Quoting A.J.P. Taylor’s The Origins of the Second World War, page 262:
It was no doubt disgraceful that Soviet Russia should make any agreement with the leading Fascist state; but this reproach came ill from the statesmen who went to Munich. […] [The German–Soviet] pact contained none of the fulsome expressions of friendship which Chamberlain had put into the Anglo‐German declaration on the day after the Munich conference. Indeed Stalin rejected any such expressions: “the Soviet Government could not suddenly present to the public German–Soviet assurances of friendship after they had been covered with buckets of filth by the [Fascist] Government for six years.”
The [German–Soviet] pact was neither an alliance nor an agreement for the partition of Poland. Munich had been a true alliance for partition: the British and French dictated partition to the Czechs. The Soviet government undertook no such action against the Poles. They merely promised to remain neutral, which is what the Poles had always asked them to do and which Western policy implied also.
Andrew Rothstein’s The Munich Conspiracy is the perfect resource for learning more about this. Pages 70–2:
On September 26 [the Third Reich’s head of state] prepared the way for this by a speech at the Sportpalast in Berlin, in which raving abuse of Czechoslovakia and Beneš, with denunciations of the U.S.S.R. and threats of war, was interspersed with assurances that this was “the last territorial claim which I have in Europe”, expressions of friendship for Britain, France and Poland, and of personal gratitude to Chamberlain.
This was well calculated to impress: since the British Ambassador in Berlin, at any rate, had freely revealed the same train of thought passing through his mind for many months, and Hitler knew from many sources that Nevile Henderson was not alone.
He followed up the speech with a personal letter to Chamberlain on the 27th (which the Prime Minister received the same evening), arguing in the most reasonable tones against various criticisms of his terms, offering to guarantee the independence of the remainder of Czechoslovakia once the German, Polish and Hungarian minorities had gone, and finishing with an invitation to Chamberlain to “continue your effort, for which I should like to take this opportunity of once more sincerely thanking you”—in order to prevent “Prague” from bringing about a general war.⁷²
The calculation was correct. Chamberlain snatched at the opportunity, and telegraphed next day to Hitler proposing an immediate Four‐Power Conference (i.e. including Italy). He had already informed the French Government, whose leaders were mainly concerned to get in ahead of Chamberlain (on the morning of the 28th) with an even more eager offer of co‐operation against Czechoslovakia—that it should be required to agree (on pain of losing any French support) to the immediate occupation by German troops of “all four sides of the Bohemian quadrilateral”.⁷³
Hitler had only to choose: and he preferred the British precisely because it involved the public participation of Britain and France in the dismemberment of Czechoslovakia, at his dictation. Mussolini, who feared that a war might end in disaster, supported Chamberlain in a series of messages to Hitler.⁷⁴
He sent the necessary invitations on the morning of the 28th; and the conference—Hitler, Mussolini, Chamberlain and Daladier—met on the afternoon of the 29th, sitting until the early hours of the morning of the 30th. Mussolini already had the draft of a settlement, which had been drawn up the previous day by the Germans, and passed on to him by the Italian Ambassador at Berlin: and at a suitable moment, after a preliminary statement by Hitler on the usual lines, Mussolini produced it as his own.
The draft provided for evacuation of the “Sudeten–German” territory, according to a map drawn up by the Germans, between October 1 and 10 and without the destruction of any existing installations: an international commission (of the four Powers with Czechoslovakia) to supervise the evacuation: a plebiscite to be held in “doubtful territories”, which until then would be occupied by international forces: and German troops to begin occupying “predominantly German territory” on October 1.⁷⁵
After argument about the drafting of various passages, with intervals for meals, these points became the essential features of the Munich Agreement, signed on September 30. There were several additional points, designed to make the document more palatable to the public in Britain and France—since none of those present could have supposed that they would make the “carve‐up” more acceptable to Czechoslovakia.
Such were the provisions that the international commission should determine one particular zone which was to be occupied, the boundaries of which were doubtful at Munich: that there was to be the right of option for individuals: that Britain and France maintained the offer of an international guarantee of the new boundaries, made on September 19, and that [the Third Reich] and [Fascist] Italy would join it once the Polish and Hungarian minority questions were settled.
(Emphasis added in all cases.)
Further reading: The Munich Crisis, Politics and the People: International, Transnational and Comparative Perspectives (interview with author)
Click here for other events that happened today (September 30).
1883: Bernhard Rust, Reich Minister of Science, Education and Culture, was unkind enough to exist.
1934: Erwin Rommel met Adolf Schicklgruber for the first time, and Reich Minister of Economics Hjalmar Schacht reported to his Chancellor on his progress of planning the German Reich’s economy for another war.
1935: The Third Reich commissioned U‐12 into service under the command of Kapitänleutnant Werner von Schmidt.
