201. The Führer and Prime Minister Chamberlain.

Hitler and Chamberlain pose for the photographer; while neither individual looks particularly comfortable, the British Prime Minister, through circumstances chiefly due to his choice in clothes appears to represent something from a bygone age. A seemingly impassive Hitler assumes a more formal pose. This meeting took place in Rheinhotel Dreesen at Bad Godesberg on 22/23 September 1938 where the two leaders met to discuss the deepening Sudeten crisis, then near breaking point. An earlier meeting between the two men at the Berghof on 15 September ended in failure to reach agreement. The Führer appeared immovable in his demands for the proposed annexation of the Sudetenland in Czechoslovakia.

On this occasion Hitler stayed in the Dreesen, a hotel he knew well; he stayed there numerous times through the 1930s. He visited the hotel for the first time on 28 November 1926. The Führer had stayed in the hotel on the night of 29/30 June 1934, the night of the Röhm Purge; the so-called ‘Night of the Long Knives.’ Chamberlain was accommodated in Hotel Petershof located on top of the Petersberg on the opposite bank of the River Rhein. As it turned out this meeting was merely a precursor to the Munich Agreement concluded a week later.