Czech crimes?

[Luca]

to Luca: From your ask "It´s interisting if it´s truth" I recognize your interest in this thing, but don´t recognize the deep of your knowledge abouth Terezín.....this "Known the truth" was mainly directed to every member of this site....to know, that if somebody read abouth Terezin like abouth "vitrine", it´s little far away from real state of things.
I´m living in Hradec Králové, some 100 km west from Prague. Your czech is pretty good. Your parents were czech?

Sincerly "It's interesting if it 's truth" no was an ask but an affermation. Infact i no agree with what You have write concern Terezin, as i no agree with the affermation that Terezin was a "vitrine", or that was a "concentration camp", as i have read here.
Your recognize is good at 50%, infact i have interest in this thing but my knowledge no is so deep as You think.
Maybe i can say, in my poor opinion, that ,yes, Terezin was a vitrine, but yesterday, and probable tomorrow, sure not during the II WW, and the glasses of this vitrine are a little bit distorced, so that the honest turist that arrive, go back with a wrong idea of the facts that occured there.

My blood was 100% pure Italian high mountains blood, but probable now in my veins i ve pure Czech beer, as You will well know when, one day or another, we will go in some old hospoda in Your fine town.
Luca

[Glynwed]

to Luca:

10.June 1940 the Pragues gestapo undertake the „small fortres“ in Terezín and established jail here....etc.

This informations are taken from:
In czech
http://www.terezin.cz/hi_terezin.htm

for information what´s new:
http://www.terezin.cz/index_en.htm

P.S. The beer is my favourite!

[Luca]

to Luca:

10.June 1940 the Pragues gestapo undertake the „small fortres“ in Terezín and established jail here....etc.

This informations are taken from:
In czech
http://www.terezin.cz/hi_terezin.htm

for information what´s new:
http://www.terezin.cz/index_en.htm

P.S. The beer is my favourite!

During the flood im no was in Czech, but in costant phone contact.
The flood of Terezin was well debated here, or was another forum?
Thank You in any case.
Luca

[michael mills]

Witness wrote:

The Sudeten Germans lived in the northwest and southwest industrial ares of Czechoslovakia and as a consequense often were better off then the other minorities or even the Czechs.

Glynwed wrote:

If somebody talking abouth poor sudeten germans tormented by Beneš and about happy czechs under Heydrich, it´s absolutely pipe-dream nonsense.

Here are some excerpts dealing with the situation of the German minority in Czechoslovakia, drawn from the 1938 book "The Battle for Peace", by Frederick Elwyn Jones.

The book was published by Victor Gollancz for the Left Book Club, so is manifestly not an apologia for national Socialist Germany. Elwyn Jones was an extreme leftist British MP, and an apologist for Stalinism (for example, in this book he defends the Moscow Trials of 1936-38 on the basis that they were rooting out traitors who had conspired with Fascism, and thereby thwarting the agressive aims of the "Fascist International", a charge exposed as entirely false by Khrushchev in 1956). He later become of the British prosecution team at the IMT in Nuremberg, which does not say much for its political neutrality.

Anyway, here are the excerpts:

Page 168:

In the first few years of Czechoslovakia's existence after the Great War, the hangover of centuries or persecution and racial conflict was so strong that the Sudeten German minority in Czechoslovakia did live under severe disabilities, although they were never oppressed as so many other minorities in Central and Eastern Europe were and still are. For many years, however, Czechoslovakia has been developing on strong democratic lines and she is now a democratic oasis in a desert of Fascism on the east of the Rhine.

The Czechoslovak State has only had twenty years in which to build up a democratic republic, years full of difficulties. For a time after the War, the German minorities did not co-operate with the Government, but in 1926, on the initiative of the Agrarian Party, a period of active co-operation began between the Czech and German Agrarians and Clerical Parties. Later, in 1929, the German Social-Democrats joined the Cabinet. It was the economic depression of 1929 and the rise of Hitler to power which brought about severe internal stresses in Czechoslovakia. The Sudeten German territory had always been the "distressed area" of Czechoslovakia. The depression made matters worse and created conditions suitalbe for the success of Nazi activity, directed by Henlein's Sudeten German Party.

