London, FridayThe Munich agreement gives Hitler everything he wants (first), except to the extent that he may not be quite able to get it as quickly as he would have done under Godesberg`s full ultimatum. He will begin tomorrow the invasion of Czechoslovakia, as he threatened in his speech of 12 September. It is free to occupy all the regions where the Sudeten Germans are the majority, and this by leaps and bounds. The slogan “Above us, without us!” (Czech: O n`s bez n`s!) sums up the feelings of the Czechoslovakian population (Slovakia and the Czech Republic) towards the agreement. [Citation required] On its way to Germany, Czechoslovakia (as the state was renamed) lost its reasonable border with Germany and its fortifications. Without it, its independence became more nominal than more real. The agreement also caused Czechoslovakia to lose 70% of its steel industry, 70% of its electricity and 3.5 million citizens to Germany. [61] The Sudeten Germans celebrated what they saw as their liberation. The impending war, it seemed, had been averted. West Germany`s policy of remaining neutral in the Arab-Israeli conflict after the Munich massacre and the 1972 lufthansa flight 615, instead of adopting the resolutely pro-Israel stance of previous governments, has given rise to Israeli comparisons with the Munich appeasement agreement. [110] The American historian William L. Shirer estimated in his “Rise and Fall of the Third Reich” (1960) that Czechoslovakia, although Hitler was not bluffing about its intention to invade, could have resisted considerably.
Shirer believed that Britain and France had sufficient air defence to avoid severe bombing of London and Paris, and could have waged a swift and fruitful war against Germany. [66] He quotes Churchill as saying that the agreement means that “Britain and France are in a much worse position than Hitler`s Germany.” [61] After personally inspecting the Czech fortifications, Hitler privately told Joseph Goebbels that “we shed a lot of blood” and that it was fortunate that there had been no fighting. [67] The British public expected an imminent war and Chamberlain`s “statesman`s gesture” was initially applauded.