There are anniversaries in the political calendar of Western democracies that London, Washing-ton, Paris and Warsaw world prefer to skip. One of such events took place exactly 75 years ago on September 30, 1938 when prime-ministers of Great Britain and France – Neville Chamberlain and Eduard Daladier – signed the Munich Pact with Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini allowing the aggressors to grab Czechoslovakia. The United States supported the deal.
No matter how hard one tries to delete or blur over this ignominious page in the history of Western diplomacy, the peoples’ memory is too strong to make it forgotten. Indeed, the Munich Pact cannot be consigned to oblivion – it started WWII…
Going through the pages of 1938, one can see that Hitler wanted Czechoslovakia to van-ish from the world map as far back as in the spring of the same year. At the beginning of April he told Mussolini about his plans to stop the movement to the Mediterranean and tackle the issue of Sudetenland predominantly populated by ethnic Germans. In the directive on implementation of Fall Grün («Case Green»), the pre-World War II German plan for an aggressive war against Czechoslovakia, the Fuhrer told Wilhelm Keitel that he was adamant in his plans to make this country cease to exist by taking a military action against it in the near future. Field-Marshal Wil-helm Keitel, Chief of the German High Command, told the commanders-in-chief to start carrying out the order no later than October 1, 1938.
Neville Chamberlain «stopped» Hitler. With touching care he did his best not to bother the Third Reich with any complications on international arena. Meeting Fuhrer in Berchtesgaden (Germany) on September 15, 1938, the British Prime Minister tried to convince him of his desire to facilitate in each and every way the rapprochement between the two countries and was ready to recognize Sudetenland as part of Germany to foster the process. No doubt this stance let Hitler have a free hand; he could not bother anymore about the Western reaction to his policy pursuing the goal of extending the «living space» at the expense of Czech territory. Now he had a reason to be self-assured enough meeting Chamberlain again in Godesburg to demand the ful-fillment of all conditions to make possible the occupation of Sudetenland no later than October 1. The British Prime Minister agreed. The UK chose Italian Duce, a well-known peacemaker, for the role of intermediary to organize the conference on the issue of Sudetenland.
Meeting in Munich on September 29, Hitler, Mussolini, Chamberlain and Daladier agreed to relegate to the Czechoslovak government a demand to cede 75% of its territory to Germany in 10 days. The country was to lose a quarter of its population, a half of industrial potential, strong fortifications at the German border which now was to be moved to the suburbs of Prague.
The negative attitude of the Czech government to the policy of imposed settlement was ignored; its representatives were not even invited to Munich.
So, the Western democracies opened the way for the policy of coercion. But there was the Soviet Union that could have frustrated the plans of the Munich Four being a party (the same way as France was) to the Czechoslovak-Soviet Treaty of Alliance signed on May 16, 1935. A protocol on the signing of the treaty stipulated that that the treaty would go into force only if France gave assistance to the victim of aggression. However, France did not support Czechoslo-vakia in 1938; it betrayed this country having signed the Munich Pact instead. Moscow could have acted unilaterally to defend Czechoslovakia. But there was one condition more to it: the Red Army had to cross the territory of Poland. But the government of this country sided with London and Paris. Juliusz Lukasiewicz, Polish Ambassador to Paris, told his American counter-part William C. Bullitt that his country would immediately declare war on the Soviet Union if it tried to bring its troops to Czechoslovakia crossing the territory of Poland. Warsaw was antici-pating with pleasure the would-be dismemberment of its neighbor harboring plans to take ad-vantage of the situation and have something for itself. In May of the same year French Foreign Minister Georges Bonnet told the French Ambassador that the plan to divide Czechoslovakia between Germany and Hungary with Teschen Silesia (Cieszyn Silesia or Těšín Silesia) going to Poland had ceased to be a secret a long time ago. What gullibility! The telegram that was sent to Mussolini (in early April) listed the «Polish corridor» along with Sudetenland as the problems to be solved in the near future. Grabbing the Polish territory that divided Eastern Prussia from the Reich’s mainland would have sparked a war sooner or later as it really did in a year. But being carried away by prospects of taking part in the division of Czechoslovakia and the would-be ac-quisition of Teschen Silesia, Poland never noticed the threat posed by the shade of the eagle with swastika in its paws approaching the country from the West.
The hyena of Europe, as Chamberlain tactlessly called Poland, was one of the first to be sorry for being nearsighted; it was to become another victim of Nazi Germany in the world war that started on September 1, 1939. France and Great Britain were the next. But were they not the ones who gave a green light to the war in Munich?
The Munich Pact had the following specific features: first, it was a coordinated dictate of Germany and England (France and Italy followed the tide); second, Hungary and Poland were the accomplices in the collusion aimed at dismemberment of Czechoslovakia: the last one occu-pied Teschen Silesia, Hungary got territories in the southern part of Slovakia; third, the Soviet Union ended up in isolation.
The steps it undertook to support Czechoslovakia (the concentration of troops at the western borders) were of no avail.
By ceding the lands that belonged to Czechoslovakia, England and France tried to appease Germany and direct away its aggressive aspirations. The Soviet intelligence re-ported to Moscow that before flying from Munich Chamberlain had met Hitler one more time to be candidly told that Germany had enough planes to attack the USSR, especially once the Soviet aviation was not able to use the landing strips on the Czechoslovak territory.
In a few moments the Munich Pact destroyed the European collective security system that had taken so much effort to create with the Soviet – French and Soviet – Czechoslovak mutual assistance treaties as its core pillars. Having occupied Czechoslovakia, Hitler could clearly see that no Western state, or a group of states, was intent to obstruct his plans of territorial revision. So, on April 3, 1939 he issued a top secret directive defining the precise date of attacking Poland – September 1 the same year.
Under the circumstances there was nothing left for the Soviet Union but to evade the pro-spect of being left alone confronted by a coalition of Western states by signing a non-aggression treaty with Germany in August 1939.
Today the Western politicians try to shake the responsibility for trying «to appease» Hit-ler that resulted in the world fire, so they apply efforts to put the blame on the Soviet Union for inciting the Second World War. In reality, they cannot forgive the Soviet leadership for its ingen-ious diplomatic maneuver that allowed the USSR to escape the trap. It managed to do it thanks to the non-aggression treaty with Germany that allowed to do away with the prospect of going to war with the united front of Western nations and let the Anglo-Saxon and the French, who did their best in an attempt to pacify Hitler and direct him to the East, prove their worth standing up against Wehrmacht.
