The notorious agreement was a disgrace. But some of the story is misunderstood. From Based in Bohemia.
Few events in Czech history carry as much emotional baggage as the Munich Agreement, signed in the early hours of 30 September 1938.
The word “Munich” itself is shorthand for betrayal, abandonment and national humiliation.
When Neville Chamberlain waved his little piece of paper signed by “Herr Hitler” at Heston Aerodrome (the paper was actually the separate Anglo-German declaration, not the Munich Agreement), he was brandishing a naive promise of peace that lasted less than a year.
For many Brits, including myself, it’s an enduring source of shame.
But how much of what we think we know about September 1938 is actually true?
I asked two historians of Czechoslovakia to break down three of the most enduring myths, misconceptions, and over-simplifications of the Munich Crisis.
‘About Us, Without Us’
“O nás bez nás.” About us, without us. Few phrases more succinctly capture the common view of Munich as a carve-up.
Hitler, Mussolini, Chamberlain, and Daladier meet around a table to dissect the sovereign nation of Czechoslovakia – without its leaders present. They pore over a map, drawing lines around the German-speaking borderlands – commonly known as the Sudetenland – that would be forcibly attached to Nazi Germany.
The end result is presented to a stunned Czechoslovak president, Edvard Benes. It comes as a bolt from the blue.
Well. Not quite.
Czechoslovakia’s leaders were thinking the unthinkable weeks before Munich.
On September 15th, Benes sent his personal envoy, Jaromir Necas, to Paris with a concrete proposal.
“Necas spoke to Leon Blum and told him that Czechoslovakia would be prepared to give up areas amounting to roughly four to six thousand square kilometers if, in exchange, Germany took in 1.5 to 2 million ethnic Germans, some with the surrendered territory, others in a population transfer,” said Vit Smetana, author of numerous books on the subject, including In the Shadow of Munich.
“That is really the moment when Czechoslovakia abandoned the principle of defending the territorial integrity of the state – and this, in my view, was the biggest mistake,” he added.
Blum, a former French prime minister, informed the serving premier, Edouard Daladier, who took the proposal to London.
“Once the British and French representatives learned this, they thought – ‘Fine. Then it’s only a matter of degree. Let us agree on a compromise. How large will the territories be that Czechoslovakia gives up?’ ” added Smetana, a historian at the Institute of Contemporary History of the Czech Academy of Sciences.
The Czechoslovak government initially rejected their proposal, which was to surrender every district with a German majority to the Reich.
But then the British and French envoys returned with an ultimatum: accept the loss of territory, or face Hitler alone.
On 21 September, they capitulated, prompting mass demonstrations in Prague. A belated general mobilization followed two days later.
That, of course, was not the end of it. Hitler escalated his demands. Britain and France accepted them. And yes, the Czechoslovaks were not in the room to object.
Verdict: O nás bez nás? In the conference room on 30 September? Absolutely. But Benes’s government had accepted the principle of giving up territory to Hitler weeks earlier – and even floated its own proposal.
‘We Could Have Fought’
The Czechoslovak army was ready. Hundreds of thousands of men had mobilized, the country possessed modern weapons and formidable border fortifications, and Hitler hadn’t even mobilized all his own forces.
Had Benes ordered the army to resist, Czechoslovakia could have given Hitler a bloody nose. Perhaps the Western powers would have intervened. Perhaps the Second World War could have been averted.
Instead, the country surrendered without firing a shot.
But could Czechoslovakia really have held off Nazi Germany?
“The best estimates are that Czechoslovakia might have been able to hold out for up to six weeks, which is quite a considerable time,” said Mary Heimann, professor of modern history at Cardiff University and a leading historian of Czechoslovakia.
“The question is – who would have come to their aid? I can’t think of anyone,” added Heimann, author of Czechoslovakia: The State That Failed.
Czechoslovakia, of course, had a treaty of mutual defense with France, not Britain.
But Vit Smetana doubts the French army would have been able to do much to help them – even with British air power and a naval blockade.
“What did the French do when Poland went to war the following year? They manned the Maginot Line and advanced a few hundred meters towards [Germany’s] Siegfried Line. But they never attacked it. They wouldn’t have done so in 1938 either.”
