German Annexation of the Sudetenland
—Jason
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The breakup of large empires into small nation-states has been ever present in history. Usually, these events revolve around different ethnic or nationalist groups creating their homelands from the defunct predecessor. Many times, the newly formed state has a deep sense of the different cultural groups within their borders. Those minority populations have been used as an excuse for a larger neighbor to strip territory from a weaker power.
The beginning decades of the twentieth century witnessed the dissolution of three major polyglot European empires: the German, Austro-Hungarian, and Russian. The Treaties of Versailles, St Germain, and Trianon in the summer of 1919 were the instruments of peace that ended the Great War and breakup of the old Central European kingdoms. From the ashes of the defeated German Empire and Austro-Hungarian Empire new nations, such as Poland and Czechoslovakia, emerged in Eastern Europe.
While Great Britain, France, Italy, and the United States drafted the peace treaties, the various peoples in Eastern Europe were faced with the dilemma of identifying where their common borders were located. The implementation in the crafting of these countries led to bitter domestic and foreign strife almost from the beginning. The population of Czechoslovakia was made up of a combination of Czechs, Slovaks, Germans, Hungarians, Poles, and Ruthenians all vying for the interests of their own ethnic groups.
Armed conflicts between Poland and Czechoslovakia over their respective borders started before the ink on the treaty was dry. The short-lived but intense war was cut short when the Bolshevik Red Army launched an attack against the Poles in the summer of 1920. The Czechs, Slovaks, and Poles signed a peace treaty amongst themselves and set to their own defenses against communist forces near their borders. Despite this cessation of fighting, neither country was truly satisfied by the compromise. Yet, mutual survival against a much larger enemy state ensured that future armed conflict was avoided.
A further series of agreements between across Europe were drafted in the late 1920s and early 1930s. The Czechs and Slovaks were guaranteed their territorial integrity by the French with the 1924 Treaty of Alliance and Friendship. France also campaigned to get Czechoslovakia, Romania, and the Kingdom of Yugoslavia to sign alliances with each other to deter Germany from rearming. Britain also initially supported their French allies claims of protection.
The 1925 Locarno Pact was signed between Great Britain, France, Germany, Belgium, and Italy to ensure that tensions over mutual borders did not devolve into war. The Treaty of Alliance and Mutual Cooperation was signed in 1935 between Czechoslovakia and the Soviet Union further bolstering the small state’s borders. The Weimer German government was a struggling semi-democracy hoping to regain international status and favor in order to reintegrate into the world community. The Treaty of Versailles had stripped significant portions of eastern and western Germany away and this was a source of constant pressure used by extremist far-right German groups, particularly the German National Socialist Party or Nazi Party, to weaken their opponents’ political strength.
When the Nazi Party won the plurality of votes for the German Reichstag in the July and November 1932 elections, this previously marginalized group now had the legal right to nominate the next German Chancellor; Adolf Hitler was the leader of the Nazi Party and thus their candidate. German President Paul von Hindenburg initially refused to seat Hitler with a cabinet consisting strictly of his fellow Nazis. However, fear that the German Communist Party had increasing support was a reason for Hindenburg to finally appoint Hitler as Chancellor, with Franz von Papen acting as his Vice Chancellor. The centrist and right-wing groups believed that Hitler’s unpredictable political stances would be tempered by a coalition cabinet.
Hitler and the Nazis were able to gain so much of the vote due to their exploitation of German grievances against the Treaty of Versailles and already present racial and national prejudices. The new chancellor had campaigned on the desire to throw off the restrictions that the Treaty of Versailles had placed on the German military. A much preached about rearmament program would give new recruits and weapons to a revitalized Nazi war machine. Hitler also made the claim that all territories lost to the German Fatherland would be restored.
At first, Hitler was forced to operate within a restricted political landscape without being able to immediately enact his extremist agenda. However, several key events quickly allowed Hitler and the Nazi Party to seize permanent power. The destruction of the Reichstag building by fire on 27 February 1933 was blamed on the German Communist Party. This prompted Hindenburg, encouraged by the Nazis, to sign an emergency decree allowing for the arrest and detainment of communist leaders throughout the country.
The next step was the creation and implementation of The Law to Remedy the Distress of the People and the Reich, better known as the Enabling Act, on 23 March. Since the Reichstag Building had been destroyed, the delegates met at the Kroll Opera House in Berlin, where Nazi Stormtroopers prevented delegates who were seen as hostile to Hitler from entering the building, thereby preventing them from voting against the Enabling Act. Its passage gave Hitler the ability to both draft and pass legislation without the consultation, or even knowledge, of the Reichstag.
