The native German-speaking regions in 1930, within the borders of the currentCzech Republic, which in theinterwar period were referred to as the Sudetenland
The word "Sudetenland" did not come into being until the early part of the 20th century and did not come to prominence until almost two decades into the century, afterWorld War I, whenAustria-Hungary was dismembered and the Sudeten Germansfound themselves living in the new country ofCzechoslovakia. TheSudeten crisis of 1938 was provoked by thePan-Germanist demands ofNazi Germany that the Sudetenland be annexed to Germany,which happened after the laterMunich Agreement. Part of the borderland was invaded andannexed by Poland. Afterwards, the formerly unrecognized Sudetenland became anadministrative division of Germany. When Czechoslovakia was reconstituted afterWorld War II, the Sudeten Germanswere expelled and the region today is inhabited almost exclusively by Czech speakers.
The wordSudetenland is a German compound ofLand, meaning "country", andSudeten, the name of theSudeten Mountains, which run along the northern Czech border andLower Silesia (now inPoland). The Sudetenland encompassed areas well beyond those mountains, however.
The areas later known as the Sudetenland never formed a singlehistorical region, which makes it difficult to distinguish the history of the Sudetenland separately from that ofBohemia until the advent ofnationalism in the 19th century.
TheCelticBoii settled there and the region was first mentioned on the map ofPtolemaios in the 2nd century AD. TheGermanic tribe of theMarcomanni dominated the entire core of the region in later centuries. Those tribes already built cities likeBrno, but moved west during theMigration Period. In the 7th century ADSlavic people moved in and were united underSamo's realm. Later in theHigh Middle Ages Germans settled into the less populated border region.
In the hilly border regions German settlers established major manufactures offorest glass. The situation of the German population was aggravated by theHussite Wars (1419–1434), though there were also some Germans among theHussite insurgents.
From the Luxembourgs, rule over Bohemia passed throughGeorge of Podiebrad to theJagiellon dynasty and finally to theHouse of Habsburg in 1526. Both Czech and German Bohemians suffered heavily in theThirty Years' War. Bohemia lost 70% of its population. From the defeat of the Bohemian Revolt that collapsed at the 1620Battle of White Mountain, the Habsburgs gradually integrated the Kingdom of Bohemia into theirmonarchy. During the subsequentCounter-Reformation, less populated areas were resettled withCatholic Germans from the Austrian lands. From 1627, the Habsburgs enforced the so-calledVerneuerte Landesordnung ("Renewed Land's Constitution"), and one of its consequences was that German, according to mother tongue, gradually became the primary and official language, while Czech declined to a secondary role in the Empire. In 1749, the Austrian Empire enforced German as the official language again. EmperorJoseph II in 1780 renounced the coronation ceremony as Bohemian king and unsuccessfully tried to push German through as sole official language in all Habsburg lands (including Hungary). Nevertheless, German cultural influence grew stronger during theAge of Enlightenment andWeimar Classicism.
Contrastingly, in the course of theRomanticism movement national tensions arose, both in the form of theAustroslavism ideology developed by Czech politicians likeFrantišek Palacký andPan-Germanist activist raising theGerman question. Conflicts between Czech and German nationalists emerged in the 19th century, for instance in theRevolutions of 1848: while the German-speaking population of Bohemia and Moravia wanted to participate in the building of a German nation state, the Czech-speaking population insisted on keeping Bohemia out of such plans. The Bohemian Kingdom remained a part of theAustrian Empire andAustria-Hungary until its dismemberment after the World War I.
Ethnic distribution inAustria-Hungary in 1911: regions with a German majority are depicted in pink, those with Czech majorities in blue.
In the wake of growing nationalism, the name "Sudetendeutsche" (Sudeten Germans) emerged by the early 20th century. It originally constituted part of a larger classification of three groupings of Germans within the Austro-Hungarian Empire, which also included "Alpine Deutschen" (Alpine Germans) in what later became the Republic of Austria and "Balkandeutsche" (Balkan Germans) in Hungary and the regions east of it. Of these three terms, only the term "Sudetendeutsche" survived, because of the ethnic and cultural conflicts within Bohemia.
