Our first order of business here is to dispose of two problems in the documentary record that constitute obstacles to an authentic account of the story, one problem of evidentiary contamination and one of void of evidence.

First, we must dispose of a misleading story nearly omnipresent in the recent historiography, a story that has obscured the reality of Soviet–Romanian military relations in September 1938. Jiri Hochman published a document in which Romanian Foreign Minister N. P. Comnen allegedly furnished Soviet Foreign Minister Maksim Litvinov, just a week before the meeting at Munich, formal permission for the transit of the Red Army across Romania on its way to Czechoslovakia. There was, Hochman says, no response, and he emphasizes the point to show that the Czechs were betrayed by their Soviet as well as by their French allies. This document is now regarded as one of the staples of traditional Western and Czech émigréhistoriography and the arguments and conclusions that it serves. The original of this document, however, has never been produced, and its authenticity is open to serious question on several grounds. The reasons for skepticism are multiple.

One dubious feature of the document is immediately apparent: the massive and multiple mistakes in French grammar and spelling, around fifty such in seven printed pages: “au côtés de,” “au conditions,” “aprés,” “cella,” “pour de telle raisons,” “la population civil,” “tout l'opération,” “tout l'Europe,” “par voi de terre,” “tout garantie,” “plusiers,” “en aucune cas,” “une durrée de 6 jours,” “autorités compententes,” “la demand expressé,” and so forth, many of which are conspicuously Anglophone, for example, “member,” “l'armament,” “l'equipment,” “un assault des forces,” “response,” “conflict.”