“After the Nazi seizure of power in 1933, Germany demanded the “return” of the ethnic German population of Czechoslovakia -- and the land on which it lived -- to the German Reich. In the late summer of 1938, Hitler threatened to unleash a European war unless the Sudetenland was ceded to Germany. The Sudetenland was a border area of Czechoslovakia containing a majority ethnic German population as well as all of the Czechoslovak Army's defensive positions in the event of a war with Germany. The leaders of Britain, France, Italy, and Germany held a conference in Munich on September 29-30, 1938. In what became known as the Munich Pact, they agreed to the German annexation of the Sudetenland in exchange for a pledge of peace from Hitler.“

United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. “Czechoslovakia.” Holocaust Encyclopedia. 

Accessed on 6/11/11.