On 30 September 1938, the Swastika flag was raised over Cardiff’s Town Hall, where it fluttered alongside the flags of Britain, France and Fascist Italy. The instructions came directly from Tory mayor Oliver Purnell and within hours he had received a message from the German consul “expressing delight at the Lord Mayor’s gesture of friendship”. Purnell himself described it as “a gesture of jubilation” at the outcome of the Munich conference. An agreement by which Britain and France conceded to Hitler’s demand for Nazi Germany to annex the Sudetenland in return for a dubious promise of peace.[