The political situation in Germany, and Europe as a whole, became more uncertain when Hindenburg died on 2 August 1934. The vacancy created by his death allowed Hitler to combine the roles of both Reich President and Reich Chancellor into his own power. Hitler was thus able to build an entirely Nazi cabinet and pass legislation that dissolved, and then outlawed, any other political parties. With all avenues of power in his hands, Hitler began implementing his long-awaited policies of territorial acquisition and rearmament.
Hitler initially played within the rules of Europe’s political landscape, slowly moving Germany towards confrontation with his neighbors. The seizure of the demilitarized Rhineland and Ruhr regions, bordering France and Belgium, on 7 March 1936 was seen as a diplomatic coup because no bloodshed took place. Hitler seemed to be unstoppable in regaining German lands and nullifying the entirety of the Treaty of Versailles. Austria was absorbed into the Third Reich by a pressured plebiscite in mid-March 1938. Next on Hitler’s list for annexation was Czechoslovakia.
Germans made up a significant ethnic minority population in the western provinces of Czechoslovakia, particularly in the region known as the Sudetenland. As Hitler and the Nazi Party gained power in Germany, a sister organization called the Sudeten-German Home Front had been founded by Konrad Heinlein in October 1933. Heinlein’s extremists pushed for the Sudetenland be ceded to Germany and conducted disruptive political activities inside Czechoslovakia. Pressure built against Czech President Edvard Beneš during his term between 1935 and November 1938.
This area also corresponded to where the Czechs and Slovaks had built some of the most modern defensive emplacements to defend against their German neighbors. Hitler’s claims that ethnic Germans were being mistreated by the Czechs were the cornerstone excuse for the Nazi demands for the Sudetenland. The heavily industrialized regions of Czechoslovakia were also coveted by the Nazi Party as they, and the weapons they produced, would help to rearm Germany.
Throughout April and May 1938, Hitler and his generals made plans for an attack on Czechoslovakia if they refused to surrender the Sudetenland. President Beneš reached out to his French and British contemporaries, Édouard Daladier and Neville Chamberlain, for their support. He asked that they be willing to honor their agreements with military aid in case of a Germans attack. Neither France or Britain felt strong enough to challenge a rearmed Germany and declined armed support. The Soviet Union was also wary of honoring its treaty with the Czechs without the British and French on board.
France and Great Britain were desperate to avoid another European war. On 28 April 1938, Daladier met with Chamberlain in London to discuss the situation. Chamberlain, unable to see how Hitler could be prevented from destroying Czechoslovakia altogether argued that Beneš should be urged to make the territorial concessions to Germany. The Germans hesitated to undertake military action against Czechoslovakia as they feared taking heavy losses. Tensions in Europe continued to rise throughout the summer of 1938.
By mid-September 1938, Chamberlain took the step of visiting Hitler in person to discuss some sort of agreement. Hitler agreed to not launch any military operations while negotiations were taking place. However, his blunt threats further pushed the British and French to pressure Beneš to surrender the Sudetenland. Chamberlain agreed to try to persuade his cabinet and the French to accept the results of a plebiscite in the Sudetenland. The Czechoslovakian government initially rejected the proposal but was forced to accept the idea of the German vote on 21 September.
On September 22 Chamberlain again flew to Germany and met with Hitler, where he was dismayed to learn that he now wanted the Sudetenland occupied by the German army and the Czechoslovaks removed from the area by September 28. Chamberlain agreed to submit the new proposal to Czechoslovakia, who rejected it, as did the British cabinet and the French. War seemed about to break throughout Europe as the last weeks of the month disappeared.
In a last-minute effort to avoid war, Chamberlain proposed that a four-power conference, consisting of Germany, Great Britain, France, and Italy, be convened immediately to settle the dispute. Hitler agreed. On September 29 Hitler, Chamberlain, Daladier, and Italian dictator Benito Mussolini met in Munich. None of these men dared insist that the two Czech diplomats waiting in a Munich hotel should be admitted to the conference room or consulted on the agenda.
Beneš was informed by Britain and France that Czechoslovakia could either resist Germany alone or submit to the prescribed annexations. The Czechoslovakian government chose to submit. Hitler had promised Chamberlain that his territorial annexations would cease once the Sudetenland was incorporated into the Reich. German troops occupied the Sudetenland between 30 September and 10 October 1938.
Chamberlain and Daladier declared that they had secured an “honorable peace” with Hitler, without mentioning that they had betrayed their agreements with Czechoslovakia by forcing it to surrender territory. The Munich Agreement proved to be a hollow promise; Hitler’s forces occupied the remaining portions of Czechoslovakia in March 1939. The country was further partitioned into the Slovak Republic and the Protectorates of Bohemia and Moravia, both Nazi-satellite states.