Page 171:

Hitler's march on Vienna helped the Nazi disruption of Czechoslovakia. In March of this year [1938], however, the Czechoslovak Government made a renewed attempt to deal with the complaints of the Sudeten minority. The Prime Minister, Dr Hodza, promised a new "Minority Statute", and both he and President Benes invited the German leaders to discuss common problems with the Government. The President further signed a decree granting a wide amnesty to political prisoners - chiefly Sudeten Germans.

Czechoslovak demoncracy, of course, is not perfect. Czechoslovakia has not yet cast off all the traditions of the Polizeistaat (Police State) - which she inherited from Austria. The tradition is made more harassing by the fact that the Czech police mostly speak poor German. Czech officials are often tactless in their dealings with the German-speaking people. There have been cases in which harmless citizens have been deprived of their passports which they need for visiting their relatives across the frontier. Yet, at the very same time, leaders of the Sudeten German Party are free to accept official invitations to the Nazi Party Congress at Nuremberg and to travel whenever they like.

Page 172:

In Prague the difficulty of coping with reactionary elements in the lower ranks of the bureaucratic machine is frankly admitted, and this year [1938] a serious attempt is being made to tackle this problem.

Page 173:

The fact is that the Sudeten Germans have had a much better deal than any other Minority in Central Europe. They have ample Minority rights; they have proportional representation, not only in parliament, but also in the district and municipal councils; the education of their children is conducted in their own tongue, and the German language is employed in all public offices in districts where the members of the Minority exceed 20 per cent.

The Czechoslovak Government is now sincerely willing to make a clean sweep of the remaining Minority difficulties and to grant all claims compatible with the democratic constitution. Unfortunately, there is every indication that Hitler means to sabotage all attempts to establish civil peace in Czechoslovakia.

Now, bearing in mind that Elwyn Jones was an extreme leftist and apologist for Stalin, we can expect that he has not exaggerated the bad treatment of the German minority by the Czech Government; if anything, he would have tended to minimise it. Even so, his description indicates that the treament of the Sudeten Germans was not particularly good.

As he admits, in the period up to 1926, the German minority was subjected to severe disabilities. Given his pro-Czech attitude and hostility to Sudeten German separatism, we may surmise that if he describes the disabilities as "severe", then they must have been very severe indeed.

Furthermore, he admits that even in 1938, Czechoslovakia still had some of the attributes of a police state, and that the Sudeten Germans were subject to official harassment, although he tries to attribute that to "reactionary" elements lower down, and misleadingly ascribes it to a tradition derived from the period of Habsburg rule.

If in 1938 the Czech Government, under German pressure, was making a "serious attempt" to end the harassment by the "lower levels" of the bureaucratic machine, and was "sincerely willing" to grant all claims compatible with the constitution, that means that up until that year it had NOT made a serious attempt to halt harassment, ie had permitted it, and had NOT been sincerely willing to grant justifiable claims, ie it had denied some of the rights of the Sudeten Germans.

Nevertheless, I think most would agree with the claim by Elwyn Jones that the treatment of the Sudeten German minority by the Czech Government was better than that accorded to any other ethnic minority in Central Europe at that time.

However, that statement misses the point, which is that both the Czech Government and the Allied and Associated Powers had consistently denied the Sudeten Germans their right to self-determination. ie they had been denied the same right granted to the Czechs, a right that supposed to be universal, and for which the Allied Powers had claimed to be fighting.

The Czech majority in the Austrian provinces of Bohemia and Moravia did not want to go on living under the rule of Vienna and the ethnically German Habsburg dynasty, even though they had full citizenship rights within the Austrian Empire, their language was used officially (in parliament for example), and many ethnic Czechs held high positions in the Imperial Government (the Austrian Foreign Minister in 1917 was a Czech, Ottakar Count Czerny). However, their demand for independence was recognised as valid, and in October 1918 the Austrian Government recognised the independence of Bohemia and Moravia under a Czech government.

If the Czech majority of Bohemia and Moravia did not want to live under the alien rule of Vienna, neither did the ethnic German minority in those provinces want to live under the alien rule of Prague. Just as the Czechs had seceded from the Austrian Empire, so the Sudeten Germans wanted to secede from Bohemia and Moravia.

It would have been quite easy to grant the desire of the Sudeten German minority in Bohemia and Moravia their desire for secession, since the areas in which they constituted a majority of more that 50% (and in some large areas more than 90%) were all situated on the borders with Germany and Austria. It would have a simple matter of a frontier adjustment, excising the border areas with a German majority from Bohemia and Moravia and attaching them to Germany or Austria, depending on their location.

