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Auction: 14035 - Postal History, Autographs and Historical Documents
Lot: 3081

Historical Documents
The Munich Agreement
1938 (28 September) the British Airways Ltd. flight ticket for, "The Rt. Hon. Neville Chamberlain", completed in pencil capitals for the flights London to Munich and return. The first flight was scheduled to take off at 08.30 from Heston and the box for the price is marked "Special Flight". On landing back at Heston, the Prime Minister was met by a large contingent of the press.

This is the top copy of ticket BA/WS "18249" which is self-carbonated. Included with this is a manila envelope marked "The Prime Minister's ticket on his last visit to Munich at which an agreement with Hitler was reached. 29.9.38". This was in the papers of George William Denny, one of the founders of British Airways. There were only two pages to these tickets (the under half was sold by Christie's in 1992).

This was one of the most significant and iconic moments in twentieth century British and European history. Photo



The Munich Agreement was a settlement permitting Nazi Germany's annexation of portions of Czechoslovakia along the country's borders mainly inhabited by German speakers, which was called the Sudetenland.

Adolf Hitler, Benito Mussolini, French Premier Edouard Daladier, and British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain signed the Munich Pact, which sealed the fate of Czechoslovakia, virtually handing it over to Germany in the name of peace. Upon return to Britain, Chamberlain would declare that the meeting had achieved "peace in our time."

Although the agreement was to give into Hitler's hands only the Sudentenland, that part of Czechoslovakia where 3 million ethnic Germans lived, it also handed over to the Nazi war machine significant percentages of Czechoslovakia's coal, iron and steel and electric power. It also left the Czech nation open to complete domination by Germany. In short, the Munich Pact sacrificed the autonomy of Czechoslovakia on the altar of short-term peace. The Czech government was eventually forced to surrender the western provinces of Bohemia and Moravia and finally Slovakia and the Carpathian Ukraine. By the time of the invasion of Poland in September 1939, the nation of Czechoslovakia no longer existed.

Neville Chamberlain would be best remembered as the champion of the Munich Pact, having met privately with Hitler at Berchtesgaden, the dictator's mountaintop retreat, before the Munich conference. Chamberlain, convinced that Hitler's territorial demands were not unreasonable (and that Hitler was a "gentleman"), persuaded the French to join him in pressuring Czechoslovakia to submit to the Fuhrer's demands. Upon Hitler's invasion of Poland a year later, Chamberlain was put in the embarrassing situation of announcing that a "state of war" existed between Germany and Britain. By the time Hitler occupied Norway and Denmark, Chamberlain had lost much credibility.

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Sold for
£14,000