Signed on 30 September 1938, the Munich Agreement represented the culmination of the policy of appeasement pursued by the British government under Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain. Seeking to avert a second major European conflict, Britain and France reached an accord with Adolf Hitler of Germany and Benito Mussolini of Italy. The agreement permitted the immediate German annexation of the Sudetenland, a border region of Czechoslovakia inhabited by a significant ethnic German population, despite the territory being a vital part of the Czechoslovakian defensive system.

The negotiations took place without the participation of the Czechoslovak government, leaving the nation effectively isolated and forced to concede its sovereign territory to German control. Upon his return to London, Chamberlain famously declared that the agreement secured peace for their time, a sentiment that was initially met with widespread relief by a British public desperate to avoid the horrors of another war. However, the diplomatic success was short-lived, as the agreement failed to satiate German territorial ambitions.

In the years that followed, the Munich Agreement became a potent symbol of the failures and moral controversies associated with the appeasement strategy. Rather than ensuring long-term stability, the concession emboldened the Nazi regime, which proceeded to occupy the remainder of Czechoslovakia in March 1939. This development shattered the credibility of the settlement and demonstrated the inherent risks of attempting to manage aggressive expansionism through diplomatic compromise.

• The agreement allowed for the annexation of the Sudetenland by Nazi Germany.
• British and French leaders sought to avoid a general European war through diplomatic concession.
• The Czechoslovak government was excluded from the negotiations regarding its own borders.
• The failure of the agreement is widely regarded as a turning point in the lead-up to the Second World War.
• The term appeasement remains synonymous with the political fallout of the Munich conference.