Sudeten German Party

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The Sudeten German Party (SdP) was founded under the leadership of Konrad Henlein on October 1, 1933, initially as the Sudeten German Home Front . Under pressure from the Czechoslovak government, she had to change her name to SdP on April 19, 1935 in order to take part in the upcoming parliamentary elections. In the last years of the first Czechoslovak Republic , with massive support from the National Socialist German Reich, it was gradually expanded into Hitler's “ fifth column ”.

history

After the First World War until 1933, the part of the Sudeten Germans that refused to cooperate with the newly formed Czechoslovak state was organized into two parties : the "value conservatives" in the German National Party (DNP) and the "radicals" in the German National Socialist Workers' Party ( DNSAP). But in 1933 these were banned by the Prague government.

On October 1, 1933, Konrad Henlein founded the Sudeten German Home Front in Eger with the aim of "bringing together all Germans" in the Czechoslovak Republic. Henlein emphasized the "Christian and German worldview" of the home front , which is based on the Czechoslovak state and which affirms the "basic idea of ​​democracy".

Conflicts soon arose between two groups within the Sudeten German home front . On the one hand stood the members of the Comradeship Association for National and Social Political Education (KB), an association of young Sudeten Germans founded in 1926 and 1930, who had devoted themselves to the teachings of Othmar Spann on the structure of the state . The most prominent representatives, alongside Henlein, were Walter Brand , Heinz Rutha and Walter Heinrich . On the other side stood the earlier supporters of the DNSAP, who gathered in the “Aufbruch” group, named after a magazine that Rudolf Jung co-founded. This group represented “ Greater German ”, anti-Semitic and racist views and was in close contact with the NSDAP in Germany from the start . An important representative alongside Jung was Hans Krebs . Initially, the leadership of the home front was in the hands of members of the KB.

Initially, the leadership of the Sudeten German Home Front rejected at least officially the National Socialism of Adolf Hitler from; many of their supporters were close to the traditions of the Habsburg Monarchy and, in the future, were more in favor of unification with neighboring Austria than with the German Empire .

Henlein initially demanded that Czechoslovakia keep its promise to build its state “like a second Switzerland”, in which all ethnic groups should be granted extensive autonomy. To this day it is controversial among historians to what extent this was a matter of conviction or - as Henlein later asserts - tactical behavior.

Shortly before the parliamentary elections in May 1935, the Sudeten German Home Front was renamed the Sudeten German Party (SdP) under pressure from the Czechoslovak government . The party won the most votes (1,249,530) of all parties nationwide and became the second largest party in the House of Representatives of the Czechoslovak Republic after the Czech farmers' party Republikánská strana zemědělského a malorolnického lidu ; it provided 44 seats (out of a total of 300) in the House of Representatives and 23 in the Senate. It won 68 percent of the Sudeten German votes. Until then, the farmers ' union , the social democratic and communist parties had dominated the parliamentary elections in the “Sudeten region” .

The election success made the SdP a factor in Hitler's foreign policy considerations. If the election campaign in 1935 was financed not least with funds from the Volksbund for Germanness abroad , the SdP now received far more funds from the Foreign Office , the German Labor Front and the four-year planning authority and deepened the party's dependence on the “Third Party Rich". In 1936, the “Aufbruch” group revolted against the party leadership and succeeded in having Brand replaced as Henlein's deputy in October 1936 by Karl Hermann Frank , who had switched to the radical camp. After Rutha was arrested in October 1937 on charges of homosexuality and a brawl between members of the SdP and the Czechoslovak police caused a sensation, Henlein also switched to the radicals. By November 19, 1937 at the latest, according to the historian Ralf Gebel , when Henlein first turned to Hitler and asked him to support the Sudeten Germans, the SdP had become Hitler's fifth column in Czechoslovakia. On March 28, 1938, the two politicians met. Henlein received instructions from Hitler to always make demands on the Czechoslovak government that it could not possibly accept.

