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Zusammenarbeit and Spoluprace: Sudeten German-Czech Cooperation in Interwar Czechoslovakia
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 20 November 2018
Extract
On 22 December 1918 Tomáš G. Masaryk delivered his first political message as president of the fledgling Czechoslovakia. Addressing the Constituent Assembly at Hradčany in Prague, he vowed that the frontier districts of Bohemia, Moravia, and Silesia, which contained a predominantly German-speaking population (and which German nationalists eventually designated collectively as the Sudetenland) would remain in the new Republic. Inimical toward and unwilling to live in a state dedicated to the sovereignty of Czechs and Slovaks, virtually all German leaders at the time of Masaryk's address were working to separate German districts from Czechoslovakia and link them with Austria.
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References
Notes
1. Confusion may arise from use of the terms “Czech” and “Czechoslovak.” The “Czechoslovakist” idea that the Czech and Slovak nations were “branches of a single tree” underpinned the state's creation, thus “Czechoslovak” corresponds to state-wide political entities. “Czech” refers to individuals, or, in the case of territory, to the historic Czech crown lands (Bohemia, Moravia, and Silesia). For the importance of “Czechoslovakism” as a state-building ideology see Leff, Carol Skalnik, National Conflict in Czechoslovakia: the making and remaking of the state, 1918-1987 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1988); Jozef Lettrich, The History of Modern Slovakia (New York: Praeger, 1955); Victor S. Mamatey, “The establishment of the Republic,” in Victor S. Mamatey and Radomír Luža eds,. A History of the Czechoslovak Republic, 1918-1948, (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1973); William V. Wallace, Czechoslovakia (Boulder, CO: East European Monographs, 1977).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
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19. César and Černý, Politika německych buržoazních stran 1: p. 300. The Agrarians had been bandying the topic of cooperation about since 1919, with the nationalists always dominant in the debate. See Linz, Norbert, Der Bund der Landwirte in der Ersten Tschechoslowakischen Republik. Struktur und Politik einer deutschen Partei in der Aufbauphase (Munich: R. Oldenbourg, 1982), pp. 296-299.Google Scholar
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23. For information on Rašín's policies see Peroutka, , Budování státu, 2:701–724, 754-771; and Zora P. Pryor, “Czechoslovak economic development in the interwar period,” in Mamatey and Luža, A History of the Czechoslovak Republic, pp. 194-197.Google Scholar
24. César and Černý, Politika německých buržoazních stran, 1: pp 289-294; Campbell, Confrontation in Central Europe, p. 158.Google Scholar
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27. An administrative reform that took effect in Slovakia in 1923 divided the province into counties, which undermined efforts to create an autonomous government for the province as a whole. However, political leaders blocked this county system from taking effect in the Czech provinces, for it would have resulted in German majorities in their most concentrated areas of settlement. See Josef Anderle, “The Slovak issue in the Munich crisis of 1938” (PhD dissertation, University of Chicago, 1961), pp. 39–43.Google Scholar
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30. Lodgman, von, leader of the German Nationals, lost his seat to an activist.Google Scholar
31. For further analysis of the election see César and Černý, Politika německých buržoazních stran, 1: pp. 304–308; and Wingfield, Minority Politics, pp. 52–53.Google Scholar
32. France and Poland were allies, but Locarno legitimated Germany's anti-Polish territorial revisionism of its eastern frontiers. France came to an understanding with Germany that was independent of Polish considerations.Google Scholar
33. A bona fide opposition party, the Communists drew their strength from disgruntled workers. The Czechoslovak Social Democrats' participation in the government alienated revolutionists in the movement; Prague's inaction toward the collapse of industrial enterprises in Slovakia dismayed workers there. For the gains and losses of the parties in the Chamber see Campbell, Confrontation in Central Europe, p. 315, n. 1.Google Scholar
34. See César and Černý, Politika německých buržoazních stran, 1: p. 375.Google Scholar
35. For the turmoil this crucial measure caused within the camp of the Czechoslovak Social Democrats and the party's deliberation over whether to leave the coalition see Jarmila Menclová, “K některým otázkám vývoje československé sociáln' demokracie v druhé polovině 20. let,” [Several questions regarding the course of Czechoslovak social democracy during the second half of the 1920s] Sborník historický 1967, 15: pp. 78–82; and Erik Polák, “K otázce rozpadu všenárodní koalice a nastolení vlády mezinárodní buržoazie v Československu v letech 1925-26,” [Regarding the breakup of the national coalition and the installation of the multinational bourgeois government 1925-26] Československý časopis historický 1961, 9: p. 30.Google Scholar
