Munich Agreement (1938): Chamberlain, Appeasement and Hitler

The Munich Agreement was a settlement reached in Munich on 29–30 September 1938 under which Britain, France and Italy allowed Nazi Germany to annex the Sudetenland, the German-speaking border regions of Czechoslovakia. Czechoslovakia itself was not at the table. Hailed at first as having saved Europe from war, the deal became the defining example of appeasement after Hitler broke it six months later, and “Munich” has been a political byword for capitulation ever since.

Background: Czechoslovakia and the Sudeten Germans

Czechoslovakia was created in 1918 from the ruins of Austria-Hungary, and its borders were confirmed by the peace settlements that followed the First World War, including the Treaty of Versailles. It was a democracy with a strong army and a modern arms industry, centred on the Škoda works in Plzeň. It was allied with France and, from 1935, the Soviet Union.

The new state included about 3 million German speakers, living mostly in the mountainous borderlands of Bohemia and Moravia that became known as the Sudetenland. Many resented Czech rule, and the Great Depression hit their industries hard. By 1935 the Sudeten German Party, led by Konrad Henlein and secretly funded by Berlin, had won more votes than any other party in the Czechoslovak parliamentary election.

Hitler’s annexation of Austria in March 1938 (see Anschluss) left Czechoslovakia surrounded on three sides by German territory. In April Henlein presented the Karlsbad demands for autonomy, on Hitler’s instructions to keep asking for more than Prague could grant.

The crisis of 1938

In May 1938 rumours of German troop movements led Czechoslovakia to order a partial mobilisation. Britain and France issued warnings, and when no invasion followed, Hitler felt humiliated. On 30 May he told his generals that it was his unalterable decision to smash Czechoslovakia by military action, setting a target date of 1 October.

Britain sent Lord Runciman to mediate over the summer, with little result. On 12 September, at the Nazi Party rally in Nuremberg, Hitler delivered a violent speech against Czechoslovakia, and unrest broke out in the Sudetenland.

Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain then took the dramatic step of flying to meet Hitler himself, reportedly the first flight of his life, at the age of 69. At Berchtesgaden on 15 September Hitler demanded the transfer of the Sudeten regions. Britain and France agreed in principle, and on 21 September, under heavy pressure from both, the Czechoslovak government accepted.

When Chamberlain returned to Bad Godesberg on 22–23 September, Hitler raised his demands: German troops must occupy the territory by 1 October, without the orderly transfer the Western powers had planned. Chamberlain could not accept this, and Europe moved to the brink of war. Czechoslovakia mobilised, France called up reservists, the Royal Navy was mobilised and trenches were dug in London parks. Gas masks were issued to civilians, and plans were drawn up to evacuate children from British cities.

On 27 September Chamberlain made a radio broadcast lamenting that Britain might go to war over “a quarrel in a far-away country between people of whom we know nothing”. The next day, while he was addressing the House of Commons, news arrived that Hitler, after an appeal through Mussolini, had invited him to a conference in Munich.

The conference at Munich

The four leaders met on 29 September at the Führerbau, the Nazi Party building in Munich. Mussolini presented a draft agreement that had in fact been drawn up in the German Foreign Office. The talks were disorganised, with no proper agenda, and two Czechoslovak diplomats who had travelled to Munich were kept waiting in a hotel and only told the result afterwards.

The agreement was signed in the early hours of 30 September, though it is dated 29 September. Its main terms were:

• German troops would occupy the Sudetenland in four stages between 1 and 10 October 1938.
• An international commission would decide the final boundary and supervise plebiscites in disputed areas; in practice it accepted German claims and no plebiscites were held.
• Britain and France would guarantee the rest of Czechoslovakia; Germany and Italy would do so once Polish and Hungarian claims were settled. This guarantee was never given.

Later that morning Chamberlain visited Hitler in his private flat and asked him to sign a short Anglo-German declaration stating that the two peoples would never go to war with one another again. Hitler signed it readily.

For Hitler the outcome was, in some ways, a disappointment. He had wanted a short war to destroy Czechoslovakia completely and later complained that Chamberlain had cheated him of his entry into Prague. For the Western leaders, by contrast, avoiding war was the overriding aim, and they accepted terms only slightly better than those Hitler had demanded at Bad Godesberg.

