DETLEF BRANDES National and International Planning of the 'Transfer' of Germans from Czechoslovakia and Poland
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DETLEF BRANDES National and International Planning of the 'Transfer' of Germans from Czechoslovakia and Poland in RICHARD BESSEL AND CLAUDIA B. HAAKE (eds.), Removing Peoples. Forced Removal in the Modern World (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009) pp. 281–296 ISBN: 978 0 199 56195 7 The following PDF is published under a Creative Commons CC BY-NC-ND licence. Anyone may freely read, download, distribute, and make the work available to the public in printed or electronic form provided that appropriate credit is given. However, no commercial use is allowed and the work may not be altered or transformed, or serve as the basis for a derivative work. The publication rights for this volume have formally reverted from Oxford University Press to the German Historical Institute London. All reasonable effort has been made to contact any further copyright holders in this volume. Any objections to this material being published online under open access should be addressed to the German Historical Institute London. DOI: 11 National and International Planning of the 'Transfer' of Germans from Czechoslovakia and Poland DETLEF BRANDES The Effects ef National Socialist Policy The conflicts between Germans, Poles, and Czechs have a long history. In Prussia's eastern provinces national conflicts between Poles and Germans had existed at least since the partitions of Poland at the end of the eighteenth century. In the Bohemian lands national quarrels between Czechs and Germans had grad- ually exacerbated other, mainly social, differences only since 1848. After the establishment of national states on the eastern borders of Germany, these conflicts became a problem of foreign relations. About half of the German minority in Poland emigrated to Germany, partly voluntarily and partly reacting to numerous oppressive measures introduced by the new authorities in the years following the foundation of the new Polish Republic in 1918. The national associations of the Germans remaining in Poland were supported by the Weimar Republic; after 1933 they declared themselves for the National Socialist regime. Of the Sudeten Germans, although they protested against their incorpo- ration into the Czechoslovak Republic, only a few emigrated to Austria or Germany. Those German political parties which were prepared to collaborate actively with the Czechoslovak govern- ment still managed to attract three-quarters of the German votes in 1929. This changed after 1933. At the next parliamentary elections, in 1935, the newly founded nationalistic and anti-liberal Sudeten German Party was supported by two-thirds of the Germans. In November 1937 its leader, Konrad Henlein, secretly placed his party at Hitler's disposal for the smashing of Czechoslovakia. His public demands DETLEF BRANDES for territorial autonomy were calculated in such a way that the government would not be able to meet them. In March 1938 the Anschluss of Austria to the German Reich weakened the strategic position of Czechoslovakia, as the belt of fortifications, still under construction, only went through the hinterland of the border with Germany and not along the border with Austria. In the communal elections in May andJune 1938 the Sudeten German Party won a startling nine-tenths of the German vote, though in the meantime it had openly professed itself to National Socialism. When the government, contrary to all expectations, offered to form a German federal entity within Czechoslovakia with far- reaching competences, Henlein broke off the negotiations under a pretext and proclaimed: 'We want home into the Reich.' ('Wir wollen heim ins Reich.') From these developments not only the Poles and Czechs, but also the governments of the great powers and their advisers, concluded that they could not count on enduring loyalty of the German minorities to the Czechoslovak and Polish republics at any time in the future. Moreover, it was a prevalent opinion that the stipulations for the protection of minorities adopted at the Paris Peace Conference had not only proved a failure, but had also disturbed the integration of the national minorities into the successor states. 1 The Czechoslovak crisis was solved by the agreement of Britain, France, and Italy to the German annexation of the Sudeten areas at the conference in Munich. As a result of the Agreement of 29 September 1938 the strategic position of the Czechoslovak Republic became so completely hopeless that a truncated Czechoslovakia was unable to offer resistance to its dismemberment, to the German occupation of the western part of the republic in March 1939, and to the establishment of the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia. For the Polish Republic, facing a German semicircle extend- ing from East Prussia to Upper Silesia after the last post-war Polish-German territorial quarrel had been settled in 1921 had already been difficult enough. With the German occupation of