The Munich Agreement, signed in September 1938, marked a pivotal moment in European geopolitics as Britain and France chose to appease Adolf Hitler by allowing Nazi Germany to annex the Sudetenland region of Czechoslovakia. This decision was made in hopes of preventing a larger conflict, but it ultimately emboldened Hitler's expansionist ambitions. The agreement is often cited as a classic example of the failures of appeasement, leading to the outbreak of World War II less than a year later.

The Munich Agreement of 1938, seen as a betrayal, was critiqued in poetry that captured the sense of false peace and impending doom. Poets like W.H. Auden reflected on the moral failures of appeasement, heightening the pre-war dread that permeated literature of the time.