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More than 5000 entries on the history, culture and life of Britain (published in 1993 by Macmillan, now out of print)
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Munich
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The usual abbreviation in Britain for the Munich conference or pact of 29 September 1938, in which Neville *Chamberlain and the French premier Edouard Daladier agreed to Hitler's annexation of the *Sudetenland (an area of Czechoslovakia with a German-speaking majority) in return for his making no further territorial demands. Chamberlain was regarded as a national hero by most people in Britain, though not by the opponents of *appeasement, when he landed in London and waved a piece of paper which he said represented 'peace for our time... peace with honour' (he was echoing words used by Disraeli in 1878, after he had negotiated peace between Russia and Turkey).
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Hitler's betrayal of the Munich agreement, by marching into the rest of Czechoslovakia in March 1939, finally resolved Chamberlain to replace appeasement with a firm commitment to defend Poland, the next likely victim, against aggression.
In 1992 John Major and the Czech president, Vaclav Havel, signed a declaration annulling the 1938 Munich agreement – by which Britain had in effect, until then, been legally supporting a German right to part of Czechoslovakia.
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