The Munich Crisis kept Europe suspended in dread of imminent war

Evidence

By 1938, few dared hope for a reprieve. Hitler annexed Austria that March. In September he turned his attention to the strongly German Sudetenland area of Czechoslovakia, which included Husserl’s homeland of Moravia. The British and French leaders Neville Chamberlain and Édouard Daladier agreed to his initial demands, and the Czechs had little choice but to accept. Hitler took this as encouragement to go further, so on 22 September he demanded the right to a full military occupation that would effectively open the doors to the rest of Czechoslovakia. There followed what became known as the Munich Crisis: a week during which people listened to their radios and read newspapers, fearing the announcement of war literally at any hour. — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café, 401

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the reader’s history reading on the Spanish Armada and Matthews’s broader interest in how historical moments of suspended dread shape decision-making. — connects to: Some crises that nearly escalated to war ended peacefully through avoidance

Broader Connections

• Some crises that nearly escalated to war ended peacefully through avoidance #exemplifies (0.80)