The Czech ultra-nationalists under Benes refused to grant the entirely reasonable request of the Sudeten Germans for self-determination, and for some years subjected them to "severe disabilities", as the anti-Nazi Elwyn Jones admits, and thereafter to ongoing bureaucratic harassment, right up to 1938.

Thus, when the Czechs lost their own right to self-determination in 1939, they had only themselves and their hard-line leaders to blame.

[witness]

Now, bearing in mind that Elwyn Jones was an extreme leftist and apologist for Stalin, we can expect that he has not exaggerated the bad treatment of the German minority by the Czech Government; if anything, he would have tended to minimise it. Even so, his description indicates that the treament of the Sudeten Germans was not particularly good.

How come mills ?
From the quote you yourself provided :

The fact is that the Sudeten Germans have had a much better deal than any other Minority in Central Europe. They have ample Minority rights; they have proportional representation, not only in parliament, but also in the district and municipal councils; the education of their children is conducted in their own tongue, and the German language is employed in all public offices in districts where the members of the Minority exceed 20 per cent.

michael mills wrote:

However, that statement misses the point, which is that both the Czech Government and the Allied and Associated Powers had consistently denied the Sudeten Germans their right to self-determination. ie they had been denied the same right granted to the Czechs, a right that supposed to be universal, and for which the Allied Powers had claimed to be fighting.

Were not Czechs offering the plebiscite ?
And who rejected the offer ?
michael mills:

Thus, when the Czechs lost their own right to self-determination in 1939, they had only themselves and their hard-line leaders to blame.

And I always thought that aggression against the sovereign State which was offering plebiscite for its minority concerning the question of seccession ( again this offer was rejected by the aggressor ) is not justifiable .. Obviously Czechs were ready to sacrifice - if this offer had been accepted and Suteten regions joined to the Reich Czechoslovakia would have lost all the natural defences of Bohemian mountains and the czech'Maginot line '
And I wonder why the remaining
Czech ramp of Czechoslavakia was also swallowed by Hitler along with Sudeten regions..?

Henlein :
"We must always demand so much that we can never be satisfied "

[alsaco]

, but in 1926, on the initiative of the Agrarian Party, a period of active co-operation began between the Czech and German Agrarians and Clerical Parties. Later, in 1929, the German Social-Democrats joined the Cabinet......

The Sudeten German territory had always been the "distressed area" of Czechoslovakia. The depression made matters worse and created conditions suitalbe for the success of Nazi activity, directed by Henlein's Sudeten German Party.......

In March of this year [1938], however, the Czechoslovak Government made a renewed attempt to deal with the complaints of the Sudeten minority. The Prime Minister, Dr Hodza, promised a new "Minority Statute", and both he and President Benes invited the German leaders to discuss common problems with the Government. The President further signed a decree granting a wide amnesty to political prisoners - chiefly Sudeten Germans.

Czechoslovak democracy, of course, is not perfect. Czechoslovakia has not yet cast off all the traditions of the Polizeistaat (Police State) - which she inherited from Austria. The tradition is made more harassing by the fact that the Czech police mostly speak poor German. Czech officials are often tactless in their dealings with the German-speaking people. There have been cases in which harmless citizens have been deprived of their passports which they need for visiting their relatives across the frontier. Yet, at the very same time, leaders of the Sudeten German Party are free to accept official invitations to the Nazi Party Congress at Nuremberg and to travel whenever they like.


The fact is that the Sudeten Germans have had a much better deal than any other Minority in Central Europe. They have ample Minority rights; they have proportional representation, not only in parliament, but also in the district and municipal councils; the education of their children is conducted in their own tongue, and the German language is employed in all public offices in districts where the members of the Minority exceed 20 per cent.

The Czechoslovak Government is now sincerely willing to make a clean sweep of the remaining Minority difficulties and to grant all claims compatible with the democratic constitution. Unfortunately, there is every indication that Hitler means to sabotage all attempts to establish civil peace in Czechoslovakia.

All these elements show that the Czechs were really willing to give to Volksdeùtsche the democratic rights they asked.
Opposition did come from the Heinlein group, sustained by the nazis from Germany.
Particularly when you remember that agrarians and social democrats, representing also the sudeten were part of the government.

