On September 29, 1938, key politicians from Europe at the time gathered in Munich. They were tasked with avoiding a military conflict on the Old Continent.
The Prime Ministers of Great Britain and France, Arthur Neville Chamberlain and Édouard Daladier, the Reich Chancellor of Germany Hitler and the Duce of Italy Benito Mussolini negotiated and signed an agreement handing over the Sudetenland from Czechoslovakia to Germany. It is also known as the Munich Agreement.
The justification was that the Sudetenland was populated mainly by ethnic Germans.
As a result of the betrayal of Czechoslovakia, Hitler greatly strengthened his army, which significantly influenced his determination to start a world war.
At that time, Czechoslovakia was one of the most industrially developed countries in all of Europe. It is one of the leading suppliers of arms for export, the country's army is seriously armed, and extremely powerful defense facilities were created in the same Sudetenland.
The Third Reich received more than 1 million self-loading rifles, tens of thousands of machine guns and thousands of tanks, which were later used in the outbreak of World War II.
British Prime Minister Chamberlain, after returning to London from the Munich Conference, declared before the House of Commons: “Gentlemen, I have brought you peace”.