Germans of Czechoslovakia : What Happened?

Comments · 1.6K

• ML

  @MLaserHistory · 3 years ago (edited) · pinned

  :yt:Extra Information &amp; Clarifications :yt:<br><br>Sources for all my videos are in the bibliography of my scripts all available to download for FREE on my Patreon. <a href="https://www.patreon.com/mlaser?filters[tag]=script">https://www.patreon.com/mlaser?filters[tag]=script</a><br><br><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wcdOvAYNDMo&amp;t=5">0:05</a> In the shown map I am not accounting for post war border changes like the land transfer between Czechoslovakia &amp; Poland and or Hungary &amp; Austria. Even though at some points I will be talking about 1918 or 1920, before all the border disputes in Central Europe had been settled, the maps will only reflect the final state of Central European borders. <br> <br><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wcdOvAYNDMo&amp;t=26">0:26</a> The Czech part of the map shows the 1921 census &amp; the Slovak 1910 census (I was unable to get hold of the Slovak 1921 regional data. There was a 30% decrees in the number of Germans in Slovakia between the 1910 &amp; 1921 censuses. This can easily be explained by the fact that around 65% of Germans living in Slovakia were natively bilingual) while the 3.2 million number comes from the German population of Czechoslovakia in 1938. The number of Germans in the 1921 census was 3.123 million <br> <br><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wcdOvAYNDMo&amp;t=75">1:15</a> This map is based on the 1930s Czechoslovak census &amp; was made based on an amazing map made by the Czechoslovak ministry of defence in the 1930s <br> <br><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wcdOvAYNDMo&amp;t=122">2:02</a> There was a bunch of contention within the socialist &amp; communist parties of Czechoslovakia, including the ones mentioned, on the grounds of how much socialist/communist they should be. For example, Czechoslovak Social Democratic Workers Party were mostly light socialist &amp; some more radical people split from the party to form a Communist party. Such splitting of leftist parties &amp; forming of new parties &amp; dissolution of other parties was very common in interwar Czechoslovakia. However, all of these parties were more concerned with the &quot;class struggle&quot; rather than ethnic struggle <br> <br><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wcdOvAYNDMo&amp;t=237">3:57</a> Ethnicity is a social construct, as such it can form in different ways (there isn&apos;t one inevitable outcome) &amp; can be malleable. The Czech &amp; Slovak ethnic identities of today were much more fluid in the 19th &amp; 20th century &amp; the idea that Czechs are separate from the Slovaks wasn&apos;t the only idea at the time. Some people which we would today define as Czechs &amp; Slovaks, all the way in the medieval era, believed themselves to be of one ethnic group. Modern believers of this idea, as ethnic identities began to be far more important during the modern period, tried to form one official united ethnic identity which included both Czechs &amp; Slovaks (they tried this through News Paper like Hlas). During this time other Czechs &amp; Slovaks (although they wouldn&apos;t want to be called that) even flirted with Pan-Slavism i.e. all Slavs are the same &amp; one ethnicity. Anyways, the Czechoslovak ethnic proponents partially succeeded as the idea of a Czechoslovak ethnicity, composed of two subgroups, was quite widespread in usage during the first Czechoslovak Republic. There were people, like the first president of Czechoslovakia, who identified as Czechoslovak. However, over time, especially after the Slovak Fascist State, the idea of Czechoslovak ethnicity fell out of use, &amp; by the 1990s it was so well out of use that the splitting of the nation, based largely on an idea of separate ethnic identities, was possible. However, none of these later developments detract from the fact that a Czechoslovak ethnic identity did exist &amp; was used by both Czechs &amp; Slovaks during the First Republic. That is why it&apos;s used in