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Munich Betrayal allowed Hitler to unleash World War Two — Russian Foreign Ministry

The events of September 30, 1938 "must be remembered as a reminder of the consequences of politically manipulating public opinion, flirting with Nazism, and the infantile pandering to neo-Nazism"
The Russian Foreign Ministry  Gennadiy Khamelyanin/TASS
The Russian Foreign Ministry
© Gennadiy Khamelyanin/TASS

MOSCOW, October 2. /TASS/. The actual capitulation of West European powers to Nazism as a result of the Munich Agreement allowed Hitler to unleash World War Two, Russia’s Foreign Ministry said in a statement on Monday, marking the remembrance of this event.

"September 30 is one of the darkest days in world history," the statement begins.

The ministry’s communique recalls that on September 30, 1938, British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain and his French counterpart Edouard Daladier met with Adolf Hitler and Italian Prime Minister Benito Mussolini in Munich to sign an agreement that later became known as the Munich Betrayal, which led to the German occupation of Czechoslovakia’s regions known as the Sudetenland.

The statement notes that Czechoslovak delegates were invited to the meeting only because they were to rubber stamp that document with their signatures. Poland and Hungary also took part in the shameless division of Czechoslovakia, the statement says.

According to the Russian Foreign Ministry, historians consider the Munich Betrayal as Western European capitulation in the face of surging Nazism. The statement goes on to say, "the heads of the leading Western European countries refused to join forces with the Soviet Union against Nazism and opted instead to appease the aggressor in the hope that this would divert the threat from them and send the German war machine to the East. Later on the same day, September 30, 1938, Neville Chamberlain signed a non-aggression pact with Adolf Hitler. France did the same three months later, on December 6, 1938."

"Actually, the Munich Betrayal allowed Hitler to start the Second World War, a global disaster that resulted in untold losses to all humankind, but primarily in the Soviet Union, where the war against the so-called brown plague claimed nearly 30 million lives," the statement reads.

It took progressive international forces considerable time and incredible effort to create the anti-Hitler coalition to defeat Germany and liberate Europe. The Nuremberg Trials outlawed the misanthropic Nazi ideology and practices, the Russian Foreign Ministry noted.

The events of September 30, 1938 "must be remembered as a reminder of the consequences of politically manipulating public opinion, flirting with Nazism, and the infantile pandering to neo-Nazism, which is reappearing in new forms in Europe," the statement reads.