CHAPTER XXXIII
The signing of the Munich Agreement heralded that Czechoslovakia had become a piece of fat on the chopping block by Britain, France and other countries, and the Germans, who had long peeped at this piece of fat, naturally became the protagonist of wielding a table knife, but on this table, there would be several other diners, such as Poland and Hungary.
Long before the Munich Agreement, Germany was gradually occupying many of the border areas of Czechoslovakia, which was the first signal that Germany was about to make further demands. As stipulated at the Munich Conference, an international commission was set up to decide on new national borders, but it was not long before it became clear that Britain and France were not interested in the activities of the Commission, despite their commitments. As a result, no referendum was held, and decisions were taken by two German generals who were members of the committee.
In the end, Germany received 10,000 square miles of territory and 3.5 million people in Czechoslovakia, of whom 1/5 were Czechs. At the same time, Poland seized the Teshen region, which was rich in coal mines, and Hungary occupied large areas of Slovakia and Lucinia. With the help of Germany, the crippled Czechoslovakia was now divided into three small parts: autonomous Slovakia, autonomous Lusinia and the Czechoslovak provinces of Bohemia and Moravia.
On the first Sunday after the signing of the Munich Agreement, the final drama finally began, when Hitler summoned the puppet heads of the Czech and Slovak regions to Berlin and asked them to dissolve their respective countries, and within a week, a large number of German troops marched into Czechoslovakia and marched into Prague. Bohemia and Moravia were declared German protectorates, Slovakia was placed under German protection, and Hitler allowed the Hungarians to invade and annex Lucinia in the east.
Although Czechoslovakia had a good military industrial base, its population and army were not comparable to those of Nazi Germany, and it was not prepared for war. However, this was a secondary reason, and it was important that Germany had access to all the industrial minerals of the Czech Republic, such as coal and copper. At the same time, the Czech Republic also has a large arsenal, and the Czech light machine gun is produced at that factory, and at the same time Germany can also get a complete Czech military industry, which is too important for Germany.
Why is Czechoslovakia so vulnerable, you must know that the Czech Republic has 400,000 elite troops and 400,000 reserve troops, but it was annexed by Germany in a blink of an eye, the main reason is that the geopolitical environment at that time forced the Czech Republic to a dead end. Although the modern focus is only on Nazi Germany's ambitions for Czechoslovakia, in fact, due to the great changes that took place in the territory of Central and Southeastern Europe after the end of World War I, there were a lot of ethnic contradictions and territorial disputes in this region. For example, the disintegration of the former Austro-Hungarian Empire, the re-independence of Poland, the establishment of Yugoslavia, the annexation of Transylvania to Romania, and the shrinking of German territory have complicated the international relations between China and Europe.
For example, there are a large number of Germans (after all, it was the main ethnic group of Austria-Hungary) in the Czech Republic, Hungarians, and Poles, and there are Germans and Hungarians in Romania, and there are a large number of Germans in Hungary, and so on. As a result, the contradictions of various countries have become a chain of contradictions, and it is not only Germany that wants to carve up the Czech Republic, but out of their own interests, including Germany, Poland, Hungary and other neighboring countries, as well as Italy, which is not a bordering country, all hope to get rid of the Czech Republic, Yugoslavia has an ambiguous attitude, and Romania sways between Germany and the Soviet Union.
France had tried to unite small Central European countries to form an alliance to contain German expansion, even at the expense of alliing with the Soviet Union. But this effort was apparently dissolved by the respective contradictions of the potential allies. Hungary followed Germany and tried to ** the Czechs, and there was a Transylvanian dispute against Romania. Later, they annexed the Hungarian-inhabited territories of the Czech Republic, taking away 20% of the Czechs with them.
Poland used the pretext that the Czech Republic was going to be ** anyway, so it was better to let Poland also take the opportunity to recover the Chekhin region and expand its territory to confront Germany, and jointly put pressure on the Czech Republic with Nazi Germany, and its posture was more vigorous than Germany's. Poland even tried to eliminate the possibility that Romania would agree to the transit of Soviet troops, and urged Romania, which had no ambitions for the Czechs, to participate in the partition of the Czechs. And the pretext for strengthening Poland was also used by Poland to explain their move to threaten to annex Lithuania, which withstood the pressure because of the support of the Soviet Union, and because of the threat from Germany, the Soviet Union at this time was still very righteous (quite black and humorous, in 40 it was the Soviet Union that agreed to Germany's annexation of Lithuania), and later Poland obtained the Czech Czechine region.
