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The Expulsion of the Sudeten Germans: 1945-1952

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 November 2018

Ronald M. Smelser
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Extract

For over 700 years Czechs and Germans lived together in those lands which in this century would be consolidated as Czechoslovakia. It was not always a harmonious existence, but a kind of symbiosis did develop which sustained the relationship to the point where one group was unthinkable without the other. All of that changed in the twentieth century in an age characterized by awakening, intolerant ethnic nationalism and total war. Indeed, by the end of the Thirty Years' War of this century, the long Czech-German relationship in Bohemia came to a bitter, and seemingly permanent, end through the expulsion of the Germans of Czechoslovakia.

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Articles
Information
Nationalities Papers , Volume 24 , Issue 1 , March 1996 , pp. 79 - 92
Copyright
Copyright © 1996 Association for the Study of Nationalities of Eastern Europe and ex-USSR, Inc. 

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References

Notes

1. See Seibt, Ferdinand, ed., Die Chance der Verständigung. Absichten und Ansätze zu übernationaler Zusammenarbeit in den böhmischen Länder 1848-1918 (Munich: Oldenbourg, 1987).Google Scholar

2. See Hilf, Rudolf, Deutsche und Tschechen. Bedeutung und Wandlung einer Nachbarschaft in Mitteleuropa (Opladen: Leske Verlag, 1973), p. 84ff.Google Scholar

3. For details see Radomír Luža, The Transfer of the Sudeten Germans, A Study of Czech-German Relations, 1933-1962 (New York, New York University Press, 1964), pp. 223–229. Luza, although indicating some degree of injustice in the implementation, defends the transfer. The most exhaustive study of the expulsion is Schieder, Theodor, ed. Dokumentation der Vertreibung der Deutschen aus Ost-Mitteleuropa (Berlin: Bundesministerium für Vertriebene, Flüchtlinge und Kriegsbeschäädige, 1957) Vol. IV/1 and IV/2, Die Vertreibung der deutschen Bevölkerung aus der Tschechoslowakei. Google Scholar

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5. Most of the relevant correspondence between Beneš and Jaksch has been reproduced in Prinz, Friedrich, ed. Wenzel Jaksch-Edvard Beneš: Briefe und Dokumente aus dem Londoner Exil 1939-1943 (Cologne: Verlag Wissenschaft und Politik, 1973). See also Eduard Beneš, Memoirs of Dr. Eduard Beneš. From Munich to New War and New Victory (Cambridge: Houghton Mifflin, 1954), pp. 303–334 and Walter Ullmann, The United States in Prague 1945-1948 (Boulder, CO: East European Quarterly, 1978), pp. 60–63.Google Scholar

6. See Luža, Transfer, pp. 229–230; also Jaroslav Kucera, “Die Vertreibung. Die Debatte über die Aussiedlung der deutschen Bevölkerung in der Tschechoslowakei und ihre politische Bedeutung” … sterreichische Zeitschrift für Geschichtswissenschaft 1992, 3: pp. 238-248.Google Scholar

7. See Edward Taborsky, “Politics in exile, 1939-1945” in Mamatey, Victor S. and Luža, Radomír, eds. A History of the Czechoslovak Republic 1918-1948 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1973), pp. 334–335.Google Scholar

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9. Ibid., pp. 227–228. For a somewhat different, and more positive, assessment of Jaksch, see Brügel, J. W., Tschechen und Deutsche 1939-1946 (Munich: Nymphenburger, 1974), throughout, but especially p. 264.Google Scholar

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11. See Mastny, Vojtech, The Czechs under Nazi Rule. The Failure of National Resistance, 1939-1942 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1971), p. 57.Google Scholar

12. Ibid., p. 71.Google Scholar

13. Ibid., pp. 186, 194.Google Scholar

14. Ibid., p. 205.Google Scholar

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16. Ibid., 11 June 1942, p. 3805. In contrast, Luža, Transfer, decries post-war German claims of the relative compliance and lack of resistance activity on the part of the Czechs.Google Scholar