DuringWorld War I, what later became known as the Sudetenland experienced a rate of war deaths that was higher than most other German-speaking areas ofAustria-Hungary and exceeded only byGerman South Moravia andCarinthia. Thirty-four of each 1,000 inhabitants were killed.[1]
Austria-Hungary broke apart at the end of World War I. In late October 1918, an independentCzechoslovak state, consisting of the lands of the Bohemian kingdom and areas belonging to the Kingdom of Hungary, was proclaimed. The German deputies of Bohemia, Moravia, and Silesia in theImperial Council (Reichsrat) referred to theFourteen Points of US PresidentWoodrow Wilson and the right proposed therein toself-determination and attempted to negotiate the union of the German-speaking territories with the new Republic ofGerman Austria, which itself aimed at joiningWeimar Germany.
The German-speaking parts of the formerLands of the Bohemian Crown were to be part of a newly createdCzechoslovakia, a multi-ethnic state of several nations:Czechs,Germans,Slovaks,Hungarians,Poles andRuthenians. On 20 September 1918, thePrague government asked for the opinion of the United States on the Sudetenland. Wilson sent AmbassadorArchibald Coolidge into Czechoslovakia. Coolidge insisted on respecting the Germans' right toself-determination and uniting all German-speaking areas with either Germany or Austria, with the exception of northern Bohemia.[2] However, the American delegation at the Paris talks decided not to follow Coolidge's proposal.Allen Dulles was the American's chief diplomat in the Czechoslovak Commission and emphasized preserving the unity of the Czech lands.[3]
Four regional governmental units were established:
Province of German Bohemia (Provinz Deutschböhmen), the regions of northern and western Bohemia; proclaimed a constitutive state (Land) of the German-Austrian Republic with Reichenberg (Liberec) as capital, administered by aLandeshauptmann (state captain), consecutively: Rafael Pacher (1857–1936), 29 October – 6 November 1918, and Rudolf Ritter von Lodgman von Auen (1877–1962), 6 November – 16 December 1918 (the last principal city was conquered by the Czech army but he continued in exile, first at Zittau in Saxony and then in Vienna, until 24 September 1919).
Province of the Sudetenland (Provinz Sudetenland), the regions of northernMoravia andAustrian Silesia; proclaimed a constituent state of the German-Austrian Republic with Troppau (Opava) as capital, governed by aLandeshauptmann: Robert Freissler (1877–1950), 30 October – 18 December 1918. This province's boundaries do not correspond to what would later be called the Sudetenland, which contained all the German-speaking parts of the Czech lands.
Bohemian Forest Region (Böhmerwaldgau), the region ofBohemian Forest/South Bohemia; proclaimed a district (Kreis) of the existing Austrian Land ofUpper Austria; administered byKreishauptmann (district captain): Friedrich Wichtl (1872–1922) from 30 October 1918.
German South Moravia (Deutschsüdmähren), proclaimed a District (Kreis) of the existing Austrian landLower Austria, administered by aKreishauptmann: Oskar Teufel (1880–1946) from 30 October 1918.
The U.S. commission to theParis Peace Conference issued a declaration, which gave unanimous support for "unity of Czech lands".[4] In particular the declaration stated:
The Commission was... unanimous in its recommendation that the separation of all areas inhabited by the German-Bohemians would not only expose Czechoslovakia to great dangers but equally create great difficulties for the Germans themselves. The only practicable solution was to incorporate these Germans into Czechoslovakia.
Several German minorities according to their mother tongue in Moravia, including German-speaking populations inBrno,Jihlava andOlomouc, also attempted to proclaim their union with German Austria.
In sum, the Czechs rejected the aspirations of the German Bohemians and demanded the inclusion of the lands inhabited by ethnic Germans in their state, on the grounds that they had always been part of the lands of the Bohemian Crown. These lands were in some instances more than 90% (as of 1921) ethnically German, which made the whole of Czechoslovakia 23.4% German.
TheTreaty of Saint-Germain in 1919 affirmed the inclusion of the German-speaking territories within Czechoslovakia. Over the next two decades, some Germans in the Sudetenland continued to strive for a separation of the regions from Czechoslovakia.