Nor were Czechoslovakia’s fortifications an impregnable shield. The strongest line faced Germany in the north and west; after the Anschluss, the Wehrmacht could also attack from Austria, where the southern defenses were far less complete.
Poland and Hungary, meanwhile, were hostile, leaving Czechoslovakia dangerously exposed on several fronts.
OK, what about the Soviets?
“The Soviet Union did nothing beyond the letter of the 1935 Czechoslovak-Soviet treaty, which made Soviet assistance conditional on assistance from France. Throughout 1938, the Soviet Union repeatedly said that Czechoslovakia could rely on them to fulfill the treaty’s obligations, but only if France fulfilled hers,” said Smetana.
In the last 10 days of September 1938, an increasingly desperate Benes repeatedly asked Moscow if the Soviets would consider acting alone.
There was no answer.
Mary Heimann, too, is skeptical, explaining that Soviet troops would have had to pass through Poland, which would not have allowed it, or Romania, which had poor roads and railways.
She acknowledges the philosophical argument that Czechoslovakia could have fought, like Poland, to preserve its national honor. But she questions whether the symbolic value of resistance would have justified the human cost.
“You’re asking people to die for a cause that can’t be won.”
Verdict: Czechoslovakia could have fought, and probably could have held out for several weeks. But without a massive and well-coordinated military campaign by its allies, it would have been a doomed endeavor.
‘Munich Was Inevitable’
By September 1938, Czechoslovakia’s fate was sealed.
Hitler wanted the Sudetenland. Britain and France wanted to avoid war. Prague was trapped between them. Nothing Benes or anyone else could have done would have changed the outcome.
Munich was simply the inevitable collision of those forces.
This, perhaps, is less controversial. But when, exactly, did it become inevitable?
For Heimann, the answer lies well before September 1938.
“I tend to see 1935 – probably March 1935 – as the tipping point,” she told me.
By then Hitler was openly rearming Germany, while nationalist politics were gaining strength across Central Europe, including inside Czechoslovakia.
Heimann points not just to the electoral success of Konrad Henlein’s Sudeten German Party but also to the growing tendency of Czechoslovakia’s other nationalities to vote along ethnic lines.
Heimann argues that Munich did not make the final collapse inevitable. The immediate crisis of March 1939 grew out of conflict between Prague and the autonomous Slovak and Ruthenian governments – an internal breakdown that Hitler was able to exploit.
Vit Smetana suggests the point of no return was March 1936, when Hitler stunned Europe by reoccupying the Rheinland. The Nazi leader later confessed this had been his biggest risk – the French army could have easily smashed his troops at this point.
The failure to enforce the Versailles settlement, combined with the opportunities Hitler gained by advancing his demands incrementally, meant the die was cast.
Even if hindsight, of course, can make missed opportunities look deceptively obvious.
“In 1936 nobody knew where German aggression and political ambitions were going to lead,” he told me.
Verdict: Munich and the ultimate destruction of democratic Czechoslovakia were not inevitable. But the opportunities to prevent it most likely came years earlier, long before four men gathered around a table in Bavaria.
I appreciate this article is merely scratching the surface of a period about which hundreds – if not thousands – of books have been written.
Munich remains – at least for me – synonymous with the failure, cynicism and short-sightedness of appeasement.
The actions of Czechoslovakia’s western allies in 1938 were exploited by Communist propaganda for decades. They continue to be exploited by some politicians today, who forget to mention the Soviets also abandoned Czechoslovakia to its fate.
Was it a betrayal? Yes, in the broader moral and political sense, although only France abandoned a formal alliance.
But hindsight is famously 20-20. And history is rarely black and white.
“One should always remember that events which are today the distant past were once in the future,” Vit Smetana reminded me.
“Nobody knew how they would turn out.”
Rob Cameron is a journalist and broadcaster based in Prague. For many years he was the BBC correspondent for the Czech Republic and Slovakia. This article originally appeared in Based in Bohemia, where you can sign up for free to receive regular stories like this, or become a paid subscriber to support Rob’s work. Republished by permission.
