czechoslovakia had a large ethnically german population
Chat with our AI personalities
The Sudetenland
The Munich Conference was held to address Germany's threat to Czechoslovakia. It resulted in the Munich Agreement, which gave Hitler control over Sudetenland in Czechoslovakia.
Before the German Army entered Czechoslovakia, the President of the country had fled to England and set up a government in exile, and the Slovaks had split off and become a separate country that was allies with the Germans. There was no Czechoslovakia left by the time the German troops entered the country. At the same time that German troops entered the former country of Czechoslovakia, there were also Polish and Hungarian troops that marched in because they wanted to take back their lands that had been part of the country of Czechoslovakia. The Czech part of the country became a German protectorate and the Polish and Hungarian land in the former Czechoslovakia became part of Poland and Hungary. The Sudentenland had already been given to Germany at the Munich conference because there were 3.5 million Germans in that area. So the answer to this question is that there was no surrender.
Hitler had several reasons. After the successful unification (the Anschluss) with Austria, he knew that the German public would love the idea of also seeing Czechoslovakia annexed: at least its Western part, called Sudetenland, which had been part of the German empire before WW 1 and where millions of Germans still lived.Annexing also the rest of Czechoslovakia had a strategic reason: Hitler was already planning to invade Poland. Czechoslovakia had a strong and modern army which he needed out of the game so that it would and could not come to the aid of Poland. After he had forced Czechoslovakia's president to sign an act of surrender, he could simply walk in and disband and disarm its army.
Poor ruler and a man who didn't deserve power, also a miserable man with a sad life.