The Soviets, the Munich Crisis, and the Coming of World War II

The Munich crisis is everywhere acknowledged as the prelude leading to World War II, and the subject has been thoroughly studied from the vantage of the available British, French and German documents. What has never been seriously studied in the Western literature is the whole spectrum of East European documentation, that is presented here for the first time. The Romanians were at one time prepared to admit the transfer of the Red Army across their territory. The Red Army, mobilized on a massive scale, was informed that its destination was Czechoslovakia. The Polish consul in Moldavia was reporting the entrance of the Red Army into the country. Meantime, Moscow seems to have focused especially on the Polish rail network. All of these findings are new, and they contribute to a considerable shift in the conventional wisdom on the subject.