Sudetenland

The Sudetenland (/suːˈdeɪtənlænd/ (listen) soo-DAY-tən-land, de; Czech and Slovak: Sudety) is a German term used by Nazi propaganda to address areas of the former Czechoslovakia with a majority of German-speaking population. The reason behind the invention of this term was to ideologically establish a specific territory in order to set grounds for subsequent secession claims, as the area in question consisted of different regions which had always been an integral part of historical Bohemia - in particular its northern, southern, and western border areas. Therefore, the Sudetenland is an ideological term rather than a geographical one, as no such territory existed as a unit of any sort prior to 1938. Similarly, the term Sudeten Germans was established in order to create a standalone ethnical identity for German-speaking nationals of Czechoslovakia, most of whom had lived in the border areas of Bohemia, Moravia, and Czech Silesia since the Middle Ages. The word Sudetenland is a German compound of Sudeten, the name of the Sudeten Mountains, which run along the northern Czech border and Lower Silesia (now in Poland), and Land, meaning "country". The border areas inhabitated by the German-speaking population encompassed territory well beyond those mountains, however.^{[1] [2]}

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 secession ambitions of Czech Germans.

During World War I, what later became known as the Sudetenland experienced a rate of war deaths that was higher than most other German-speaking areas of Austria-Hungary and exceeded only by German South Moravia and Carinthia. Thirty-four of each 1,000 inhabitants were killed.^[3]

The German-speaking parts of the former Lands of the Bohemian Crown were to be part of a newly created Czechoslovakia, a multi-ethnic state of several nations: Czechs, Germans, Slovaks, Hungarians, Poles and Ruthenians. On 20 September 1918, the Prague government asked for the opinion of the United States on the border areas. Wilson sent Ambassador Archibald Coolidge into Czechoslovakia. Coolidge insisted on respecting the Germans' right to self-determination and uniting all German-speaking areas with either Germany or Austria, with the exception of northern Bohemia.^[4] 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.^[5]

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 a Landeshauptmann (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 northern Moravia and Austrian Silesia; proclaimed a constituent state of the German-Austrian Republic with Troppau (Opava) as capital, governed by a Landeshauptmann: 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 of Bohemian Forest/South Bohemia; proclaimed a district (Kreis) of the existing Austrian Land of Upper Austria; administered by Kreishauptmann (district captain): Friedrich Wichtl (1872–1922) from 30 October 1918.
• German South Moravia (Deutschsüdmähren), proclaimed a District (Kreis) of the existing Austrian land Lower Austria, administered by a Kreishauptmann: Oskar Teufel (1880–1946) from 30 October 1918.

The U.S. commission to the Paris Peace Conference issued a declaration, which gave unanimous support for "unity of Czech lands".^[6] 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.

According to Elizabeth Wiskemann, despite the initial resistance to the Czechoslovak rule, the Czech German population was not entirely opposed to the establishment of Czechoslovakia. Economy and industry of the border areas 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 Czech Germans also opposed joining Austria, arguing that being incorporated into Austria would turn the border areas into "economically helpless Austrian enclaves". Because of this, the border areas becoming part of Czechoslovakia was the preferable choice of "a good deal of cautious middle-class" amongst Czech Germans. Silesian Germans were particularly pro-Czechoslovak, as they strongly preferred Czechoslovak rule to the prospect of becoming a part of Poland.^[7]

During the Great Depression, the mostly-mountainous regions populated by the German minority, together with other peripheral regions of Czechoslovakia, were hurt by the economic depression more than the interior of the country was. Unlike the less developed regions (Carpathian Ruthenia, Moravian Wallachia), the border areas had a high concentration of vulnerable export-dependent industries (such as glass works, textile industry, paper-making and toy-making industry). Sixty percent of the bijouterie and glassmaking industry were located in the Sudetenland, and 69% of employees in the sector were German-speaking according to first language, 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.^[9]