this video <br> <br><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wcdOvAYNDMo&amp;t=314">5:14</a> Here I used the phrase German-speaking as opposed to just German. This is because it was language not ethnicity that was used in the AH&apos;s censuses that were used to determine which areas had a German majority &amp; which had a Czech <br> <br><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wcdOvAYNDMo&amp;t=544">9:04</a> What is interesting here is that Kramar was considered as one of the more chauvinistic Czechoslovak politicians &amp; was far more nationalistic than, for example, Masarik or Benes. However, even he, as you can see with his quote, was against violent attacks on Germans &amp; their property &amp; understood the importance of not antagonising the Germans <br><br><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wcdOvAYNDMo&amp;t=655">10:55</a> There were few instances of these terms being used before 1918 but they were never used by the Czechoslovak Germans themselves. It was only after the formation of Czechoslovakia that these terms started to be used as ethnic identifiers by the Germans of Czechia &amp; Slovakia <br> <br><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wcdOvAYNDMo&amp;t=811">13:31</a> The 20% mark wasn&apos;t defined in the constitution. It was left open in order to be defined later when or if the minority parties were willing to negotiate. This didn&apos;t happen as the minority parties viewed any negotiation as admitting defeat, &amp; so the old 20% standard of the Austro-Hungarian Empire was adopted as the mark for Czechoslovakia as it was deemed to be the most &quot;equal&quot; solution <br> <br><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wcdOvAYNDMo&amp;t=933">15:33</a> The one gripe that everyone keeps holding against Masaryk was that he called the Germans &apos;colonists&apos; &amp; &apos;settlers&apos; in Czechoslovakia during his December 1918 speech to the nation called &apos;první poselství&apos;. However, in that same speech Masaryk called for ethnic unity &amp; for creating &quot;free self-governing citizenship&quot; composed of all &quot;equal&quot; ethnic groups, including Germans, Hungarians, &amp; Rusyns. His statement of calling German &apos;colonists&apos; &amp; &apos;settlers&apos; wasn&apos;t meant to incite ideas of deportation or ethnic cleansing, it was simply a statement of the historical reality. Nevertheless, the statement was very controversial at the time &amp; Masaryk did later, during a newspaper interview, apologise to the Sudeten Germans for saying it. Masaryk never, at any point, called for ethnic cleansing &amp; his entire agenda was always one of co-prosperity &amp; interethnic unity in the country <br> <br><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wcdOvAYNDMo&amp;t=1179">19:39</a> Confusingly all the Nazi parties in the various countries retained the same name. So instead of calling the German, Czechoslovak, &amp; Austrian Nazis the same name I will specify which country they&apos;re from <br> <br><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wcdOvAYNDMo&amp;t=1259">20:59</a> The Czechoslovak Nazi party was technically able to get a bit more % of the vote then just 3.5 as they ran on a joined election ticket with the German National Party. All together both parties manage to score a bit over 5% of the Czechoslovak vote <br> <br><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wcdOvAYNDMo&amp;t=1307">21:47</a> The Nazis knew the Czechoslovak government was going to ban &amp; dissolve them &amp; before the ruling could pass through the parliament they preemptively dissolved themselves. So &quot;technically&quot; they weren&apos;t dissolved by Czechoslovakia but they were banned &amp; the funds of the paramilitary Volkssport were seized <br> <br><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wcdOvAYNDMo&amp;t=1368">22:48</a> Estimated because there are no unemployment figures that differentiate among ethnicity. Also, it must be stated that the reasons which made the Germans suffer more during the great depression also made their economic recovery after