30 September 2013. PenzaNews. The Munich Agreement signed on 30 September 1938 did not prevent the Second World War but, on the contrary, has provoked it. This is the opinion of well-known Russian researcher of history of the Baltic States, author of numerous scientific publications and several books Dr. Mikhail Krysin. According to him, signing of the infamous Munich Pact has led not only to the partition and occupation of Czechoslovakia, but also opened up the possibility of further expansion to the East for the leader of the fascist movement Adolf Hitler. On the day of the 75th anniversary of this event news agency PenzaNews publishes an article of Mikhail Krysin entitled “The Munich Agreement of 1938: From Where World War II Started.”

The way to Munich

Hitler considered various ways to achieve world domination in his opus Mein Kampf [included in the Federal List of Extremist Materials, the distribution of which is banned in the Russian Federation], written in his youth in 1924 in Landsberg prison, where he was put after the failed coup – The Beer Hall Putsch. He argued that Germany had lost the First World War partly because the war was fought on two fronts. So the premise of the book was as follows: if Germany again wants to become a world power, it should conclude a military alliance either with the United Kingdom or with Russia. The conclusion was that in the case of an alliance with Russia, especially after the power there was taken by “Jews and Marxists,” Germany will have to claim the position of a major maritime and colonial power, and take the place of the UK. Hitler believed this was nonsense, and, by the way, was right. Therefore, he strongly advocated an alliance with Britain, which he always called “the greatest world power,” unlike “rotting government corpses,” which, according to him, were Germany’s allies of the First World War. Only then, allegedly, Germany would become a great continental power, and the UK would remain the great colonial power, capable of protecting the “German Europe” from the sea.

According to British historian Chris McNab, even German bombing of the British Isles in 1940–1941 was intended not so much to prepare the ground for Britain’s occupation, as to put Britain at its knees, forcing the country into the alliance with Germany or, at least, into neutrality. “We need not Western or Eastern orientation, we need Eastern policy aimed at the conquest of new lands for German people,” Hitler said.

It is clear that the European leaders of the 1930s were familiar with Hitler’s book Mein Kampf; and not only familiar. There is the assumption that this was the book Chamberlain and Daladier were guided by in their appeasement of Hitler in 1938. Let Fuhrer quietly continue to realize his dream of “living space” (Lebensraum) in the East: The First World War will not happen again, there will be no second front in the West.

Appeasement or the beginning of World War II?

Let us recall the history. In the spring of 1938 pro-Nazi Sudeten German Party of Konrad Henlein started a massive campaign “for the rights of ethnic Germans” in Czechoslovakia, following the instructions received from Berlin. By the fall of that year the crisis became even more acute. On this pretext Germany began preparing a military invasion of Czechoslovakia. On 27 September 1938, Hitler informed the ambassadors of Great Britain and France that the German action against Czechoslovakia would begin the next day and offered to hold new talks on the issue of the Sudetenland. In fact, this was an ultimatum. But on September 28, British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain assured Hitler that everything can be solved “without war, and without delay.”

As a result, on the night of 29/30 September 1938 British Prime Minister Chamberlain, French Prime Minister Édouard Daladier and Italian dictator Benito Amilcare Andrea Mussolini arrived to the residence of Hitler in Munich to sign the Munich Agreement, which led to the dismemberment of Czechoslovakia. Representatives of Czechoslovakia were forced to sign the agreement only after the “big boys” and under pressure from Britain and France – the countries that were formally considered to be their allies – despite all the protests. In the morning of September 30, President of Czechoslovakia Edvard Beneš ratified this agreement without the parliamentary approval. On October 5 he resigned, and the presidency was temporarily taken by the Army General Jan Syrovy.

On the same day, 30 September 1938, the UK signed mutual non-aggression pact with Germany, turning its back on the former ally – Czechoslovakia. By the end of the year a similar agreement was signed with France. Even the US President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who at the time preached the policy of isolationism, sent his telegram to Chamberlain congratulating him on “peaceful resolution to the Sudeten crisis.” Having returned to England, Chamberlain said “I have returned from Germany with peace in our time.” Winston Churchill commented on the Munich agreement differently: “England was given the choice between war and dishonor. It chose dishonor, and it will have war.” British Foreign Secretary Anthony Eden resigned in protest against the Munich Agreement.

