Excerpts from Books and Wikipedia
"The Munich Agreement (…) or Munich Betrayal (…) was an agreement concluded at Munich on 30 September 1938, by Nazi Germany, the United Kingdom, the French Third Republic, and the Kingdom of Italy. It provided "cession to Germany of the Sudeten German territory" of Czechoslovakia. Most of Europe celebrated the agreement, because it prevented the war threatened by Adolf Hitler by allowing Nazi Germany's annexation of the Sudetenland, a region of western Czechoslovakia inhabited by more than 3 million people, mainly German speakers. Hitler announced it was his last territorial claim in Europe, and the choice seemed to be between war and appeasement. . . . Today, the Munich Agreement is widely regarded as a failed act of appeasement, and the term has become 'a byword for the futility of appeasing expansionist totalitarian states.'" [Wikipedia]