The Munich Agreement: Avoiding another world war?

Eighty years ago, in a desperate attempt to avoid war, the leaders of Great Britain and France met with Hitler in Munich in September of 1938. During the meeting, they acceded to Hitler's demands to cede the Sudetenland to Germany, as well as to most of his additional demands. In return, Hitler pledged that he had no territorial claims on the rest of Czechoslovakia. War had been temporarily avoided at the cost of losing a major ally in the form of a 400,000-man Czech army.

Back in the U.S., storm clouds were forming in our relationships with both Germany and Japan. Congress, dominated by isolationists, passed a series of neutrality acts to curb President Roosevelt's internationalist tendencies that were seen as similar to Woodrow Wilson prior to U.S. entry into World War I.

The rise of Hitler's Nazi Germany and its expansion complicated America's desire to remain neutral, and Roosevelt pushed for changes in the Neutrality Act of 1935 to accommodate the situations that arose.

Despite pleas from Jewish organizations in America, the U.S. turned away the S.S. Saint Louis, a ship carrying Jewish refugees from Germany. When Germany invaded Poland to begin World War II in Europe, Roosevelt stressed that the U.S. would do all in its power to stay neutral and work for peace.

Students can learn more about the debates between the isolationists and the interventionists of this era that preceded the U.S. entry into World War II. These debates are similar to those preceding the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003.

Assign students to create a written report of at least 150 words that cites at least three resources; or students can prepare an optional PowerPoint presentation of at least two minutes and seven slides. Students will need to address the following essential questions for critical thinking in their reports (you can create others):

1. What were the arguments of the isolationists?
2. What were the arguments of the interventionists?
3. What would you have done in a similar situation and why?
4. How are these arguments similar to those used to justify the invasion of Iraq?

Use our custom ProQuest models for written or PowerPoint reports written and PowerPoint-style reports.

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