The Munich Agreement

SEP 30 1938 · 12:00

Chamberlain, Daladier, Hitler, Mussolini and Ciano before the signing of the Munich Agreement, 29 to 30 September 1938. Place: Führerbau, Königsplatz, Munich Figures: Adolf Hitler · Neville Chamberlain, British Prime Minister · Édouard Daladier, French Premier · Benito Mussolini, mediating · Edvard Beneš, Czechoslovak President, not invited Four Powers, One Absent The four heads of government meet at the Führerbau in Munich on the evening of 29 September 1938 and sign before two a.m. on the 30th. The agreement transfers the Sudetenland, the German-majority border districts of Czechoslovakia, to Germany in stages between 1 and 10 October. With the Sudetenland go the entire Czech border fortification system, most of the country's heavy industry, three-quarters of its electrical generating capacity, and the natural mountain frontier. The Czechoslovak delegation is held in a Munich hotel and presented with the terms after signature. Beneš accepts on 30 September because the alternative is to fight Germany alone. France abandons its 1924 alliance with Prague; Britain has never had one. The country that the Versailles settlement (see [[treaty-of-versailles-1919]]) had built as a Central European liberal democracy is partitioned by its supposed protectors in a thirteen-hour meeting to which it is not admitted. Peace for Our Time Chamberlain returns to Heston aerodrome on the afternoon of 30 September waving a separate Anglo-German declaration of non-aggression and tells the crowd at Downing Street that he has brought back peace for our time. Daladier, met by cheering crowds at Le Bourget, mutters to an aide that the French do not understand what has just happened (les imbéciles, in some accounts). On 15 March 1939, German troops occupy the rump Czech lands without resistance and declare the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia. Slovakia is detached as a German client. Whatever Munich was supposed to settle, it has settled nothing for six months. The agreement enters the lexicon as the canonical case of appeasement, and the comparison to Munich becomes one of the most weaponized analogies in twentieth-century foreign-policy debate. Six months later, the door is open to [[ribbentrop-molotov-1939]] and [[germany-invades-poland-1939]]. Video: Indy Neidell on the 29 September 1938 Munich Agreement, Chamberlain's peace for our time, and the dismemberment of Czechoslovakia.