Statesmen gathered to consider ceding to an aggressor part of an allied country without consulting that country’s leaders. The gathering was not the 2025 Riyad summit in Ukraine, but the 1938 Munich meeting to decide the fate of Czechoslovakia.

After gaining power, Adolf Hitler had rearmed Germany, occupied the Rhineland and annexed Austria through the Anschluss — clear violations of the Versailles Treaty.

Allied acquiescence to these moves emboldened him. During the summer of 1938, he demanded that Czechoslovakia cede the Sudetenland with its large German population to the Reich and threatened to take it by force if necessary.

With Britain and France as its allies, Czechoslovakia refused. Europe teetered on the brink of war.

Then at the eleventh hour, Hitler’s ally Benito Mussolini, the fascist ruler of Italy, proposed a four-power conference to resolve the issue. Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain of the United Kingdom and Premier Edouard Daladier of France raced to Munich to meet with the two dictators.

After just one day of negotiations, they signed the Munich Pact on Sept. 30, accepting Hitler’s territorial demands. Czechoslovakia had no say in the matter.

Chamberlain returned to London a hero, declaring to the British people that he had secured “peace for our time.” Hitler had already stated that the Sudetenland would be his “last territorial demand” in Europe.

From the political wilderness, Winston Churchill told Chamberlain, “You were given the choice between war and dishonor. You chose dishonor, and you will have war.”

© The Hill