Author: Fext

The percentage of the German population in the judicial districts of Sudetenland, Czechoslovakia according to the census of 1930

Hitler annexed neighboring Austria in 1938, an event that was welcomed by many of the country's inhabitants. Next, he set his sights on the Sudetenland, a region of Czechoslovakia with large German-speaking populations. This map shows the fraction of German speakers in each of the judicial districts in the modern-day Czech Republic (which was then the western half of Czechoslovakia) in the 1930s. As you can see, areas near the borders with Germany (to the Northwest) and Austria (to the Southwest) were predominantly German-speaking. Hitler claimed that these regions should be part of Germany, and his threats to take them by force sparked a political crisis. British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain met with Hitler in Munich, in September 1938 to discuss the crisis. The Czechoslovakian government wasn't invited the the negotiations. Chamberlain agreed to let Hitler annex these portions of Czechoslovakia in exchange for a promise from Hitler not to seek further territorial gains. Chamberlain declared that the agreement represented "peace for our time," which of course it didn't. (Source: Vox)