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37. German Christian Socials distanced themselves from negativism because they could not tolerate the anti-Catholic sentiments of pan-German nationalists. They also argued that Germans had to get into the government in order to participate in making and administering laws, and to improve conditions for Germans as much as possible. See Schütz, Hans, “Gedanken eines Aktivisten zur Frage der Chancen und Grenzen des Aktivismus,” in Bosl, Karl ed., Aktuelle Forschungsprobleme um die Erste Tschechoslowakische Republik, (Munich: R. Oldenbourg, 1969), pp. 151–152. See also Wiskemann, Czechs and Germans, pp. 229ff.Google Scholar
38. For details on the often quarrelsome relations between the parties during 1919-1928 see Campbell, Confrontation in Central Europe, pp. 155–161; César and Černý, Politika německých buržoazních stran, 1: pp. 209-214; Victor S. Mamatey, “The development of Czechoslovak democracy, 1920-1938,” and J. W. Brügel, “The Germans in pre-war Czechoslovakia,” in Mamatey and Luža, eds, A History of the Czechoslovak Republic, pp. 130, 174-175; Menclová, “Vývoje československé sociální demokracie,” pp. 83–84; and Wingfield, Minority Politics, ch. 1-3, passim. Google Scholar
39. With the 1924 Insurance Act, for example, employers had to share in contributions toward sickness and old age benefits, and had to pay the full costs for accident insurance. See Wiskemann, Czechs and Germans, p. 189. Germans also participated in efforts to revise taxes. See Helmut Slapnicka, “Die Ära Švehla und des sudetendeutschen Aktivismus,” in Karl Bosl, ed., Handbuch der Geschichte der böhmischen Länder, 4 vols (Stuttgart: Anton Hiersemann, 1968-70), 4: pp. 61–62.Google Scholar
40. See Brügel, Czechoslovakia before Munich, pp. 80–84. The German Social Democrats became the strongest of the German parties; and President Masaryk also insisted that they should enter the cabinet. For results of the election see Mamatey, “The development of Czechoslovak democracy,” in Mamatey and Luza, A History of the Czechoslovak Republic, pp. 140-142; see also Menclová, “Vývoje československé sociální demokracie,” p. 104. See Wingfield, Minority Politics, p. 97, for the possible political idée fixe of the Czechoslovak Social Democrats.Google Scholar
41. See Brügel, Czechoslovakia Before Munich, p. 82; Wiskemann, Czechs and Germans, p. 195.Google Scholar
42. Ibid., p. 193.Google Scholar
43. See Pryor, “Economic Development,” pp. 205–215, in Mamatey and Luza, eds, A History of the Czechoslovak Republic. For the condition of the Czechoslovak economy in relation to that of neighboring states and of Europe in general see Rothschild, East Central Europe, pp. 122-124.Google Scholar
44. Luža, The Transfer of the Sudeten Germans, p. 71.Google Scholar
45. Brügel, Czechoslovakia Before Munich, p. 120; Rothschild, East Central Europe, p. 128.Google Scholar
46. For analyses and results of the election see César and Černý, Politika německých buržoazních stran, 2: pp. 289–294; Rothschild, East Central Europe, p. 126; and Wiskemann, Czechs and Germans, p. 206. The Sudeten German Party was popular in the major German cities of the Republic, particularly in northern and north-western Bohemia. Henleinist rhetoric was less successful in small German villages and in the mixed areas of southern Bohemia and Moravia. See Šimka, “Česko-německé vztahy na Jihlavsku”, p. 201; and Wingfield, Minority Politics, pp. 133-134.Google Scholar
47. These journals, such as Die Tat, founded an Anti-Henlein Front and presented articles by anti-fascist intellectuals. Neue Zeit, founded in 1936 and published with support of Czechoslovak government circles, advocated measures that corresponded more with the opinions of government figures than with those of the activists who sought German autonomy within the Republic. See César and Černý, Politika německých buržoazních stran, 2: pp. 332–334. The DSAP published the trilingual (German/French/English) Sudeten-German Newsletters in order to influence domestic and foreign public opinion.Google Scholar
48. Ibid., p. 337; Wingfield, Minority Politics, p. 146–148.Google Scholar
49. See César and Černý, Politika německých buržoazních stran, 2: pp. 294–296, 350-6351, 497; Wingfield, Minority Politics, p. 141. Several expressions of Social Democratic unity in 1938 are reprinted in Chtěli jsme bojovat [We were ready to fight], comp. ástav dějin Komunistické strany Československa. 2 vols. (Prague: Nakladatelství politické literatury, 1963).Google Scholar
50. For example, in September 1938 the German Social Democrat Robert Wiener and Czechoslovak Social Democrat Jaromír Nečas went to Paris in a joint Social Democratic effort to relieve Western pressure on Czechoslovakia during the Munich crisis. They met with Léon Blum, leader of the French Socialists, and pleaded with him to seek a change in French policy. Blum, of course, was unable to help. See Brügel, Czechoslovakia before Munich, pp. 248–249.Google Scholar
51. See Hajek, Jiří S., “Social Democrats defending Czechoslovak democracy and independence,” Kosmas Winter 1984/Summer 1985, 3&4(2&1): pp. 150–156; Wingfield, Minority Politics, pp. 172-173.Google Scholar
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