Key people

• Neville Chamberlain – British prime minister and the chief architect of appeasement.
• Adolf Hitler – German dictator, who in fact wanted war in 1938 and resented being cheated of it.
• Édouard Daladier – French prime minister, who doubted Hitler’s promises but would not act without Britain.
• Benito Mussolini – Italian dictator, who posed as the peacemaker.
• Edvard Beneš – president of Czechoslovakia, who accepted the terms on 30 September and resigned on 5 October.

Reactions: “peace for our time”

Chamberlain returned to Heston Aerodrome near London on 30 September and waved the Anglo-German declaration to the crowds. That evening, from a window of 10 Downing Street, he said that he believed it was “peace for our time”. He was greeted as a hero, and Daladier was cheered in Paris too, though he privately thought the crowds misguided.

Not everyone agreed. Duff Cooper resigned from the Cabinet as First Lord of the Admiralty. In the Commons debate, Winston Churchill told the House that Britain had “sustained a total and unmitigated defeat”. The government nonetheless won the vote on its policy comfortably on 6 October.

In Czechoslovakia the reaction was bitter. The country lost its fortified frontier and much of its industry, and several hundred thousand Czechs were left inside Germany. Poland seized the Teschen (Těšín) area in early October, and in November the First Vienna Award gave parts of southern Slovakia to Hungary. Together these losses took away roughly a third of the country’s population.

Consequences

The settlement lasted less than six months. On 15 March 1939 German troops occupied Prague and the remaining Czech lands, which became the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia, while Slovakia became a German client state. For the first time Hitler had seized territory with no German-speaking majority, and British opinion turned decisively against appeasement.

On 31 March 1939 Britain and France guaranteed Poland’s independence. The Soviet Union, excluded from Munich and doubtful of Western resolve, signed a non-aggression pact with Germany in August 1939. On 1 September Germany launched the invasion of Poland, and two days later Britain and France declared war.

The appeasement debate

For a generation after 1940, Munich was judged through the polemic “Guilty Men”, which blamed Chamberlain and his colleagues for leaving Britain weak and Hitler emboldened. Postwar leaders often cited Munich as a lesson that aggressors must be confronted early.

Since the opening of government archives in the 1960s and 1970s, many historians have offered a more complex picture. Britain’s air defences, including the Hurricane and Spitfire fighters and the radar chain, were far from ready in 1938; public opinion and the Dominions opposed war over Czechoslovakia; and France was unwilling to attack. Others answer that Germany was also unready, that Czechoslovakia’s army and fortifications were significant, and that some German generals were plotting to remove Hitler if war broke out. The debate over whether war in 1938 would have gone better for the Allies remains open.

Myths and facts

Myth: Chamberlain was simply naive. He was deeply suspicious of Hitler but believed war was a catastrophe to be avoided if at all possible, and he accelerated rearmament at the same time.

Myth: “Peace in our time”. The phrase is often misquoted. Chamberlain said “peace for our time”. In the same remarks he spoke of bringing back “peace with honour”, consciously echoing Disraeli’s return from the Congress of Berlin in 1878.

Timeline

• 1938, 12–13 March: Germany annexes Austria.
• 1938, 20–21 May: The May Crisis; Czechoslovakia partially mobilises.
• 1938, 15 September: Chamberlain meets Hitler at Berchtesgaden.
• 1938, 22–23 September: Talks at Bad Godesberg; Hitler raises his demands.
• 1938, 29–30 September: Munich conference; agreement signed in the early hours of 30 September.
• 1938, 1–10 October: German troops occupy the Sudetenland.
• 1938, 5 October: President Beneš resigns.
• 1939, 15 March: Germany occupies the rest of the Czech lands.
• 1939, 1 September: Germany invades Poland; war follows two days later.

Why it matters

The Munich Agreement showed the limits of concession as a way of dealing with a dictator bent on expansion, and it sacrificed a democratic state without its consent. Its legacy still shapes political arguments about when to compromise and when to stand firm against aggression.