The Sudetenland province of Czechoslovakia was populated by largely ethnic Germans. At the Munich Conference in September 1938, Great Britain and France agreed to allow Germany to annex this area. This consent, and the actual annexation on October 6, 1938, cost Czechoslovakia its fortifications and most of its industry. However, Hitler continued to consider Czechoslovakia a threat to his south-eastern border in the event that Germany would be involved in war on another front. The Slovaks' demand for autonomy from the Czech government, and the Czechs' dissolution of the government of Slovakia, gave Germany a pretext to invade Czechoslovakia. On March 15, 1939, the Czech president, Emil Hacha, coerced by pressures and threats, signed over control of Czechoslovakia to Germany with no need for an act of war, ostensibly to assure Slovak autonomy.