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How Chamberlain paved the way for world war
JOHN ELLISON looks back 80 years to the signing of the Munich agreement, which authorised Germany’s occupation of the Sudetenland
Neville Chamberlain waves his hat as he boards an aircraft bound for Munich before talks with Adolf Hitler

SEPTEMBER 30 1938 contained the fateful minutes during which Britain’s “national government” prime minister Neville Chamberlain and his French counterpart Edouard Daladier signed an agreement in Munich together with nazi Germany’s Hitler and fascist Italy’s Mussolini.

This “authorised” Germany’s armed forces to cross Czechoslovakia’s till then strongly fortified borders where they touched those of Germany and Austria, and to occupy some 11,000 square miles of the country’s outer edges — the Sudetenland.

The invasion proceeded promptly on October 1 without resistance, as Edvard Benes, the Czechoslovak leader, had been intimidated into surrender.  Nazi occupation of the country’s much weakened residue, including Prague, unaddressed by the devils’ pact, was deferred until the following March.

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