An agreement between Germany, France, Italy and Britain, which wrote the script of World War II

On September 1, 1939, 85 years ago, the Second World War began with the march of German troops into Poland. It is considered the deadliest military conflict in the history of mankind. An estimated 100 million people from 30 countries participated in the Second World War. Great Britain and France assured Poland of help. Two days after the march of German troops, Poland declared war on Germany and its allies on September 3. The outbreak of war exposed the shortcomings of the Munich Agreement to the world. The agreement was signed less than a year earlier. An agreement that has been seen as a disastrous act of appeasement of Adolf Hitler’s Nazi regime.

Hitler had threatened to bring war to Europe unless the German-majority areas in the north, south and west of Czechoslovakia were ceded to Germany. The German-speaking people living in these areas, called the Sudetenland in German, had found themselves part of the new country created in 1918 following the collapse of the German-dominated Austro-Hungarian Empire at the end of World War I. The occupation of the Sudetenland, home to more than three million Sudeten Germans, was part of Hitler’s plan to create Greater Germany. Following the Munich Agreement, German troops occupied these areas between October 1 and October 10, 1938.

On 30 September 1938, an agreement was signed at Munich by Nazi Germany, the United Kingdom, the French Republic and Fascist Italy. The agreement provided for Germany’s occupation of a part of Czechoslovakia called the Sudetenland, where more than three million people, mainly ethnic Germans, lived. Germany had begun a low-intensity undeclared war on Czechoslovakia on 17 September 1938. In response, Britain and France formally requested Czechoslovakia to hand over the Sudetenland region to Germany on 20 September. After returning from Munich, Chamberlain waved the piece of paper signed by Hitler and called it a declaration of peace with honour. In return for European peace, the Sudetenland region was allowed to be occupied by the Germans.

Did anything change?

The agreement, signed after Hitler met Chamberlain and French Prime Minister Edouard Daladier with Italian Prime Minister Benito Mussolini in Munich, allowed for the annexation of the Sudetenland by Germany. The German occupation was to be carried out in four stages from October 1-10, 1938. In some places the annexation was subject to referendums. The Czechoslovak government was to release from its military and police forces any Sudeten Germans who wished to be released, and all Sudeten German prisoners within four weeks of signing the agreement.