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

Chapter III
particularly the situation among the
German minority controlled by the
Sudeten-German Party, which was
already sympathetic to the Reich and to
Nazism. The party had placed the fate
of that minority in Hitler’s hands in the
hope that a solution based on political
might, even if it involved violence,
would be all to the good.
After 1918, the world had fostered
the idea that peace should be
Poster advertising the 30 th German
gymnastics festival at Chrastava (North
Bohemia) in1936.
maintained above all by means of
political and diplomatic guarantees.
That attitude suited Czechoslovakia
and it fostered it. It could not defend its
entire 2000-metre long frontier by its
own military power. That fact enhanced
the importance of foreign policy and
diplomacy. They were either to protect
the state from outside danger, or – if all
else failed – to ensure the army alliances
that would enable it to put up effective
resistance. The chief alliance reposed in
the treaties with France of January 1924
and October 1925.
However, compared to the period
when those treaties were signed, France
Czechs and Germans in a Democratic
Czechoslovakia, 1918-1938
104
had been weakened in the 1930s.
It proved incapable of preventing the
weakening of its international position,
particularly since developments at home
were racked by discord, sharp conflicts
and dashed hopes of a turn for the
better. It was all the more willing,
therefore, to accept the offers and advice
of Britain, which since the mid-thirties
seemed to have suddenly recalled to
mind the wartime “Entente cordiale” that
had somewhat faded since. Its revival
was not a patch on the original,
however. The reason was the basis on
which Britain revived it – appeasement.
Peace was to be protected from its
destroyer and actually superseded by
“appeasement” of the strangest kind.
The political and territorial changes
aimed at by the Rome-Berlin fascist axis
should, in the view of the “appeasers” be
kept under political control and not give
rise to the sort of tension or conflicts
that might usher in a new war. British
ruling circles assumed that it could
thereby be postponed in the long term
and a regulation could be achieved that
could even be advantageous to the
West. They were supported in this by
members of the British Commonwealth
of Nations.
The British leadership did not regard
Germany’s foreign-policy objectives in
central Europe as in any way unnatural.
Besides, it was an area in which their
Empire had no immediate interest.
Those aims were not to be achieved by
armed force, however. An invasion of
Czechoslovakia could trigger the
mechanism of its treaties of alliance and
thus draw France into a war and then,
through the League of Nations, Britain
and other states too.
From the spring of 1938, by which
time it was clear that Germany had
launched its single-minded political and
diplomatic offensive against
Czechoslovakia – which could have
sounded like the prelude to war drums –
Britain concentrated its efforts on
achieving political “conciliation”. But it
in no way ruled out gains for the
powerful and losses for the potential
victims. This was because the essence of