Those who write history will say that the German minority (at least 3.5 million in the Sudetenland) "undermined the new Czechoslovak state" because they were predominantly sympathetic to Germany. Most, if not all, fail to realize the realities that these "minorities" faced. They had been part of their homeland, Austria/Germany, for centuries. Suddenly, because of a treaty, they were no longer German but Czech/Slovaks. Just because someone decides to change the name of a country doesn't suddenly make the citizens of that country a different ethnicity. The Germans wanted to be part of Germany, their own people and Heritage.
The German-speaking population of the Sudetenland wanted to participate in the building of a German nation state, the Czech-speaking population insisted on keeping Bohemia out of such plans. The German deputies of Bohemia, Moravia, and Silesia in the Imperial Parliament (Reichsrat) referred to the Fourteen Points of U.S. President Woodrow Wilson and the therein granted right of self-determination, and attempted to negotiate the union of the German-speaking territories with the new Republic of German Austria, which itself aimed at joining Weimar Germany.Wilson's fourteen points were of no matter when it came to German interests
Sudetenland was incorporated into a newly created Czechoslovakia, a multi-ethnic state of several nations: Czechs, Germans, Slovaks, Hungarians and others. On 20th September 1918, the Prague Government asked the United States for permission to annex the Sudetenland. President Woodrow Wilson sent ambassador Archibald Coolidge into the newly created state Czechoslovakia.
After Coolidge became witness of Czech police brutality against peaceful Sudeten German demonstrators, he suggested the possibility of ceding certain German-speaking parts of Bohemia to Germany (Cheb) and Austria (South Moravia and South Bohemia). He also insisted that the German inhabited regions of West and North Bohemia remain within Czechoslovakia. However, the American delegation at the Paris talks, with Allen Dulles as the American's chief diplomat who emphasized preserving the unity of the Czech lands, decided not to follow Coolidge's proposal.
The Treaty of Versailles gave these lands to Czechslovakia, a country that didn't even exist prior to World War I. Lands that had been part of the German Empire for hundreds of years were taken away by allies who wanted to "punish" Germany and Austria. Really they wanted to punish Germans. With the swipe of the pen, people who were German now belonged to someone else.
In August of 1938, UK Prime Minister, Neville Chamberlain, sent Lord Runciman to Czechoslovakia in order to see if he could obtain a settlement between the Czechoslovak government and the Germans in the Sudetenland. His mission resulted in the urgent recommendation to the return of the Sudetenland to Germany. He understood that Heritage is more important than geography. Runciman reported the following to the British government:
Czech officials and Czech police, speaking little or no German, were appointed in large numbers to purely German districts; Czech agricultural colonists were encouraged to settle on land confiscated under the Land Reform in the middle of German populations; for the children of these Czech invaders Czech schools were built on a large scale; there is a very general belief that Czech firms were favoured as against German firms in the allocation of State contracts and that the State provided work and relief for Czechs more readily than for Germans. I believe these complaints to be in the main justified. Even as late as the time of my Mission, I could find no readiness on the part of the Czechoslovak Government to remedy them on anything like an adequate scale ... the feeling among the Sudeten Germans until about three or four years ago was one of hopelessness. But the rise of Nazi Germany gave them new hope. I regard their turning for help towards their kinsmen and their eventual desire to join the Reich as a natural development in the circumstances.
The Nazis, together with their Sudeten German allies, demanded incorporation of the region into Nazi Germany to escape oppression of ethnic Germans. While the Czechoslovak government mobilized its troops, the Western powers urged it to comply with Germany believing that they could prevent or postpone a general war by appeasing Hitler.
A woman acknowledges incoming German troops in the Sudetenland, 1938 |
British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain met with Adolf Hitler in Berchtesgaden on September 15 and agreed to the cession of the Sudetenland. Three days later, French Prime Minister Eduard Daladier did the same. No Czechoslovak representative was invited to these discussions.
Chamberlain met Hitler in Godesberg on September 22 to confirm the agreements. Some believe that Hitler aimed to use the crisis as a pretext for war because he now demanded not only the annexation of the Sudetenland but the immediate military occupation of the territories, giving the Czechoslovakian army no time to adapt their defense measures to the new borders. Again, they fail to realize Hitler's intense desire to protect and save his Heritage, his German people. Hitler's love for his people is something that historians and the general public have failed to fully understand. To achieve a solution, Italian prime minister Benito Mussolini suggested a conference of the major powers in Munich and on September 29, Hitler, Daladier and Chamberlain met and agreed to Mussolini's proposal. The Munich Agreement was signed accepting the immediate occupation of the Sudetenland. The Czechoslovak government, though not party to the talks, promised to abide by the agreement on September 30, 1938.
The Sudetenland was relegated to Germany between October 1 and October 10, 1938. On December 4, 1938 there were elections in Reichsgau, Sudetenland where 97.32% of the adult population voted for the NSDAP, the Nazi Party. Of course they would! They had just been saved by the Nazis! I would have voted for them too. About a half million Sudeten Germans joined the party, 17% of the German population in the Sudetenland. The average NSDAP participation in Nazi Germany was just under eight percent. This means the Sudetenland was the most pro-Nazi region in the Third Reich.
