British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain conferred with Hitler at the latter’s summer home in Berchtesgaden on September 15, 1938. They discussed the Sudetenland situation, in which Germans living in Czechoslovakia had begun to agitate for reunion with Germany. Chamberlain took his first plane flight to this conference and cheering crowds had greeted him. Martial law was further extended in Czechoslovakia due to unrest. Henlein, the Sudeten leader, issued a proclamation calling for the reunion of the Sudeten with the Reich.

View documents from the conference on the British National Archives website.

After two more such conferences that September, Chamberlain secured an agreement from Hitler that if he could have the Sudetenland, Germany would pursue no further land demands in Europe in the Munich Agreement on September 30, 1938. This strategy was called “appeasement.” While Chamberlain pursued this agreement, he simultaneously was negotiating increases in British armaments in preparation for possible war in Europe.