The areas later known as the Sudetenland never formed a single
historical region, which makes it difficult to distinguish the history of the Sudetenland separately from that of
Bohemia until the advent of
nationalism in the 19th century.
Early origins The
Celtic Boii settled there and the region was first mentioned on the map of
Ptolemaios in the 2nd century AD. The
Germanic tribe of the
Marcomanni dominated the entire core of the region in later centuries. Those tribes already built cities like
Brno, but moved west during the
Migration Period. In the 7th century AD
Slavic people moved in and were united under
Samo's realm. Later in the
High Middle Ages Germans settled into the less populated border region. In the
Middle Ages the regions situated on the mountainous border of the
Duchy and the
Kingdom of Bohemia (Crown of Saint Václav) had since the Migration Period been settled mainly by
western Slavic Czechs. Along the
Bohemian Forest in the west, the
Czech lands bordered on the German Slavic tribes (German Sorbs)
stem duchies of
Bavaria and
Franconia;
marches of the medieval
German kingdom had also been established in the adjacent
Austrian lands south of the
Bohemian-Moravian Highlands and the northern
Meissen region beyond the
Ore Mountains. In the course of the
Ostsiedlung (settlement of the east), German settlement from the 13th century onwards continued to move into the
Upper Lusatia region and the
duchies of Silesia north of the
Sudetes mountain range. From as early as the second half of the 13th century onwards these Bohemian border regions were settled by
ethnic Germans, who were invited by the
Přemyslid Bohemian kings—especially by
Ottokar II (1253–1278) and
Wenceslaus II (1278–1305). After the extinction of the Přemyslid dynasty in 1306, the Bohemian nobility backed
John of Luxembourg as king against his rival Duke
Henry of Carinthia. In 1322, King John of Bohemia acquired (for the third time) the formerly Imperial
Egerland region in the west and vassalized most of the
Piast Silesian duchies, as acknowledged by King
Casimir III of Poland by the 1335
Treaty of Trentschin. His son, Bohemian King
Charles IV, was elected
King of the Romans in 1346 and crowned
Holy Roman Emperor in 1355. He added the
Lusatias to the
Lands of the Bohemian Crown, which then comprised large territories with a significant German population. In the hilly border regions German settlers established major manufactures of
forest glass. The situation of the German population was aggravated by the
Hussite Wars (1419–1434), though there were also some Germans among the
Hussite insurgents. Despite the hardships of the Hussite Wars, the German population remained dominant in the border regions. By then Germans largely settled the hilly Bohemian border regions as well as the cities of the lowlands; mainly people of Bavarian descent in the
South Bohemian and
South Moravian Region, in
Brno,
Jihlava,
České Budějovice and the West Bohemian
Plzeň Region; Franconian people in
Žatec; Upper
Saxons in adjacent
North Bohemia, where the border with the
Saxon Electorate was fixed by the 1459
Peace of Eger; Germanic
Silesians in the adjacent Sudetes region with the
County of Kladsko, in the
Moravian–Silesian Region, in
Svitavy and
Olomouc. The city of Prague had a German-speaking majority from the last third of the 17th century until 1860, but after 1910 the proportion of German speakers had decreased to 6.7% of the population. From the Luxembourgs, rule over Bohemia passed through
George of Podiebrad to the
Jagiellon dynasty and finally to the
House of Habsburg in 1526. Both Czech and German Bohemians suffered heavily in the
Thirty Years' War. Bohemia lost 70% of its population. From the defeat of the Bohemian Revolt that collapsed at the 1620
Battle of White Mountain, the Habsburgs gradually integrated the Kingdom of Bohemia into their
monarchy. During the subsequent
Counter-Reformation, less populated areas were resettled with
Catholic Germans from the Austrian lands. From 1627, the Habsburgs enforced the so-called
Verneuerte 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. Emperor
Joseph 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 the
Age of Enlightenment and
Weimar Classicism. Contrastingly, in the course of the
Romanticism movement national tensions arose, both in the form of the
Austroslavism ideology developed by Czech politicians like
František Palacký and
Pan-Germanist activist raising the
German question. Conflicts between Czech and German nationalists emerged in the 19th century, for instance in the
Revolutions 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 the
Austrian Empire and
Austria-Hungary until its dismemberment after the World War I.
Emergence of the term 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.
World War I and aftermath 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. Austria-Hungary broke apart at the end of World War I. In late October 1918, an independent
Czechoslovak 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 the
Imperial Council (
Reichsrat) referred to the
Fourteen Points of US President
Woodrow Wilson and the right proposed therein to
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. 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 Sudetenland. 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. 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. 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 October6 November 1918, and Rudolf Ritter von Lodgman von Auen (1877–1962), 6 November16 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". In particular the declaration stated: Several German minorities according to their mother tongue in Moravia, including German-speaking populations in
Brno,
Jihlava and
Olomouc, 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. The
Treaty 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 to
Elizabeth 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.
