Month: September 2017

Today in History 09/30/17

German-speaking schoolchildren welcome Adolf Hitler in the Sudetenland, Czechoslovakia, in 1938 (© Central Press/Getty Images)(1938) Hitler’s Germany gains Czech borderlands
Adolph Hitler wants Czechoslovakia’s borderlands, and European leaders, still haunted by the ghosts of World War I and intimidated by the ever-growing Nazi war machine, agree to the demand. The Munich Agreement is signed by Britain, Italy, France, and Germany, allowing the Nazis to annex the ‘Sudetenland.’
The Munich Agreement was a settlement permitting Nazi Germany’s annexation of portions of Czechoslovakia along the country’s borders mainly inhabited by German speakers, for which a new territorial designation “Sudetenland” was coined. The agreement was signed in the early hours of 30 September 1938 after being negotiated at a conference held in Munich, Germany, among the major powers of Europe, excluding the Soviet Union. Today, it is widely regarded as a failed act of appeasement toward Germany. The purpose of the conference was to discuss the future of the Sudetenland in the face of ethnic demands made by Adolf Hitler. The agreement was signed by Germany, France, the United Kingdom and Italy. Sudetenland was of immense strategic importance to Czechoslovakia, as most of its border defenses, and banks were situated there, as well as heavy industrial districts. Part of the borderland was occupied and annexed by Poland.
Munich Agreement
After the summit, the British prime minister Chamberlain returned to the UK where he declared that the Munich agreement meant “peace for our time”

wiki/Munich_Agreement
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