A P.E. teacher named Konrad Heinlein was the leader of the Sudeten German Party and he gradually became the mouthpiece of Nazi Germany in Czechoslovakia. His was a separatist platform aimed at joining the Czech border lands to Germany. Nothing less than Czechoslovakia's sovereignty was at stake. But this did not interest many people outside of the small Czechoslovak State. France and Britain favoured a policy of appeasement in response to Hitler's aggressive policy towards Czechoslovakia, and so Konrad Heinlein's wish came true in September 1938, when the four great powers of the time (Germany, Great Britain, France and Italy) decided, at a meeting in Munich, that extensive areas of the Czech border regions were to be ceded to Germany.

Shortly after the Munich Pact was signed, the Czech border regions were indeed joined with Germany. Seizing this window of opportunity, Poland snapped up the Tesin region in the North, and Hungary annexed the Southern part of Slovakia while Hungary captured Ruthenia. Overnight, Czechoslovakia lost about a third of its territory. After six months of the "Second Republic" as the old Czechoslovakia minus its border regions was called, Bohemia and Moravia were occupied by the Nazis.