After the onset of the world economic crisis in 1929, Czechoslovakia had friction with its allies in the Little Entente, and then the Czechoslovak government finally allowed Germany to enter the market as a supplier of industrial products, and the establishment of the German-Austrian Customs Union became the first step in the "German-Austrian merger" in World War II.
Although this German-Austrian tendency dissolved in 1931 with opposition from countries such as France and Italy, for the Czechoslovakians the German invasion seemed only a matter of time. In this way, the history of Czechoslovakia entered the eve of World War II......
大战前夕
During the era of the Weimar Republic of Germany, the Czechoslovak fear of German aggression temporarily subsided as Germany entered the League of Nations in 1926 and retained a stability treaty with Czechoslovakia. But with the appointment of Adolf Hitler as German Chancellor in January 1933, Germany embarked on a process that challenged European democracy and threatened the revision of its eastern borders with Poland and Czechoslovakia.
Adolf hitler
In 1933, Chancellor Adolf Hitler opted out of the League of Nations for foreign policy and withdrew from an international disarmament conference headed by Benes (President of Czechoslovakia). The level of German threat to Czechoslovakia increased dramatically.
Edward Benes, who was Chancellor at the time, understood that the Poles were the source of the friction and tried to negotiate with his Polish counterpart, General Joseph Beck, but suffered a major setback when Poland reached a non-aggression pact with Nazi Germany in 1934.
Edward Benes
Benes later denounced Poland's decision as "an ill-conceived, arrogant sign of provocation" that strained relations with countries such as France, Czechoslovakia, and the Soviet Union at a time when French interest in Central Europe was beginning to wane.
In the first few months of 1933, the Soviet Union had made proposals to France and the Little Entente (i.e., Czechoslovakia, Romania, and Yugoslavia), and in 1934 French Foreign Minister Louis Baldou responded to the German-Polish Pact with an Eastern strategy linking Czechoslovakia and the Soviet Union to France.
Louis Baldou
Benes and Masaryk wanted the Soviet Union to play a greater role as a counterweight to Germany, but the Soviets did not take concrete action until the following year, when they entered the League of Nations and began to advance collective security against the threat posed by fascist Italy and Nazi Germany.
Masaryk
But the possibility of uniting with the Soviet Union to defend the Czechoslovak Republic was not in the interests of the Western powers, who preferred to sacrifice Czechoslovakia to help Nazi Germany organize an anti-Soviet crusade. And Hitler had intended to take Czechoslovakia by force if necessary!
Hitler later found that Germany was not strong enough to defeat the well-armed Czechoslovak army on the well-fortified borders, so he did not intend to launch an attack on Czechoslovakia in 1943 or 1945, but gathered strength to prepare for war.
Hitler
The Soviet-Czech Treaty, signed in May 1935, the same year that Germany announced its rearmament program, guaranteed Czechoslovakia support from the Soviet Union in the event of a direct military threat – albeit if France first fulfilled their own commitments to the 1925 treaty.
Benes later succeeded Masaryk as president, and his place was replaced by Milan Hodža, with historian and diplomat Kamil Krofta as foreign minister. A month later, German troops reoccupied the Rhineland, challenging the Treaty of Versailles, and Benes, along with Poland and the Soviet Union, provided support to the French, who instead counted on British assistance.
Milan Khoja
Camille Crofta
France's lack of a tough response worried Benes, who proposed a previously unimaginable option – a non-aggression pact with Nazi Germany. France approached Benes about Czechoslovakia's willingness to assist in the defense of Poland, but Poland refused to defend Czechoslovakia in exchange, despite Benes's positive response.
In August 1936, Benes, through a French mediator, proposed that Czechoslovakia and Poland begin joint military preparations against Germany, but the Poles again refused to cooperate. Benes and Crofta held secret talks with German diplomats during November and December, but the controversy over the status of the Sudetenland Germans and Hitler's objections to Benes's interpretation of the terms closed any possibility of a final agreement.
Benes
It can be said that Hitler in Germany despised Czechoslovakia as an artificially created state destined to become part of the Greater German Reich and to accommodate the Germanic population. Konrad Henlein and his Sudetenland Germanic Party, which had long been largely financed by the Reich, provided Hitler with a way for the German Empire to gain possession of the German-speaking Sudetenland.