According toElizabeth Wiskemann, despite the initial resistance to the Czechoslovak rule, the Sudeten German population was not entirely opposed to annexation by Czechoslovakia. Sudeten economy and industry relied on the rest of Bohemia, and local industrialists were afraid of "Reich German competition and therefore of the talk of handing them over". Many Sudeten Germans also opposed joining Austria, arguing that being incorporated into Austria would turn Sudeten lands into "economically helpless Austrian enclaves". Because of this, Sudetenland becoming part of Czechoslovakia was the preferable choice of "a good deal of cautious middle-class" amongst Sudeten Germans. Silesian-Sudeten Germans were particularly pro-Czechoslovak, as they strongly preferred Czechoslovak rule to the prospect of becoming a part of Poland.[5]
According to the February 1921 census, 3,123,000 native German speakers lived in Czechoslovakia, 23.4% of the total population. The controversies between the Czechs and the German-speaking minority lingered on throughout the 1920s and intensified in the 1930s.
During theGreat Depression, the mostly-mountainous regions populated by the German minority, together with other peripheral regions ofCzechoslovakia, were hurt by theeconomic depression more than the interior of the country was. Unlike the less developed regions (Carpathian Ruthenia,Moravian Wallachia), the Sudetenland had a high concentration of vulnerable export-dependent industries (such as glass works,textile industry, paper-making and toy-making industry). Sixty percent of thebijouterie and glassmaking industry were located in the Sudetenland, and 69% of employees in the sector were German-speaking according to mother tongue, and 95% of bijouterie and 78% of other glassware was produced for export. The glass-making sector was affected by decreased spending power and by protective measures in other countries, and many German workers lost their work.[7]
The high unemployment, as well as the imposition of Czech in schools and all public spaces, made people more open topopulist and extremist movements such asfascism,communism and Germanirredentism. In those years, parties of German nationalists and later theSudeten German Party (SdP), with its radical demands gained immense popularity, amongGermans in Czechoslovakia.
Czech inscriptions smeared by Sudeten German activists, March 1938,Teplice
The increasing aggressiveness of Hitler prompted the Czechoslovak military to start to build extensiveborder fortifications in 1936 to defend the troubled border region. Immediately after theAnschluss ofAustria into theGerman Reich in March 1938, Hitler made himself the advocate of ethnic Germans living in Czechoslovakia, which triggered the Sudeten Crisis. The following month, Sudeten Nazis, led byKonrad Henlein, agitated for autonomy. On 24 April 1938, the SdP proclaimed theKarlsbader Programm, which demanded in eight points the complete equality between theSudeten Germans and theCzech people. The government accepted those claims on 30 June 1938.[clarification needed][8]
In August,British Prime MinisterNeville Chamberlain sentLord Runciman on amission to Czechoslovakia to see if he could obtain a settlement between the Czechoslovak government and the Germans in the Sudetenland. Runciman's first day included meetings with President Beneš and Prime MinisterMilan Hodža as well as a direct meeting with the Sudeten Germans from Henlein's SdP. On the next day, he met with Dr and Mme Beneš and later met non-Nazi Germans in his hotel.[9]
A full account of his report, including summaries of the conclusions of his meetings with the various parties, which he made in person to the Cabinet on his return to the United Kingdom, is found in the Document CC 39(38).[10] Lord Runciman[11] expressed sadness that he could not bring about agreement with the various parties, but he agreed withLord Halifax that the time that had been gained was important. He reported on the situation of the Sudeten Germans and gave details of four plans that had been proposed to deal with the crisis, each of which had points that, he reported, made it unacceptable to the other parties to the negotiations.
The four plans included, first, the transfer of the Sudetenland to the Reich, second, holding aplebiscite on the transfer of the Sudetenland to the Reich, third, organising a Four-Power Conference on the matter and, fourth, creating a federal Czechoslovakia. At the meeting, he said that he was very reluctant to offer his own solution and had not seen that as his task. The most that Halifax said was that the great centres of opposition were inEger andAsch, in the northwestern corner of Bohemia, where about 800,000 Germans and very few others lived.
Halifax said that the transfer of these areas to Germany would almost certainly be a good thing adding that the Czechoslovak army would certainly oppose that very strongly and that Beneš had said that it would fight, rather than accept it.[12]
Chamberlain met Hitler inGodesberg on 22 September 1938 to confirm the agreements. Hitler, aiming to use the crisis as a pretext for war, now demanded not only the annexation of the Sudetenland but also the immediate military occupation of Bohemia, Moravia and Slovakia, thus giving the Czechoslovak army no time to adapt its defence measures to the new borders.
