Churchill, Hitler, and "The Unnecessary War": How Britain Lost Its Empire and the West Lost the World

by Patrick J. Buchanan

Fourth, the Czechs knew what they wanted and were resolute and ruthless in taking it. As Hungary and Austria were reeling in defeat in 1918, Czech troops moved into Slovakia. They then seized the Polish enclave of Teschen, “whose coal heated the foyers and powered the industry of Central Europe from Krakow to Vienna,” and occupied German Bohemia, which would come to be known as the Sudetenland.70 Masaryk told Parliament, “The Germans will have to be satisfied with self-determination of the second class ….”71 Clemenceau supported the Czech seizures. By the time Masaryk, Beneš, and the Allies were finished, they had created in the new Czechoslovakia the tenth most industrialized nation on earth, having stripped Austria and Hungary of 70 to 80 percent of their industry, from china and glass factories to sugar processors … to the breweries of Pilzen and the Skoda works producing world-class armaments, locomotives, autos, and machinery. The wealth these companies generated would make Czechoslovakia coveted by Germany and envied by its other, less amply endowed neighbors.