Masses of Germans, all of them performing the Nazi salute
For an eight-year-old child it must have been a traumatizing experience, or at least that is how Mrs Doležalová describes it many years later. In 1938 she lived with her parents in Hostouň, in the Šumava region. In the border areas, the pre-war situation escalated very quickly. “At the time, the situation regarding Hitler was serious and even in Hostouň, members of the Sudeten German Party organized meetings for local Sudeten Germans. I can still remember it clearly, Henlein had arrived and gave them speech. There was a long square which was crowded with Germans. First they were marching, then they got some goulash and they were doing the Nazi salute. It was a terrible experience.” Mrs Doležalová was watching the whole situation with some adult Czechs who had gathered next to the post office. “We were watching it with great concern and all around us were masses of Germans, all of them performing the Nazi salute, and food was falling from some of their mouths.”
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Sudetendeutsche Partei (SdP)
The Nazi power grab in Germany inspired the nationalist representatives of the Sudeten Germans to found a uniform national movement in Czechoslovakia as well. As a result, the Sudeten German Patriotic Front (Sudetendeutsche Heimatsfront, SHF) was formed under the leadership of Konrad Henlein, former Turner (gymnast) from Aš, in the autumn of 1933. Shortly before the parliamentary election in the spring of 1935, it adopted the Sudeten German Party (Sudetendeutsche Partei, SdP) name since as a movement (a loose political group) it would been excluded from the election. The party had no consistent agenda. Instead, it presented various conditional requirements adapted to the current political developments. The concerns that the party might be prohibited and the need for tangible results in the borderland led to its initial co-operation with the Czechoslovak government. The SdP was managed by the central secretariat (Arbeitsamt) residing in Prague and Cheb. The party expended high amounts on propaganda. The Nazis subsidized its costly activities through the German embassy. In the east part of the country, the SdP worked closely with the Carpathian German Party (Karpathendeutsche Partei, KdP). The core members were the Turnern, middle class, students and workers. SdP members were under military discipline and had to observe the leadership principle. The extraordinary economic hardships of the borderland citizens as a result of the economic crisis influenced the results of the 1935 parliamentary election. SdP excelled in using social demagogy tactics in the election (and later). Despite that – or because of that – its election success was unexpectedly triumphant: In terms of all votes submitted, it won the election in all of Czechoslovakia. The ultimate goal of SdP policy was not just the self-determination of the German minority in Czechoslovakia. Its leading politicians pursued the destabilisation of the country, aiming to annex the borderland areas to the Nazi Germany. The party representatives tried to stir uprising in the borderland in mid-September 1938 and fled to Germany. The government dissolved the Henlein party on 17 September 1938 for demonstrated subversive activity. Following the Munich developments, SdP merged with Germany’s NSDAP.
