page_title: World War II
section_title: European occupations and agreements
hierarchical_section_title: World War II / Pre-war events / European occupations and agreements
caption_attribution_description: For documentary purposes the German Federal Archive often retained the original image captions, which may be erroneous, biased, obsolete or politically extreme. Münchener Abkommen, Staatschefs Zentralbild Das Münchner Abkommen vom 29.9.1938. Das am 29.9.1938 in München zwischen dem britischen Ministerpräsidenten Neville Chamberlain, dem französischen Ministerpräsidenten Edouard Daladier, dem italienischen Staatschef Benito Mussolini und Adolf Hitler geschlossene Abkommen ermächtigte das faschistische Deutschland zur Annexion tschechoslowakischen Gebietes. UBz: von links: Chamberlain, Daladier, Hitler, Mussolini, und der italienische Außenminister Graf Galeazzo Ciano. Im Hintergrund v.l.n.r. Unbekannter (wahrscheinlich ein brite Diplomat), Fromageot, Ribbentrop, Weizsäcker, Leger alias Saint-John Perse. 12 766-38 [Scherl Bilderdienst] Abgebildete Personen: Neville Chamberlain, Premierminister, Großbritannien Graf Galeazzo Ciano, Außenminister, Italien (GND 119178362) Édouard Daladier, Ministerpräsident, Vorsitzender Sozialistische Partei, Frankreich Henri Fromageot, Diplomat, Frankreich Adolf Hitler, Reichskanzler, Deutschland Alexis Leger alias Saint-John Perse, Generalsekretär des Aussenministeriums, auch Dichter, Schriftsteller und Nobelpreisträger für Literatur, Frankreich Benito Mussolini, Ministerpräsident, Regierungschef, Chef des Faschistischen Großrates, Italien Joachim von Ribbentrop, deutscher Außenminister Freiherr Ernst von Weizsäcker, Diplomat, Staatssekretär im Auswärtigen Amt, SS-Führer, Deutschland Information added by Wikimedia users.Русский: После подписаний Мюнхенских соглашений 1938 года. Слева направо: Чемберлен, Даладье, Гитлер, Муссолини, Чиано.
context_page_description: World War II, also known as the Second World War, was a global war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all the great powers—forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis. In a state of total war, directly involving more than 100 million people from more than 30 countries, the major participants threw their entire economic, industrial, and scientific capabilities behind the war effort, blurring the distinction between civilian and military resources. World War II was the deadliest conflict in human history, marked by 70 to 85 million fatalities. Tens of millions of people died due to genocides, premeditated death from starvation, massacres, and disease. Aircraft played a major role in the conflict, including in the use of strategic bombing of population centres, and the only uses of nuclear weapons in war.
  World War II is generally considered to have begun on 1 September 1939, with the invasion of Poland by Germany and subsequent declarations of war on Germany by France and the United Kingdom.
context_section_description: In Europe, Germany and Italy were becoming more aggressive. In March 1938, Germany annexed Austria, again provoking little response from other European powers. Encouraged, Hitler began pressing German claims on the Sudetenland, an area of Czechoslovakia with a predominantly ethnic German population. Soon the United Kingdom and France followed the appeasement policy of British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain and conceded this territory to Germany in the Munich Agreement, which was made against the wishes of the Czechoslovak government, in exchange for a promise of no further territorial demands. Soon afterwards, Germany and Italy forced Czechoslovakia to cede additional territory to Hungary, and Poland annexed Czechoslovakia's Zaolzie region.
  Although all of Germany's stated demands had been satisfied by the agreement, privately Hitler was furious that British interference had prevented him from seizing all of Czechoslovakia in one operation. In subsequent speeches Hitler attacked British and Jewish "war-mongers" and in January 1939 secretly ordered a major build-up of the German navy to challenge British naval supremacy. In March 1939, Germany invaded the remainder of Czechoslovakia and subsequently split it into the German Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia and a pro-German client state, the Slovak Republic. Hitler also delivered 20 March 1939 ultimatum to Lithuania, forcing the concession of the Klaipėda Region, formerly the German Memelland.
  Greatly alarmed and with Hitler making further demands on the Free City of Danzig, the United Kingdom and France guaranteed their support for Polish independence; when Italy conquered Albania in April 1939, the same guarantee was extended to Romania and Greece. Shortly after the Franco-British pledge to Poland, Germany and Italy formalised their own alliance with the Pact of Steel. Hitler accused the United Kingdom and Poland of trying to "encircle" Germany and renounced the Anglo-German Naval Agreement and the German–Polish Non-Aggression Pact.
  The situation reached a general crisis in late August as German troops continued to mobilise against the Polish border. On 23 August, when tripartite negotiations about a military alliance between France, the United Kingdom and Soviet Union stalled, the Soviet Union signed a non-aggression pact with Germany. This pact had a secret protocol that defined German and Soviet "spheres of influence" (western Poland and Lithuania for Germany; eastern Poland, Finland, Estonia, Latvia and Bessarabia for the Soviet Union), and raised the question of continuing Polish independence. The pact neutralised the possibility of Soviet opposition to a campaign against Poland and assured that Germany would not have to face the prospect of a two-front war, as it had in World War I. Immediately after that, Hitler ordered the attack to proceed on 26 August, but upon hearing that the United Kingdom had concluded a formal mutual assistance pact with Poland, and that Italy would maintain neutrality, he decided to delay it.
  In response to British requests for direct negotiations to avoid war, Germany made demands on Poland, which only served as a pretext to worsen relations. On 29 August, Hitler demanded that a Polish plenipotentiary immediately travel to Berlin to negotiate the handover of Danzig, and to allow a plebiscite in the Polish Corridor in which the German minority would vote on secession. The Poles refused to comply with the German demands, and on the night of 30–31 August in a stormy meeting with the British ambassador Neville Henderson, Ribbentrop declared that Germany considered its claims rejected.
caption: Chamberlain, Daladier, Hitler, Mussolini, and Ciano pictured just before signing the Munich Agreement, 29 September 1938
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