On this day 85 years ago, Britain, France, and Fascist Italy gave part of Czechoslovakia to the Third Reich

Pictured (from left to right): Neville Chamberlain, Édouard Daladier, Adolf Schicklgruber, Benito Mussolini, and Galeazzo Ciano before signing the Munich Agreement. Standing behind them are one unknown (possibly British) man, Henri Fromageot, Joachim von Ribbentrop, Freiherr Ernst von Weizsäcker, and Alexis ‘Saint‐John Perse’ Leger. Click here for more photographs.

Quoting A.J.P. Taylor’s The Origins of the Second World War, page 262:

It was no doubt disgraceful that Soviet Russia should make any agreement with the leading Fascist state; but this reproach came ill from the statesmen who went to Munich. […] [The German–Soviet] pact contained none of the fulsome expressions of friendship which Chamberlain had put into the Anglo–German declaration on the day after the Munich conference. Indeed Stalin rejected any such expressions: “the Soviet Government could not suddenly present to the public German–Soviet assurances of friendship after they had been covered with buckets of filth by the [Fascist] Government for six years.”

The [German–Soviet] pact was neither an alliance nor an agreement for the partition of Poland. Munich had been a true alliance for partition: the British and French dictated partition to the Czechs. The Soviet government undertook no such action against the Poles. They merely promised to remain neutral, which is what the Poles had always asked them to do and which Western policy implied also.

Andrew Rothstein’s The Munich Conspiracy is the perfect resource for learning more about this. Pages 70–2:

On September 26 [Adolf Schicklgruber] prepared the way for this by a speech at the Sportpalast in Berlin, in which raving abuse of Czechoslovakia and Beneš, with denunciations of the U.S.S.R. and threats of war, was interspersed with assurances that this was “the last territorial claim which I have in Europe”, expressions of friendship for Britain, France and Poland, and of personal gratitude to Chamberlain.

This was well calculated to impress: since the British Ambassador in Berlin, at any rate, had freely revealed the same train of thought passing through his mind for many months, and Hitler knew from many sources that Nevile Henderson was not alone.

He followed up the speech with a personal letter to Chamberlain on the 27th (which the Prime Minister received the same evening), arguing in the most reasonable tones against various criticisms of his terms, offering to guarantee the independence of the remainder of Czechoslovakia once the German, Polish and Hungarian minorities had gone, and finishing with an invitation to Chamberlain to “continue your effort, for which I should like to take this opportunity of once more sincerely thanking you”—in order to prevent “Prague” from bringing about a general war.⁷²

The calculation was correct. Chamberlain snatched at the opportunity, and telegraphed next day to Hitler proposing an immediate Four‐Power Conference (i.e. including Italy). He had already informed the French Government, whose leaders were mainly concerned to get in ahead of Chamberlain (on the morning of the 28th) with an even more eager offer of co‐operation against Czechoslovakia—that it should be required to agree (on pain of losing any French support) to the immediate occupation by German troops of “all four sides of the Bohemian quadrilateral”.⁷³

Hitler had only to choose: and he preferred the British precisely because it involved the public participation of Britain and France in the dismemberment of Czechoslovakia, at his dictation. Mussolini, who feared that a war might end in disaster, supported Chamberlain in a series of messages to Hitler.⁷⁴

He sent the necessary invitations on the morning of the 28th; and the conference—Hitler, Mussolini, Chamberlain and Daladier—met on the afternoon of the 29th, sitting until the early hours of the morning of the 30th. Mussolini already had the draft of a settlement, which had been drawn up the previous day by the Germans, and passed on to him by the Italian Ambassador at Berlin: and at a suitable moment, after a preliminary statement by Hitler on the usual lines, Mussolini produced it as his own.

The draft provided for evacuation of the “Sudeten–German” territory, according to a map drawn up by the Germans, between October 1 and 10 and without the destruction of any existing installations: an international commission (of the four Powers with Czechoslovakia) to supervise the evacuation: a plebiscite to be held in “doubtful territories”, which until then would be occupied by international forces: and German troops to begin occupying “predominantly German territory” on October 1.⁷⁵

After argument about the drafting of various passages, with intervals for meals, these points became the essential features of the Munich Agreement, signed on September 30. There were several additional points, designed to make the document more palatable to the public in Britain and France—since none of those present could have supposed that they would make the “carve‐up” more acceptable to Czechoslovakia.

Such were the provisions that the international commission should determine one particular zone which was to be occupied, the boundaries of which were doubtful at Munich: that there was to be the right of option for individuals: that Britain and France maintained the offer of an international guarantee of the new boundaries, made on September 19, and that [the Third Reich] and [Fascist] Italy would join it once the Polish and Hungarian minority questions were settled.

(Emphasis added in all cases.)

Other events that happened today (September 30):

1883: Bernhard Rust, Reich Minister of Science, Education and Culture, was unkind enough to exist.
1939: General Władysław Sikorski became the Polish government‐in‐exile’s prime minister.
1941: The Babi Yar massacre ended.
1942: Hans‐Joachim Marseille, Axis pilot, died.
1944: The Third Reich commenced a counteroffensive to retake the Nijmegen salient, this having been captured by the Allies during Operation Market Garden.
1946: A Chinese firing squad executed Takashi Sakai, the Axis’s governor of Hong Kong.