Konrad Henlein
As Czechoslovakia's position became more and more dangerous, and the Munich Agreement of September 1938 enabled Hitler to achieve his goal of annexing the Sudetenland, Britain and France chose to abandon Czechoslovakia, fantasizing about appeasement in order to avoid another world war......
Konrad Henlein and the Sudetenland Germans
In 1936, the Prague government faced not only the growing threat from the aggressive Nazi Germany from outside, but also from the internal Germanic people, who were becoming more radical and looking forward to turning to the Hitler regime for support. The worsening economic crisis in Bohemia and the remote German-speaking regions of Moravia-Silesia has led to high unemployment and social disruption.
As a result of this economic crisis, Konrad Henlein (leader of the Sudetenland German Party, or SdP) and the Sudetenland Germanic Party emerged as self-proclaimed defenders of the rights of the Germanic minority in Czechoslovakia.
Konrad Henlein
As early as early October 1933, Henlein, the leader of a Czechoslovak gymnastics organization, founded the Sudetenland Germanic Patriotic Front, which was quickly reorganized into the Sudetenland Germanic Party (SdP) before the April 1935 elections, after quickly gaining reinforcement from the banned German National Socialist Party and the German National Party.
Sudetenland Germanic Party (SdP)
Henlein wanted to capitalize on the discontent of all German residents of Czechoslovakia, and has since gained a coalition of Franz Karmasin's Carpathian Germans (KpD), which claims to speak on behalf of the majority of Germanic people living in Slovakia.
Henlein's party provided Hitler with a useful organization in line with his pursuit of German expansionism and pan-Germanism, and ultimately the creation of a Greater Germanic Empire in central Europe. As a result, Henlein's party received financial support from Nazi Germany during the 1935 elections.
Hitler and Henlein
In November 1937, Henlein expressed his desire to reposition the Sudetenland Germanic Party to assist Hitler in his efforts to seize Czech territory. Moreover, Henlein's letter to Hitler exaggerated the problems between the Sudetenland Germans and the Czechs and the Prague government, and encouraged the Germans to occupy the border areas in order to achieve what Henlein called the most important goal of the Sudetenland Germanic Party.
Shortly after Hitler redeployed heavy troops in the Rhineland in 1936, the Czechoslovak National Assembly finally reacted to the activities of the Sudetenland Germans and the frictions that had arisen in the border areas, while Germany significantly increased its financial flows to the Sudetenland, hoping to capitalize on the growing anger and radicalization of the party's adherents.
Hitler
In February 1937, the Khoja government proposed a plan to deal with the economic, social and cultural affairs of the ethnic minorities as a response to the discontent among the ethnic groups. In the autumn of that year, however, Khoja's efforts to negotiate with Henlein failed completely. By early 1938, the Sudetenland Germans had entered the government.
In June 1937, German military planners devised a secret plan known as Operation Fall Grün, which called for the rapid seizure of Bohemia and Moravia and the establishment of a military control government to control the occupied areas. This plan did not include either the occupation of Slovakia or the inclusion of the Czech nation among the citizens of the Greater Germanic Empire.
Green Action (Fall Grün)
Hitler had come to believe that Poland would not retaliate by a German attack on Czechoslovakia, and that Britain and France were unlikely to engage in the defense of Czechoslovakia, which might mean escalating a regional problem into a larger war.
Thus, the Sudetenland Germans became the focus of Germany's preparations for a planned operation against Czechoslovakia! On March 12, 1938, when Nazi Germany succeeded in annexing Austria to the Greater Germanic Empire, Hitler's planners submitted a revised version of the "Green Action" plan, envisaging action against Czechoslovakia in the near future, despite opposition from Hitler's top military generals.
"Green Action" program
On 28 March, Henlein visited Hitler and received his approval to secure his leadership of the Sudetenland Germanic Party, and that the party should continue to demonstrate a willingness to negotiate with the Czechoslovak government, but at the same time raise its demands to an unfulfilled level.
A month later, on 24 April, Henlein gave a speech at the Sudetenland Germanic Party Congress in Karlovy Vary, demanding complete equality between the Sudetenland Germans and the Czechs. In addition, Henlein demanded Germanic-dominated local administrations in clearly defined Germanic regions and under the control of the Sudetenland Germanic Party, and demanded that Germanic people have the right to favor racial and political views that were practically close to Nazis.