Your opinion then goes to judge the situation from your own point of view, and you then show a firm bias in favor of German irredentism.

..... both the Czech Government and the Allied and Associated Powers had consistently denied the Sudeten Germans their right to self-determination. ie they had been denied the same right granted to the Czechs, a right that supposed to be universal, and for which the Allied Powers had claimed to be fighting.

If the Czech majority of Bohemia and Moravia did not want to live under the alien rule of Vienna, neither did the ethnic German minority in those provinces want to live under the alien rule of Prague. Just as the Czechs had seceded from the Austrian Empire, so the Sudeten Germans wanted to secede from Bohemia and Moravia.

It would have been quite easy to grant the desire of the Sudeten German minority in Bohemia and Moravia their desire for secession, since the areas in which they constituted a majority of more that 50% (and in some large areas more than 90%) were all situated on the borders with Germany and Austria. It would have a simple matter of a frontier adjustment, excising the border areas with a German majority from Bohemia and Moravia and attaching them to Germany or Austria, depending on their location.

Taking wordly what was the basis of the nazi pretence, you leave by side the geographic realities. The german populated areas were mixed with villages and towns of slavian origin, as it was the rule in all these territories ruined by the Thirty years war, and repopulated with immigrants taken from other places. Satisfying Hitler did result in a destruction of links of communications, and destruction of commercial currents.
The question was do we destroy czechoslovaquia, or keep it. Daladier and Chamberlain accepted Hitler's plan, and made the wrong choice.

Your conclusion is therefore entirely wrong, also, and by rejoining the arguments of Heinlein, Hitler, and the NSDAP party you just confirm your bias in analysis. Historically, events can be commented according to preferences, but facts are fixed. Czechs were victims of the Allies, who did not keep their promises, and not responsible of any oppression of minority.
And nothing authorizes you to conclude

Thus, when the Czechs lost their own right to self-determination in 1939, they had only themselves and their hard-line leaders to blame.

[David Thompson]

Additional information on this subject can be found in the thread "Nazi destabilization of Czechoslovakia" at:

http://www.thirdreichforum.com/viewtopic.php?t=14407

[michael mills]

On the question of the German minority in Czechoslovakia, here is a very interesting comment from the introduction of the "Memoirs of Dr Eduard Benes", 1954, obviously not a pro-German book. The Introduction was written by Godfrey Lias, the translator of the benes memoirs.

Page ix:

Though Dr Benes gave his book the somewhat cumbrous sub-title of From Munich to New War and New Victory, its real theme is the revocation of the Munich settlement. In bringing this about, Dr Benes can claim both sole credit and complete success in almost every respect except one - he was quite unable to secure a modus vivendi between the Czech and German inhabitants of the country. Whose fault this was is best left to the reader to decide. The real issue between Dr Benes and Wenzel Jaksch, the Sudeten German Social Democratic leader, concerned the right of secession [my emphasis] - a right which even President Lincoln refused when faced with a similar demand. The German minority - President Benes wholly rejected the word Sudeten - demanded complete autonomy within the Czechoslovak State. The Czechs, under the leadership of the President, held this to mean that at any moment the Germans could walk out on their partners and adhere to the German Reich. They saw no secure future for a State so constituted. They therefore insisted on a unitary State in which the will of the majority was to prevail though minorities were to have full cultural rights and equal opportunity (as well as responsibility) with the majority. The Germans flatly rejected the idea of a unitary State because they had no faith in the Czech promises of equality.

The gap could not be bridged. The Czechs could not forget that the German population of Bohemia and Moravia had provided the excuse for Munich. The Germans could not forget either that the Czechs had not always treated them as equals in the period between the two world wars [my emphasis] or their own relationship to the Germans of Germany. In these circumstances it was inevitable that in the end the Czechs should demand the expulsion, or 'transfer', of the great mass of the germans. Dr benes makes it clear that the British, French and American Governments, as well as the Soviet Government, agreed to this policy. In the parallel case of the Magyar minority in Czechoslovakia, on the other hand, there was no such agreement although the problem was almost precisely similar. Some of the Magyars were driven out of Slovakia before the Allies intervened. Others were exchanged at a later date for Slovaks in Hungary. But most of the Magyar inhabitants of Slovakia are still there. But of the 3,500,000 Germans in the Republic at the end of the war only some 250,000 now remain.

