Expulsions - 4
Austreibung Expulsions - 4
(The Atrocities of Ethnic Cleansing!!!)
(The Atrocities of Ethnic Cleansing!!!)
| "LET BYGONES BE BYGONES" GENERAL EISENHOWER 1950 By Karl Hausner I attended college in Landsberg when General Eisenhower traveled from campus to campus returning to the German people the military honor, which was removed from the German troops by the Allies as a result of the Morgenthau Plan. It called for the unconditional surrender and the total destruction of Germany. What went wrong that all of a sudden, we Germans, were supposed to be soldiers again and mobilize against the great ally and friend, Joseph Stalin. He was commonly called "Uncle Joe" by Roosevelt. The Nuernberg Trial and all the other trials of Nazi war criminals, or criminals against humanity, were the climax of victory by the Allies. In retrospect, we must admit neither one of these trials enhanced true justice at that time, or for the future. While some of these Nazis should have been severely punished, as they were, at least a neutral court of law should have tried them. Some of the concentration guards, who actually had very little to do with either concentration camps or the crimes committed, were sentenced to death, and in some cases, people who were not even in such positions were executed. After the execution, some were exhonorated. In Landsberg, at the penitentiary, over "360 Nazi criminals" were hanged. At the same time, General Eisenhower spoke these words: "Let bygones be bygones". They were busy finishing the job of execution in spite of the changing circumstances. WHAT WENT WRONG WITH THE GREAT ALLIANCE? Joseph Stalin at Pottsdam in 1945 got more than he expected. It is hard to believe, that Presidents Roosevelt, Truman and Churchill were so ignorant that they believed Stalin had changed to become a humanitarian. His plan was to bring Communism to the whole world. First to Germany, then France, Italy, Britain and at the end, the rest of it. Although President Roosevelt died too early to see the blunder he had created, President Truman still had the opportunity to correct some of the mistakes, or perhaps even international crimes against humanity, for which many Nazis were executed. First, they permitted the Soviet Union, after Germany had surrendered, to declare war on Japan just a few weeks before the total end. By this military action, Stalin was able to take all the weaponry from the Japanese and give it to the Communist Chinese. Also he prepared them to help the North Koreans and the North Vietnamese for their upcoming attacks. In a short time, Mao Tse Tung claimed victory over the Nationalists in China and China became Communistic. Dividing of Korea and Vietnam were other blunders, perhaps criminal decisions, which Churchill and Truman agreed to. In both cases, it led to war, not just for the natives, but involving American troops and a great deal of resources. This is why Eisenhower suddenly decided to rearm Germany. OTHER INTERNATIONAL CRIMES Stalin and his Allies in Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia and Poland were able to expel sixteen million German people during which many died. Other millions of non-Germans fled the Soviet occupied regions to West Germany, in the hopes of immigrating to America, Australia or wherever possible. Stalin was mistaken that the expellees, who were driven into West Germany, would become Communists. The opposite occurred and most of us expellees, became determined, not just to resist Communism, but all forms of totalitarianism. Stalin blockaded the access to Berlin, which led to the air supply bridge by the American and British Air Forces to Berlin. In 1948, the three military occupying governors in West Germany, decided to establish a semi autonomous German Government, which became known as the Federal Republic of Germany, under the able leadership of Chancellor Konrad Adenauer. GERMAN SOLDIERS AGAIN WERE NEEDED Most of us young Germans had absolutely no interest in any form of military service, even as police. When the new government in West Germany was elected, they even had a hard time to recruit police officers. Nobody wanted to wear a uniform in their lives again. That was the reason why General Eisenhower had to use his influence to convince, not just the German Government, but us, young Germans, to show willingness to join the armed forces again, to defend the West from the threat of Bolshevism. It was a very unpleasant journey for General Eisenhower, because many students in German colleges and universities had spent years in the military and also a significant time in prisoner-of-war camps. These camps, in most instances, were not any better than Nazi POW camps, or concentration camps. The Western Allies cannot be commended for the way these German prisoners-of-war were treated in starvation camps so that 1.2 million of them perished after the war during 1945 and 1946. This was the situation which General Eisenhower had to reverse by saying: "Let bygones be bygones." This was also the lime between 1948 and 1952 when the United States opened its borders to German engineers to participate in the rapidly growing defense industry. This was the time when Wemer von Braun and many of his former colleagues, who worked on the German Missile Program, were moved to the United States to develop the first guided missiles even though, they all had to be members of the NSDAP, the Nazi party. In 1952, as I finished college, a priest, the pastor of Landsherg, Dr. Nikias, who spent 42 months in the Dachau Concentration Camp, recommended that I go, for a few years, to the United States, where he was a missionary in his early years, to increase my perspective of life. Within a few weeks after I applied, I had my visa and the Catholic Church found a sponsor, who was a farmer in Wisconsin, my present neighbor on the farm. The visas, we engineers received, were nicknamed Sputnik visas. Later, General Eisenhower was elected President, and his Secretary of State, John Foster Dulles, was the first American in government who understood the threat of Communism. It is hard to believe that Presidents Roosevelt and Truman could not see it. It is my opinion, they believed in socialism and world government. They believed with Stalin, that they could form such an ideal government, the United Nations. Although the United Nations has not yet achieved that dream. Fifty years later, there are still many Americans and other leaders who pursue the course of global government, global involvement and global "protection". THE FIRST AWAKENING When the Communists in Korea moved South, pushing the American troops almost out of the peninsula. General MacArthur proposed to attack the supply lines from Red China. President Truman removed