Video: 'The World At War 1973(World War II Documentary) 01.A New Germany (1933–1939)' (German troops pour into Sudetenland at 38:29)

(Saturday, October 1, 1938, 2:00 p.m. CET) — Five gray-green columns of German troops poured across the Czechoslovak frontier this afternoon on a twenty-mile front, beginning the dismemberment of Czechoslovakia in accordance with the Munich Agreement.

The uniforms, the guns, the mechanized engines of war were in contrast to the festivity of the scene. The cheering German inhabitants pelted the troops with flowers.

The first contingent crossed the frontier at exactly 2:00 p.m., the deadline which had been set. Colonel General Wilhelm Joseph Franz Ritter von Leeb was in command of the occupied area, which is on the southwestern border north of Linz, Austria.