Czechoslovakia was informed by Great Britain and France that it could either oppose Nazi Germany or submit to the prescribed annexes. The Czechoslovakian government single-purposely acknowledged the desperation of the fight against the Nazis, reluctantly capitulated (30 September) and agreed to abide by the agreement. The colony gave Germany, from 10 October, the Sudetenland and de facto control of the rest of Czechoslovakia as long as Hitler promised not to go any further. On 30 September, after some time off, Chamberlain went to Hitler`s house and asked him to sign a peace treaty between the United Kingdom and Germany. After Hitler`s interpreter translated it for him, he was glad to have accepted it. Meanwhile, the British government has asked Benea to ask for a mediator. As he did not want to sever his government`s relations with Western Europe, the heirs reluctantly agreed. The British appointed Lord Runciman, the former Liberal cabinet minister, who arrived in Prague on 3 August to convince Benes to accept an acceptable plan for the Sudeten Germans. [23] On 20 July, Bonnet informed the Czechoslovakian ambassador in Paris that France, while publicly declaring its support for the Czechoslovakian negotiations, was not prepared to go to war on the Sudetenland. [23] In August, the German press was full of stories of Czechoslovakian atrocities against the Sudeten Germans, with the intention of forcing the West to put pressure on the Czechoslovakians to make concessions. [24] Hitler hoped that the Czechoslovaks would refuse and that the West would feel morally justified in abandoning the Czechoslovaks to their fate.
[25] In August, Germany sent 750,000 troops along the border with Czechoslovakia, officially as part of military maneuvers. [9] [25] On September 4 or 5,[23] Erbe presented the fourth plan, which met almost all of the requirements of the agreement. The Sudeten Germans were invited by Hitler to the prairies to avoid compromise,[25] and the SdP organized demonstrations which, on 7 September, provoked a police operation in Ostrava, during which two of its deputies were arrested. [23] The Sudeten Germans used the incident and the false allegations of other atrocities as a pretext to interrupt further negotiations. [26] In 1933, the head of the German Sudetenland government, Konrad Henlein, founded the German Sudetenland Party (SdP), which was “militant, populist and overtly hostile” to the Czechoslovakian government and soon won two-thirds of the vote in districts with a large German population. Historians disagree on whether the SDP was a Nazi front organization from the beginning or whether it had forged a front-line organization. [10] In 1935, the SdP was the second political party in Czechoslovakia, as German votes were concentrated on the party and czech and Slovak voices were divided among several parties. [9] Shortly after Austria`s accession to Germany, Henlein met Hitler in Berlin on 28 March 1938 and was ordered to make unacceptable demands for the Czechoslovakian democratic government led by President Edvard Bené.