GS Paper - I

On this day 85 years ago — 1 September 1939 — German troops marched into Poland, triggering the beginning of World War II, the deadliest military conflict in the history of mankind, involving an estimated 100 million people from 30 countries.

Great Britain and France, which had assured help to Poland, declared war on Germany and its allies two days later, on 3 September. The beginning of the War exposed to the world the folly of the Munich Agreement that was signed less than a year previously.

The Sudeten crisis

• Hitler had threatened to bring war to Europe unless the German-majority areas in the north, south, and west of Czechoslovakia were surrendered to Germany.
• The German-speaking people living in these areas, referred to in German as Sudetenland, had found themselves part of the new country created after the German-dominated Austro-Hungarian Empire collapsed at the end of World War I in 1918.
• The annexation of Sudetenland, home to over three million Sudeten Germans, was part of Hitler’s plan to create a “Greater Germany”.
• Following the Munich Agreement, German troops occupied these areas between 1 October and 10 October 1938.

The Munich Agreement

• The agreement was signed among Germany, France, Italy, and Great Britain on 29-30 September 1938.
• Hitler’s appeasement in an attempt to keep the peace in Europe was strongly supported by Great Britain’s Prime Minister at the time, Neville Chamberlain.
• 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 permitted to be annexed by the Germans.
• Czechoslovakia, the country whose region was about to be annexed, was not officially party to the Agreement.
• It was forced to agree to the deal under pressure from Great Britain and France, which had a military alliance with the country.

What changed?

• The Agreement, signed after Hitler met Chamberlain and French Prime Minister Édouard Daladier along with Italy’s Prime Minister Benito Mussolini in Munich, allowed for the cessation of Germany of Sudetenland. The German occupation was to be done in four stages from 1-10 October 1938.
• The cessation in some places was subject to a plebiscite. The Czechoslovak government was supposed to release from their military and police forces within four weeks of the signing of the Agreement, any Sudeten Germans who wished to be released, and all Sudeten German prisoners.
• Six months after the Munich Agreement was signed, Hitler went back on his commitments and invaded the whole of Czechoslovakia. War was on its way.