What major world event did the Munich Conference attempt to prevent through appeasement?

The Munich Conference, held in 1938, sought to avert the outbreak of World War II through a policy of appeasement towards Adolf Hitler's aggressive expansion in Europe. At the conference, leaders from France, Britain, Italy, and Germany negotiated over the Sudetenland, a region of Czechoslovakia with a significant German population. The decision to allow Germany to annex this territory was made in the hope that satisfying Hitler's demands would prevent further military aggression and ultimately maintain peace in Europe.

This strategy, however, failed to stop the impending conflict, as Hitler continued to pursue territorial expansion, leading to the full-scale outbreak of World War II in 1939. The Munich Conference is often regarded as a crucial moment of miscalculation, where the Western powers underestimated the extent of Hitler's ambitions and the dangers of appeasing totalitarian regimes.