him from his post, because the war in Korea was just a "police action". For some reason, over twenty military actions since World war II have been called police actions, United Nations support for freedom, for justice, Nato operating to stop ethnic cleansing, etc., etc. Wars without declaration of wars. The United States spent ten trillion dollars on military hardware between 1945 and 1990. Just think what could have been built in this country with such a sum of money. Yet, we wasted these resources for the benefit of some, especially those in the defense industry. Shortly after I had arrived in the United States, while working for International Harvester, I had to go to Germany for a few weeks. While applying for my return visa, I had to go to the Selective Service, and had it not been for my already poor eyesight, I would have been drafted into the Korean Conflict. A friend of mine, Jochen Holz, who came with me to the United States, spent his share of time in Korea, even though, as a fifteen year old, he had already been in the paramilitary service just at the end of World War II, where he barely survived. In my essays 1945 In Memory and Concentration Camps, Myths and Realities, I expanded upon the circumstances surrounding World War II and the subsequent period, including our expulsion from the Sudetenland. Since Communism did not succeed in Western Europe, because the German people refused it, they put their efforts into Africa and Central America. I just would like to draw attention to Castro in Cuba and the missile crisis under President Kennedy . In Europe, the Soviets built the Iron Curtain right through Germany, all the way down through the Balkan States. In Asia, we had the Bamboo Curtain. All these costly disasters could have been prevented if wisdom had prevailed at the end of World War II. If Churchill and Truman had insisted that Stalin withdraw his troops and influence from Poland, the Baltic Countries, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Rumania, Bulgaria, etc., he would have had no power in 1945 to resist such demands. His army was not in any better shape than that of the Germans or the Japanese . "THE EVIL EMPIRE" President Reagan called the Soviet Union the Evil Empire. He was one of the first who understood the real plan of the Soviet Union. The Star War technology, which he supported, gave the Soviets the conviction that they could not continue a superiority of military weaponry. They spent all their resources to keep pace with the developments in the United States and other Western nations. Thus, the Soviet Union and the whole Eastern Block collapsed economically, socially, politically and, of course, morally. Although West Germany had tried to convince their former enemies, and especially the Jews, that the crimes committed by the Nazis were deplorable, they paid billions to the State of Israel and to survivors. Yet, certain Jewish groups found it necessary to trademark the Holocaust as if the Nazi crimes on the Jews were the only crimes in the Twentieth Century. They are using resources to brainwash people and as Rabbi Lapin says, "This is deplorable that more American universities teach Holocaust than Jewish history." He will be the last Jew to visit the Holocaust museum, because of falsehoods displayed. Yes, it is deplorable, because all it does is keep certain statements alive which already have been weakened or disproved, as I point out in my essay. Concentration Camps, Myths and Realities. With the collapse of the Soviet Empire, the military threat from there diminished. The satellite countries had broken away, even the great Russian Empire crumbled. For financial reasons, the Holocaust promotion has rapidly increased, and as Professor Ralph Raico from the University of New York says, "It nazifies the German people." More recently, the Holocaust "industry" has targeted Pope Pius XII, the Vatican, the Catholic Church and even neutral Switzerland as contributors or collaborators to the Nazi Holocaust. Without question, Swiss Banks accepted, for decades and centuries, money from all kinds of people. This is what made the Swiss banking system so strong. Nobody complains that Lenin had millions stashed away there. But since Switzerland, that is the Swiss people, have voted not to join the United Nations, NATO, or the European Union, they have become an obstacle to the global government. The Catholic Church is attacked because it is resistant to certain radical agendas, which again ought to be implemented through the United Nations under the flag of population control and population assistance. Without question, there is a strong tendency to form a world government with an agenda which is anti-Christianity and anti-neutrality. Yet, the United States was founded both with Christian Doctrine and with a defensive neutrality. "Let bygones be bygones" is not necessarily a good philosophy, because if you don't know where you come from, you do not know who you are and you do not know where you are going to. We should master the history, learn from it, subscribe to the absolute truth as Jesus Christ commands us. This would be a blessing, not just for the people in the United States, but for other nations, which could form their own philosophy and lifestyle, compete with each other without conflict and not try to force all into one "great, world government". The Roman Empire fell apart. All the other empires, the British, the Spanish, the French and the Soviet, attempted the same, but they all failed. CONCLUSION Have we learned from history? It does not seem so. There are many paradoxes to "Let bygones be bygones." For over fifty years the world is still hunting for "Nazi criminals". Even simple guards of Nazi concentration camps are tried and jailed. But, on the other hand, there have been practically no trials in Russia, Czechoslovakia and all other Eastern European countries of Communist criminals who tortured and killed millions, even ten years ago. There is another major paradox. While the Jewish groups demand compensation from the Vatican and from Switzerland, they do not demand due compensation from Czechoslovakia and other Eastern European countries, where Jews lost their assets prior or during World War II. Obviously, these countries are not yet sufficiently wealthy. Cultivating the Holocaust, is to "unite all Jews without God", says Rabbi Lapin. It is to extract big money, not just from the German people, as Norman Finkelstein in his book "The Holocaust Industry" points out. By the way, he is Jewish. In Moscow, London, Paris, Washington and elsewhere, more and more the truth will prevail. Regrettably, the Holocaust plays into the hands of radical nationalism. If economic conditions in Eastern Europe do not quickly improve, Russia will be the next country with significant anti-semitism. Therefore, let us be honest, let us practice what we preach and let ns put the historic facts on the table, so that the next generations can have more confidence in our political leaders and in our judicial systems. ENDNOTES, RECOMMENDED READING: 1) From the Author: "1945 In Memory", "When World War II Was Over", "Concentration Camps,MythandRealities", "HitlersCross", "WhyChristiaintylosttheClilture", "World War n, a Conflict between National Socialism and International Socialism", "The Silent Majority" and other essays. 