Within the Czechoslovak Republic (1918–1938) 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 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 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 the
bijouterie 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. The high unemployment, as well as the imposition of Czech in schools and all public spaces, made people more open to
populist and extremist movements such as
fascism,
communism and German
irredentism. In those years, parties of German nationalists and later the
Sudeten German Party (SdP), with its radical demands gained immense popularity, among
Germans in Czechoslovakia.
Sudeten Crisis 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. 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. 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). Lord Runciman 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. The four plans included, first, the transfer of the Sudetenland to the Reich, second, holding a
plebiscite 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 in
Eger and
Asch, 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. British Prime Minister
Neville Chamberlain met
Adolf Hitler in
Berchtesgaden on 15 September and agreed to the
cession of the Sudetenland. Three days later,
French Prime Minister Édouard Daladier did the same. No Czechoslovak representative was invited to the discussions. Germany was now able to walk into the Sudetenland without firing a shot. Chamberlain met Hitler in
Godesberg 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" and gave Czechoslovakia a deadline of 28 September 1938 at 2:00 p.m. to cede the Sudetenland to Germany or face war. To achieve a solution, the Italian dictator,
Benito Mussolini, suggested a conference of the major powers in
Munich, and on 29 September, Hitler, Daladier and Chamberlain met and agreed to Mussolini's proposal (actually prepared by
Hermann Göring) and signed the
Munich 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 subsequently
invaded by Germany in March 1939, with a portion being annexed and the remainder turned into the
Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia. The Slovak part declared its independence from Czechoslovakia and became the
Slovak Republic (Slovak State), a
satellite state allied to Germany. (The Ruthenian part, Subcarpathian Rus, made also an attempt to declare its sovereignty as
Carpatho-Ukraine but only with ephemeral success since the area was soon annexed by
Hungary.) 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. 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. Sudeten German historian 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. Part of the borderland had an ethnic Polish majority and was invaded and
annexed by Poland in 1938. Bundesarchiv Bild 183-H13160, Beim Einmarsch deutscher Truppen in Eger.jpg|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 Bundesarchiv Bild 146-1986-042-14, Anschluss sudetendeutscher Gebiete.jpg|Volunteers of the Sudeten German Free Corps () receiving refreshments from the local population in the city of Eger/Cheb) Bundesarchiv Bild 137-004055, Eger, Besuch Adolf Hitlers.jpg|Adolf Hitler drives through the crowd in Eger/Cheb on 3 October 1938
Sudetenland as part of Germany The Sudetenland was initially put under military administration, with General
Wilhelm Keitel as military governor. On 14 April 1939, the annexed territories were divided, with the southern parts being incorporated into the neighbouring Reichsgaue of
Niederdonau,
Oberdonau and
Bayerische Ostmark. 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 19394 May 1945). The Sudetenland consisted of three administrative districts (
Regierungsbezirke):
Eger (with
Karlsbad as capital),
Aussig (
Aussig) and
Troppau (
Troppau). Before the occupation, Jews in the area had become targeted during the
Holocaust in the Sudetenland. Only a few weeks later, the
Kristallnacht occurred. As elsewhere in Germany, many synagogues were set on fire and numerous leading Jews were sent to
concentration 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. The
Gleichschaltung 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 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. 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. 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.
Expulsions and resettlement after World War II as the result of the end of World War II Shortly after the liberation of Czechoslovakia in May 1945, the use of the term
Sudety (Sudetenland) in official communications was banned and replaced by the term
pohraniční území (border territory). The
Berlin Declaration of 5 June 1945 disabled German annexation of Sudetenland legally. In the summer of 1945, the
Potsdam Conference decided that Sudeten Germans would have to leave Czechoslovakia. 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. Some German refugees from Czechoslovakia are represented by the
Sudetendeutsche Landsmannschaft. Many of the Germans who stayed in Czechoslovakia later emigrated to
West Germany (more than 100,000). As the German population was transferred out of the country, the former Sudetenland was resettled mostly by
Czechs but also by other nationalities of Czechoslovakia:
Slovaks,
Greeks (arriving in the wake of the
Greek Civil War 1946–49),
Carpathian Ruthenians,
Romani people and Jews who had survived
the Holocaust, and
Hungarians (though the Hungarians were forced to do so and later returned home—see
Hungarians in Slovakia: Population exchanges). 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 the
Iron Curtain in 1952 to 1955, the so-called "forbidden zone" was established by means of
engineer 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 entire
Aš-Bulge fell within the border zone, a status that remained until the
Velvet Revolution in 1989. 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. 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 reduce compared to the 3,123,568 Germans reportedly living in the
Czechoslovak Republic in 1921. In the modern day, the
Bohemian German dialects and the
Moravian German dialects have largely disappeared because remaining Germans employ Standard German. ==See also==