the great depression, more specifically after 1937, faster <br> <br><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wcdOvAYNDMo&amp;t=1711">28:31</a> I am skipping over a lot of Czechoslovak internal politics here because I found them to be irrelevant in the grand scheme of things. Nothing, other than western intervention, would have prevented the conquest of Czechoslovakia by Germany <br> <br><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wcdOvAYNDMo&amp;t=1705">28:25</a> What would become the Munich agreement was already being negotiated before the September coup attempt but the uprising was the final nail in the coffin for the allied decision <br> <br><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wcdOvAYNDMo&amp;t=1765">29:25</a> However, any planned large-scale settlement of Germans in Czechia never happened due to the war <br> <br><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wcdOvAYNDMo&amp;t=1860">31:00</a> I will admit that stating that one terrible experience isn’t as bad as another terrible experience is missing the point a bit <br> <br><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wcdOvAYNDMo&amp;t=1878">31:18</a> Population changes shown on screen are estimates so you will see a bit different numbers from various sources. However, every single source will agree that the population of Czechia during the war grew while the populations of Poland &amp; Ukraine drastically fell <br> <br><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wcdOvAYNDMo&amp;t=2025">33:45</a> The scale &amp; planned execution of this idea changed on an almost monthly bases depending on various conversations, state of the war, &amp; support or reluctance from the allies. At one point in 1941-2 Benes even tabled the idea of autonomous German parts within Czechoslovakia, with expulsion of only the members of the Nazi party (which at most would be 20% of the German Czechoslovak population). However, this got rejected by the Czechoslovak nationalistic elements. On the other hand a lot of the Sudeten Germans in exile also rejected various proposals from the Czechoslovak government in exile, basically, for the most part, no one was willing to compromise <br> <br><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wcdOvAYNDMo&amp;t=2025">33:45</a> There&apos;s far more nuanced diplomacy happening here. For example, the allies, including UK &amp; USA, agreed earlier in 1942 to an organized expulsion of Germans but by 1944-5 UK &amp; USA were reluctant to officially sanction it. Basically there was a lot of backroom diplomacy with secret deals being made &amp; others being broken. But in broad strokes what I talk about in the video is accurate <br> <br><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wcdOvAYNDMo&amp;t=2182">36:22</a> The Russian, &amp; in parts of Western Czechia, US troops sometimes tried to mediate the tensions between the German civilians &amp; Czechoslovak militias but the troops were not everywhere, especially not in rural towns &amp; villages, &amp; even if they were, they would often let the locals do what they want &amp; not interfere <br> <br><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wcdOvAYNDMo&amp;t=2308">38:28</a> Some of these camps, after 1948, were also used by the communist as gulags <br> <br><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wcdOvAYNDMo&amp;t=2325">38:45</a> The labor camp showen was a German labor camp in Petrzalka not Pezinok. A picture of the Pezinok labor camp doesn&apos;t exist <br> <br><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wcdOvAYNDMo&amp;t=2340">39:00</a> The picture is of a camp in Terezin which was built by the Nazis &amp; later used by the Czechoslovaks. This is not a picture of the camp in Budejovice (no pictures of it exist), it is only here to serve as a visual representation <br> <br>There were many other instances of brutality &amp; executions of the Germans than I have mentioned here (I cannot mention everything). Like, for example, the execution of around 100 Hauerland Germans in today&apos;s Slovakia, or the roughly 1000 Germans shot dead in Postoloprty, etc.n