2) Alfred M. de Zayas, "The Wehnnacht War Crimes Bureau, 1939-1945", University of Nebraska Press, Lincoln and London. 3) Alfred M. de Zayas, "A Terrible Revenge - the Ethnic Cleansing of the East European Germans, 1944-1950", St. Martin's Press, New York. 4) James Bacque, "Crimes and Mercies", the Fate of German Civilians under Allied Occupation, 1944-1950, Warner Books, London. 5) James Bacque, "Other Losses", An Investigation into the Mass Deaths of German Prisoners at the Hands of the French and Americans after World War II, Little Brown and Company, Boston, New York, Toronto, London. 6) Ralph Franklin Keeling, "Gruesome Harvest" the Allies' Postwar War against the German People, Institute for Historical Review, Torrance, CA, ISBN: 0-939484-40-4. 7) Norman G. Finkelstein, "The Holocaust Industry", Reflection on the Exploitation of Jewish Suffering, VERSO, London, New York, ISBN: 1-85984-773-0. 8) James Paulding, "Brothers In The Storm", Video, Truman State University, Kirksville, MO. 9) Rabbi Daniel Lapin, "America's Real War", Multnomah Publishers, Sisters, OR. ISBN: 1-57673-366-1. 10) Petr Novick, "The Holocaust in American Life", Houghton Mifflin Co., Boston, New York, ISBN: 0-395-84009-0. 11) Wolfgang Juchem, "Truth and Justice Versus Lies and Hatred", Heimat Publishers, Toronto. 12) John Sack, "An Eye for an Eye", Basic Books, ISBN: 0-9675691-0-9. 13) Inglende Zway, "The Crime of being German", The Book Guild Ltd., London, ISBN: 1-85776-204-5. 14) Patrick J. Buchanan, "A Republic Not an Empire, " Regnery Publishing, Washington, DC, ISBN: 0-89526-272-X. 15) Ernst Zuendel, "Ethnic Cleansing, Then and Now", Samisdat Publishers, Toronto, Canada. 16) Erich Anton Helfert, "Valley of the Shadow", Creative Arts Book Co., Berkeley, CA, ISBN; 0-88739-117-6. 17) Ralph Raico, "Nazifying the Germans", Chronicles, January 1997. Author's address: Karl Hausner 28 Concord Drive Fax: (630)543-2102 Oak Brook, IL 60523-1767 E-mail: medical@elmed.com ============================ The many faces of the Sudetenland By David Vaughan Usually in Czech Books we discuss poetry or prose, but for this week's programme we look at an intriguing book that fits neither category. Instead it is a collection of interviews, coming from a part of the Czech Republic that has gone through huge and sometimes traumatic changes over the last sixty or seventy years. I talk with two people who were very closely involved in the book, Matej Spurny and Ondrej Matejka. Matej Spurny and Ondrej MatejkaFirst of all, Matej, tell us a little bit about the book. Its title is "Sudetske osudy", which could be roughly translated as "Sudeten stories". Matej Spurny: "These are dialogues with seventeen people, most of whom live in the Sudetenland - or the borderland of the Czech Republic - today." This is a part of the country that for many of our listeners will have very strong historical echoes. The Sudetenland was the part of Czechoslovakia that had a predominantly German-speaking population before the war. MS: "Most of the Germans were expelled after the war, and just a few of them - mostly Germans who had Czech wives or vice-versa - could stay, as well as a few antifascists and some Germans who worked in a factory where they were needed, but these were just a few thousand people. The first part of the book is made up of interviews with these people." Matej SpurnyJust to give us an idea - we are talking about a huge area of this country, and when you say that the Germans were expelled, we are talking about the expulsion literally of millions of people, aren't we? MS: "Yes, we are talking about the expulsion of three or three-and-a-half million people, and this region makes up a third of today's Czech Republic." How many Germans did stay? MS: "About three hundred thousand Germans remained, but most of them left the country in the sixties. Today there are fewer than fifty thousand Germans." As you say, the first third of the book is made up of interviews with people who lived in the Sudetenland before the war. Are these just Sudeten Germans, and are they just those who stayed? MS: "There are three interviews with Sudeten Germans. One of them had to leave after the war as a child. What is interesting is that he came back in the 1990s and today he lives in the Sudetenland again. Then there are two interviews with German women who could stay, then one interview with a Czech woman who lived in the Sudetenland before the war, because there were also thousands of Czech people living there, and there are two further women - one Czech-German, the other German-Jewish. So they are very interesting stories from this dramatic time." Tell me something about their stories. MS: "The first story - the German man who had to leave - is sort of a typical story of a Sudeten German, because millions of them had to leave, most to West Germany. They built their lives in West Germany somehow. The other people, the mixed families, also constitute a huge theme in this area, because thousands of families were somehow mixed, of Czech-Jewish-German origin, and in these years their lives were very dramatic and very complicated. So these are mostly not very happy stories." Many of the Germans who stayed now have grown-up children - or even grown-up grandchildren. Do they still speak German? MS: "Mostly not, or maybe they speak it but it's just a foreign language for them. There are too few Germans today to keep the society somehow compact, and the communist regime made sure that they couldn't live in one place." So this is the first group of people who you interviewed in the book. Who were in the second and third groups? MS: "I think the second part of the book is even more interesting for the Czech society to read about, because these are people, mostly Czech people, who came from the eastern countries, at that time from the Soviet Union or Romania. These were people whose ancestors had emigrated to Ukraine or Romania etc in the 18th or 19th century, and after the war - with this Slavic ideology - it was said that it's good if these people come back. Some of them wanted to also, and here was the Sudetenland, which was quite empty after the expulsion of the