This book is the fruit of the cooperation between the Institute for Political Studies of Defense and Military History, and the Institute of History of the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic and the Czech Embassy in Romania. […] The “Munich episode” deserves to be analyzed not only from a historical perspective, namely from the way in which the events unfolded, but also from the perspective of its longterm consequences. It inaugurated a new paradigm in international relations – “about us, without us”, as ambassador Jiri Sitler correctly asserted –, which was repeatedly put to use during the Second World War and in the post-war period. To exemplify, one can mention the agreements of 1939-1940 between the Soviet Union and Germany, those between the major actors of the United Nations at the end of WW 2, a number of episodes in the bipolar confrontation during the Cold War years and even afterwards, etc. (major general (ret) dr. Mihail E. Ionescu)