The Coming of World War II 1053attack. But the Soviets refused to act unless joined by France, and France
refused to act without considerable British assistance, which Chamberlain
had already ruled out. In any case, France could really only help its Eastern
European allies by attacking Germany, which the French government
viewed as out of the question. In May, German troops massed along the
Czechoslovak border.
On September 15, 1938, Chamberlain flew to the Fiihrer’s mountain
retreat in southern Germany. When Hitler informed him that he would risk
world war to unite the Sudeten Germans to their fatherland, Chamberlain
agreed to try to convince the French and Czech governments that Ger
many's absorption of the Sudetenland was the best hope for peace. Hitler
promised Chamberlain that this would be the last territorial revision of the
Treaty of Versailles that Germany would demand. On September 19, 1938,
Britain and France virtually ordered the Prague government to cede to Ger
many territories where the 3 million ethnic Germans formed a majority.
Chamberlain returned to Germany to see Hitler again on September 22.
He asked only that the new borders of Czechoslovakia be protected by a
joint agreement.
Faced with the kind of collective security agreement he loathed, Hitler
now threatened that Germany would occupy the Sudetenland by October
1 and would recognize Polish and Hungarian claims on territory ceded to
Czechoslovakia in 1918 (he was already encouraging Slovaks to push for
autonomy). This would have dismembered Czechoslovakia for all practi
cal purposes (see Map 26.1). The French government balked, demanding
Hitler’s original terms as presented to Chamberlain. Hitler then seemed
to draw back, agreeing to meet with Mussolini, French Prime Minister
Edouard Daladier, and Chamberlain to settle everything once and for all.
In London, Chamberlain confronted mounting skepticism. The British
government ordered preliminary measures for civil defense in case of
war. Chamberlain tried to rally British public opinion with a speech on
September 27: “How horrible, fantastic, incredible it is that we should be
digging trenches and trying on gas masks here because of a quarrel in a
faraway country between people of whom we know nothing. It seems still
more impossible that a quarrel which has already been settled in princi
ple should be the subject of war.”
At the multilateral conference at Munich in September 1938, Hitler
refused to allow representatives of the Soviet Union to attend. Czech offi
cials were not even permitted to assist at the dismemberment of their own
country. Chamberlain and Daladier agreed to immediate German occupa
tion of the Sudetenland (the most industrialized part of the country),
Poland’s annexation of Teschen, and the transfer of parts of Slovakia to
Hungary, all in exchange for Hitler’s personal guarantee of the redrawn
borders of the partitioned nation. Chamberlain stepped off the plane in
London announcing to cheering crowds that he had brought his country
“peace in our time.”