Germans. Some two hundred thousand people like that came to the Sudetenland - and to southern Slovakia also - after the Second World War in the years 1945-48. We spoke with some of these people. It is interesting because they were Czech, most of them spoke Czech or Slovak, but they grew up in a totally different society and culture. Most of them didn't know electricity and so on, and they came to the Sudetenland and had somehow to live together with the Czech people and the few Germans who were still there." MS: "The third group is actually the largest group in today's Sudetenland. These are the Czechs, and most of the Czechs interviewed in our book are people who came to the Sudetenland directly after the Second World War. One or two are actually communists, who came to build the new land with a lot of enthusiasm. There is one man who is a dissident who looked for some place where he could hide from the communists. So these are very different sides of the stories of the Sudetenland." I'd also like to ask you about your own story, because you actually come from the Sudetenland. That is where you grew up. MS: "I was born in Prague, but when I was three years old I went with my parents to the Giant Mountains, which are in the north-northeast of Bohemia - so right in this region - and certainly this was a very important motivation for me to ask some questions myself: what is the history of this country, why are there so few people whose families were already living here before the war, and that was how I came to this theme." When you were growing up in the 1980s in the mountains, were there still - and are there still today - fragments of the old world? It's very hard for somebody from outside to imagine what it is like to live in a place where ninety percent or maybe more than ninety percent of the population has just disappeared and been replaced. It's extraordinary to imagine it. It must be a strange place to grow up. MS: "I think that for most people who live there it is not a strange place. It's just a normal place where people live for years, but maybe if you are sensitive or if you look around a bit, then you feel there is something different, something strange. There are also a few people, one of them my teacher - who is also interviewed in this book - from mixed families or even German people." This is your teacher from primary school? Ondrej MatejkaMS: "Yes, that is my teacher from primary school, who a bit later told me a lot about the history and about her family, which had been living in Pec [pod Snezkou] - in this village - since ages actually." This isn't the only book which you have produced about the border regions of the Czech Republic. I'd like to ask you a bit more about how your interest came about and what other projects you have been doing as part of your interest in the region. And for that I'd like to turn to Ondrej Matejka. Ondrej Matejka: "Our biggest project up to now is called 'Das verschwundene Sudetenland - Zmizele Sudety'. We could translate it as the 'Disappeared Sudetenland'. Our point is that we just wanted to show that there is a big civilization, actually a disappeared civilization of Sudeten Germans, a civilization hundreds and hundreds of years old, and that after the war this civilization, this culture, just disappeared." The way that you bring that across in the book 'Disappeared Sudetenland' is very powerful. You place photographs of what it looked like before next to the same scene as it looks today. In some cases you have a photograph showing a whole village - and in the picture you can see the life of the village, but then in the next photograph - as it looks today - there is nothing left, there is literally just a field. OM: "It's very effective, because you can in very simple ways just see that many, many villages disappeared, that the people disappeared, and that means that also that the culture connected with the people living there has disappeared. For Czechs, and for Czech society, this kind of culture, this German culture, is almost totally unknown. For most of the Czechs the Sudetenland is synonymous with a land which is somehow destroyed. So we have tried to explore the rich history of this country and to show it to Czechs, not only because we want to be nostalgic. Our goal is to show that there are some traditions that maybe we could connect with. We could try to keep them alive and use them for us." I would like to ask both of you about the association that you have founded, called "Antikomplex", which is exploring some of the issues that you have been talking about. Up until the fall of communism any discussion of this topic was pretty much taboo, wasn't it? Have you found it difficult to create a non-political foundation on which you can build your research and your work? OM: "It was difficult for us to find the right way how to discuss it, because at the beginning we were trying to discuss these topics in a rather political way, and I would say that we weren't very successful. After three or four years, we tried to find a new way and this new way is a non-political one, showing what we have lost. We have seen that it works." Matej, what sort of responses have you encountered in your work? MS: "We can see that Czech society is changing, because even in the 1990s the Sudeten question was a political-historical question and speaking about this question meant a conflict, which today is no longer the case. When we created this exhibition 'Disappeared Sudetenland', there were just a few negative reactions, but these are maybe five percent of people who come to our events." But the name of your association, "Antikomplex" is slightly provocative, isn't it? It is implying that there is a prevailing complex on the Czech side about the history of the borderlands and the expulsion of the Germans. MS: "Yes, this title of our association comes of course from when it was first founded in 1998. At that time we were about eighteen or nineteen years old and it was our rebellious time, when we were very critical of Czech society. We had a theory, which I think is not false, that the problems which we have with the Germans and with speaking in a critical way about our own history also come from a lack of self-confidence. We have a complex that we are a small nation, there is this feeling that we shouldn't speak about our own mistakes in a critical way, because it will make us even weaker and smaller. It is a sort of inferiority complex. We wanted to fight against this complex, because we are a country and a society with a very rich history and we don't have to think that we are small and weak, but we also have to speak about our own mistakes, about the things which went wrong in our history, and we also have to show this German history of our land because that's also a part of our culture. These cultures were connected." ================================================================== |
