ABSTRACT
One of the effects of the Anschluss had been to extend Germany's borders so that geographically Czechoslovakia's western half became a salient surrounded by the territories of the Third Reich. This gave added strength to the demand Hitler had begun to make soon after coming to power in 1933 – that the affront to German nationhood that the artificial state of Czechoslovakia represented must be ended. Purely in terms of the internationally recognised principle of self-determination, he had a case. Czechoslovakia had been one of the new states created by the Versailles settlement. It had been formed from a number of ethnic groups, the largest being the Czechs and Slovaks, who together made up around nine million of the overall population of fourteen million. A large minority group were the three and a quarter million Germans of the Sudetenland, the ‘Southland’ in German terms, though the area formed the northern fringe of Czechoslovakia. It was the Sudeten Germans who, from 1933, under their Nazi leader, Kurt Henlein, agitated with increasing confidence and vehemence against what they described as their enforced incorporation into the bastard state of Czechoslovakia.
