JACK DAVIDSON explains the motivation behind the UCU strike action at the University of Sheffield
SEPTEMBER 30 1938 contained the fateful minutes during which Britain’s “national government” prime minister Neville Chamberlain and his French counterpart Edouard Daladier signed an agreement in Munich together with nazi Germany’s Hitler and fascist Italy’s Mussolini.
This “authorised” Germany’s armed forces to cross Czechoslovakia’s till then strongly fortified borders where they touched those of Germany and Austria, and to occupy some 11,000 square miles of the country’s outer edges — the Sudetenland.
The invasion proceeded promptly on October 1 without resistance, as Edvard Benes, the Czechoslovak leader, had been intimidated into surrender. Nazi occupation of the country’s much weakened residue, including Prague, unaddressed by the devils’ pact, was deferred until the following March.
PHIL KATZ looks at how the Daily Worker, the Morning Star's forerunner, covered the breathless last days of World War II 80 years ago



