister Eduard Daladier, British Prime Minister Neville
Chamberlain, and Benito Mussolini. The conference was called after a
protracted crisis created by the ethnic German minority-sponsored
and supported by Nazi Germany-in the Sudetenland, a province of the
Republic of Czechoslovakia.
The Nazi
regime exacerbated the crisis; the British government, in contrast,
was fervently committed to keeping matters from escalating into
hostilities-even if it meant repudiating its tripartite defense
treaty with France and Czechoslovakia, and even as Hitler constantly
changed and stepped up his demands.
Chamberlain
and Hitler negotiated at length. Representatives of Czechoslovakia
were not invited to take part in the talks. Daladier and Mussolini
were secondary players. First, they attempted to conclude an
autonomy arrangement for the German minority in Czechoslovakia;
later on, they debated the annexation of the Sudetenland to Germany.
When Germany increased its demands again, Great Britain, France, and
Czechoslovakia verged on declaring war on Nazi Germany. However, in
Chamberlain’s famous speech, he stated: "How horrible,
fantastic, incredible it is that we should be digging trenches and
trying on gas masks here because of a quarrel in a faraway country
between people of whom we know nothing!"
To prevent
war, Chamberlain offered Hitler and Mussolini a quadripartite
conference. By accepting the invitation, Hitler forewent a military
invasion at the last moment in favor of a settlement. The decisions
at the conference amounted to the contents of the memorandum that
the British had refused to accept shortly before. The decisions were
reported to the government of Czechoslovakia as a final verdict,
with which it was to comply without appeal.
Upon his
return from Munich, Chamberlain waved the joint statement at the
airport in London and proclaimed, "I bring you peace in our
time."
Germany’s
annexation of the Sudetenland-with its military industries, gold
reserves, communications system, coal mines, and anti-German defense
lines-sealed the fate of the Republic of Czechoslovakia. With the
German occupation of Bohemia and Moravia on March 15, 1939, breaking
the Munich Agreement, Western statesmen awakened to the realization
that war was inevitable. |
