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Czechoslovakia had fielded a modern army of 35 divisions and was a major manufacturer of machine guns, tanks, and artillery, most of them assembled in the Škoda factory in Plzeň. Many Czech factories continued to produce Czech designs until converted to German designs. Czechoslovakia also had other major manufacturing companies.
The Munich Agreement [a] was an agreement reached in Munich on 30 September 1938, by Nazi Germany, the United Kingdom, the French Republic, and Fascist Italy.The agreement provided for the German annexation of part of Czechoslovakia called the Sudetenland, where more than three million people, mainly ethnic Germans, lived. [1]
At the time of the collapse of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, the Sudetenland was a German-speaking part of the Empire which fell to the new state of Czechoslovakia, itself dominated by the Czechs. Initially, many Sudeten Germans wished to become part of the new German-speaking state of German Austria, and later they hoped to join Austria.
Czechoslovakia was not to be a party to these talks, nor was the Soviet Union. The four powers agreed that Germany would complete its occupation of the Sudetenland but that an international commission would consider other disputed areas. Czechoslovakia was told that if it did not submit, it would stand alone.
Once a unified Czechoslovakia was restored after World War II (after the country had been divided during the war), the conflict between the Czechs and the Slovaks surfaced again. The governments of Czechoslovakia and other Central European nations deported ethnic Germans, reducing the presence of minorities in the nation.
After Germany's annexation and occupation of Czechoslovakia, the U.S. fully backed and supported the Czechoslovak government-in-exile initially operating in Paris in 1939, but withdrew to London in 1940 due to the then-impending German occupation of France. Diplomatic support did not end as a result of the occupation by Germany.
The rise of Adolf Hitler and Nazi Germany in 1933, the German annexation of Austria in 1938, the resulting revival of revisionism in Hungary, the agitation for autonomy in Slovakia and the appeasement policy of the Western powers of France and the United Kingdom left Czechoslovakia without effective allies.
Czechoslovakia was the world's 7th largest manufacturer of arms, making Czechoslovakia into an important player in the global arms trade. [13] After Czechoslovakia accepted the terms of the Munich Agreement of 30 September 1938, Nazi Germany incorporated the ethnic German majority Sudetenland regions along the German border directly into Nazi ...