In March 1938 the Association of Farmers was absorbed into the Sudeten German Party, and the members of the German Christian Social People's Party also joined the SdP. At the same time, there was pressure on the Germans in the Czechoslovak Republic to join the party. The membership of the SdP, which on December 31, 1936 was 459,833, rose from 548,338 on December 31, 1937 to 759,289 in March 1938 and 1,047,178 a month later. At the behest of Hitler, the SdP adopted the Karlovy Vary program on April 24, 1938 . The fulfillment of the extensive autonomy rights demanded in it for the German minority, for example a separate administrative apparatus, would have meant the end of the Czechoslovak state in its previous form; it was rejected by the Czechoslovak government.

A short time later, the party won around 90 percent of the Sudeten German votes in local elections - which already took place in a climate of intimidation towards dissenters.

In May 1938 the volunteer German protection service (FS) was formed, which emerged from the security service of the SdP.

In October 1938 - after the incorporation of the Sudeten areas as Reichsgau Sudetenland into the German Reich as a result of the Munich Agreement  - the Sudeten German Party was directly subordinated to the NSDAP. A last party congress was held in Aussig on October 16, 1938 . On November 5, 1938, the party in Reichenberg was declared dissolved and the takeover into the NSDAP was announced. Since Hitler and some other leading National Socialists (e.g. Rudolf Heß and Reinhard Heydrich ) still mistrusted the SdP and considered it unreliable from an ideological point of view, the 1.35 million SdP members were not automatically taken over. They were able to apply for membership in the NSDAP, which ultimately took on around 520,000 members from the ranks of the SdP.

The wing struggles from the early days of the movement continued after the annexation of the Sudeten areas to the Greater German Reich , as influential representatives of the Comradeship Association - including Walter Brand  - were subjected to persecution by the state and the party despite outwardly only slight deviation from the National Socialist ideology. At the beginning of 1940, trials of some KB members were carried out in Dresden for alleged homosexuality.

As a popular leader of the Sudeten Germans, the SdP chairman Konrad Henlein was exempt from persecution. He received the title of Gauleiter and Reich Governor of the German Reichsgau Sudetenland and was appointed " SS Honorary Leader" by Heinrich Himmler with the rank of SS-Obergruppenführer. This meant that Henlein was one of the few non-members of the SS who was allowed to wear the SS uniform; However, he also actively joined the SS and NSDAP in 1939. At Reinhard Heydrich's instigation, however, Henlein noticeably lost influence during the Second World War.

literature

Web links

Commons : Sudeten German Party  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Jörg Osterloh: Sudeten German Home Front . In: Wolfgang Benz (Hrsg.): Handbuch des Antisemitismus . Volume 5: Organizations, Institutions, Movements . W. de Gruyter, Berlin 2012, p. 591.
  2. ↑ a b c d e Gebel: "Heim ins Reich!" 1999, p. 129.
  3. ↑ Heinz Höhne : “Kohen” cannot be grasped - two studies about Konrad Henlein - spy of the British and Gauleiter of the Sudetenland . In: Die Welt , August 21, 1999
  4. ↑ Alena Mípiková, Dieter Segert: Republic under pressure . In: Information on political education , issue 276, November 6, 2002.
  5. ↑ Gebel: “Heim ins Reich!” 1999, pp. 51–55, quoted in. P. 55.
  6. ^ The Munich Agreement . In: Living Museum Online, LeMO
  7. ^ Jörg Osterloh: Sudeten German Home Front . In: Wolfgang Benz (Hrsg.): Handbuch des Antisemitismus. Vol. 5. Organizations, institutions, movements . W. de Gruyter, Berlin 2012, p. 592.
  8. ↑ Detlef Brandes: "Senseless frenzy and excessive intimidation". The Sudeten Germans in 1938 . (PDF) In: Yearbook of Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf 2004. Heinrich Heine University, Düsseldorf 2005, p. 232.