accord formulated and signed by Germany, Italy, France, and Great Britain at Munich on Sept. 29, 1938, concerning the cession of the German-speaking Sudetenland, a region of Czechoslovakia, to Germany, which it bordered. Local German leaders claimed that the Czech government discriminated against the Sudeten people, and Germany backed their request for self-determination. In a series of negotiations that began in August 1938, cession of the Sudetenland to Germany had already been agreed upon in principle by the participants in the pact. The pact, signed by Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain for Great Britain, Premier Edouard Daladier for France, Adolf Hitler for Germany, and Benito Mussolini for Italy, merely determined the conditions under which the cession should be made.

The date set in the pact for the beginning of Czechoslovakian evacuation of the territory was Oct. 1, 1938, and German occupation of four specified districts was to take place in successive stages between October 1 and 7. Additional territories of predominantly German population were to be specified by an international commission composed of delegates from France, Germany, Great Britain, Italy, and Czechoslovakia, and those territories were to be occupied by Germany by October 10. The international commission was also to determine and occupy areas in which plebiscites were to be held and fix a date for such plebiscites no later than the end of November. The plebiscites, however, were never held. It was also agreed that if the claims of Hungarian and Polish minorities in Czechoslovakia were not settled in three months, a new conference was to be convened. Great Britain and France agreed, in an annex to the pact, to guarantee the new boundaries of Czechoslovakia against aggression, as did Germany.

Poland and Hungary proceeded to seize much of the remaining Czech territory they coveted. By insisting that the international commission use the figures of the Austro-Hungarian census for 1910 instead of those of the Czechoslovakian census for 1930, Germany was able to claim much additional territory that was predominantly Czech. The dwarfed country that remained was renamed Czecho-Slovakia. In March 1939, however, the Munich Pact was nullified when the Germans marched into Czecho-Slovakia and subsequently made most of the country a German protectorate. The failure by the British and French governments to invite the Soviet Union to participate in pact discussions was often cited by Soviet spokesmen as one of the causes leading to the German-Soviet nonaggression pact (Aug. 23, 1939).