| The Expulsion Story Sudetenland Sudetenland - From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Sudetenland (Czech and Polish: Sudety) was the German name used in English in the first half of the 20th century for the western regions of Czechoslovakia inhabited mostly by ethnic Germans, specifically the border areas of Bohemia, Moravia, and those parts of Silesia associated with Bohemia. The name is derived from the Sudeten mountains, though the Sudetenland extended beyond these mountains. The German inhabitants were called Sudeten Germans (German: Sudetendeutsche, Czech: Sudetští Němci, Polish: Niemcy Sudeccy). The German minority in Slovakia, the Carpathian Germans, is not included in this ethnic category. Contents: 1 History of Sudetenland 1.1 Early origins and part of Austria 1.2 Emergence of the term 1.3 Changes after World War I 1.4 Within the Czechoslovak Republic (1918-1938) 1.5 Sudeten Crisis and German annexation 1.6 Sudetenland as part of Nazi Germany 1.7 Expulsions and resettlement after World War II 2 Notes 3 See also 4 Sources and references History of Sudetenland: Historically, the parts later known as Sudetenland belonged to the regions of Bohemia, Moravia and Silesia. Since they did not form a single historical region, except as united under the Bohemian crown, it is difficult to distinguish the history of the Sudetenland apart from that of Bohemia and Moravia, until the advent of nationalism and the coining of the term in the 19th century. Early origins and part of Austria: The regions later called Sudetenland were situated on the borders of the Kingdom of Bohemia, which also consisted of Moravia (and later Silesia) and was in turn part of the Holy Roman Empire. After the extinction of the Czech Přemyslid dynasty, the kingdom was ruled by the Luxemburgs, later the Jagiellonians and finally the Habsburgs. Already from the 13th century onwards the border regions of Bohemia and Moravia, called Sudetenland in the 20th century, were settled by Germans, who were invited by the originally Slavic Bohemian nobility. The Habsburgs integrated the Kingdom of Bohemia and Moravia into their monarchy, and it remained an integral part of that kingdom until the advent of modern nationalism in the 19th century. Conflicts between Czech and German nationalists emerged, for instance in the Revolutions of 1848 in the Habsburg areas: while the German-speaking population wanted to participate in the building of a German nation state, the Czech-speaking population insisted on keeping Bohemia out of such plans. Emergence of the term: Ethnic distribution in Austria-Hungary (1911): regions with a German majority are depicted in pink, those with Czech majorites 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 Austrian Empire, which also included "Alpendeutsche" (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. Changes after World War I: After World War I, Austria-Hungary broke apart. Late in October 1918, an independent Czechoslovak state, consisting of the lands of the Bohemian kingdom, was proclaimed. However, the German deputies of Bohemia, Moravia, and Silesia in the Imperial Parliament (Reichsrat) refused to adhere to the new state by referring to the Fourteen Points of U.S. President Woodrow Wilson. Instead they proclaimed the union of the German-speaking territories with the new Republic of German Austria, which itself aimed at joining Weimar Germany. Four regional governmental units were established: German Bohemia (Deutschböhmen), the regions of northern and western Bohemia; proclaimed a constitutive state (Land) of the German-Austrian Republic with Reichenberg 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 Sudetenland, the regions of northern Moravia and Austrian Silesia; proclaimed a constituent state of the German-Austrian Republic with Troppau as capital, governed by a Landeshauptmann: Robert Freissler (1877-1950), 30 October - 18 December 1918 . 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 made the following, unheeded, recommendations. It should be noted they refer to all areas claimed by Czechoslovakia, including areas such as Lusatia, which would for obvious reasons never be joined to Czechoslovakia. [1] “ "To grant to the Czechoslovaks all the territory they demand would be not only an injustice to millions of people unwilling to come under Czech rule, but it would also be dangerous and perhaps fatal to the future of the new state ... the blood shed on March 3rd when Czech soldiers in several towns fired on German crowds ... was shed in a manner that is not easily forgiven... For the Bohemia of the future to contain within its limits great numbers of deeply discontented inhabitants who will have behind them across the border tens of millions of sympathizers of their own race will be a perilous experiment and one which can hardly promise success in the long run." ” Several German minorities in Moravia, including German populations in Brünn (Brno), Iglau (Jihlava), and Olmütz (Olomouc) also attempted to proclaim their union with German Austria but failed. The Czechs thus rejected the aspirations of the Sudeten Germans and demanded the inclusion of the Sudetenland in their new state, despite the presence of more than three million ethnic Germans, on the grounds they had always been part of Bohemia and Moravia. The Treaty of Saint-Germain in 1919 affirmed the inclusion of the German-speaking territories within the new state of Czechoslovakia. However, over the next two decades, some Germans in the Sudetenland continued to strive for a separation of the German inhabited regions from Czechoslovakia. Within the Czechoslovak Republic (1918-1938): Germans in Czechoslovakia (1918-1938) According to the February 1921 census 3,123,000 Germans lived in all Czechoslovakia - 23.4% of the total population. The controversies between the Czechs and the German minority (which was actually a majority in the Sudetenland areas) lingered on throughout the 1920s and intensified in the 1930s. In the years of Great Depression the mostly mountainous regions populated by German minority - together with other peripheral regions in Czechoslovakia - were hurt by economic depression more than the inland. Unlike the underdeveloped regions (Ruthenia, Wallachia...) there was a high concentration of industry dependent on export (such as glass works, textile industry, paper-making and toy-making industry) and thus very vulnerable in the period of global depression. For example: 60% of the bijouterie and glass- making industry were located in Sudetenland, 69% of employees in this sector were Germans, 95% of bijouterie and 78% of other glass-ware were produced for export. Then the glass-making sector was affected by decreased spending power and also by protective measures in other countries and many German workers lost their work.