Unhappy Anniversary: A Wolfsonian Reflection on the Abandonment of the Czechs and the Appeasement of Hitler, Munich, 1938
As is clear from some editorial cartoons published by the American cartoonist Vaughn Shoemaker (creator of “John Q. Public”) in September, 1938, Europeans experienced another great “war scare.” That month, Adolf Hitler made demands for a “greater Germany” and initiated a campaign of threats, bluff, and bluster designed to carve out more territory in the “heart” of Europe.
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Flushed with his recent success in engineering the relatively bloodless annexation of Austria into his “greater Germany,” in September, 1938, Herr Hitler turned his attention and appetite on the “German-speaking Sudetenland,” determined to wrest it away from the Czechoslovakian Republic created in the wake of the First World War. Hitler’s demands on September 22nd for the “immediate cession” of the territory and the removal of the Czech population by the month’s end triggered troop mobilization in Czechoslovakia and France and the threat of another European war.
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In an attempt to avert the crisis, British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain and French Prime Minister Edouard Daladier traveled to Munich to meet with Herr Hitler. If the Czechs hoped that Britain and France would honor their commitment to defend their nation in the event of a German invasion, the pact signed in Munich must have come as a grave shock.
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While Daladier was against appeasing and encouraging Nazi Germany’s aggressive and expansionist aims, his British counterpart was unprepared and unwilling to go to war over Czechoslovakia. In fact, Chamberlain not only cheerfully signed the Munich Pact, but stayed behind to sign another document with Hitler to ensure the future of an Anglo-German peace. Returning to England, Chamberlain addressed crowds of ecstatic Londoners claiming that the Munich Pact had secured “peace with honor” and “peace in our time.”
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The peace celebrations were decidedly short-lived, at least for the Czechoslovaks. The day after Chamberlain’s self-congratulatory speech in London, the Czechoslovak government capitulated to Hitler’s annexation demands, knowing their tiny army could not stand alone against the mighty German Wehrmacht.
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Having whetted his insatiable appetite with the Sudetenland, Hitler annexed the remainder of the country in March 1939 and the Czech nation ceased to exist.
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While Neville Chamberlain momentarily appeared to be the master negotiator who saved the world from the threat of a second “Great War,” history has been less kind to his image and his influence. In a political parody of Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland published before the outbreak of WWII in 1939, Chamberlain is depicted as the hookah-smoking caterpillar besting a diminutive Hitler.
The Wolfsonian–FIU, Gift of Pamela K. Harer
After Nazi Germany invaded Poland and provoked the Second World War, the British Prime Minister’s policy of appeasement fell into immediate disrepute, and images of Chamberlain are far less flattering.
The Wolfsonian–FIU, Gift of Martijn F. Le Coultre
The Wolfsonian–FIU, Mitchell Wolfson, Jr. Collection
The Wolfsonian–FIU, Gift of Francis Xavier Luca & Clara Helena Palacio Luca
For the Czechs, of course, that disillusionment came much earlier.
The Wolfsonian–FIU, Mitchell Wolfson, Jr. Collection
Wolfsonian-FIU Library 
In truth, Czechoslovakia was given to the Nazis by the British and French rulers. There was no cowardice by these rulers. Their intent was to help the rise of Germany as a military power, and for it to conquer the Soviet Union. By far the most complete book is “Le Choix de la Défaite” by Dr. Lacroix-Riz. (Armand Colin, Paris, 2nd Ed. 2010) Unfortunately the book is only in French and it’s 679 pages aimed at serious history students. Her sources are impeccable, 67 pages of small print. The other heavyweight historian, Dr. Michael Jabara Carley, writes in English very clearly and for a popular readership, but his sources are mainly limited to diplomatic archives, and as the dean of Canadian historians, he probably needed to curb his analysis. Dr. Lacroix-Riz is an outspoken Communist and has no such need. Lacroix-Riz found the most incriminating material in the German archives and in the business archives of French bankers and industrialists. If you are a Francophone, you can find her on Youtube, and she is very lucid.
The worst fears of the Soviets turned out to be a simple nasty truth: the West planned for the Nazis to invade the USSR, and that’s why Britain and France were unconcerned with a re-armed Germany, and even helped finance the re-armament. Germany produced as many warplanes in a month as France made in all of one of their better years. Britain had only 2 army divisions for Europe and France had 60 divisions, while the Germans had over 90. That didn’t produce a panic anywhere except in Moscow. The Allied military leaders were supremely unconcerned because “the fix was in”, or so they thought. But scorpions will always be scorpions, and the Nazis surprised the French and British when they invaded France in May, 1940. Until then, it had been a phony war in every sense, and Britain was tinkering with the idea of bombing the Soviet oil fields in Baku.
It’s important to note that while the Nazis and the Soviets are long gone, but there is a tremendous continuity in England and France. The Conservatives are still in power in London, the French bankers still rule their politicians, etc.