Before living in Prague I thought I knew about the Sudetenland and how Hitler annexed it. There’s a lot I’ve learnt about the nuances of history in the region/s that carry this name. This article is my attempt at sorting out the facts I thought I knew from the commonly-held myths.

Background

Bohemia used to be an Imperial state in the Holy Roman Empire. It became part of the Habsburg Austrian Empire in 1806 and part of the Austro-Hungary in 1867. Since the 11th century ethnic Germans migrated into Bohemia, living around the Sudeten mountains¹.

(This is the Germanic name for them. Czechs call these mountains the Krkonoše mountains²).

The rulers of the day encouraged Germans to migrate there. When King Charles I founded a university in Prague he encouraged German students to study there. At the time of its founding, only 20% of the student body was Czech. 

This is not to say there was a well-defined area which was “German” in any way. In fact people in towns were German-Czech bilingual and people mixed without any problems¹. It was only in the second half of the 19th century that nationalism became a big issue in Europe.

Nationalism fueled the 1848 Prague uprising as well. The revolt was not as revolutionary as the rebels hoped for.

The rulers tried to ease ethnic conflict in 1867 when they created Austria-Hungary by the Austria-Hungary compromise. This agreement enshrined several key points – like the equality of all Austrian citizens, no matter their ethnicity. The Czechs, like all Slavic ethnicities in Austria-Hungary, wanted an autonomous Czech sub-division in the Empire.

The geographically curious town of Hranice is in this region.

This didn’t happen and as a result something new happened. Whereas the Czechs used to fear Germanisation, now it was German Bohemians who worried about Czechisation.

Conflict

On 29 October 1918, Czechoslovakia declared its independence. Germans living in areas in Czechoslovakia where they were the majority tried to change things. They used US President Wilson’s declaration of a right to self-determination. Shouldn’t they determine who should rule over them, they asked³? They wanted to be a state in German Austria⁴.

After World War I the Allies and the Republic of German-Austria signed the Treaty of Saint-Germain-en-Laye which set out the borders of new countries – one of which was Czechoslovakia. German speakers represented a third of the population in Czechoslovakia¹.

The German-speaking border regions contained heavy industry and mines. It is clear why there would be further tension in the country.

And by ‘mines’, I mean one of the richest geoglogical areas on Earth.

Up until this point German people from the area were “German-Bohemians”⁵. After World War I with a rise in ethnic nationalism they became “Sudeten Germans” instead.  The regions they lived in were known as the Sudetenland. The Germans were an ethnic minority but there was a feeling they weren’t treated well.

The Czechoslovaks drafted the country’s constitution without any German representation. Germans took part in elections, there was a German political party governing in a coalition and there were German ministers. They were Czechoslovak citizens even if they thought of themselves as being different.

This is the point where economics played a major part in changing world events.

There was high unemployment in the Sudetenland. In 1933 unemployment rose to a third of the German-speaking people, compared to a fifth of Czech-speaking people. It was the Great Depression which led to many societal changes⁶.

Forty years later the Communists moved one of the churches in the Sudetenland in a feat of modern engineering.

On 2 October 1933 local politician Konrad Henlein founded the Sudeten German Home Front⁶. It was loyal to Czechoslovakia on paper but called for decentralisation.  The Czechoslovak government over-reacted to the influence of Nazism by suppressing Sudeten-Nazis⁶. It expelled German nationals and Sudeten Nazis from local government around the country.

This reaction was a knee-jerk reaction to what the Czechoslovaks saw as a clear danger. From the Sudeten German side, it was seen as unfair and aggressive. On 30 April 1935 Henlein created the Sudeten German Party (SDP) by merging with other smaller ones. It was the most popular party amongst Sudeten Germans winning over 60% of their vote on 19 May 1935⁶.

The party spoke of wanting to settle Sudeten German claims within Czechoslovakia⁶. In private, Heinlein was in contact with Nazi Germany which gave him material aid. Heinlein refused all proposals by Prague, including having Sudeten German officials work in government jobs in the Sudetenland. At a famous speech in Karlovy Vary on 16 June 1936 the SDP demanded complete autonomy and the ability to profess Nazi ideology⁶.