Meanwhile, the division of Czechoslovakia continued. Separatists of Slovakia and Ruthenia (Carpathian Ruthenia, Transcarpathian Ukraine) had declared autonomy, after which some of these areas were occupied by Hungary in agreement with Germany. The Cieszyn region of Czech Silesia was occupied by Poland – in agreement with Hitler as well.

The final crisis came on 14 March 1939. On this day, the abbot Jozef Tiso became the Prime Minister of Slovakia and declared its independence, and the next day turned to Hitler with a request to establish a German protectorate over Slovakia. On the night of 14/15 March, President of the Czech Republic (no longer Czechoslovakia) Emil Hácha was urgently summoned to Berlin, where he in the form of an ultimatum was asked to sign an agreement according to which the Czech Republic came under a German protectorate. That night Hácha had a heart attack. The very next day German troops entered the Czech Republic, and the country became the Imperial Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia (Reichsprotektorat fuer Boehmen und Maehren). On the same day Hungary occupied Ruthenia that declared independence from Slovakia. This partition plan was well-known in the spring of last year – 1938 – and even at the time, according to the French Foreign Minister Georges-Étienne Bonnet “was not a secret for anybody.”

Soviet-French alternative to Munich

Was there any alternative to the Munich Agreement, except for the war that Germany was ready to unleash against Czechoslovakia? Yes, there was. In December 1933, less than a year after Hitler came to power, the government of the Soviet Union and France put forward a draft treaty on collective European security, also known as the Eastern Pact, and aimed primarily at repelling possible aggression from Hitler’s Germany nurtured by the money of German and American corporations.

Finland, Czechoslovakia, Poland, Romania, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania were invited to join the treaty. But then Britain stipulated a number of conditions (including German rearmament), and Poland, Romania, Finland and the three Baltic republics also refused to join the alliance, not wanting any guarantees from the USSR. As a result, the collective security pact was not signed.

In his memoirs, Winston Churchill says: “The obstacle to the alliance was the fact that these border states had an awful fear of Soviet aid in the form of the Soviet armies that could pass through their territories to protect them from the Germans and at the same time include them in the Soviet-Communist system. After all, they were the most violent opponents of this system. Poland, Romania, France and three Baltic states did not know what was more scaring for them – German aggression or Russian salvation.”

Moreover, to prevent the signing of the Eastern Pact a series of political murders took place throughout Europe, most of which were organized by the German Foreign Ministry, the Foreign Policy Office of the NSDAP headed by Alfred Ernst Rosenberg, the future imperial Minister for the Occupied Eastern Territories and their supporters from fascist parties across Europe. Some of the victims are the Austrian Chancellor Engelbert Dollfuss (killed on 25 July 1934 by Austrian Nazi militants), the French Minister of Foreign Affairs Jean Louis Barthou and the Yugoslav King Alexander I (killed during the official visit of the king in Marseille on 9 October 1934 by Croatian separatists of fascist Ustasha organization by direct order of Goering). These people had one thing in common – they were strong supporters of the Eastern Pact, aimed at countering any attempts to launch a war in Europe. According to some historians, all of the traces lead to Berlin.

Former German ambassador in Paris Roland von Koester, who was an outspoken opponent of Hitler, in an informal conversation with French journalist Geneviève Tabouis said, “…They [the Nazis] stated that Germany would avoid war six well-thought-out political assassinations.” According to some historians, the list also included the Czechoslovak Prime Minister Edvard Beneš, Belgium’s King Albert I, the French Minister Edouard Herriot, the Romanian Minister Nicolae Titulescu, and some others.

However, Germany was also invited to join the Eastern Pact. But it declined the offer. At the conference of Reichsleiter, Gauleiter and Fuhrers SA and SS on 18 February 1935, personal assistant to Hitler Julius Schaub said, “Our refusal to sign the Eastern Pact remains firm and unchanged. Fuhrer will rather cut off his arm than … give up the historic mission of the German nation in the East.”

