It is documented that the French and British considered the Soviet army and air force to be inferior in 1938 and probably would have had a difficult time moving through Poland (Moldovia?) to do much. However, the simultaneous threat of France (with some BEF) moving from the West and USSR moving from the East may have prevented Hitler from moving beyond the Sudetenland so fast and delayed the invasion of Poland by the Nazi’s and USSR. The threat of using the early British heavy longer range bombers may have helped as well.

Britain did gain an additional year and one half to bring more Hurricanes, Blenheims and early heavies on line. They were extremely smart awarding a contract to Supermarine for the Spitfire and getting them built during this year and one half. They were able to fully mechanize their army, albeit the BEF was too small. However, they were very short on adequate armor, anti-tank and AA units.

In the one year gained, France did a little to improve their armored forces, but not enough of the tanks that mattered: Somua’s, Char B-1’s and the advanced Renault tank. They did not build enough mechanized artillery or adequate anti-tank units. France also did not listen to de Gaulle and other French and British armor experts to develop independant armored divisions until 1940. France also did little to improve their fighter force. They chose to continue to build the obsolete MS-406 in lieu of the D-520 and D-550. They chose not to buy and use the Merlin I engine. They did not manufacture enough LeO bombers instead choosing Berguet’s which and did not purchase USA planes (Douglas bomber and dive bombers) until the last minute. France was extremely short on AA and mechanized infantry. France chose to work on the Maginot Line but did not complete it to Lille.

During this one year, the Nazi’s more than doubled their armored units and mechanized units as well as increasing their bomber forces. A large part of this was from Czech armament factories.

Adam’s comment is very interesting indeed. The Nazi’s needed the armament factories of Czechoslovakia badly. These were outside the Sudetenland near Prague. Without the Pz 38 and all of its variants, Rommel and other Army groups would have had a hard time taking on the French tanks. The Hetzer and Marder weapons later caused havoc with the British tanks and even with the USA M-3 and M-5’s.

That is one reason, why I still believe that this was a Franco-Anglo crisis. The other reason is, France and England lost all credibility with USSR after this occured which lead to the August 1939 agreement between Hitler and Stalin which really allowed for control of Europe until the Nazi defeat at Stalingrad and in Tunisia/Sicily.

Paul Shafer

If you don’t mind listening to the opinion of someone who is a Czech citizen and who sees and feels the whole issue “from inside”, I would say that the event is known here (in the Czech Republic) as Munich Crisis or Munich Agreement or Munich Betrayal). Very popular phrase here is also “about us without us”. That is also why we don’t like foreigners very much, especially if they are from Germany or Russia.-)

Of course what happened in the past was not their fault but this tragedy determined the faith of the whole nation for 80 years and it is very significant even now.

If this all did not happend Czechoslovakia would be economically and socially at least as strong as Germany, France or Switzerland. And it is little funny that these days, people from Germany, France or Britain consider us as being “that poor country” somewhere in the east….but you made us becoming such a country guys…or at least your polititians did.

We will never forget this and I will make sure my children learn all about the Munich Betrayal very carefully

Kind regards

Adam

Two years later Coulondre was proven correct.