1936: Mutsu completed her reconstruction at Yokosuka Naval Arsenal.
1937: Imperial flightcraft bombarded Chinese coastal battery positions overlooking the Pearl River Delta in Guangdong Province.
1939: As General Władysław Sikorski became the Polish government‐in‐exile’s prime minister, Reinhard Heydrich became the leader of new Reich Main Security Office, RSHA, and U‐23 completed her twoth war patrol. Additionally, Walther von Brauchitsch received the Clasps to his Iron Cross 2nd Class and 1st Class medals as well as the Knights Cross of the Iron Cross.
1940: Four Axis raids, each consisting of sixty to two hundred bombers and escorted by large numbers of fighters, crossed into southern England at 0900, 1000, 1300, and 1600 hours; some got through to London, but some did not drop their bombs as they had little visibility due to low clouds, overshooting their targets as radar operators misread the Knickebein radio beacon signals. Meanwhile, two groups of about one hundred bombers each attacked cities on the southern coast. On that day, the Axis lost fourteen bombers, twenty‐eight Bf 109 fighters, and one Bf 110 fighter (while the Allies lost 19 fighters and 8 pilots). The daylight attacks would represent the last major raids of such type conducted by the Luftwaffe. Overnight, the Axis bombed London, Liverpool, and several others cities; the aircraft factory at Yeovil was only lightly damaged as most bombs fell on the town instead.
Apart from that, Axis submarine U‐37 sank Allied ship Samala west of Ireland at 1013 hours, massacring everyone aboard (65 crew, 1 gunner, and 2 passengers). At 2156 hours, in the same area, U‐37 sank Allied ship Heminge, killing somebody. Axis mines laid by destroyers Eckholdt, Riedel, Lody, Galster, Ihn, and Steinbrinck two days earlier off Falmouth in southwestern England destroyed two Allied vessels, resulting in twenty‐nine and fifteen deaths, respectively. Elsewhen, Karl Dönitz inspected the Axis submarine Alessandro Malaspina at Bordeaux, and Alpino Bagnolini ended her third war patrol arriving there.
1941: The Axis finished the Babi Yar massacre, but the Jager Report noted that the Axis exterminated 366 Jewish men, 483 Jewish women, and 597 Jewish children in Trakai, Lithuania (for a total of 1,446 people). As well, Operation Typhoon got an unofficial start when Guderian’s Panzergruppe 2 attacked two days ahead of schedule, and Axis bombers attacked shipyards at Tyneside in northern England, severely damaging submarine HMS Sunfish.
1942: The Third Reich’s head of state publicly repeated his forecast of the annihilation of Jewry while a transport containing 610 Jews arrived at Auschwitz from the Westerbork camp in the Netherlands; the Axis registered 37 men and 118 women into the camp but exterminated the remaining 454. As well, Axis bombers attacked Lancing and Colchester, England, and Auschwitz Commandant Rudolf Höss forbade his SS guards to consume raw fruits, raw vegetables, and raw milk due to the typhus epidemic in the camp. On the bright side, Hans‐Joachim Marseille, Axis pilot, died falling to his death.
1943: On the eve of the Jewish New Year, the Gestapo and Danish fascists began rounding up Danish Jews. A Danish businessman passed the news of the operation and passed the information to the Danish resistance, which then arranged fishing boats to ferry a large number of Danish Jews to Sweden. Meanwhile, SS‐Hauptsturmführer Eduard Weiter became the commandant of Dachau (replacing Martin Wei), and the Wehrmacht began evacuating Naples amidst continued fighting, leaving behind a burning city historic archive and many traps. A ‘wolfpack’ consisting of Axis submarines U‐703, U‐601, and U‐960 also attacked Soviet convoy VA‐18 near the Sergey Kirov Islands in the eastern Kara Sea and sank freighter Arhangelsk.
1944: The Third Reich commenced a counteroffensive to retake the Nijmegen salient, this having been captured by the Allies during Operation Market Garden. Likewise, a V‐1 flying bomb caused five deaths and many injuries when a row of houses was demolished at Ardleigh in Essex, England. The USAAF base at Thorpe Abbots, home of the 100th Bomb Group (‘The Bloody 100th’) reported buzz bombs flying over the airfield at one hundred fifty feet before exploding in the farm fields surrounding the base. A U.S. 8th Air Force 750‐bomber raid on Munster and Handorf in the Greater German Reich killed the Staffelkapitän and the training officer of Axis Air Force 7/KG3; records captured by the Allies showed that the Staffel had launched one hundred seventy‐seven flying bombs during thirteen nights of sorties in Sept. 1944.
1945: The Western Allies disbanded I‐401’s crew, and all of the officers and other men went back into the civilian population, including the few who had committed war crimes!
1946: Takashi Sakai, Axis governor of Hong Kong, died at the hands of a Chinese firing squad.