Word: runcimans
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Document 1 is the final Runciman Report, summing up scores of hitherto secret cablegrams and verbal messages sent to His Majesty's Government by Viscount Runciman of Doxford in the period from August 3 to September 16, during which the veteran British shipping tycoon labored in Czechoslovakia as mediator...
During those 44 days the Czechoslovak Government was obliged to make steadily greater concessions to the Sudeten German Party. Lord Runciman wrote that in his opinion and "in the opinion of the more responsible Sudeten leaders" the concessions offered on September 6 as the famed Plan No. 4 could be considered virtually full acceptance of those demands which provoked the Czechoslovak crisis, namely the Karlsbad Demands made last April 24 by the Sudeten "Little Führer," Konrad Henlein...
According to the Runciman report, "Sudeten extremists" such as Führer Henlein brashly refused to go to Prague to discuss Plan No. 4, and also Henlein's additional demands, instead urged "ex-treme unconstitutional action"-i. e., Sudeten secession-so that by September 13 "the Reich had become the dominant factor in the situation; the dispute was no longer an internal one. It was not part of my function to attempt mediation between Czechoslovakia and Germany...
...Chamberlain flew to Berchtesgaden on September 15. Next day, Mediator Chamberlain and ex-Mediator Runciman, starting respectively from Berchtesgaden and from Prague, flew back to London where they arrived within a few minutes of each other. They promptly conferred at No. 10 Downing Street. Events then moved so swiftly that by September 19 the capitulation of Prague had already been demanded by Britain and France, but it took methodical Lord Runciman until September 21 to write his report. Excerpts...
Sold Out. Viscountess Runciman and other women of the British Mission left Prague for London this week just ahead of the staggering news that Britain and France demanded Czechoslovakia yield part of the Sudetenland to Germany with out even a plebiscite. "Impossible ! That can't be true!" Government officials cried as press wires first broke the news, later confirmed to President Benes by the British and French Ministers. In London, the shock "cracked" Czechoslovak Minister Jan Masaryk, son of the late founder of Czechoslovakia, and he took his break down to bed. In Paris, the Czech Minister Stefan Osusky...