[2] The high unemployment made people more open to populist and extremist movements (communism, fascism). In these years, the parties of German nationalists and later Sudetendeutsche Party (SdP) with its radical demands gained immense popularity among Germans in Czechoslovakia. Sudeten Crisis and German annexation: After 1933, the Sudeten-German party (SdP) pursued a policy of escalation. Party leader Konrad Henlein with his deputy Karl Hermann Frank had secretly formed a pact with the Nazi Party now ruling in Germany and would gradually increase his demands so that Hitler could reap the fruits of the conflict. “ It has been frequently suggested that Henlein was a sinister schemer and his SdP nothing more than a subversive Nazi organization bent on the destruction of Czechoslovak independence. It is easy to understand how these notions arose, yet neither Henlein at the outset of his political career nor the SdP for many years of its development had anything to do with the National Socialist movement in Germany. Both were originally dedicated to a democratic settlement of the Sudeten German question, which was to be achieved by peaceful negotiations in the Czech parliament. All attempts to reach an acceptable settlement, however, failed, and the gradual escalation of the Czech-Sudeten confrontation resulted in forcing Henlein into the arms of Adolf Hitler, who promised to provide an international sounding board for the Sudeten case. […] Hitler of course, more than welcomed the opportunity of making the Sudeten case his own and did not hesitate to misuse the principle of self-determination as a weapon to further his own Lebensraum policy.[3] ” Immediately after the Anschluss of Austria into the Third Reich in March 1938, Hitler made himself the advocate of ethnic Germans living in Czechoslovakia, triggering the "Sudeten Crisis". In August, 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 failed because, on Hitler's command, Sudeten German Party refused all conciliating proposals.[4][5][6] 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.[7] ” Cropped image of what first appeared in the Nazi party newspaper Völkischer Beobachter, ostensibly depicting a Sudeten German woman in Asch crying tears of joy when Hitler crossed the border in 1938. Allied propaganda later used the cropped image with other interpretations.The Nazis, together with their Sudeten German allies, demanded incorporation of the region into Nazi Germany to escape "oppression", in fact to destroy the Czechoslovak state. 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. British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain met with 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 these discussions. Chamberlain met Hitler in Godesberg on September 22 to confirm the agreements. Hitler however, aiming at using the crisis as a pretext for war, 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 defence measures to the new borders. 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 (actually prepared by Hermann Göring) and signed the Munich Agreement 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. The Sudetenland was occupied by Germany between October 1 and October 10, 1938. This unification with the Third Reich was followed by the flight or expulsion of most of the region's Czech population to areas remaining within Czechoslovakia. The remaining parts of Czechoslovakia were subsequently invaded and annexed by Germany in March 1939. Sudetenland as part of Nazi Germany: The Sudetenland was initially put under military administration, with General Wilhelm Keitel as Military governor. On 21 October 1938, the annexed territories were divided, with the southern parts being incorporated into the neighbouring Reichsgaue Oberdonau and Niederdonau. The northern and western parts were reorganised as the Reichsgau Sudetenland, with the city of Reichenberg (present-day Liberec) established as its capital. Konrad Henlein (now openly a NSDAP member) administered the district first as Reichskommissar (until 1 May 1939) and then as Reichsstatthalter (1 May 1939–4 May 1945). Sudetenland consisted of three political districts: Eger (with Karlsbad as capital), Aussig (Aussig) and Troppau (Troppau). Shortly after the annexation, the Jews living in the Sudetenland were widely persecuted. Only a few weeks after, the great pogrom called "Kristallnacht" occurred. As elsewhere in Germany, many synagogues were set on fire and many Jews were sent to concentration camps. In later years, the Nazis transported up to 300,000 Czech and Slovak Jews to concentration camps.[8] where 90% of them were killed or died. Jews and Czechs were not the only afflicted peoples; German Socialists, communists and pacifists were widely persecuted as well. Some of the German Socialist fled Sudetenland via Prague and London to other countries. The "Gleichschaltung" would damage permanently the community in the Sudetenland. Despite this, on 4 December 1938 there were elections in Reichsgau Sudetenland, in which 97.32% of the adult population voted for NSDAP. About a half million Sudeten Germans joined the Nazi Party which was 17.34% of the German population in Sudetenland (the average NSDAP participation in Nazi Germany was 7.85%). This means, the Sudetenland was the most "pro-Nazi" region in the Third Reich.[5] Because of their knowledge of the Czech language, many Sudeten Germans were employed in administration of Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia as well as in Nazi organizations (Gestapo, etc.). The most notable was Karl Hermann Frank: the SS and Police general and Secretary of State in the Protectorate. Expulsions and resettlement after World War II: After the end of World War II, the Potsdam Conference in 1945 determined that Sudeten Germans would have to leave Czechoslovakia (see Expulsion of Germans after World War II). As a consequence of the immense hostility against all Germans that had grown within Czechoslovakia due to Nazi behavior, the overwhelming majority of Germans were expelled. (While the relevant Czechoslovak legislation provided for the remaining of those Germans that were able to prove their anti-Nazi affiliation, in many instances these provisions were not respected.) The number of expelled Germans in early phase (spring-summer 1945) is estimated to be around 500,000 people. These expulsions and forced resettlements were associated with excesses and even murders of Germans, e.g. during the Brno death march ("Brünner Todesmarsch", the