The above remarkably fair and even-handed analysis by an admirer of Benes shows that the desire of the German minority in the provinces of Bohemia and Moravia for secession and unification of the territories in which they were the majority with the main territories belonging to the German people was not just something cooked up by Sudeten German Nazis, the followers of Henlein and Hitler. It was a desire shared by all the Sudeten Germans, even the leader of the Sudeten German Social Democrats, who was an anti-Nazi.

Here is what Elwyn Jones said of Jaksch, in the book I have already quoted:

Page 175:

In May of this year (1938) Jaksch, leader of the German Social Democratic Party, warned the Czech Government against the further tolerance of Nazi terrorism in the Sudeten areas.

"We call on the Minister of the Interior", he said, "to cease allowing the loyal and democratic elements among the Germans to be fair game for Fascist terrorists".

Jaksch was thus an anti-Nazi, and an opponent of Henlein. Yet after the war he still demanded the right of secession for the Sudeten Germans, and that was where he fell out with his fellow anti-Nazi Benes.

As I have said, it was the refusal of the Czech nationalists under Benes to grant to the Sudeten Germans their right to national self-determination that caused them to turn away from the Social Democrats and Agrarians, who despite their co-operation with the Czech Government were unable to obtain the right to secede, and to turn to the Sudeten Nazis under Henlein, who were able to obtain that right through their connections with Hitler. Thus, it was the stubbornness of the Czech chauvinists that led eventually to the extinction of their state. The fact that their treatment of their German minority was better than that accorded to most minorities does not alter that fact.

[witness]

Thus, it was the stubbornness of the Czech chauvinists that led eventually to the extinction of their state.

The Chechs offered to conduct plebicsite for the Suteten German to solve the question of seccession. No State could be expected to cede its territory ( and as alsaco correctly indicated the German population in those regions was mixed with the Slavic one. ) without at least raising the question of plebicsite .
And why is mills so obviously avoiding the question posed in my previous post ?
witness wrote :

..why the remaining
Czech ramp of Czechoslavakia was also swallowed by Hitler along with Sudeten regions..?

All the quotes brought up (and selective emphasizing from them ) above is nothing else but what is called "hair splitting "aimed to apologize
absolutely unjustified Nazi aggression against Czechoslovakia.

[alsaco]

The right to secession is the core of the problem.
Mr Mills mixes two period.

1919-1938, when germans in czechoslovakia were taking advantage of Wilson principles. They then stated that they had rights of a minority established on foreign soil, and asked application of a special status inside the czech territory. This was difficult, and the mixing of communities did need special provisions.
In fact the Wilson principles could not be organised, and having based the liquidation of the austrian empire on the right of autonomy for people was an error. The frictions just opened large the doors for racism and german expansion. Sudeten pretended they were a germanic nation, and asked for annexion by Germany, instead Austria they were part of.
Hitler used all possibilities offered to kill Czechoslovakia, and get rid of these slavic territories between Silesia and Ostmark.

1945-1946 was different. The Sudeten had not lost the war. They were not occupied before April 1945. They did stay home, and had kept their germanic pride.
They were no more a minority on foreign soil, but were living on germanised soil, under german administration.
They asked for the right to stay on the soil, and to secede to join Germany, while the Czechs considered that the Munich settlement had to be nullified. From the Wilson principle the germans had moved to Hitler's system, race does dominate ground. Even non nazis germans did accept this way of thinking, and, if accepting temporary partnership with czechs, kept hopes toward the big Reich.

Benes could evidently not accept this binational partition of Bohemia and Moravia, and expulsion of the german volksdeùtsche was the only solution


In fact, the basic error in all these ethnic mixed nations, Hungary, Slovakia, Rumania, Ukrainia was to try to implement the principle of nationality for people on a land which is geographically mixed. Building up a new distribution of frontiers requested a different way of living, which was not considered. A trial was made in Yugoslavia under Tito, but it cannot said the success followed, when you see the results in 1990.

[David Thompson]

Michael -- I think your essays in this thread have been well argued and expressed. I found myself nodding in agreement until I got to this part:

Thus, when the Czechs lost their own right to self-determination in 1939, they had only themselves and their hard-line leaders to blame.

and this:

Thus, it was the stubbornness of the Czech chauvinists that led eventually to the extinction of their state. The fact that their treatment of their German minority was better than that accorded to most minorities does not alter that fact.