The increasing aggressiveness of Hitler prompted the Czechoslovak military to start to build extensive border fortifications in 1936 to defend the troubled border region. Immediately after the Anschluss of Austria into the German 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 by Konrad Henlein, agitated for autonomy. On 24 April 1938, the SdP proclaimed the Karlsbader Programm, which demanded in eight points the complete equality between the Sudeten Germans and the Czech people. The government accepted those claims on 30 June 1938.^{[clarification needed][10]}

In August, British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain sent Lord Runciman on a mission 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 Minister Milan 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.^[11]

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).^[12] Lord Runciman^{[lower-alpha 1]} expressed sadness that he could not bring about agreement with the various parties, but he agreed with Lord 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.

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.^[13]

Hitler, in a speech at the Sportpalast in Berlin, claimed that the Sudetenland was "the last territorial demand I have to make in Europe"^[14] and gave Czechoslovakia a deadline of 28 September 1938 at 2:00 p.m. to cede the Sudetenland to Germany or face war.^[15]

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.^[16] Contemporary reports of The 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 to Wickham Steed, over 50% of Henlein's supporters favoured greater autonomy within Czechoslovakia rather than joining Germany.^[17] Sudeten German historian Emil 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.^[18]

• 
  Ethnic Germans in the city of Eger (now Cheb) greeting Hitler with the Nazi 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 northern and the western parts were reorganised as the Reichsgau Sudetenland, with the city of Reichenberg (present-day Liberec) established as its capital. Konrad Henlein (now openly an NSDAP member) administered the district first as Reichskommissar (until 1 May 1939) and then as Reichsstatthalter (1 May 1939 – 4 May 1945). The Sudetenland consisted of three administrative districts (Regierungsbezirke): Eger (with Karlsbad as capital), Aussig (Aussig) and Troppau (Troppau).

However, on 4 December 1938, there were elections in Reichsgau Sudetenland in which 97.32% of the adult population voted for the NSDAP. About a half million Sudeten Germans joined the Nazi 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.^[19] Because of their knowledge of the Czech language, many Sudeten Germans were employed in the administration of the ethnic Czech Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia as well as in Nazi organizations (Gestapo etc.). The most notable one was Karl Hermann Frank, the SS and police general and Secretary of State in the Protectorate. Nazi Germany occupied Sudetenland from 1938 to 1945.^[20] The annexation was supported by many Bohemian and Moravian Germans. The new Sudetengau was treated as an “endangered borderland.” Using the same borderland funding that Saxony and Bavaria had received since 1931, the German government flooded northern Bohemia with funds to boost social welfare aid and to reduce unemployment. However, Bohemian Germans soon complained that the German occupation had also brought inflation, a declining standard of living, and a new form of outside rule, as Altreich bureaucrats filled business and government positions in the Sudetengau.^[21]

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.^[22] Some German refugees from Czechoslovakia are represented by the Sudetendeutsche Landsmannschaft.

There remained areas with noticeable German minorities in the westernmost borderland around Cheb, where skilled ethnic German miners and workers continued in mining and industry, until 1955, as sanctioned under the Yalta Conference protocols; in the Egerland, German minority organizations continue to exist.{{Citation needed|date=February 2026} In the 2021 census, 24,632 people in the Czech Republic claimed German ethnicity, 15,504 of which in combination with another ethnicity, a sharp reduction compared with the 3,123,568 Germans reportedly living in the Czechoslovak Republic in 1921.^[23][24] In the modern day, the Bohemian German dialects and the Moravian German dialects have largely disappeared because remaining Germans employ Standard German.

• Areas annexed by Nazi Germany
• British Committee for Refugees from Czechoslovakia
• Flight and expulsion of Germans (1944–1950)
• Republic of German-Austria
• Germans in Czechoslovakia (1918–1938)
• Pursuit of Nazi collaborators
• Sudetenland Medal

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