Hitler, in a speech at the Sportpalast in Berlin, claimed that the Sudetenland was "the last territorial demand I have to make in Europe"[13] and gave Czechoslovakia a deadline of 28 September 1938 at 2:00 p.m. to cede the Sudetenland to Germany or face war.[14]
To achieve a solution, the Italian dictator,Benito Mussolini, suggested a conference of the major powers inMunich, and on 29 September, Hitler, Daladier and Chamberlain met and agreed to Mussolini's proposal (actually prepared byHermann Göring) and signed theMunich Agreement. They accepted the immediate occupation of the Sudetenland. The Czechoslovak government, though not party to the talks, submitted to compulsion and promised to abide by the agreement on 30 September.
The Sudetenland was assigned to Germany between 1 and 10 October 1938. The Czech part of Czechoslovakia was subsequentlyinvaded by Germany in March 1939, with a portion being annexed and the remainder turned into theProtectorate of Bohemia and Moravia. The Slovak part declared its independence from Czechoslovakia and became theSlovak Republic (Slovak State), asatellite state allied to Germany. (The Ruthenian part, Subcarpathian Rus, made also an attempt to declare its sovereignty asCarpatho-Ukraine but only with ephemeral success since the area was soon annexed byHungary.)
Although "Henlein and the SdP had become accessories in Hitler's escalating campaign to annex the Sudetenland to the German Reich" by the summer of 1938, the supporters of the SdP supported autonomy within Czechoslovakia rather than annexation into Germany.[15] Contemporary reports ofThe Times found that there was a "large number of Sudetenlanders who actively opposed annexation", and that the pro-German policy was challenged by the moderates within the SdP as well; according toWickham Steed, over 50% of Henlein's supporters favoured greater autonomy within Czechoslovakia rather than joining Germany.[16] Sudeten German historianEmil Franzel [de] argues that the mainstream wing of Henlein's party was "not striving for annexation to Germany, but for genuine autonomy", and the majority of negotiators who conducted talks with Hodža and Beneš belonged to the pro-autonomy wing and were unaware of Henlein's agreements with Hitler.[17]
Part of the borderland had an ethnic Polish majority and was invaded andannexed by Poland in 1938.
Ethnic Germans in the city of Eger (nowCheb) greeting Hitler with theNazi salute after he crossed the border into the Czechoslovak Sudetenland on 3 October 1938
Volunteers of the Sudeten German Free Corps (German:Sudetendeutsches Freikorps) receiving refreshments from the local population in the city of Eger/Cheb)
Adolf Hitler drives through the crowd in Eger/Cheb on 3 October 1938
The Sudetenland was initially put under military administration, with GeneralWilhelm Keitel as military governor. On 14 April 1939, the annexed territories were divided, with the southern parts being incorporated into the neighbouring Reichsgaue ofNiederdonau,Oberdonau andBayerische Ostmark.
Election ballot, Reichsgau Sudetenland, December 1938
Sudetenland was administered by Konrad Henlein for the duration of the war.
Before the occupation, Jews in the area had become targeted during theHolocaust in the Sudetenland. Only a few weeks later, theKristallnacht occurred. As elsewhere in Germany, many synagogues were set on fire and numerous leading Jews were sent toconcentration camps. Jews and Czechs were not the only afflicted peoples since German socialists, communists and pacifists were widely persecuted as well. Some of the German socialists fled the Sudetenland via Prague and London to other countries. TheGleichschaltung would permanently alter the community in the Sudetenland.
However, on 4 December 1938, there were elections in Reichsgau Sudetenland in which 97.32% of the adult population voted for theNSDAP. About a half million Sudeten Germans joined theNazi Party, 17.34% of the total German population in the Sudetenland (the average NSDAP membership participation in Germany was merely 7.85% in 1944). That means the Sudetenland was one of the most pro-Nazi regions of Nazi Germany.[18] Because of their knowledge of theCzech language, many Sudeten Germans were employed in the administration of theethnic CzechProtectorate of Bohemia and Moravia as well as in Nazi organizations (Gestapo etc.). The most notable one wasKarl Hermann Frank, the SS and police general and Secretary of State in the Protectorate.