As Henlein's followers prepared for the municipal elections in the border areas through intimidation and brutality against anti-fascists and supporters of the republic, the Prague government revoked the ban on public gatherings enacted after the German-Austrian merger, and some pro-democracy political parties could show solidarity in defending the republic on May Day.
Henlein
On 20 May, rumors about the activities of German troops near the border led to the "May Crisis" of partial mobilization of the Czechoslovak armed forces, which was seen as a signal that Czechoslovakia would defend its territory against the German invasion......
Encroachment and aggression
After the Munich Agreement of September 1938, the appeasement of Britain and France, far from preventing the outbreak of the Great War, stimulated Hitler's ambitions: when Hitler saw that the Western powers were willing to sacrifice Czechoslovakia without a fight, he changed his plans to invade Czechoslovakia and immediately began to act.
In order to clear the way for Hitler, the Western powers sent a delegation to Czechoslovakia, headed by Lord Runciman, in an apparent attempt to induce Czechoslovakia to surrender. The Czechoslovak government de facto yielded to the demand for the cession of the border area, which was subsequently confirmed by British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain and Hitler at their first meeting in Bechtesgaden.
Chamberlain and Hitler
This was followed by new territorial claims by Hitler at his second meeting in Goldsburg, this time in favor of the fascists in Poland and Hungary. The British and French delegates sent these demands to the Czechoslovak government, but it did not dare to accept them at once in the face of public opposition.
When the British and French issued an ultimatum, the Czechoslovak government surrendered. Britain and France even threatened Czechoslovakia: "If it does not accept Hitler's demands, it will be recognized as an aggressor!" At the same time, the Soviet government also announced its decision: "If the Czechoslovak government asks the Soviet Union to fulfil its obligations to the allies, the Soviet Union will provide assistance alone, even if France, with which is an alliance with Czechoslovakia, refuses to provide such assistance."
But the Czechoslovak government did not accept the Soviet proposal, because the ruling circles were afraid of the power of the working class and preferred to sacrifice the independence of Czechoslovakia in order to maintain their own class superiority, and even the government headed by President Benes decided to surrender without convening a parliamentary discussion.
Benes
By September 22, mass demonstrations and a general strike led by the Communists forced the government to retreat, and the decision to surrender was not put into action. The broad masses of the Czechoslovak people demanded the defense of the Republic against Hitler, but at this critical juncture, the right wing of the Social Democratic Party and the leaders of the National Socialist Party tried to stop the Communist Party's efforts to call for the establishment of a Popular Front government by uniting all anti-fascist forces.
So in the end, the Popular Front government also failed to take power, and the capitulationists hiding behind the puppet government of General Jan Serovy took real power, and the new government issued a general mobilization order. At the same time, Britain, France and other Western powers continued to sell out the interests of Czechoslovakia at the Munich Conference.
On September 29, 1938, a meeting of Hitler, Mussolini, Daladier, and Chamberlain was held in Munich, which was not attended by representatives of Czechoslovakia. And the final result of the Munich Conference was the recognition of all the territorial claims of Nazi Germany, the approval of the violation of the sovereignty of Czechoslovakia!
Czechoslovakia was ceded after the Munich Conference: Tikhine was forcibly occupied by Poland; South Slovakia and the Ukrainian regions of Transcarpathia were occupied by Hungary. And in the occupied territories, hundreds of thousands of Czechs and Slovaks fell into the hands of fascist terrorists. Czechoslovakia lost more than a third of its territory and inhabitants, almost forty percent of its entire industry, not to mention the strategically important frontiers!
With the fall of the frontiers, Czechoslovakia became even more economically and militarily powerless. It can be said that the Munich Conference meant placing Czechoslovakia directly within the sphere of influence of Nazi Germany. The bourgeois ruling circles in the upper echelons of the Czech Republic, headed by the new prime minister and leader of the Peasants' Party, Belém, simply took advantage of the unfortunate events in Munich to establish a fascist regime.
In this way, Czechoslovakia finally fell into the hands of Nazi Germany, and how Hitler annexed all of Czechoslovakia was only a matter of time, and thus Czechoslovakia entered the period of World War II, when it lost its independence again and was occupied by Germany......