17. , Mastny, Czechs, p. 214.Google Scholar

18. Ibid., p. 215.Google Scholar

19. See Taborsky, Edward, President Edvard Benes. Between East and West 1938-1948 (Stanford: Hoover Institution Press, 1981), p. 125.Google Scholar

20. See Beneš, Memoirs, p. 187; for corroborating testimony see Taborsky, Beneš, pp. 119, 125, 155, 161Google Scholar

21. See J.W. Brügel, “Die Aussiedlung der Deutschen aus der Tschechoslowakei. Versuch einer Darstellung der Vorgeschichte,” Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte April 1960, 2: p. 162.Google Scholar

22. Feis, Herbert, Churchill, Roosevelt, Stalin (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1957), p. 198.Google Scholar

23. Beneš made this remark to Soviet Foreign Minister, Viacheslav Molotov. See Taborsky, Beneš, p. 162; generally on Beneší Moscow visit see, Luža, Transfer, pp. 242–243 as well as Taborsky above.Google Scholar

24. See Foreign Relations of the United States (1945), Vol. IV, p. 424.Google Scholar

25. See Alfred M. de Zayas, Nemesis at Potsdam. The Anglo-Americans and the Expulsion of the Germans, rev. edn, (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul 1979), p. 89 for Byrnes' communique. On the expulsion of the Sudeten Germans generally, pp. 17–38. An updated study by the same author is The Germans Expellees: victims in war and peace (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1993).Google Scholar

26. For the text of the Protocol see de Zayas, Nemesis, p. 88.Google Scholar

27. For the text see Schieder, Dokumentation, IV/1, Anlage 2, p. 192ff.Google Scholar

28. For a description of the wildcat expulsions see ibid., pp. 67–115; also Luža, Transfer, p. 272ff.Google Scholar

29. On the death march see Schieder, Dokumentation, p. 108 and de Zayas, Nemesis, p. 105–106. On the pogrom in Uśtí, see Alfred Bohmann, Die Ausweisung der Sudetendeutschen dargestellt am Beispiel des Stadt- und Landkreises Aussig (Marburg, 1955).Google Scholar

30. See Schieder, Dokumentation, pp. 80ff., 92.Google Scholar

31. See Luza, Transfer, p. 269ff. and Schieder, Dokumentation, pp. 67–97.Google Scholar

32. Luža, Transfer, p. 274ff.Google Scholar

33. Ibid, pp. 282–283.Google Scholar

34. For these figures see Leff, Carol Skalnik, National Conflict in Czechoslovakia. The Making and Remaking of a State, 1918-1987 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1988), p. 93; also generally Luža, Transfer, pp. 282–283, 288.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

35. For an interesting perspective on the Sudeten Germans in West Germany see Seibt, Ferdinand, Deutschland und die Tschechen. Geschichte einer Nachbarschaft in der Mitte Europas (Munich: Piper, 1993), especially pp. 359–371.Google Scholar

36. These figures are from Korbel, Josef, The Communist Subversion of Czechoslovakia 1938-1948. The Failure of Coexistence (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1959), p. 162.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

37. For this assessment see, in particular, the recent work of the Czech scholar, Tomáš Staněk: e.g. “Das Auseinandergehen mit den Deutschen. Ein Blick von tschechischer Seite” in P. Becher and H. Ettl, eds, Böhmen. Blick über die Grenze (Viechtach, 1992), esp. p. 105; also Odsun Němců z Československa 1945-1947 (Prague, Academia, 1991). Staněk's conclusions mirror to a remarkable degree those of the German scholar Rudolf Hilf, Deutsche und Tschechen. Bedeutung und Wandlung einer Nachbarschaft in Mitteleuropa. Google Scholar

38. See Luža, Transfer, p. 268.Google Scholar

39. Schmidt-Hartmann, Eva, “Menschen oder Nationen? Die Vertreibung der Deutschen aus tscheschischer Sicht” in Benz, Wolfgang, ed., Die Vertreibung der Deutschen aus dem Osten: Ursachen, Ereignisse, Folgen (Frankfurt am Main: Fischer Taschenbuchverlag, 1985), pp. 143–145.Google Scholar

40. See Kennan, George, From Prague after Munich. Diplomatic Papers 1938-1940 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1968), p. 236.Google Scholar