In early October 1938 — 83 years ago this week — Nazi German forces marched into the Sudetenland in western Czechoslovakia. European leaders, intimidated by Adolf Hitler’s bullying, had ceded the territory to Germany just days earlier at a conference in Munich. Massive Czech fortifications that could have provided a stout defense against invasion were instead peacefully abandoned, and the Germans took over the region without firing a shot.
A few days later, Hitler himself made an inspection of some of the empty concrete bunkers. He even tested one by ordering an…
