"In 1938 Hitler thought that he had with great care laid the groundwork for the first of his wars. Czechoslovakia would be destroyed in a war.... Once tricked into negotiations by British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain, Hitler tried desperately to extricate himself; but then at the last moment funked at war when confronted by the doubts of his own people and advisors, / the warning of war with England and France, the reluctance of Mussolini, and the hesitation of Hungary. Reluctantly he settled for his ostens ible aims rather than his real ambition; that is to say, he took the portions of Czechoslovakia adjacent to Germany and inhabited predominantly by Germans, but he refrained from the war to destroy Czechoslovakia and seize most of the country as he had originally intended. While others thought of the Munich agreement of 1938 as a sign of German triumph and as a symbol of weak-kneed acquiescence in aggression, Hitler looked on it as a terrible disappointment then and as the greatest error of his career later." Weinberg, World At Arms, pg 27-28.
Weinberg's view puts a different spin on the "Munich analogy" that is used so often in foreign policy discussion.
Great question, sorry if I'm a bit late to the game though. Hitler did not really see the Munich Agreement as anything but a formality which he had every intention of breaking. The Sudetenland was something which Hitler was going to take with or without the approval of the British Government. He was quoted saying about Chamberlain "that senile old rascal Chamberlain has prevented my entry into Prague.” Though after he presented the Godesberg Memorandum it was more clear that he was not really interested in following the rules outlined in the Munich Agreement. Also the infamous "piece of paper" which was signed (the Anglo-German Fellowship) was very clearly something which Hitler had no intention of following though with as war broke out a year after the Munich Agreement was signed.
So while Hitler did actually attend the Munich Agreement, it was because of the pressure from the German Government to attend to not seem like he would not work with the other large European powers. Hitler was not ready for an all out war from both fronts (if he invaded Czechoslovakia without consent then France and the USSR would have had to back up the Czech due to a diplomatic agreement) and the Munich Agreement got him what he wanted, the Sudetenland and Czechoslovakia without starting a war, so that would be one reason he saw it as a success.
Overall it was very much a stepping stone for Hitler to achieve his final goal; to re-unify Germany, a goal which eventually lead to the start of the Second World War.
That is an interesting quote. I always saw it as Hitler buying time - I'd agree he had no interest in long term peace but rather than being pushed in to the agreement he was actually just buying time, if he could invade France and other European countries successfully Britain's position would be weak and surely, they'd concede to him ?
I think he was well aware that the UK (and America for that matter) had no interest in another war and was trying to use it to his advantage. Only problem was, Britain didn't give in. Nevertheless he still saw their situation as dire, in the plan to invade Britain he wrote:
"Since England, despite its militarily hopeless situation, still has not shown any signs of being prepared to negotiate, I have decided to prepare a landing operation against England and, if necessary, carry it out.
The objective of this operation is to eliminate the English home country as a base for the continuation of the war against Germany. 2) Included in these preparations is the bringing about of those preconditions which make a landing in England possible; a) The English air force must have been beaten down to such an extent morally and in fact that it can no longer muster any power of attack worth mentioning against the German crossing."