The attitude of Romania is most telling, first of all, Romania borders with the USSR and there are territorial disputes over Western Ukraine. Second, Romania was nervous with Hungary, and although it did not share a border with Germany, Hungary was clearly prepared to be Germany's follower. Therefore, Romania made the decision that best served its interests: it supported Hungary's annexation of the Hungarian regions of the Czech Republic, but firmly opposed Hungary's annexation of all of Slovakia, which of course meant allowing Soviet troops to cross the border. At the same time, it was stated that the Soviet Union would firmly stand on the side of Poland when it attacked Poland, but that the Soviet Union would not attack Poland if Poland did not invade the Czech Republic.
The situation of the Czech Republic became very devastating, and the Soviet Union offered to send troops absolutely as long as France fulfilled its obligation to protect the Czechs. France offered to help the Czechs and ask the British to attack Germany together, at least the Poles would have to side with the French. And if the Poles want to help France avoid being ** in the Czech Republic at this time, unless the sow will go to the tree. The British saw the opportunity and proposed that it only had an alliance obligation to France, although the British did not want the Czech Republic to be **, but it was they who destroyed the French Central European alliance in the first place, and they could not say it. Turning back to the Soviet Union, although they did want to protect the Czechs, they were unable to attack Poland seriously because they had nowhere to do it.
Thus, despite the fact that the Czechs themselves had begun a general mobilization, it was expected that they would be able to resist Germany for at least three to six months on their own, and if necessary, withstand the Hungarian attack, and even be forced to agree to Poland's demands to withdraw them from the war. But the success of their resistance was only provided by France in the west and the Soviet Union in the east, but until the Munich Agreement was signed, both of them were ultimately only a moon in the water. In the end, the straw that crushed the Czechs was the attitude of Poland, which did not even bother to accept it at all, and they openly demanded that the Czechs be destroyed. This is the sorrow of a small country, how can the Czech Republic survive the joint invasion of two big countries, three neighboring countries with heavy troops, and two people watching the excitement outside, plus a country that is eager to help but is likely to have ill intentions? This is called the lack of diplomacy in a weak country. Eventually, Czechoslovakia agreed to the territorial claims of its three neighbors, and became a satellite state to Germany.
Because of Zhuo Fei's appearance and turmoil, the Munich Agreement was signed three months earlier than in history, and the Germans' annexation of Czechoslovakia was also at least half a year earlier. On June 20, 1938, the first German troops marched into Prague, which had been the capital of Czechoslovakia, and by this time the country had been divided into many parts, all of which were subservient to Hitler.
While most of the Czechs were hiding in the streets and weeping, German radio announced that Bohemia and Moravi would be occupied by the Germans on the same day, and that the Germans imposed a curfew on the streets of Prague. The Ministry of Public Buildings and Banking has been taken over by the Germans. The Gestapo has a list in his hand and is arresting people everywhere. The wheels of history are still rolling, the Germans have once again achieved great benefits without bloodshed, and all the German people are cheering for the revival of the Reich.
The Germans were excited, but Britain and France were dumbfounded, after the signing of the Munich Agreement, Britain and France had actually seen the end of Czechoslovakia being partitioned, but they never expected that the Germans would be so fast, and they never thought that the Poles would be so unscrupulous. Britain and France did not know that as early as after their delegation expressed a warm attitude towards the Czechoslovak question, at the suggestion of Zhuo Fei, Hitler had already planned to annex Czechoslovakia.
In this plan planned by Hitler, the territory that Germany needed to occupy had already been demarcated, and if it were not for Hitler's instructions, how could the Poles get the opportunity to wield their knives in this feast. According to the information fed back by the intelligence officers lurking in Czechoslovakia, the German army had already accurate the steps of the operation to the hourly unit, and once the troops deployed on the border received the order to attack, the wolf-like German troops would pour into the territory of Czechoslovakia like a torrent and take full control of the area to be occupied according to the plan.
Czechoslovakia had 400,000 so-called elite troops, but Hitler had deployed no less than 600,000 German troops on the border early on, half of which were mechanized troops. Manpower can never compare to the power of machinery, especially the sudden German attack caught the Czechs by surprise, and with more than ninety percent of the roads and bridges in Czechoslovakia still intact, the German army, with a high degree of mechanization, took only one week to control the territory that Germany needed to occupy according to plan.
This was the benefit and effect of mechanized marching, and in this way, Hitler valued the oil wells that Zhuo Fei had helped Germany explore on his own soil. The ambitious Hitler even believed that as long as he gave himself enough fuel and chariots, the all-powerful Imperial Army would conquer all of Europe and even the whole world.