The document discusses the Munich Agreement of 1938 and its significance. In 3 sentences: The Munich Agreement allowed Germany to annex the Sudetenland region of Czechoslovakia, fulfilling the dream of reunifying ethnic Germans and weakening the Treaty of Versailles. It meant freedom for 3.5 million Sudeten Germans but also led to refugees fleeing the region as Germany occupied it. The agreement gave Hitler control of key Czech defenses and resources, leaving Czechoslovakia vulnerable to further German expansionism and economic exploitation.

1. Some notes of comparison
Greater Germany Thanks the Führer
The Sudetenland Awaits Adolf Hitler's Army of Peace
After the Anschluss of Austria into the Reich, the Munich Agreement was the
most significant political event of the year 1938. And not just for Germany, but
also for the whole world. Because even more than the reunification of the
German Ostmark with the Reich, the political event of the Munich conferences
represents a success of the policy of the Führer, which aimed at a radical
liquidation and annulment of the Versailles treaty and its subsidiary agreements.
The merger of the two German states into a Greater German Empire in March of
this year was a matter that Germany and Austria settled on their own. For the first
time, the heads of government of one of the great European powers, who at the
time themselves dictated the failed treaties, were involved in the Munich
Agreement, which is characterized by its complete departure from the spirit of
Versailles. It is therefore understandable that voices can already be heard in the
foreign press celebrating the result of the discussions of September 29, 1938 as
the most significant historical event since the world war. "The meeting in Munich
wiped out in a few hours one of the most heinous crimes of the tyrannical
conspiracy at Versailles," writes an Italian newspaper.
The Munich Agreement means freedom for three and a half million Sudeten
Germans. For them it also means the fulfillment of a centuries-old dream that has
always moved the Germans in the Bohemian basin just as much as the other
Germans. For the Sudeten Germans, their own freedom coincided with the
political realization of the Greater German Reich. Their autonomy and
independence from Czech foreign rule was never a question that concerned them
alone, but was only to be solved in connection with the establishment of a
Greater German national empire itself.
How much blood has been shed over the centuries to make this day a reality.
Today is the day. And therefore heart full of joy and happiness about the
homecoming of our fellow Sudeten Germans, whose misery has now come to an
end for all time.
Published 1/10/38 – by Wilhelm Wiess in Völkischer Beobachter (A German
Newspaper)
Hitler’s new powers: Czechoslovakia at his mercy
The Munich agreement gives Hitler everything he wants (to begin with)
except in so far as it does not perhaps quite enable him to get it as quickly as
as he would have done under the untrimmed ultimatum of Godesberg. He
will begin the invasion of Czechoslovakia tomorrow exactly as he threatened
threatened to do in his speech on September 12. He is free to occupy all the
the regions where the Sudeten Germans are in a majority, and to do so by
rapid stages.
All the misery and outrage that followed the German occupation of Vienna
are now certain to follow the German occupation of the Sudetenland.
Prague has, even now, begun to fill with refugees – Sudeten German
Socialists, Jews, not to speak of Czechs, – which is natural enough, seeing
that for months the German newspapers, wireless, and Hitler himself have
referred to the Czechs in terms that have been one prolonged incitement to
to acts of violence and oppression.
By October 10 Hitler will have annexed a vast area with great natural and
industrial wealth, and is not even to pay compensation for Czech property,
whether private or Government. He will be master of Czechoslovakia’s main
main defences, and there is nothing to stop him from making himself
master of all Czechoslovakia in course of time.
…
The economic consequences of the Munich agreement are bound to be very
very hard for Czechoslovakia. The loss of industries, railheads, junctions
and so on, cannot fail to cause heavy loss of trade and unemployment. Nor
can there be any doubt that Czechoslovakia will become for Germany an
object of quasi-colonial exploitation.
Published 1/10/38 – By ‘Our Diplomatic Correspondent’ in The Guardian (A
(A British Newspaper)