I can't see any connection between German claims in the Sudetenland and the establishment of the Reich Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia. An arguable case can be made that the German annexation of the Sudetenland was righteous. You made that case, and I thought you did a good job of it. However, in my opinion the creation of the Reich Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia was a piece of imperialistic aggrandizement. I can't see how you could blame the Czechs for this episode of Nazi aggression.

[michael mills]

David,

If the Czech nationalists who founded the new state of Czechoslovakia had agreed in 1919 to the excision from the provinces of Bohemia and Moravia of the border areas with an ethnic German majority and their transfer to Germany and Austria, then there would have been no ongoing ethnic conflict in those areas between Germans and Czechs, and there would have been no casus belli in 1938 giving Germany an excuse for intervening in Czechoslovakia.

In fact, if in 1919 the Major Allied and Associated Powers had extended the principle of self-determination to the German people as a whole and acceded to the clearly expressed wish of the ethnic German majorities in the former Imperial Austrian provinces of Upper and Lower Austria, Tirol, Steiermark and Kärnten, and in the border areas of Bohemia and Moravia, to unite with Germany, then Hitler may never have come to power in Germany, without those ethnic grievances to play on.

The fact is that the Czech nationalists had an extremely hostile attitude toward the ethnic German minority in Bohemia and Moravia, as is illustrated by an incident that occurred in 1919, which I wager you have never even heard of.

When the Czech Legion, formed from former Austrian POWs in Russia, reached Khabarovsk in Siberia at the end of 1918, on their journey to Vladivostok for the purpose of returning to their homeland, they found there a Sudeten German brass band that had been touring Russia after the Peace of Brest-Litovsk. The commanders of the Czech Legion took the view that, since the musicians came from the provinces of Bohemia and Moravia, they should now become citizens of the new Czech state that they intended to establish. Accordingly, they demanded that the musicians swear an oath of allegiance to the Czech state. When the musicians, who considered themselves to be still citizens of Austria, refused, the Czech leaders decalred them to be traitors, and had them taken down to the bank of the River Amur and summarily shot.

Now, David, I am sure that there are many people who do not particularly like the traditional German oompah-pah music. But that is no reason to shoot the musicians.

My source for the above incident was a book written by General Konstantin Viacheslavovich Sakharov, one of the officers of the Kolchak army in Siberia. It included a photo of the band, and a memorial set up on the spot where they were shot. The book, in German, was in the possession of the general's grand-daughter, who used to live here in Canberra.

[David Thompson]

Michael -- Thanks for the interesting and grim story. You're right in thinking that I hadn't heard it before.

[wildboar]

Benoit Douville wrote:

Well, The Czech population suffered a lot when Heydrich was the leader and they suffered a lot more after the death of Heydrich, think about the tragedy of Lidice.

Actually, no.

The Czech population was relatively well treated, and enjoyed much the same conditions of life as the population of Germany proper, for example they had the same level of food rations. Bohemia/Moravia made a very important contribution to German war production, in particular the munitions plants at Skoda, and continued to do so right until the end of the war. The Czech workers at the factories were normal employees, and not conscripted labour; they continued to turn out weapons for the German army until the end of the war.

Heydrich did not treat the Czech population brutally. In fact, he was making great progress in reconciling them to German rule through a two-pronged policy of on the one hand increasing wages and the supply of goods, and on the other of cracking down very hard on black-marketeers, who were very unpopular. At the same time he was utterly ruthless with saboteurs and resisters; for example he executed a number of Czech officials and senior Czech army officers who were plotting to subvert German rule.

It was precisely because of Heydrich's success in cutting the ground from under what little resistance activity there was in Bohemia/Moravia, and of getting the workforce to produce efficiently and abundantly for the German war effort that the Czech Government-in-Exile set out to assassinate him. It was purely for propaganda reasons; the lack of Czech resistance, plus the fact that the Czechs seemed to be working hard for Germany, was severely undermining the credibility of the Czechs in Allied eyes.

Another reason for assassinating Heydrich was to provoke the German authorities to punish the Czech population, and thereby ruin the modus vivendi that Heydrich had created.

