The Munich Agreement: Nazi Aggression and Crisis of Democracy?

September 30, 1938The SudetenlandCzechoslovakia

Hitler Used Wilson’s “14 Points”

World War INation-StateNational Self-

Determination

Three Varieties of Ethnic Cleansing:

1.) taking away territory and giving it away based on national or ethnic composition (Munich Crisis);

2.) killing members of national or ethnic group (Nazi Holocaust);

3.) expelling members of national or ethnic group (post-war expulsions).

Hitler

Germany

Chamberlain

Britain

Daladier

France

Beneš

Czechoslakia

A Policy of AppeasementTo appease: “to pacify or

conciliate”

Or?

To appease: “to buy off an aggressor through concessions”

Appeasement Equals Weakness?

Czechoslovakia: Created 1918 from Austria-Hungary (Habsburg Monarchy)

President Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk

Prague Castle

The Pětka

Czech Agrarian Party

Czech National Democratic Party

Czech Social Democratic Party

Czech National Socialist Party

Czech Populist Party

Where is the Sudetenland?

Sudetenland Industry

Sudetenland Fortifications

Konrad Henlein

Sudenten-German National Front (1934)

Sudeten-German Party (1936)

Anschluss: Nazi Takeover

of Austria (March 1938)

Carlsbad Demands, April 24, 1938

1.) Restoration of complete equality of German national group with the Czech people; 2.) Recognition of the Sudeten German national group as a legal entity for the safeguarding of this position of equality within the State; 3.) Confirmation and recognition of the Sudeten German settlement area; 4.) Building up of Sudeten German self-government in the Sudeten German settlement area in all branches of public life insofar as questions affecting the interests and the affairs of the German national group are involved; 5.) Introduction of legal provisions for the protection of those Sudeten German citizens living outside the defined settlement area of their national group; 6.) Removal of wrong done to Sudeten German element since the year 1918, and compensation for damage suffered through this wrong; 7.) Recognition and enforcement of principle: German public servants in the German area; 8.) Complete freedom to profess adherence to the German element and German ideology.

Hitler-Henlein Meeting, March 1938

“always demand so much that we will never be satisfied.”

Three Meetings of Munich Crisis

1.) Berchtesgaden: September 15, 1938

2.) Bad Godesberg: September 22, 1938

3.) Munich: September 30, 1938

Klement Gottwald and the Czechoslovak Communist Party

“Barefoot Ethiopians, without arms, defended themselves, and we yield.”

German Liberation?

Sudeten-German Reactions

Ethnic Cleansing:Moving the Border and

Expelling the Czechs

Nazi Takeover of Czechoslovakia

March 15, 1939

Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia; Slovakia

Reinhard Heydrich

Old Jewish Cemetery and Old-New Synagogue:

Hitler Planned to Make ThemMuseum of an Extinct and Vanished Race

Lidice

Jaroslava Skleničková, b. 1926

Post-War Retribution: Expulsion of 3-Million Germans

“Peace in Our Time”: What Went Wrong?