ABSTRACT
The Munich conference, which represents the summit of Adolf Hitler’s political success, begot in him that ultimate over-weening self-confidence which was to prove his undoing. Hitler stood triumphant at the Channel. During all his drumfire propaganda against the latter, Hitler had always insisted, one might almost say ecstatically insisted, that the Sudetenland represented his final territorial aspiration. Yet if Hitler regarded himself essentially as the liquidator of the Treaty of Versailles, and Hermann Rauschning’s evidence suggests that that is just what he did, he could hardly have overlooked the fact that the most important losses of German territory remained unrectified. Hitler’s prestige after his bloodless victories in Austria and Czechoslovakia was too enormous. During the winter of 1938, Hitler further ordered the General Staff to abandon all preparations of plans for a future war and to concentrate on the training and organization of the Army.
