the nationality of all inhabitants of the czech provinces and ...

Czechs and Germans in a Democratic
Czechoslovakia, 1918-1938
demand a general mobilisation. It was
a misassessment of the situation,
however. Britain also had a major
influence on France’s defeatist position
and the merely Platonic condemnation
of Germany’s destruction of
international treaties because of its
efforts to prevent at all costs a military
conflict over the demilitarised zone.
Its aim was to replace the Locarno
Treaty with some new international
pact with Germany.
Hitler’s triumph of March 7, 1936
had far-reaching consequences for
Czechoslovakia’s international
position. Above all it undermined the
main prop for its security in an
unstable Europe – the effective help of
France. Czechoslovakia based some
hopes for a renaissance of French
foreign policy on the arrival to power
of Leon Blum’s Front populaire
government in June 1936. On that
occasion Blum sent a message to
Beneš reassuring him that “such a
decline as happened in the
government of his predecessor at the
time of the occupation of the left bank
of the Rhine will not occur again and
that his government will be strong and
firm vis-à-vis Germany” and that
Czechoslovakia was to rely on that. It
remained mere wishful thinking.
Blum’s government was to fail at the
very next trial, which was its attitude
to the Spanish Civil War and the
intervention of Italy and Germany in
favour of the insurgents. It opted for a
policy of “non-intervention” which, in
its repercussions, displayed the
indecisiveness and even weakness of
democracy and anti-fascism at
international level. France was also
affected by the “non-interventionist”
approach of Great Britain, which was
not in favour of a popular front victory
in Spain or that country’s
transformation into a wider battle
zone. Britain turned out to have views
on the more explosive situations in
various parts of Europe which were
not particularly favourable to the
existing international order that was
under threat from Nazi Berlin and
101
Chapter III
Fascist Rome. That applied to central
Europe, among others. Czechoslovakia
also sensed that Britain’s active
political interest stopped at “the Rhine
border”. Czechoslovak envoy to
Britain, Jan Masaryk, vainly drew
attention in London to the fact that
“time was running terribly short”
in Europe.
In the West, and particularly in
Britain, Czechoslovakia’s situation was
The closer ties between Prague and
Moscow as seen by a German
cartoonist.
already complicated by the consistent
propaganda campaign waged against it
by the Nazis. It included the claim that
the Czechoslovak state was being
transformed into “a flagship of
Bolshevism”. It also tried to discredit
Czechoslovakia by alleging the brutal
oppression of its minorities. Henlein’s
Sudeten-German Party also joined in
that campaign. Officially it proclaimed
a programme of autonomy with the
intention of making it into an
international issue. It also garnered a
positive response in London.