A Czechoslovak Government in Exile was organized in London to obtain international recognition for the government and a renunciation of the Munich Agreement. The United Kingdom, Soviet Union and United States all recognized this government. Czechoslovak military units fought alongside Allied forces in World War II. They would have been better off fighting with Germany. Czechoslovakia would be communist for decades afterwards.
On May 8, 1944, Czechoslovakian President Benes signed an agreement with Soviet leaders stipulating that Czechoslovak territory liberated by Soviet armies would be placed under Czechoslovak civilian control. Did they really believe Stalin would live up to this agreement?
Did any of the Allies really believe Stalin would give up territory?
Hitler only wanted to reunite the German people from territories taken under the conditions of the Treaty of Versailles
Stalin wanted the world to be communist
And the Allies knew it
From September 21, 1944, Czechoslovakia was "liberated" by Soviet troops, supported by Czech and Slovak resistance, from the east to the west, only southwestern Bohemia was liberated by other Allied troops from the west. In May 1945, U.S. forces liberated the city of Plzen. A civilian uprising against the Nazi garrison took place in Prague in May 1945. The resistance was assisted by heavily-armed ROA aka Gen. Vlasov's army, a force composed of Soviet POWs organized by the Germans, now turning again against them. Bratislava was taken over on April 4, 1945, and Prague on May 9, 1945 by Soviet troops. Both Soviet and Allied troops were withdrawn in the same year.
A treaty ceding Carpatho-Ukraine to the Soviet Union was signed in June 1945 between Czechoslovakia and the Soviet Union, following an apparently rigged Soviet-run referendum in Carpatho-Ukraine or Ruthenia. The Potsdam Agreement provided for the expulsion of Sudeten Germans to Germany under the supervision of the Allied Control Council. Decisions regarding the Hungarian minority reverted to the Czechoslovak government. In February 1946, the Hungarian government agreed that Czechoslovakia could expatriate as many Hungarians as there were Slovaks in Hungary wishing to return to Czechoslovakia.
First the Czechs didn't want to give up the German minority
Now they can't get rid of them fast enough
Germans expelled from the Sudetenland Expelled from land that had been German for centuries
| The "Ten Commandments for Czechoslovak Soldiers in the Border Regions" directed soldiers that "The Germans have remained our irreconcilable enemies. Do not cease to hate the Germans...Behave towards Germans like a victor...Be harsh to the Germans...German women and the Hitler Youth also bear the blame for the crimes of the Germans. Deal with them too in an uncompromising way." Millions of Germans were expelled from their ancestral homes in Eastern Europe Women and girls were raped Old women, young girls, even boys Millions died Read "A Terrible Revenge: The Ethnic Cleansing of the East European Germans" by Alfred-Maurice de Zayas
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| After the end of World War II, the Sudeten Germans were expelled by the millions. Almost three million in all were forced from their ancestral homeland. Those that stayed had to wear white arm band and thousands of them were murdered. In the Usti Massacre up to 100 Germans were lunched. Hundreds of other massacres occurred where thousands of Germans were slaughtered. On May 30, 1945 the German population of Brno, upwards of 20,000 people, many women, children and elderly since adult men were in prisoner of war camps, were lead on a death march. They were marched to Austria but since the Soviets held that sector, they were refused entry and were sent back. Thousands perished. The property of most Sudeten Germans was claimed as war reparations and confiscated by Czechoslovakia. In 1946 there were 2,232,544 people transferred to Germany, two thirds to the American sector, the rest to the Soviet sector (not all were actual Germans. Some were non-German members of mixed families and renegades.) About 244,000 Germans were allowed to remain in Czechoslovakia, many of whom later emigrated to West Germany. In the 2001 census only 40,000 people in the Czech Republic claimed German ethnicity. Hitler tried to save his heritage, these German civilians. The tragedy is that his efforts were in vain. It's been estimated that at least 1,500,000 of the Sudeten Germans would die, most from famine.
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In April of 1945 three socialist parties formed a coalition government in Prague. Because the Soviet armies had liberated them, the local population viewed them as heroes. The only reason that the Soviet armies were the ones to enter Czechoslovakia first was because of a compromise by the Allies and Stalin at the Yalta Conference in 1944. The Allies made the world safe for communism. We should be ashamed of ourselves.
In the national elections of 1946, President Edvard Benes hoped the Soviet Union would allow Czechoslovakia the "freedom" to choose its own form of government. Yet Communists came to power. By 1947, Stalin was telling the country what to do. They backed out of the Marshall Plan and by 1948 all twelve non-communist ministers resigned from the government, hoping Benes would call for early elections. The communist takeover was complete when the foreign minister was found dead under suspicious circumstances. Benes resigned from the presidency and the country was not communist.
It would take until 1989 for anti-Communist demonstrations to take place by university students. These demonstrations were violently put down by the police but it was the start of the end of the Communist Party in Czechoslovakia.
