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Comment by michalu | Hacker News Reader

They did, and so Great Britain and France pacted with Nazis to give in Czechoslovakia in "Munich betrayal" Czechoslavakia was an ally with Fr/GB agreeing to defend each other and they were much better prepared for war. In WW2 none of the main actors were innocent.

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Similar situations, but different in the sense that Russia took Poland from a position of power, while GB/Fr gave up Czechoslovakia from a position of weakness and didn't make any territorial gains from it.

Another difference is relations to annexed territories.

Territories, annexed from Poland, had majority of population Eastern Slavs (Ukrainian and Belarussian), not Poles, were part of Russia for hundreds of years (except Galicia) and were annexed by Poland from Russia (Galicia from Austria) 20 years before.

As I said on here recently before, Chamberlain had no choice. Britain was not ready to fight (see Dunkirk). He was playing for time.

The same is true of the Soviets - they were also hastily arming themselves. They were still training secret, massive armies in Siberia as the Germans approached Stalingrad, a city ridiculously deep in Soviet territory. They also had the massive officer purge of the late 30's to recover from.

That's true, in 1938 Britain wasn't ready to fight. Probably not in May 1937 when Chamberlain became PM either. But Chamberlain was a high government official (arguably #2 overall) from 1931. The fact that the British military was where it was, and the German military was where it was, in 1938 was partly his responsibility.

Hindsight is always 20/20. Chamberlain didn't see it coming in 1931, events moved swiftly after 1937.

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