Nazi Germany occupied Sudetenland from 1938 to 1945.[19]
Theexpulsion of Germans from Czechoslovakia as the result of the end of World War IIFrom the territory occupied by the Third Reich, 160,000 to 170,000 Czech-speaking inhabitants were forced to leave or were expelled
Shortly after the liberation of Czechoslovakia in May 1945, the use of the termSudety (Sudetenland) in official communications was banned and replaced by the termpohraniční území (border territory).[20] TheBerlin Declaration of 5 June 1945 disabled German annexation of Sudetenland legally.
In the summer of 1945, thePotsdam Conference decided that Sudeten Germans would have to leave Czechoslovakia (seeflight and expulsion of Germans (1944–50)). As a consequence of the immense hostility against all Germans that had grown within Czechoslovakia because many of them had helped the Nazis, the overwhelming majority of Germans were expelled though the relevant Czechoslovak legislation had provided for Germans to remain if they could prove their anti-Nazi affiliation.
The number of expelled Germans in the early phase (spring-summer 1945) is estimated to be around 500,000 people. After the Beneš decrees, nearly all Germans were expelled starting in 1946 and in 1950 only 159,938 (from 3,149,820 in 1930) still lived in the Czech Republic. The remaining Germans, who were proven antifascists and skilled laborers, were allowed to stay in Czechoslovakia but were later forcefully dispersed within the country.[21] Some German refugees from Czechoslovakia are represented by theSudetendeutsche Landsmannschaft.
Some areas, such as part of Czech Silesian-Moravian borderland, southwestern Bohemia (Šumava National Park), western and northern parts of Bohemia, remained depopulated for several strategic reasons (extensive mining and military interests) or are now protected national parks and landscapes. Moreover, before the establishment of theIron Curtain in 1952 to 1955, the so-called "forbidden zone" was established by means ofengineer equipment up to 2 km (1.2 mi) from the border in which no civilians could reside. A wider region, or "border zone", existed up to 12 km (7 miles) from the border in which no "disloyal" or "suspect" civilians could reside or work. Thus, the entireAš-Bulge fell within the border zone, a status that remained until theVelvet Revolution in 1989.
There remained areas with noticeable German minorities in the westernmost borderland aroundCheb, where skilled ethnic German miners and workers continued in mining and industry, until 1955, as sanctioned under theYalta Conference protocols;[citation needed] in theEgerland, German minority organizations continue to exist.
In the 2021 census, 24,632 people in the Czech Republic claimed German ethnicity, out of which 15,504 in combination with another ethnicity.[22]
^Wiskemann, Elizabeth (1938).Czechs and Germans: A Study of the Struggle in the Historic Province of Bohemia and Moravia. Oxford University Press. pp. 85–86.
^Kárník, Zdeněk. České země v éře první republiky (1918–1938). Vol. 2. Prague 2002.
^Zayas, Alfred Maurice de: Die Nemesis von Potsdam. Die Anglo-Amerikaner und die Vertreibung der Deutschen, überarb. u. erweit. Neuauflage, Herbig-Verlag, München, 2005.
^Note that what he reportsled is an expression of his opinion on the situation. He may have been entirely mistaken on that, but it helps to understand how he saw the situation. For example, he felt that the Czechoslovakian government was blind to the situation, but that does not make it true.
^Max Domarus; Adolf Hitler (1990).Hitler: speeches and proclamations, 1932–1945: the chronicle of a dictatorship. p. 1393.
^Santi Corvaja, Robert L. Miller.Hitler & Mussolini: The Secret Meetings. New York, New York, USA: Enigma Books, 2008.ISBN978-1-929631-42-1. p. 73.
^Glassheim, Eagle (2016).Cleansing the Czechoslovak Borderlands: Migration, Environment and Health in the Former Sudetenland. University of Pittsburgh Press. p. 35.ISBN978-0-8229-6426-1.
^David J. Gossen (June 1994).Public Opinion, Appeasement, and The Times: Manipulating Consent in the 1930s (Thesis). Vancouver: The University of British Columbia. p. 63.doi:10.14288/1.0094711.
^Franzel, Emil[in German] (1958).Sudetendeutsche Geschichte: eine volkstümliche Darstellung (in German). Adam Kraft Verlag München. p. 387.ISBN3-8083-1131-2.
^Zimmermann, Volker: Die Sudetendeutschen im NS-Staat. Politik und Stimmung der Bevölkerung im Reichsgau Sudetenland (1938–1945). Essen 1999. (ISBN3-88474-770-3)
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