I am looking for informations about an overlooked point of history, which I think is of a major importance for the understanding of the roots of WWII.

Most people think that WWII started with the invasion of Poland by Germany, but personally, I think it started rather with the invasion of Czechoslovakia. This event gave a perfect pretense to western countries for applying a more aggressive policy toward Germany, under the excuse that Hitler was now appearing as an untrustworthy person.

I think that if Hitler invaded Czechoslovakia, he didn't do so out of pure whim, and he certainly had very good reasons to do so, especially knowing that he would lose the trust of GB and France, by such a breaking of Munich agreements.

Leon Degrelle made it clear in his writings, that Hitler invaded Czechoslovakia because he was informed that Benes was plotting to open the borders of his country to soviet troops : this would have posed a major threat not only for Germany but for all western Europe, as in case of war, it would have been impossible to stop an attack from such advanced positions.

When we know that Leon Degrelle already presented Barbarossa like a preemptive strike against an imminent soviet invasion decades before Suvorov, and that he knew of the truth behind such events as the Katyn slaughter way before the opening of soviet archives, I think that his words are not to be taken lightly.

Curiously very few people have studied this point of history, for the documents about it are few and scarce between, and many of the most important files are still classified.

When I did research this topic on the web, one name came out frequently : it was a professor named Igor Lukes who wrote a very interesting book :

http://www.oup.com/us/catalog/general/subject/Politics/ComparativePolitics/EasternEurope/?ci=0195102673&view=usa

In Czechoslovakia Between Stalin and Hitler, Igor Lukes explores this turbulent and tragic era from the new perspective of the Prague government itself. At the center of this study is Edvard Benes, a Czechoslovak foreign policy strategist and a major player in the political machinations of the era. The work analyzes the Prague Government's attempts to secure the existence of the Republic of Czechoslovakia in the treacherous space between the millstones of the East and West. It studies Benes's relationship with Joseph Stalin, outlines the role assigned to Czechoslovak communists by the VIIth Congress of the Communist International in 1935, and dissects Prague's secret negotiations with Berlin and Benes's role in the famous Tukhachevsky affair. Using secret archives in both Prague and Russia, this work is an accurate and original rendition of the events that sparked the Second World War.

Beside this work, I have found nothing validating the writings of Leon Degrelle, and I would be pleased, if such knowledgeable gentlemen as Dr Brandt, or Friedrich Braun could give their little two cents to this already intriguing but fondamentally important part of the puzzle which led to the WWII tragedy.

Leon Degrelle made it clear in his writings, that Hitler invaded Czechoslovakia because he was informed that Benes was plotting to open the borders of his country to soviet troops : this would have posed a major threat not only for Germany but for all western Europe, as in case of war, it would have been impossible to stop an attack from such advanced positions.I hadn't read this, but it makes sense--Czechoslovakia was well-known to be tight with the SU. And the image of CZ as a spear pointed a the heart of Germany is not mere rhetoric--it provided a conduit right into the heart of the country for troops to flow through.

Benes' influence on the Western Allies is also important; Irving revealed that he was bribing Churchill with monthly payments. Even before the beginning of the war, I believe, he suggested the expulsion of the Sudeten Germans, conniving and agitating from his convenient perch of exile in London. There's a pamphlet at the Scriptorium that might be helpful, though it doesn't address your specific point of interest, a projected Russian invasion through a compliant Czechoslovakia. He does talk about the genesis of CZ's love affair with Russia, however.

The Czech Conspiracy: a Phase in the World-War Plot, by George Henry Lane-Fox Pitt-Rivers. This book is a Captain of the Royal Dragoons' 1938 account of the situation in Czechoslovakia and the Sudetenland, addressing the questions of who wanted war; why; who would profit by it; and how was England concerned? This is the exposé which might have triggered popular resistance in England to British involvement in the War - if only more Englishmen and -women had read it! [721Kb / 10 pages]

http://www.wintersonnenwende.com/scriptorium/english/archives/czechconspiracy/cc05.html

Notice the title--with the words "World-War Plot". it's nineteen thirty-eight and the author is seeing the handwriting on the wall as manifested in the inflammatory verbiage of the press. He knows there's a plot, and he knows Britain is involved, as many people of the time did:
Concealment of the Truth
Until, in August and September 1938, the newsboys shrieked the scare-line headings in the streets of London: "Gravest Crisis Since the War" - "Peace or War" - "Hitler Unmasked" - "Herr Henlein's Demands" - "Czechs Ready to Die for their Country", few people in England knew much about the Czechs or the country they lived in; it had occurred to very few Englishmen why they should take any great interest in that country unless they wanted to buy cheap coloured glass, "made in Czecho-Slovakia", or unless, maybe, they remembered that Karlsbad plums and Pilsener beer were pleasant comestibles which took their names from two towns in what was once Austria before the twenty-year Balkan Republic ever existed, and for which the name "Czecho-Slovakia" was invented.

It certainly never occurred to the man-in-the-street twenty years ago, at the end of the "War to end War and make the World Safe for Democracy", that old soldiers should be invited again so soon to send their sons to die, not for their own country, not for liberty and their homes, but, so the democratic press vociferously explained, in order that seven million Czechs, allied to 260-million-odd Russians, Frenchmen, and Englishmen, should prevent a little handful of 3½ million half-starved German Bohemians being allowed to vote for Home Rule or even to have enough to eat.

The questions that every Englishman wants answered stand out:

Who wants war?

Why? Who profits by war?

How are we concerned?

Every Englishman had a right to the answers and of access to the truth - in a matter of life and death.

I have undertaken here to set out calmly, dispassionately, and briefly, the principal facts known to me, by personal observation and experiences, by twenty years' study of these problems in Central Europe, and by my recent adventures in the country which is the Tinder-Box of Europe.

True words are not pleasant: pleasant words are not true. So the greatest Chinese sage of all time addressed the small glib liars of the world, who are hired to use words in order to confuse and mislead, and those greater liars who have the power, and use it, to suppress and outlaw the truth. I stand aghast at the power of falsehood!

Let every good man and true who knows any hidden fact in the many-sided crystal which makes the whole truth, speak it at the bar of public opinion and shout it above the chattering and lying din.

"Let him take both reputation and life in his hands, and with perfect urbanity, dare the gibbet and the mob by the absolute truth of his speech and the rectitude of his behaviour." (Emerson.)

If, then, in the cause of Truth, I must accuse and give the lie to the printed or the spoken word - I do!

The part about the newspaper headlines reminds me of the count-down to the Iraq war, with the media screeching stuff about WMDs and Saddam's evilness (another Hitler, don't you know?) and the imminent attack on the helpless US from Big Bad Iraq.

I suspect that Pitt-Rivers and others who had been around for the advent of the First World War recognized the media frenzy which was an essential part of cooking up a war.