  233

• AR

  @archstanton3931 · 3 years ago

  My grandfather was a Sudeten German. &nbsp;When his family was exiled, he left a harmonica with a Czech neighbor, and decades later he returned to his hometown as an adult to find that she not only lived in the same house, but had kept the harmonica for all those years.

  3.9K

• AU

  @auto952 · 3 years ago

  Do what happened to the Greeks of Constantinople/Istanbul, culminating in the Istanbul Pogrom of 1955. Greeks made up 31% of the city&apos;s population in 1919, when Turks made 38%. It&apos;s a very interesting story.

  1.4K

• MG

  @mg4361 · 3 years ago

  Something similar was going on in eastern Croatia (Slavonia) and northern Serbia (Vojvodina) at the time. My grandma&apos;s family got a house and land grant in Slavonia, but when they got there, they found the german family that owned the farm shot dead and deposeted on the dung heap. They didn&apos;t want to live in a place obtained in such a way and went back to their village in the mountains of south Croatia.

  1.1K

• SE

  @sebastiankala1093 · 2 years ago

  Though I&apos;m slovak, my grandpa was a Moravian. After the war his parents were given a house and land in the Sudetes. One night, they found an old man walking around their house. When my great-grandma asked who is he, and what he wants on their property, he calmed her down and said, that he just wanted to see his old home. They got to talk, grandma invited him inside. He was one of the germans, who were expeled. He even showed her, where he hid some of their valuables, which were still there. So grandma let him take it. Grandpa was always telling me this story, because his parents felt very sorry for the man and guilty for living in the house, which he built.

  353

• FL

  @flopunkt3665 · 2 years ago

  In Bavaria we have entire towns founded by Sudeten Germans after the war, like Neu-Gablonz, Waldkraiburg or Traunreut. And lots of cities often have an area called &quot;Neue Heimat&quot; (new home). A large part of the Bavarian population descends from Sudeten Germans today, and Bavaria has a population larger than that of Austria or the Czech Republic.

  496

• JA

  @JayTeeDE · 2 years ago

  My grandpas family was expelled from the Sudetenland, but he always had a surprisingly positive experience with the Czechs that got the house, to an extend that other Germans from the region are confused. The family let my grand-grandpa take valuable family stuff from the house over the border and my grandparents now often visit. We children even got socks knitted by a Czech grandma, who sadly passed away around 3 years ago. If anything he only had a bad experience with the Soviets, who sadly shot the family dog (who was not attacking them and in their shed).<br><br>Ironically he faced discrimination by other school kids in East Germany for being &quot;foreign&quot;. I think we can just agree, that its bad to to ethnic cleansing. Its not a good look, if people use Nazi tactics to Germans that were expelled.

  515

• MI

  @michaelmcnally9737 · 3 years ago

  Using the YouTube logo to censor the forbidden symbol was genius

  434

• IR

  @irena4545 · 2 years ago

  A very good video, though one point seems to be missing - the aftermath of the München Agreement when not only the Sudets were ceded to Germany but the Czech population of the region was expelled. Not so brutally and forcibly, not at such a short notice, but expelled they were, and those who stayed were subject to ethnic prosecution. Just one more piece to the mosaic.<br>Also, after the Velvet Revolution, the topic was opened and quite widely discussed throughout the 1990s, it&apos;s not like it&apos;s been all hush-hush.

  158

• AR

  @Archerman-bd1nr · 2 years ago

  My grandfather &nbsp;lived in Teplice (Teplitz). They were ethnicaly czech but spoke german (czech as well they were bilingual). After 1938 anexation his grandma switched nationalities from czech to german whitch resulted in the death of his father and brother in Stalingrad. Suprisingly after the war (mainly due to speaking czech) they were able to stay here and I also live in Teplice to this day. It was strong when he said when hitler came I had to forgot czech and when communists came I had to forgot german.

  262

• ME

  @merxbj · 3 years ago

  Great video! My grandfather was Sudeten German (*1924) and was pretty much bilingual. On the other hand, his mother (I was fortunate enough to meet her when I was still very young) still spoke rather broken Czech. Her husband was actually politically active and very much anti-Hitler. As a result, he ended up in a concentration camp, managed to survive for a couple of years but died shortly after his release. After the war, they wanted to deport the family from their house but my great grand mother successfully pleaded for an exception. However, all their friends and neighbors from the village either died during the WW2 or if they survived, they got deported. It must have been surreal to watch the new “owners” “occupy” their homes.

  371

• LO

  @loptater9681 · 3 years ago

  As a descendent of Sudeten Germans, I greatly appreciate this video since the topic is basically unknown outside Germany and Czechia (and even there lots of folks don&apos;t know anything about it). My grandparents continue to have nightmares about the explusion and refused to watch any news about the War in Ukraine because &quot;they had already seen enough dead bodies during their youth&quot;.<br>What happened between our people was horrible and we can all be glad to finally live peacefully next to one another. May those times never repeat again.

  474