National self-determination

National self-determination becomes the central justification for transferring German-majority territories from Czechoslovakia, and the principle’s limits emerge in the gap between an ethnic criterion and the consequences for the state being divided. The proposed settlement is presented as recognition of one population’s right to choose, yet the map makes visible what that recognition removes from another country: territory, fortifications, and the prospect of defensible borders.

The Principle on the Map

The transfer is rendered as a concrete territorial decision. In a private dining room, Ashton-Gwatkin gives Wilson a small rolled-up map, which Wilson spreads on the table while Hugh Legat stands behind him. Red marks the areas assigned to Germany. In the western half of Czechoslovakia, three large sections around Eger, Aussig, and Troppau have been cut out of the borderlands; the eastern half remains mostly untouched. Farther south, an area beside what had been Austria is shaded pink, its disposition left to a plebiscite. The map distinguishes between a settled transfer and a territory whose fate is still to be decided by a vote.

Wilson explains the red transfers by reference to the majority population: Britain has agreed only to cede areas where most inhabitants are German. That formulation presents self-determination as a rule for identifying which territory may leave Czechoslovakia. But the Czechoslovak representatives do not experience the map as a neutral application of a rule. Masarík objects that Germany has received everything it demanded. The exchange makes the principle’s abstraction tangible: a majority-based boundary can be described as a choice for one population while still removing extensive parts of another state.

Competing Claims to Security

The representatives’ objection is not limited to the scale of the transfer. They point out that the ceded districts contain all Czechoslovakia’s border fortifications, leaving the remaining country indefensible. Wilson answers that those defenses should not have been built in areas bound to become disputed once Germany recovered its strength. His reply treats the contested status of the border as a reason the fortifications were misplaced; the Czech objection treats their loss as a direct threat to the state’s survival.

Mastny uses the map to show the resulting geographic vulnerability. At its narrowest point, he says, the country will be only forty-five miles across, allowing Germany to cut it in two within a day. Wilson disclaims responsibility for geographic realities. The disagreement exposes the difference between deciding a border by the population living on one side of it and assessing what that border does to the political and military integrity of the country left behind. A transfer justified by majority identity may still produce a state whose territory is strategically compromised.

The Principle in Diplomatic Argument

The Czechoslovak representatives also invoke assurances made by France. They say the French government had promised that, after any agreement, their borders would remain defensible and that geographic, economic, and political realities would be considered alongside race. Their objection therefore does not simply deny that ethnicity matters; it challenges the idea that ethnicity should settle the territorial question by itself. Wilson’s account of Adolf Hitler’s position sharpens that contrast: Hitler regards Czechoslovakia as an economic and political unit rather than a nation, and treats race as indispensable. Wilson describes him as unyielding on that point.

Neville Chamberlain later makes self-determination the decisive test of whether Britain and France can take up arms. In response to Paul von Hartmann’s warning against signing the agreement, Chamberlain argues that the British and French peoples cannot be expected to fight to deny ethnic Germans, whom he describes as trapped in a foreign country they wish to leave, that right. He sets this immediate claim against Hartmann’s forecast of a future war of conquest, treating the asserted right of departure as the political reality that outweighs those warnings. His stated objective is to avert war in the short term and build a lasting peace over time, rather than abandon the conference.

Limits and Consequences

The scene does not resolve whether self-determination is intrinsically valid or invalid; it shows how its application depends on which consequences are admitted into the decision. The map offers a majority criterion and a plebiscite area, while the Czech representatives insist that defensibility, geography, and political cohesion must also count. Their objections are heard, but Wilson’s explanation and Chamberlain’s later reasoning show those concerns failing to displace the ethnic claim as the basis for agreement.

That imbalance gives the principle a double effect. It supplies Chamberlain with a public rationale for refusing war over the transfer, but in the same exchange the Czechoslovak representatives describe the material cost: lost fortifications, a dangerously narrowed territory, and the possibility of being cut in half. Hartmann warns that signing will make Hitler’s position in Germany unassailable. Self-determination thus appears not only as a claim about a population’s choice, but as the language through which a diplomatic decision is defended despite its severe consequences for the state whose territory is being transferred.