The Sudeten Crisis (March-September 1938) as Reflected in the Pages of the Daily Newspaper the West (Timişoara). Case Study: March-June 1938
The Sudeten Crisis (March-September 1938) as Reflected in the Pages of the Daily Newspaper the West (Timişoara). Case Study: March-June 1938

Summary/Abstract: The annexation of Austria, known in historiography as the Anschluss, avoided for two decades (1918–1938) and carried out through an act of force in March 1938, represented only the prelude to other similar actions undertaken by Nazi Germany, meant to secure its vital space (Lebensraum) through expansion toward Eastern Europe (Drang nach Osten). The Sudeten crisis, triggered almost immediately after the Anschluss and resolved amicably by the Directorate of the Four Great Powers of the “old continent” (Germany, Italy, Great Britain, and France) through the Munich Conference (29–30 October 1938), “prepared” the ground for the dismemberment of the Czechoslovak state—the only democracy in the region that remained loyal to the Western Allies and to its partners in the Little Entente (Romania and Yugoslavia): the cession of the mining regions of Teschen and Friestadt following the Polish ultimatum; negotiations with Hungary regarding control over Ruthenia, interrupted and then followed by the satisfaction of Hungarian claims under the First Vienna Award (2 November 1938); the autonomy of Slovakia and its request to be placed under the “protection” of the Third Reich; the occupation of the remaining territory of former Czechoslovakia and its capital, Prague, by the Wehrmacht (15 March 1939). “Dark clouds” were gathering over Europe, and a new war had become imminent, breaking out after new crises artificially fueled by the main “actors” on the international stage (Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini): the Polish–Lithuanian border conflict and the annexation of Albania by Italy under the “mask” of a personal union. The failure of negotiations to establish a common anti‑fascist “front” between the Soviet Union, on the one hand, and Great Britain and France, on the other, made possible the signing of the Ribbentrop–Molotov Pact—tellingly nicknamed the Hitler–Stalin Pact (23 August 1939)—and its secret additional protocol, which retained its classified status for nearly five decades, providing for the division of spheres of influence in Europe and hastening the outbreak of the Second World War. The Banat daily Vestul, founded in 1930 in Timișoara by Sever Bocu, a prominent figure of the province and deeply committed to democratic ideals, captured in its pages—objectively—the disappearance of Czechoslovakia from the map of Europe in the years 1938–1939, under the pressure exerted by Hitler’s Germany and Mussolini’s Italy, the appeasement practiced by the governments in London and Paris, and the lack of firm involvement by the government in Moscow in maintaining the status quo established at the end of the First World War, all of which contributed significantly to the tragedy experienced by this state, a neighbor and ally of Romania.

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