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

Chapter III
democracy. Their political efforts were
focused above all on ensuring the West’s
effective interest in the fate of
Czechoslovakia. It was reflected in the
way they reacted to British and French
pressure aimed initially at the creation
of a closed Sudeten-German territory.
Pressure from London and Paris
restricted still more Czechoslovakia
political scope that had already been
curtailed anyway by the previous demise
or enfeeblement of its various
international guarantees, i.e. the
disqualification of the League of
Nations during Italy’s war on Ethiopia
and the remilitarisation the Rhineland,
which facilitated Germany’s eventual
military operations in central Europe.
By making a show of goodwill
concerning the Sudeten-German issue,
Prague tried to convince itself that it
would not only improve its standing in
the eyes of the West but would also
demonstrate that it was merely being
exploited by the Third Reich as a
pretext for expansion. The
Czechoslovak state certainly failed to do
all that was demanded by the pressing
Sudeten-German question. Its ethnic
composition caused all sorts of
problems, but its democratic system
gave the different nationalities
reasonable scope for their lives and
development. But Hitler was not
concerned with the Sudeten-German
issue at all, and significantly there was
no mention of it in his initial war plans.
In Prague, they hoped that the
governments of France and Britain
would realise this too. And there was
feverish clutching at straws during
September 1938. Yet the Czechoslovak
politicians did not risk taking a decision
that would place the West and, above
all, its ally France in a situation that
would have compromised or even
brought to an end its “appeasement”
policies. They either expected the West
to do it of its own accord, once it had
been convinced of the real essence of
German-Czechoslovak tension, or they
feared, on the contrary, that there was
no way of achieving such a volte face
even if Czechoslovakia resisted
Czechs and Germans in a Democratic
Czechoslovakia, 1918-1938
106
Germany by force of arms. Nonetheless
the latter possibility was closer to the
hearts of Czechoslovakia’s chiefs of
staff: in their opinion, once it was
mobilised, the army could manage to
resist Germany for long enough to force
the allies to help. Czech society was in a
similar frame of mind and it formed the
backbone of the movement for the
defence of the republic, which brought
together all sorts of political and
ideological currents. That movement
varied greatly in intensity from one part
of the republic to another, and that
applied not just to the Czech border
areas but also Slovakia, to a certain
extent.
The Czechoslovak government’s
considerations about its possible allies
focused above all on France. Soviet
assistance was regarded as ancillary to
France’s and that was how it was viewed
politically too, i.e. there was no
anticipation that it would be separate.
That was essentially Moscow’s
interpretation too. Besides, it would be
hard to implement because of the
distances involved and the lack of a
common frontier, as well as in terms of
international law, not to mention the
unsatisfactory conditions inside the
Soviet army, purged of the officers’
corps. The theory that the
Czechoslovak government was
preparing for effective rapid assistance
from the Soviet Union was never more
than propagandist rhetoric. The Soviet
Union preferred the protection of
Czechoslovakia by means of political
collective security; it required military
measures on the part of France in the
first instance. It clearly was intending to
fall in with the latter, as its preparations
indicated. However, the Soviet envoy,
Alexandrovsky, was unable to give
Beneš any definite information when he
requested it on September 25. At that
time the Soviet diplomat had the
impression that Beneš was close to
halting the unfavourable political
developments by armed conflict which
would give rise to a wider pro-
Czechoslovak coalition as a result of
Soviet intervention. Even so Beneš at