On 30 September he returned to Heston Aerodrome with an agreement which removed the imminent threat, while allowing Hitler to annexe parts of Czechoslovakia. He brandished a statement signed by the two leaders which said the agreement was "symbolic of the desire of our two peoples never to go to war with one another again".
Speaking at Downing Street a short while later he said it promised "peace for our time". This optimism was short lived, as the Munich Agreement was broken within a year and Britain went to war over the Nazi invasion of Poland.
Richard Dimbleby described the scene at Heston on 30 September for radio and for the small television audience. As Chamberlain's plane arrived a large excited crowd gathered to greet him.
He was received by the Foreign Secretary and The Minister of War, then spoke to the expectant crowd and waiting media. The BBC reported the crisis in some detail, rescheduling many programmes to cover it. It also made civil defence announcements and instituted news broadcasts to Europe.
When the War began the Corporation was ready to take its place at the heart of national life, providing news, information and morale-boosting entertainment. Chamberlain returns from Munich 30 September Image: Neville Chamberlain and his piece of paper. World War 2 and the BBC. Only a generation removed from the horrors of World War I, which had claimed nearly one million of its people, Britain was once again on the brink of armed conflict with Germany.
The clouds of war billowed in the British capital as the hours to the deadline dwindled. Workers covered the windows of government offices with sandbags and installed sirens in police stations to warn of approaching enemy bombers. A knot of traffic snarled the city as Londoners began an exodus. Hundreds of thousands who planned to stay in the city stood patiently in line for government-issued gas masks and air-raid handbooks. London Zoo officials even developed plans to station gun-toting men in front of cages to shoot the wild animals in case bombs broke open their cages and freed them.
Just two days before the deadline, Hitler agreed to meet in Munich with Chamberlain, Italian leader Benito Mussolini and French premier Edouard Daladier to discuss a diplomatic resolution to the crisis. The four leaders, without any input from Czechoslovakia in the negotiation, agreed to cede the Sudetenland to Hitler.
Chamberlain also separately drafted a non-aggression pact between Britain and Germany that Hitler signed. When news of the diplomatic breakthrough reached the British capital, normally staid London responded like a death-row prisoner granted a last-minute reprieve.
Front Page Years Themes Witness. About This Site Text Only. PM Neville Chamberlain arrived back in the UK today, holding an agreement signed by Adolf Hitler which stated the German leader's desire never to go to war with Britain again.
The two men met at the Munich conference between Britain, Germany, Italy and France yesterday, convened to decide the future of Czechoslovakia's Sudetenland. Mr Chamberlain declared the accord with the Germans signalled "peace for our time", after he had read it to a jubilant crowd gathered at Heston airport in west London. The German leader stated in the agreement: "We are determined to continue our efforts to remove possible sources of difference and thus to contribute to assure the peace of Europe.
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