Word: chamberlain
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There were the usual protests, with the usual results, but Hitler's seizure of Bohemia and Moravia had two important consequences. First, Chamberlain finally realized that appeasement would not suffice to restrain Hitler. So when Hitler began talking to the Poles in that same month about the Germans' need to regain the port of Danzig, plus free passage through the Polish Corridor, Chamberlain offered the Poles an unsolicited guarantee of British military support. It was that guarantee that Hitler flouted the following September...
Hitler's antagonists had changed over the years, and now the important newcomer on the international scene was Neville Chamberlain, who had replaced Stanley Baldwin as Conservative Prime Minister of Britain in the spring of 1937. Chamberlain's background was in business; he believed in orderly negotiations. He had no experience in dealing with an unscrupulous improviser like Hitler, but he nonetheless invited himself to a meeting with the Fuhrer. Hitler received him in Berchtesgaden, and soon began ranting about the Czechs. He said he would not "tolerate any longer that a small, second-rate country should treat the mighty...
...Chamberlain said he would have to consult with his associates, which amounted to seeing whether either the British or the French were ready to fight for Czechoslovakia. They were not. Chamberlain then had to persuade Bene to give Germany every area inhabited more than 50% by Germans. That would mean the surrender of the entire Sudetenland, which represented not only one-fifth of Czechoslovakia's territory but also its industrial heartland and its defensible natural frontier. Bene at first refused, but when the British and French told him that he would have to fight alone, he gave...
...next day Chamberlain returned to Germany to tell Hitler he could have everything he asked. "Do I understand," asked the Fuhrer, "that the British, French and Czech governments have agreed to the transfer of the Sudetenland from Czechoslovakia to Germany...
...said Chamberlain...