Adolf Hitler
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Munich conference, leading to his infamous claim to have secured "peace for our time", Hitler was privately furious about being "cheated" out of the war he was desperate to have in 1938. As a result of the summit, Hitler was TIME magazine's Man of the Year for 1938.
By appeasing Hitler, Britain and France left Czechoslovakia to Hitler's mercy. Though Hitler professed happiness in public over the achievement of his ostensible demands, in private he was determined to have a war the next time around by ensuring that Germany's future demands would not be met. In Hitler's view, a British-brokered peace, though extremely favourable to the ostensible German demands, was a diplomatic defeat which proved that Britain needed to be ended as a power to allow him to pursue his dreams of eastern expansion. In the aftermath of Munich, Hitler felt since Britain would not ally herself nor stand aside to
facilitate Germany's continental ambitions, it had become a major threat, and accordingly, Britain replaced the Soviet Union in Hitler's mind as the main enemy of the Reich, with German policies being accordingly reoriented. Hitler expressed his disappointment over the Munich Agreement in a speech on 9 October 1938 in Saarbrücken when he lashed out against the Conservative anti-appeasers Winston Churchill, Alfred Duff Cooper and Anthony Eden, whom Hitler described as a warmongering anti-German fraction, who would attack Germany at the first opportunity, and were likely to come to power at any moment.
In the same speech, Hitler claimed "We Germans will no longer endure such governessy interference. Britain should mind her own business and worry about her own troubles". In November 1938, Hitler ordered a major anti-British propaganda campaign to be launched with the British being loudly abused for their "hypocrisy" in maintaining world-wide empire while seeking to block the Germans from acquiring an empire of their own. A particular highlight in the anti-British propaganda was alleged British humans rights abuses in dealing with the Arab uprising in the Palestine Mandate and in India, and the "hyprocrisy" of British criticism of the November 1938 Kristallnacht event. This marked a huge change from the earlier years of the Third Reich, when the German media had portrayed the British Empire in very favourable terms. In November 1938, the Foreign Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop was ordered to convert the Anti-Comintern Pact into an open anti-British military alliance, as a prelude for a war against Britain and France. On 27 January 1939, Hitler
An American soldier stands in front of a wagon piled high with corpses outside the crematorium in the newly liberated Buchenwald concentration camp