578 Chapter 29
its industry. When Hitler stated this claim as giving the
Sudetenland “the right of self-determination,” the prime
minister of Britain, Neville Chamberlain, agreed to
meet with him to discuss the Czech question. Although
Hitler made clear his intention to annex the Sudeten-
land, British and French (but not the Czech) diplomats
prepared for the Munich Conference of October 1938
with Hitler. There, Chamberlain and the French pre-
mier, Edouard Daladier, agreed to the annexation of the
Sudetenland and pressured the Czech government of
President Edvard Benes (who thereafter resigned) into
accepting it. The effect was to reduce Czechoslovakia
to a Nazi client state. In early 1939 Czechoslovakia was
abolished, most of it (Bohemia and Moravia) becoming
a German protectorate.
The western capitulation to Hitler’s demands at
Munich became known as a policy of appeasement—
appeasing dictators by surrendering to their demands.
A 1938 newsreel records the return of Prime Minister
Chamberlain from Munich and clarifies his policy: A
pleased Chamberlain waves the Munich agreement and
proclaims that he has won “peace in our time.” Public
opinion in both Britain and France shared in the sense
of relief that a war, fought over “far-off countries of
which we know little” (such as Serbia in 1914), had
been avoided. To Chamberlain’s opponents, led by
Winston Churchill, Chamberlain and Daladier had
made craven concessions to avoid fighting.
World War II began when Hitler sought to revise
the eastern border of Germany, where the Polish Corri-
dor and the free city of Danzig separated East Prussia
from the rest of Germany. This, Hitler told the world,
was his last territorial demand in Europe. Stalin neither
believed this nor waited for further Anglo-French con-
cessions. He answered western appeasement with the
Nazi-Soviet Nonaggression Treaty, also known as the
Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact for the foreign ministers who
signed it. Germany and the Soviet Union promised not
to attack each other and to remain neutral in a war with
a third party. They sealed the bargain with secret provi-
sions of the treaty reprising the eighteenth-century
partition of Poland. Germany would take the western
two-thirds while the Soviet Union absorbed eastern
Poland and the Baltic republics. This treaty stunnedDOCUMENT 29.1
The Hossbach Memorandum on the German Need for War, 1937
After World War II, the Allies searched German archives for docu-
ments to be used in the Nuremberg war crimes trials. The chief docu-
ment used by prosecutors to prove that Hitler intended war is known
as the Hossbach Memorandum, named for the colonel who took
minutes at the meeting. The memorandum records a discussion
at a conference between Hitler and German military leaders in
November 1937.The Führer initially said that the subject matter of today’s
conference was of such high importance that further de-
tailed discussion would probably take place in Cabinet
sessions. However, he, the Führer, had decided not to dis-
cuss this matter in the larger circle of the Reich Cabinet
because of its importance....
The Führer then stated: The aim of German policy is
the security and the preservation of the nation, and its
propagation. This is, consequently, a problem of space.
The German nation is composed of 85 million people,
which... form a homogeneous European racial body
which cannot be found in any other country. On the
other hand, it justifies the demand for larger living space
(Lebensraum) more than for any other nation.... The Ger-
man future is therefore dependent exclusively on the solu-
tion of the need for Lebensraum....
The German question can be solved only by way of
force, and this is never without risk. The battles of Freder-
ick the Great for Silesia, and Bismarck’s wars against Aus-
tria and France had been a tremendous risk.... If we place
the decision to apply force with risk at the head of the fol-
lowing exposition, we are only left to reply to the ques-
tions “when” and “how.”
The rearming of the German Army, the Navy, and
the Air Force, as well as the formation of the Officers’
Corps, are practically concluded. Our material equipment
and armaments are modern, with further delay the danger
of their becoming out-of-date will increase.... In com-
parison with the rearmament of other nations, which will
have been carried out by that time, we shall begin to de-
crease in relative power.... It is certain, however, that we
can wait no longer.
Nürnberg War Crimes Trials Documents. Nazi Conspiracy and Aggres-
sion, vol. 3. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office,
1946–1948.