The Lidice atrocity in reprisal for the assassination of Heydrich stands out because it was pretty well unique in Bohemia/Moravia. There was very little resistance activity that needed to be suppressed, no large-scale anti-partisan warfare, no civil war between rival political groupings.

The atrocities committed at the very end of the war against both German soldiers and the large German ethnic minority were most likely the work of underground resistance organisations which came out of the woodwork when all the fighting was basically over. The population as a whole did not have any real reason to seek revenge, although they may have stood by and let the resistance activists commit atrocities in order to ingratiate themselves with the new rulers.

The same thing happened in France after the German retreat. The public reprisals against collaborators, including a wave of semi-legal executions, were carried out mainly by Communist activists who emerged once the Germans had left.

michael mills,
The entire atrocities carried against Germans Civilians & POWs was work of the Communist party goons.
The communist parties in eastern europe lacked mass-base & carried there work on moscow's dicktats and only agenda that communist had was to incite anti german hate orgy.
the entire idea of carrying atrocities against german civilians was of Mr.Beria chief of NVKD and czech communists eagerly carried out Beria's Diktat.
i would blame Czech Communist party & NVKD for all atrocities carried against Germans .
Red Army infact was not party to this nonsense.

[Glynwed]

Dear Michael, you clearly explain us why the German minority was treated down. “the treatment of the Sudeten Germans was not particularly good“ because…..they was treated bad. If the Czechoslovakia was a police state, please, explain me, what was the Deutsches Reich? Probably the brilliant democratic state in its perfect form?

If Czechs treated German minority so poor, its amazing, that Czechoslovakia became home to hundred German Jewish, social democrats and communists. Why they escape from their homeland to hostile anti-German country? Probably for it that ruling forces in Germany was so cheerful, that it can’t stand there, and need some threat?

If you are talking about Sudeten Germans, you should know that cca 90% of them support the SdP (pro-nazi party), the rest were communists, social democrats and Jews. Do you think that this 10% wants go to Deutsches Reich (even if they were Sudeten Germans)? This 10% support the Czech government, standing with arms on Czech army side (organisation Rotte Wehr). This 10% were democratic Germans.

If you say: “Sudeten Germans were subject to official harassment“, you should say Sudetendeutsche Partei (SdP). This party was from 1935 financial supported from Reich, and from the same year were their members in Czech parliament (44 members). On congress of SdP in Karlovy Vary 24.4. 1938 their leader Konrad Heinlein proclaimed autonomic-federalist requirements, which include right to free proclaim of Nazi ideology. One cut-off from his speech: "In National Socialism every German found realisation of concept of his live and moral. Sudeten-German community can’t stay and don’t stay away from philosophy, which today every Germans on the world profess with such gratification”

The Czech government than “under German pressure, was making a serious attempt", and offered to SdP (not to Sudeten Germans) summary 4 possibility to solve the situation. The last fourth plan, which includes the autonomy to Czech Germans, was 7.9. 1938 rejected by SdP. In the following days 12.-13.9. 1938 after Hitler’s speech in Norimberk, the “Heinleins” start a plot in border areas of Czechoslovakia – there were assaulted and tormented Czech police officers, Czechs officials, Czech railwayman, German communists and democrats and their families. For this actions was SdP in 16.9. 1938 forbidden, and from this point you can say that SdP “were subject to official harassment”. But until this period the SdP was legal (even for its nazi proclamation) part of Czech political live.

When Wehrmacht occupy border areas of Czechoslovakia, from this areas run some 150.000 people, on areas stay some 300.000 peoples with Czech nationality.

Konrad Henlein in his speech 4.3. 1941 said: "During several years the sudeten Germans can endanger interior stability of Czechoslovakia so principle and affect its interior condition so perfect, that it was ripe for liquidation. This all can be done only for that, that every sudeten Germans became national socialists…History will pass verdict one day: Sudeten Germans performed faithful and of own accord their duty.”

By the way, if you are talking about “The Czech majority in the Austrian provinces of Bohemia and Moravia”, you follow the sense of this countries as Habsburk´s did. Let me inform you, that in fact there were (in Austria-Hungary) Countries of Czech crown, which consisted from Czech kingdom, Moravian margrave and Silesian duchy. The Czech kingdom lasts from 13.century.

“The tradition is made more harassing by the fact that the Czech police mostly speak poor German.” And do you know, that some sudeten Germans has some problems with…German?