the western part of Czechoslovakia, Poland's military position 1 Detlef Brandes, Der Weg zur Vertreibung 1938-194s; Plane und Entscheidungen zum 'Transfer' der Deutschen aus der Tscheclwswwakei und aus Polen (2nd edn., Munich, 2005). As the contents of my monograph are easily accessible by subject, name, and place indexes, foot- notes here will be kept to a minimum. Planning of the 'Transfer' of Germans 283 became untenable. Following the surprisingly quick defeat of September 1939, the question of a revision of the boundaries in the west and north naturally came to play a much greater role in Polish thinking than had been the case in the inter-war period, when political discussions focused on the Polish mission in the east. The wartime Czechoslovak resistance at home and abroad likewise looked for guarantees against a repetition of the Anschluss and the German annexation of the border areas. Economic exploitation, cultural suppression, forced labour, hostage-taking, executions as reprisals for acts of resistance, and the mass murder of the Jews were common features of the German policy towards Poland and Czechoslovakia. The long- term objectives included the assimilation of those Poles and Czechs considered racially suitable to be Germanized and the deportation of the rest to the east. In terms of the policy actually carried out, however, the differences were significant. In Poland one million people-more than one and a half million when we add the inhabitants of Warsaw evacuated after the uprising of autumn 1944-lost their homes by displacement, and more than 400,000 so-called 'ethnic Germans' from the Baltic states, Bessarabia, and eastern Poland were settled in the 'incorporated territories' of western Poland. Almost three million Poles from these incorporated areas and the General Government were compelled to perform forced labour.2 With minor exceptions, the Czechs were spared displacement from their homes and the settling of 'ethnic Germans' in their place. Because of the impor- tance of the heavy industry of the so-called Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia, German policy towards the Czechs was generally more moderate throughout the war. 3 Nevertheless, shortly after his accession as acting Reichs- protector, Reinhard Heydrich, the chief of the Security Police and the SS, had more than 400 people shot. 4 The Foreign Press and Research Service, a team of scholarly advisers to the British Foreign Office, wrote in February 1942: 'If the Heydrich policy is continued in the "Protectorate" it may become true, as it is 2 Czeslaw Madajczyk, Die Okkupationspolitik Nazideutschlands in Polen 19Jfrl945 (Berlin, 1987). 3 DetlefBrandes, Die Tschechen unter deutschem Protektorat 1939-1945, 2 vols. (Munich, 1969, 1975). 4 Ibid. 207-12. DETLEF BRANDES certainly true for Poland, that the life and security of any German left in an area restored to Czechoslovakia will be in such danger that facilities for departure would be the best service which could be rendered to the Germans themselves.' 5 After the assassination of Heydrich, another 1,700 people were murdered, among them the men and children from the village of Lidice, while the women were deported to a concentration camp. Even greater in its impact on the Czech hatred of the Germans was the rumour spread by the occupation authorities that every tenth Czech was to be shot if the assassins were not handed over.6 Plans and Decisions on the 'Transfer' Beginning in October 1939, when the Polish Foreign Minister raised the question of the annexation of East Prussia with the British, the Polish government was always a few steps ahead of its Czechoslovak counterpart with its requests for frontier rectifica- tions and expulsion of the Germans. Under the influence of the battle of Britain, the inclination to favour radical anti-German solutions increased, not only among the British population in general but also among the officials of the British Foreign Office. Encouraged by this atmosphere, the Polish government submit- ted a memorandum to the Foreign Office detailing its demands for the annexation of East Prussia, Danzig, and Upper Silesia, a shortening of the Polish western frontier, and the transfer of the German population out of the old and new Polish territories. In alliance with Czechoslovakia, it argued, Poland would replace France as Great Britain's most important partner in maintaining security on the Continent. Hence its economic and strategic posi- tion needed to be strengthened. For its part, the Polish govern- ment considered Benes's plans for the solution of the Sudeten German problem to be too moderate. As early as September 1938 Edvard Benes had reacted to the 'home into the Reich' slogan of the Sudeten German Party, whose groups were trying to seize power in Sudeten German villages and towns at that time, by submitting a secret proposal to 5 National Archive, FO 371/30930, C 2167/241/IB, Memorandum of the Foreign Research and Press Service (Arnold]. Toynbee) to Foreign Office (Ronald), 12 Feb. 1942. 6 Brandes, Di.e Tschechen unter deutschem Protektorat, 254-67.