Yet while most discussions focus on the Anglo-French betrayal of Czechoslovakia that would trigger the worst war in human history, there is a commonly overlooked lesson to this tragedy: the need of small nations to defend their independence at all costs, even at the risk of defying most of the international community. [...] A fervent believer in the soft power of diplomacy, Benes was virtually incapable of contemplating the use of military force despite his keen awareness of the years-long Nazi strategy of exploiting the large German ethnic minority in the Czech Sudetenland to subvert the Czechoslovak state. [...] On the contrary: rather than ask the parliament to discuss means of confronting Hitler’s threats, as required by the constitution, he heeded the appeasing voices emanating from London and Paris while anxiously watching the spreading restiveness in the Sudetenland. [...] General Ludwig Beck, who on August 18 resigned his post as Chief of the General Staff over the Czechoslovak crisis, had secretly approached the British government for confirmation that it would declare war in the event of a German attack on Czechoslovakia, in which case he would “finish the Hitler regime.” In a prophetic memorandum in May 1938, Beck forecast the chain of events that would eventual. [...] On September 28, a day before the signing of the Munich agreement, conspirators met at the military headquarters in Berlin, only to decide to wait and see the outcome of the next day’s negotiations.
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