Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Maps
- Acknowledgments
- List of Abbreviations
- Foreword
- Preface: A Test Case of Collective Security
- Introduction: The Nature of the Problem
- Part One Background of the Munich Crisis
- Part Two Foreground: Climax of the Crisis
- 4 East Awaiting West: Berchtesgaden to Godesberg
- 5 The Red Army Mobilizes
- 6 Dénouement
- Part Three Conclusion
- Appendices
- Index
5 - The Red Army Mobilizes
from Part Two - Foreground: Climax of the Crisis
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 07 September 2010
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Maps
- Acknowledgments
- List of Abbreviations
- Foreword
- Preface: A Test Case of Collective Security
- Introduction: The Nature of the Problem
- Part One Background of the Munich Crisis
- Part Two Foreground: Climax of the Crisis
- 4 East Awaiting West: Berchtesgaden to Godesberg
- 5 The Red Army Mobilizes
- 6 Dénouement
- Part Three Conclusion
- Appendices
- Index
Summary
On 19 September, President Beneš, in receipt now of the increasingly bad news from the Western capitals, where the fate of Czechoslovakia was being decided in his absence, summoned Soviet Ambassador Sergei Aleksandrovskii and asked him to put two questions to Moscow: (1) Would Moscow render military assistance to Czechoslovakia if Hitler attacked and if France rendered such assistance, and (2) would Moscow otherwise render such assistance if it were approved by the League of Nations under Article 16? On the following day, V. P. Potemkin responded, in Litvinov's absence in Geneva, with an unqualified affirmative to both questions.
The shuttle diplomacy of Neville Chamberlain was by this time quite publicly apparent, everywhere the subject of the headlines, and it ratcheted up both the focus of attention and the pace of diplomatic – and other – developments. On 22 September, as Chamberlain flew to Berchtesgaden, Czechoslovak Foreign Minister Kamil Krofta summoned Aleksandrovskii again. This time he reported that the Poles were concentrating a large military force on the border of Czechoslovakia, and he asked Moscow to warn them that an attack on Czechoslovakia would automatically void, according to Article 2, the Polish–Soviet Non-Aggression Treaty of 1932. On the following day, the Soviet government issued precisely such a warning to the Polish Embassy in Moscow and followed it with a public declaration to the same effect: If the Poles attacked Czechoslovakia, Moscow would denounce the nonaggression pact.
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- Information
- The Soviets, the Munich Crisis, and the Coming of World War II , pp. 111 - 126Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2004