Sudetenland

From Wikinfo

Sudetenland was the name used before 1918 and in 1938-45 for the region inhabited mostly by Sudeten Germans (German: Sudetendeutsche) in the various places of Bohemia. (The region was only partly confined to mountains of Sudeten. In 1918-38 and after 1945 the region was part of Czechoslovakia (from 1993, in the Czech Republic).

History of Sudetenland

The land became known as Bohemia and part of Great Moravia, to where successive groups of Celtic and Slav language speakers had moved into. The province became fief of the Holy Roman Empire, ruled via tributary relationships, marriages etc.

The later Habsburg imperial rulers inherited the land of Bohemia.

After the destruction of the Holy Roman Empire by 1806, Bohemia including the Sudetenland or Bohemian mountains became a part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire.

Because of the Czech national awakening movement, the German speaking people who lived in the Sudetenland then found themselves in an enclave of German people living in these Sudeten mountains and other areas of Bohemia. By the Versailles Treaty the land of Bohemia became part of the new state of Czechoslovakia.

Adolf Hitler forced the Munich Agreement which ceded the Sudetenland to Germany in 1939. This unification with Third Reich was followed by flight and forcible expulsion of Czech people to remaining parts of Czechoslovakia.

After World War II those Sudeten Germans, who were not able to prove they were anti-Nazi, were expelled from the country. Expulsion and forced resettlement was associated with many excesses and murders.

There are various organisations which represent Sudeten people, most notably the Sudetendeutsche Landsmannschaft and the Munich-based Verband der Sudetendeutschen (Sudeten-German Federation).