Eighty years ago the Sudetenland emerges as the next flashpoint for a European crisis, Neville Chamberlain returns some lost property and the airship era comes to an end

Konrad Henlein, the leader of the “Sudeten” German-speaking population of Czechoslovakia issued an extensive list of demands to the Czech government. It was immediately endorsed by Nazi Germany. The next flashpoint for a serious crisis in Europe was now abundantly clear. The presence of 3.5m German speakers in Czechoslovakia was an anomaly of the Versailles Treaty and few would have argued against the justice of improving their rights as a majority, but Henlein wanted full autonomy. More sinister, he wanted a right to “profess German nationality.” The Sudetenland had never been a political entity, it had always been part of Bohemian crown lands. The notion that Sudetens could be German citizens led logically to the incorporation of Sudetenland into Germany. Britain too was in process of tidying up one aspect of the greater mess of the legacy of 1914-1918 with the signature of a treaty with Eire. Britain was to give up control of the three naval bases in southern Ireland w