Nakladatalství Leges 

The first part of the edition deals with the relationship of the British Diplomacy to minority and frontier problems in Central Europe between 1939 and 1945 in the context of the so-called Czechoslovak and Polish Issues. Initially in Munich on the 30th of September 1938, Britain decided, having considered all wider implications of its appeasement policy, to support a potential solution of the minority issue subsisting in the forced surrendering of a part of the Czechoslovak territory settled primarily by the German minority for the benefit of Nazi Germany. Britain considered rather ineffective and inapplicable the system of minority treaties under the auspices of the League of Nations. During WWII, supporting the restoration of Czechoslovakia within its pre-Munich frontiers as well as an independent Poland, Britain was trying to find an alternative; since 1940 the alternatives were discussed at first unofficially by the Royal Institute of International Affairs as well as by the Czechoslovak and Polish resistance movements. In July 1942 the British War Cabinet approved the principle of the transfer of German minorities from Czechoslovakia, Poland (due to its new Western borders) and from other countries in Central and Eastern Europe to Germany. This British approach was based upon several reasons besides their belief that the resettlement of German minorities would strengthen the position of the respective states in Central Europe and help them effectively face the threat coming from the USSR as well as potentially from Germany. In addition, the transfers would eliminate a possibility that German minorities could again become a threat to European peace. Another reason was the fact that, having analysed the whole problem, the British Foreign Office concluded that no “resuscitation” of the system of minority treaties would be feasible after WWII; despite such conclusion, the issue of the protection of minorities would not be eliminated, and rather was included in debates over the new conception of basic human rights.