forced march of some 20,000 German inhabitants of Brno toward the Austrian borders in the end of May 1945). There were about 24,000 known deaths directly related to the expulsion (this includes murders as well as suicides or deaths from disease, old age, etc.). More than 62,000 German people were reported missing by relatives, but their deaths could not be verified. The property of practically all Sudeten Germans, claimed to be part of war reparations, was confiscated by Czechoslovakia pursuant to the Beneš decrees. During the organised phase in 1946, a total of 2,232,544 people were transferred to Germany: two-thirds of them to the American sector, and one- third to the Soviet sector (note: not all of the transferred were actual Germans, the number includes the non-German members of mixed families and renegades). Only about 244,000 Germans were allowed to remain in Czechoslovakia. Many 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 the country, the former Sudetenland was resettled, mostly by Czechs but also by other nationalities of Czechoslovakia: Slovaks, Volhynian Czechs, Gypsies and Hungarians (though the Hungarians were forced into this and later returned home). Some areas remained depopulated for several strategic reasons (extensive mining, military interests etc.) or simply for their lack of attractions. There remained areas with noticeable German minorities only in the westernmost borderland. In the 2001 census, only approximately 40,000 people in the Czech Republic claimed German ethnicity. The term Sudetenland now has only a historical meaning, generally closely linked to its Nazi past. Notes: ^ Alfred de Zayas, "Anglo-American Responsibility for the Expulsion of the Germans, 1944-48", (Pittsburg lecture, published in Vardy/Tooley "Ethnic Cleansing in 20th Century Europe" pp. 239-254) p. 245 ^ Kárník, Zdeněk. České země v éře první republiky (1918-1938). Díl 2. Praha 2002. ^ de Zayas, Alfred-Maurice. Nemesis at Potsdam. Routledge & Kegan Paul, London 1977 ISBN 0710084684, pp. 28f ^ Šamberger, Zdeněk: Mnichov 1938 v řeči archivních dokumentů. Praha 2002. (ISBN 8085475936) ^ a b Zimmermann, Volker: Die Sudetendeutschen im NS-Staat. Politik und Stimmung der Bevölkerung im Reichsgau Sudetenland (1938-1945). Essen 1999. (ISBN 3884747703) ^ Čelovský, Bořivoj: Germanisierung und Genozid. Hitlers Endlösung der tschechischen Frage - deutsche Dokumente 1933-1945. Dresden 2005. (ISBN 8090355013) ^ Alfred de Zayas, "Anglo-American Responsibility for the Expulsion of the Germans, 1944-48", (Pittsburg lecture, published in Vardy/Tooley "Ethnic Cleansing in 20th Century Europe" pp. 239-254) p. 243 ^ Wheeler, Charles (2002-12-03). Czechs' hidden revenge against Germans (HTML, Blog). BBC News. Retrieved on 2006-09-26. A 'Diatribe' in Honor of Dr. Alfred Schickel By Heinz Nawratil Dr. Schickel is the founder and head of the Zeitgeschichtliche Forschungsstelle (Research Office for Recent History) Ingolstadt, which since he established it in 1981 has become one of the leading centers of Historical Revisionist scholarship in West Germany. While Dr. Schickel's ZFI has steered clear of attacking the Bundesrepublik's regnant taboo, the extermination myth, ZFI scholars have effectively exposed such historical impostures as Hermann Rauschning's fraudulent Conversations with Hider, and thrown new light on historical problems ranging from Hitler's various relations with the Soviet Union to the failure of the Third Reich's atomic-bomb program. But it has been above all for its focus on the long veiled crimes of the Allies against the Germans, during and after the war, that Dr. Schickel's ZFI has become celebrated. This is not surprising in that Dr. Schickel himself was born at Aussig, in the Sudetenland, and thus experienced the expulsion of over three million of his countryman in 1945. A prolific scholar, Dr. Schickel is the author of Die Vertreibung der Deutschen (The Expulsion of the Germans), Sudetendeutsches Schicksalsjahr: 1938 (Sudeten German Year of Destiny: 1938), and Von Grossdeutschland zur Deutschen Frage, 1938-1946). Dr. Schickel's measured objectivity has gained him and the ZFI a sympathetic ear in unusual places in West Germany and abroad, and ZFI publications have been favorably reviewed in Der Spiegel, Frankfurter Allgemeiner, Süddeutsche Zeitung (Munich), London Times, and Il Giornale (Milan). His church and political connections, partly through his activities as a leader of the Katholisches Bildungswerk (Catholic Educational Guild) contributed last year to Dr. Schickel's being awarded the Bundesverdiensireuz (Federal Service Cross), one of West Germany's highest civilian honors. The following "diatribe" delivered in his honor by Dr. Heinz Nawratil, in his own right a scholar of the Allies' "war (and postwar) crimes discreetly veiled," is a good- humored accounting of the inconveniences and lurking perils which even so moderate and judicious a Revisionist as Alfred Schickel must face in the Federal Republic, as well as a reminder of the pervasive influence of leftists and Communists in the West German intelligentsia even today. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Dear Friends of Historiography: After our Honorable Dr. Schickel received the Federal Service Cross two weeks ago, I should normally at this time deliver the traditional laudatio in his honor. On this occasion, however, I find it more appropriate to deliver a diatribe in which I shall stigmatize the honoree, omitting none of his numerous vices. The least of his vices remains his unhealthful mode of living. Instead of reading five books about the Second World War and then writing a sixth, as do other authors, he plows through thousands of original records and documents. I warn Dr. Schickel: Too much reading is bad for the eyes! For all of you should know that Dr. Schickel is one of the few German historians who ventures to make use of, for instance, the huge documentary holdings of the National Archives in Washington. Our honoree will surely remember what the director of the National Archives told him during an earlier visit to the United States: One sees scarcely any of the established historians from West Germany here. And precisely because so few read the original documents, they're covered with dust. The more dust, the greater the danger to the lungs. Therefore my well-meaning advice to Dr. Schickel: Spare your eyes and your lungs! May is almost upon us: enjoy the spring sunlight on a peaceful stroll, go to a health club if it's raining, but stop this perfectly insane obsession with original sources! There's no need for it, as is proved by countless bestsellers. The next vice of our laureate is his profligacy. Instead of paying off his mortgage as befits a respectable head