Crimean secession: A Russian remake of the 1938 Sudeten crisis?

Despite the passage of time, there are many parallels between the German Sudetenland and Crimean crises,writes Bobo Lo

WITH Crimea voting for secession, the upheaval in Ukraine is fuelling an increasingly charged atmosphere between Russia and the tandem of the US and the EU. Are American and European leaders being cast in a Russian remake of the 1938 Sudeten crisis?

Immediately after Nazi Germany’s annexation of Austria, Adolf Hitler turned his attention to the ethnic Germans living in Czechoslovakia’s Sudetenland. First, he demanded the Sudetenland’s cession to Germany, gaining relatively easy agreement from British prime minister Neville Chamberlain and his French counterpart, Édouard Daladier.