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Each triumph filled Hitler with ever greater confidence in his invincibility, in his political instincts and in the irresolution of his antagonists. Having easily conquered Austria, he decided in the spring of 1938 to attack Czechoslovakia. Like Poland, Czechoslovakia had been carved out of the Habsburg Empire by the mapmakers at Versailles, and its boundaries included an awkward mixture of roughly 6.5 million Czechs, 3.3 million Germans, 2.5 million Slovaks and about 800,000 Hungarians and Poles. Unlike Poland, it was a genuine democracy with a large and well-equipped army; it also had signed a treaty that pledged France to defend it against any attack.
As in Austria, Hitler's war of nerves began with a wave of terrorist bombings and street riots. Berlin sponsored this violence with payments to Konrad Henlein, leader of Czechoslovakia's Sudeten German Party. It also gave him his instructions, which Henlein himself once summed up: "We must always demand so much from the Czechs that we can never be satisfied." When Czech President Eduard Bene first asked Henlein what he wanted, the list included political autonomy, payment of damages, separate citizenship for Sudeten Germans and freedom to practice "the ideology of Germans." Bene refused.
Rumors, possibly false, suddenly spread in May 1938 that German troops were concentrating on the Czech frontier. Bene ordered a partial mobilization, the British expressed "grave concern," and the French warned Berlin that they were ready to fight. One of Hitler's top generals thereupon announced that it had all been a mistake, that there had been no German troop movements. By appearing to stand firm for the first time, the Allies seemed to have made Hitler back down. But this apparent victory had two important results: the Allies were appalled at how near to war they had come, and Hitler determined on revenge. He told his generals, "It is my unalterable decision to smash Czechoslovakia by military action in the near future." He even set a date: Oct. 1.
Hitler's antagonists had changed over the years, and now the important newcomer on the international scene was Neville Chamberlain, who had replaced Stanley Baldwin as Conservative Prime Minister of Britain in the spring of 1937. Chamberlain's background was in business; he believed in orderly negotiations. He had no experience in dealing with an unscrupulous improviser like Hitler, but he nonetheless invited himself to a meeting with the Fuhrer. Hitler received him in Berchtesgaden, and soon began ranting about the Czechs. He said he would not "tolerate any longer that a small, second-rate country should treat the mighty thousand-year-old German Reich as something inferior." Shocked, Chamberlain threatened to leave. Hitler, who had never ) previously asked to take over part of Czechoslovakia, now claimed that he wanted "the principle . . . of self-determination."