of his family, he squanders his money on trips across Europe and to America, interviewing historical participants and buying whole mountains of documents on microfilm. Oh, what extravagance! Consider, for example, scriptwriters of historical documentaries for television. Here a certain Ralph Giordano comes to mind, because I read his book Der zweite Schuld (The Second Guilt) a little while ago. His bibliography encompasses five or six authors. As I read, I wondered whether the author had read even these few books, so many mistakes does his magnum opus include. Such deficiencies, of course, were no obstacle to enthusiastic reviews in Der Spiegel, Der Stern, Die Zeit, and on public television. Speaking of television, Mr. Giordano has to date already inflicted more than a hundred TV documentaries on us. While Dr. Schickel is receiving perhaps 100 marks for a lecture before the Catholic Educational Guild, Mr. Giordano collected, by my estimate, at least 150,000 marks for his last production, The Bertinis. Thus, my second counsel to Dr. Schickel: Forget scholarship and this obsession with objectivity, opt for television and ideological correctness, and at our next conference you'll be sporting a gold Rolex, not the inexpensive Japanese watch with the stainless-steel wristband I see on your desk. With that, we're nearly at the third point of criticism: Dr. Schickel has the wrong friends and relatives. He heads the Catholic Educational Guild in Ingolstadt; what on earth is that? He's related to a bishop: So what? He's no match for the television scriptwriter I spoke of just now. While Mr. Giordano is at the moment without political affiliation, he was for years a member of the Communist Party, and he did time in prison for violent offenses: that makes an author interesting, it gives his friends and admirers a piquant sense of liberalism and tolerance; for who wants to be a primitive anti-Communist, a mindless cold warrior? The same thing goes in other areas. One of many I could name is the Viennese sculptor and veteran Communist Hrdlitschka, who collects million-mark commissions from local governments of leftist persuasion up and down the Rhine and Danube. How could he stay in business if he didn't now and then- as just a few months ago in an Austrian Communist newspaper-characterize Stalin as a "not unnecessary phenomenon"? If our Dr. Schickel is therefore not afflicted with political blindness, he'll join a discreet little Communist group-not necessarily the German Communist Party, that won't be necessary -- and he'll take part in a few militant demonstrations, for instance blocking military bases. But in moderate dosages, please: not too many, not too few. Once he exhibits the necessary delicacy, meditates a bit on collective guilt and warns a bit against the aggressive aims of NATO and the impending seizure of power by the fascists, his name will shortly receive respectful mention in progressive media outlets, and everybody, everybody will admire him: some with the enigmatic smiles of the initiated, others with open- mouthed bourgeois simple-mindedness. Dr. Schickel, what are you waiting for? There remains the last reproach: Dr. Schickel's crass ignorance. To be sure, this man knows unbelievably many historical details, but he overlooks the most important things. For example, he lives in the childish belief that in this country one can simply research away and make public demonstrable facts wherever he goes. How naive these scholars are! Just think of Galileo Galilei, for one. He too could prove his new findings, but what good did it do him? The Inquisition had many better arguments. Bringing out the implements of torture was enough to convince the scholar of the error of his computations in short order. Now you'll probably object that we're living in the twentieth century and we've got a democracy as well. You'll soon be better instructed. For example, Dr. Schickel, just try to deliver the lecture you'll shortly present to us at a university, at the Free University in Berlin, say. Then the same friendly folks who staged virtual pogroms just last week would doubtless put in an appearance. To be sure, you won't be shown thumbscrews and irons, more likely (I refer to the Berlin police report of last Friday) knives and Molotov cocktails, blackjacks and bicycle chains and baseball bats with nails driven through them. I'll wager any amount that you couldn't resist the persuasive power of these arguments. Think also of Graf Spee, who carelessly wrote a book on the belief in witchcraft. They tried to exclude him from the Jesuit order, and he barely escaped the stake, to which, as is well known, not only witches but their accessories are consigned. Such practices are far from superseded. Rudolf Augstein [publisher of Der Spiegel] took thought, in the matter of Professor Hillgruber, as to whether his writings didn't provide good grounds for his dismissal; in the case of Professor Nolte the heretic wasn't personally for burning, but his car was. [See IHR Newsletter No. 59, (July 1988).] Let's assume that the mass murder at Katyn was still unsolved, and that Dr. Schickel was the first historian to discover that Stalin and not Hitler was the author of the crime. What would in all probability happen? No doubt Der Spiegel would be the first to proclaim the scandal. One week later West German Broadcasting would devote itself to the fascist goings-on in Ingolstadt, and the next week would see a polite visit from the friendly folks with the blackjacks and the Molotov cocktails. Five years later, if Gorbachev hasn't fallen in the meantime and if our researcher hasn't died of a heart attack, a historical journal from Moscow will breeze across his desk, with an announcement that surprising new documents on Katyn have surfaced ... Well, you can fill in the rest of the story. As the poet of liberty, Ludwig Börne, put it: "O foolish people, o comical world!" Here my last advice for Dr. Schickel: Take the world for what it is, be flexible, write what the Establishment wants to hear. Augstein is more powerful than Kohl, as the late Franz Josef Strauss already said. Not without foundation, for chancellors come and go, but Der Spiegel remains, and steady droplets hollow the stone. Write things that a hundred have written before you, put your pen to ideological flackery, and with all your talent you'll have it made. Remain obstinate, like the Dr. Schickel I know, and he'll prove ineducable and pass by his good fortune blindly. Perhaps this Dr. Schickel has in mind a verse from the Sermon on the Mount: "Woe unto you, when all men shall speak well of you! For so did their fathers to the false prophets" (Luke 6, 26). And perhaps he's right. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
