One of the main causes of World War II was Hitler's public justification for the dismemberment of the Czech state through either war or diplomacy was the plight of the 3.5 million ethnic Germans the Treaty of Versailles had left inside Czechoslovakia. The main land that Hitler wanted to annex to Germany was that of the Sudetenland, where most of the people living there were of German origin. The land also bordered Germany to the South East, and Germany was prepared to conquer this land at all cost.
Czechoslovakia had been created in 1919. The new nation was created out of the old Austro-Hungarian Empire and it contained numerous nationalities :
*3,200,000 Germans
*7,450,000 Czechs
*2,300,000 Slovaks
*720,000 Magyars
*560,000 Ruthenes
*100,000 Poles
It was almost inevitable that trouble would occur between the various nationalities. This was especially true of the Germans who resented living under the rule of foreigners.
Mussolini (left) and Hitler sent their armies to N...
From left to right (front): Chamberlain, Daladier,...
A woman in the Sudetenland greets incoming German ...The Germans mostly lived in the region on the western border with Germany - the Sudetenland.
A SPEECH BY ADOLF HITLER
"And now before us stands the last problem that must be solved and will be solved It (the Sudetenland) is the last territorial claim which I have to make in Europe, but it is the claim from which I will not recede..." - Adolf Hitler, in a speech in Berlin, September 26 1938, just prior to the Munich conference.
Most of the German minorities live in Sudetenland, an economically valuable and strategically important area along the Czech border with Germany and Austria. The grievances of the Sudeten Germans against the Czech state had led to the rise of a strong German nationalist movement in the Sudetenland. By the mid -1930's, this movement had the support of almost 70 percent of the Sudeten German population. Their leader, the pro-Nazi Konrad...