Sudetenland

After the First World War the old empire of Austria-Hungary ([link]) was carved up. The Sudetenland, within the areas of Bohemia and Moravia were given to the new Czechoslovakia there was a sizeable ethnic German minority. Hitler would use this fact as a pretext for claiming the right to absorb the area and bypass the line of Czech defensive fortifications that his armies could not take through direct attack. In September 1938 the Munich Agreement was signed, permitting Germany to annex the Sudetenland, a move that Neville Chaimberlain thought would be the end of Hitler's territorial ambitions and prevent war. It did not.