Had this been granted, the Sudetenland would have been able to align itself to Nazi Germany.

Czechoslovakia refused. By 1937 the SDP was open with its support for Hitler’s pan-German objectives.

The Munich agreement

On 28 March 1938 Henlein met Hitler who instructed him to impose “unacceptable conditions” on the Czechoslovak government⁶. 

The situation worsened. The Czechoslovak army clashed with protesters in several small incidents as it had been doing over the previous few years⁶. Nazi propaganda spun this as Czech atrocities⁶. The Czechoslovaks portrayed the Sudeten Germans as being unreasonable especially in cases where they tried to control protesters who couldn’t speak Czech.

(This mirrors modern-day sentiments of identity and claims that if “foreigners” cannot speak the language then “they’re not one of us”)

The escalation of matters attracted international attention. With the Treaty of St-Germain-en-Laye the Allies were responsible for the new European borders. In other words, the Allies had an obligation to preserve the Czechoslovakian border. This obligation contradicts the concept of self-determination. (This concept is still a vague one, 100 years later.)

On 20 July 1938 UK Prime Minister Chamberlain sent Lord Runciman to Czechoslovakia to try to mediate⁶. The SDP refused to accept or concede anything. Runciman reported on Czechoslovak policy towards the German minority. He wrote of how Czechoslovakia appointed non-German speaking Czech officials to positions in the Sudetenland. He also noted agriculturists settled on land confiscated from German Bohemians. He added “the feeling among 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 […] eventual desire to join the Reich as a natural development in the circumstances.”

The British were worried about war in Europe at a time when they had riots on their hands in the Middle East. They had already hatched a secret plan to bolster Malta’s money supply in case of war.

With the help of Nazi special forces, the SdP created paramilitary groups that took over border areas, killing 110 soldiers and police and kidnapping 220 Czechoslovaks⁶. Faced with this situation, Britain, France, Italy and Germany met in Munich on 29 September 1938⁶.

The British and French forced Czechoslovakia to accept the Munich agreement which they signed a day later on 30 September 1938⁶.

This changed the dynamics in the region. Overnight Czechoslovakia lost 3 million citizens⁷, 38% of its territory, 70% of its steel industry, 70% of its electrical power. All of Czechoslovakia’s border preparations against a German invasion were now in German territory. Czechoslovakia’s main arms factory – Skoda works in Plzen – became German.

From the Allied powers’ side, the overall assessment was that this was a good agreement. No one thought it was worth going to war over 3 million Germans in Czechoslovak territory. Public opinion held that signing an agreement to prevent a war was a good thing. Crowds welcomed UK Prime Minister Chamberlain and French President Deladier home from Munich.

From the Czechoslovak side, this was a disaster. They refer to this as the Munich diktat. They were not invited to Munich and despite military alliances with Western powers, the Allies carved the country up when it suited them most.

I can understand how both sides of the argument came to the fore. At the same time it’s hard for me to be objective now because I have the benefit of hindsight.

The moral of this sliver of history is simple:

• You cannot win an argument if you only hear one side of the story.
• You cannot trust the media to be unbiased.
• It’s up to you to keep questioning.

Please share this with someone fascinated with European history

References

1. The Germans in Bohemia, Moravia and Silesia : with two maps; Staatsdruckerei; 1919[↩][↩][↩]
2. The Sudeten; Encyclopedia Britannica; 2019-09-14[↩]
3. The Germans in Bohemia, Moravia and Silesia : with two maps; Staatsdruckerei; 1919[↩]
4. The Germans in Bohemia, Moravia and Silesia : with two maps; Staatsdruckerei; 1919[↩]
5. Testimony for Assimilation; The Social Contract; 1996[↩]
6. History of the Czech Crown Countries in dates; F. Čapka: (Retrieved 2019-09-19) [↩][↩][↩][↩][↩][↩][↩][↩][↩][↩][↩][↩][↩]
7. The Sudeten Germans’ forgotten fate; Jolyon Jenkins; BBC; 2004-02-04[↩]

Remember: links were correct at time of publication.