The Spirit of the Munich Agreement Lives On

Following Nazi Germany’s annexation of Austria in March of 1938 (the Anschluss), on September 30 of that year a fragile peace was negotiated in Munich. Great Britain and France were willing to cede the Sudetenland region of Czechoslovakia – an area populated primarily by ethnic Germans bordering Germany – to Germany in exchange for Hitler’s promise of peace. In this hope, the British and French urged the Czechs to accept the “Munich Agreement.” One month later Hitler annexed Sudetenland, and by March of 1939 the rest of Czechoslovakia was subjugated, to the bewilderment of those committed to “peace.”