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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 March 2014
THE MUNICH AGREEMENT HAS BEEN THE SUBJECT OF A VAST literature. There are only a few points which I should like briefly to make. The first is that for the Czechs the main horror of Munich was not that it deprived them of valuable territories, but that it was imposed on them by their allies. The Anglo-French ultimatum of September 1938 profoundly wounded President Beneš and the whole Czech nation. If they had had no friends at all, the Czechs might have fought alone and perished, or they might have surrendered, the tragedy would have been simple. But their false friends told them that if they resisted they would be in the wrong, they deprived them even of the chance of defending themselves. This was to have lasting effects on their national morale.
1 A close friend of President Benes, for many years foreign editor of the liberal newspaper Lídove Novin, during the war Deputy-Minister of Foreign Affairs in exile, in 1945–48 Minister of Foreign Trade, from 1948 until his death again an exile.