When the Munich Agreement allowed Nazi troops to occupy the Sudetenland inside Czechoslovakia (see blog Jan. 5, 2021), it also turned over to the Nazis all that country’s defensive positions guarding against a German attack.

Six months later, March 15, 1939, German Chancellor Adolf Hitler informed the Czech president that German soldiers were marching out of the Sudetenland to occupy nearly half of the country. He said this was necessary to “restore order” in the Czech provinces of Bohemia and Moravia, which included the Czechoslovak capital of Prague. If his troops met with any resistance, Hitler warned, German air forces would bomb the capital. The president had no choice but to tell his defenseless countrymen not to oppose the German occupation, and Bohemia and Moravia became a German protectorate.
Germany’s actions clearly violated the Munich Agreement. In London, British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain said he bitterly regretted Germany’s actions but added he would not be deterred from, “our policy of appeasement.”
Parliament and the public quickly condemned Chamberlain’s words and the continued policy of appeasement. The reaction caught the Prime Minister by surprise. To record Britain’s displeasure with the German coup, Chamberlain recalled the British ambassador from Berlin.
But within days of Germany’s occupation of Prague, a new crisis loomed. A large number of German-speaking people in the Free City of Danzig, a major port on the Baltic Sea, began calling for annexation by Germany. The Free City was administered by Poland, an otherwise landlocked nation in Eastern Europe that connected with Danzig via a long neck of land known as The Polish Corridor. The corridor also separated Germany from her ethnic cousins in East Prussia.
Hitler began demanding that Germany take control of Danzig and be given permanent access to East Prussia through the Polish Corridor. Hoping to discourage Hitler, Chamberlain’s Government announced plans to double the size of Britain’s Army and reached an agreement to aid Poland if the Poles were to be attacked “by a European power.” By early April, France reached its own agreement to aid Poland in the event of a third party attack.
The sudden turn of events in Eastern Europe rehabilitated the political fortunes of Winston Churchill. For the last ten years, Churchill had been a Conservative member of parliament, but had not held any leadership positions in Chamberlain’s Government. In his writings and speeches, however, Churchill had kept up a steady drumbeat of warnings about Hitler’s intentions and the dangers of appeasement.

Despite the accuracy of his warnings and his unquestioned organizational and rhetorical abilities, Churchill was quietly rebuffed when he inquired about the possibility of serving in any capacity in Chamberlain’s Government.

After six more tension-filled months, fortune would deal a final blow to appeasement and bring Churchill back into the Prime Minister’s government.

More in our next blog.