Mobilization of the Czechoslovak army in response to the Munich Agreement.
The Munich Agreement (Czech: Mnichovsk dohoda; Slovak: Mnchovsk dohoda; German: Mnchner Abkommen) was an agreement concluded at Munich on 30 September 1938, by Germany, the United Kingdom, France, and Italy. It provided "cession to Germany of the Sudeten German territory" of Czechoslovakia, despite the existence of a 1924 alliance agreement and 1925 military pact between France and the Czechoslovak Republic, for which it is also known as the Munich Betrayal (Mnichovsk zrada; Mnchovsk zrada). Most of Europe celebrated the Munich agreement, which was presented as a way to prevent a major war on the continent. The four powers agreed to the German annexation of the Czechoslovak borderland areas named the Sudetenland, where more than three million people, mainly ethnic Germans, lived. Adolf Hitler announced that it was his last territorial claim in Northern Europe.
Germany had started a low-intensity undeclared war on Czechoslovakia on 17 September 1938. In reaction, the United Kingdom and France on 20 September formally asked Czechoslovakia to cede its Sudetenland territory to Germany, which was followed by Polish territorial demands brought on 21 September and Hungarian on 22 September. Meanwhile, German forces conquered parts of Cheb District and Jesenk District and briefly overran, but were repelled from dozens of other border counties. Poland also grouped its army units near its common border with Czechoslovakia and also instigated generally unsuccessful sabotage on 23 September. Hungary also moved its troops towards the border with Czechoslovakia, without attacking.
An emergency meeting of the main European powers not including Czechoslovakia, although their representatives were present in the town, or the Soviet Union, an ally to both France and Czechoslovakia took place in Munich, Germany, on 2930 September 1938. An agreement was quickly reached on Hitler's terms, being signed by the leaders of Germany, France, Britain, and Italy. The Czechoslovak mountainous borderland that the powers offered to appease Germany had not only marked the natural border between the Czech state and the Germanic states since the early Middle Ages, but it also presented a major natural obstacle to any possible German attack. Having been strengthened by significant border fortifications, the Sudetenland was of absolute strategic importance to Czechoslovakia.
On 30 September, Czechoslovakia yielded to the combination of military pressure by Germany, Poland and Hungary, and diplomatic pressure by the United Kingdom and France, and agreed to give up territory to Germany on Munich terms. Then, on 1 October, Czechoslovakia also accepted Polish territorial demands.The Munich Agreement was soon followed by the First Vienna Award on 2 November 1938, separating largely Hungarian inhabited territories in southern Slovakia and southern Subcarpathian Rus' from Czechoslovakia. On 30 November 1938 Czechoslovakia ceded to Poland small patches of land in Spi and Orava regions.In March 1939, the First Slovak Republic, a Nazi puppet state, proclaimed its independence. Shortly afterwards, Hitler reneged on his solemn promises to respect the integrity of Czechoslovakia by invading Czechia and turning it into the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia, giving Germany full control of what remained of Czechoslovakia, including its significant military arsenal that later played an important role in Germany's invasions of Poland and France. As a result, Czechoslovakia had disappeared.Today, the Munich Agreement is widely regarded as a failed act of appeasement, and the term has become "a byword for the futility of appeasing expansionist totalitarian states."
Czechoslovakia, or Czecho-Slovakia (; Czech and Slovak: Československo, Česko-Slovensko), was a sovereign state in Central Europe, created in October 1918, when it declared its independence from Austria-Hungary.
In 1938, after the Munich Agreement, the Sudetenland became part of Germany, while the country lost further territories to Hungary and Poland. Between 1939 and 1945 the state ceased to exist, as Slovakia proclaimed its independence and subsequently the remaining territories in the east became part of Hungary, while in the remainder of the Czech Lands the German Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia was proclaimed. In October 1939, after the outbreak of World War II, former Czechoslovak President Edvard Beneš formed a government-in-exile and sought recognition from the Allies.
After World War II, the pre-1938 Czechoslovakia was reestablished, with the exception of Carpathian Ruthenia, which became part of the Ukrainian SSR (a republic of the Soviet Union). From 1948 to 1989, Czechoslovakia was part of the Eastern Bloc with a command economy. Its economic status was formalized in membership of Comecon from 1949 and its defense status in the Warsaw Pact of 1955. A period of political liberalization in 1968, known as the Prague Spring, was violently ended when the Soviet Union, assisted by some other Warsaw Pact countries, invaded Czechoslovakia. In 1989, as Marxist–Leninist governments and communism were ending all over Eastern Europe, Czechoslovaks peacefully deposed their socialist government in 17th November 1989 in the Velvet Revolution, state price controls were removed after a period of preparation. In 1993, Czechoslovakia split into the two sovereign states of the Czech Republic and Slovakia.