If the war began in 1938

On 25 September 1938, in response to Germany’s military preparations President of Czechoslovakia Beneš declared a general mobilization. Czechoslovakia was preparing for a defensive war to defend its independence. But no allies wanted to support it, except the Soviet Union. However, Poland, the UK and France were against the Soviet aid. On 23 May 1938, at the beginning of the Sudeten crisis, the Polish ambassador in France told the US ambassador in Paris Bullitt that Poland would immediately declare war on the Soviet Union if it tries to send its troops to Czechoslovakia through Polish territory. And Poland, as is known, has considered itself Germany’s ally and waited for an opportunity to start its campaign to the East against Russia.

On 19 September 1938, after the decision to transfer the Sudeten region to Germany, President of Czechoslovakia Beneš asked Joseph Stalin for support. However, on September 20–21 the British and French ambassadors to Czechoslovakia stated that “if the Czechs unite with the Russians the war could become a crusade against the Bolsheviks. Then it will be very difficult for the governments of Britain and France to stand aside.” It would be interesting to ask the question: On whose side?

In 1938 Czechoslovak army consisted of 1,280 thousand people and had the best weapons in comparison to other countries in Eastern Europe. Suffice to say that the Czech rifles, machine guns and tanks had been used by the Wehrmacht for a long time. Nine German infantry divisions and five tank divisions by 1941 were armed with these weapons. Czech tank LT-38 that did not enter service until 1938 was adopted by the Germans as PzKpfw 38 (t), and later the famous light tank destroyer Hetzer was based on its chassis. According to some military historians, the Czechoslovak army could well confront the Wehrmacht alone with its then-armament. This, however, is doubtful, as the German Air Force was eager to test their latest dive bombers Junkers Ju-87 in the sky over Czechoslovakia and the Czechs did not have such machines. The President Beneš came to terms with it. After all, if Soviet troops helped Czechoslovakia despite the protests of England, France and Poland, the world war would be inevitable.

Thus, the Western “allies” saved Czechoslovakia from the Soviet aid. The troops that advanced to the western borders of Czechoslovakia were at the eastern borders of the country until 25 October 1938, and were later withdrawn.

What would happened if the Eastern Pact was signed? According to the German war criminals at Nuremberg, the war would not take place. And even if Czechoslovakia confronted Germany by itself, it would not be the world war, and perhaps, according to some military historians, it would have ended not in favor of Germany. And with the support of the allies – the Soviet Union and France – it would be even more likely. The world would not see the Second World War.

September 30 today

For real historians, and there are many of them in Europe and in the US, the value of the Munich betrayal and its consequences are obvious.

The opinion of competent scholars does not mean anything for today’s ignorant American politicians and their European colleagues. Obviously, the opinion of the then leaders – such as Winston Churchill, Anthony Eden, or the famous American journalist William Shirer who spent many years in Germany – does not mean anything for them either.

However, the point is not even the competence of the political elite in some countries. It is just advantageous for many people today to forget about the Munich Agreement in 1938 as well as many other events that led to the outbreak of the Second World War.

If you believe Bill Clinton, the cold war ended with the collapse of the Soviet Union. But the West countries are still afraid of Russia and build a “sanitary cordon” around it as in 1930-s and in the years of the cold war. Apparently, these politicians are also familiar with Hitler’s Mein Kampf, since they still preach the slogan “Drang nach Osten.” Apparently, they also mastered the tactics of orange revolutions using the experience of Hitler. This is especially true for our Eastern European neighbors who do not want to remember their history and still vainly hope that “the West will help them,” though they have actually turned into the US colony already. For that they support the delusions of their patrons.

Those recalcitrant have already suffered the fate of Czechoslovakia (which scenario is very similar to the division of Yugoslavia in 1999) or Austria (a typical example for the future orange revolutions); and obedient got the same fate as pro-Nazi puppet states such as Croatia, Slovakia, Italian Social Republic, Vichy France, and others.