The Sudeten German Tragedy [Dr. Austin J. App]

[Ahnenerbe]

FOREWORD. This booklet on the tragedy of the Sudeten Germans is a labor of love and a call for truth and justice. As a child I used to listen enthralled as my mother and father harmonized the Boehmerwald song: "Just a last time, 0 Lord, grant I may see again, My home and homeland in the Boehmerwald."

At that time, before World War I, the Sudeten Germans of what in 1919 became Czechoslovakia were among the most blessed people in the world. Under the Hapsburgs nobody even dreamed of an Iron Curtain! Tragedy began when in 1919 the "Champions of Democracy" tore the Sudeten Germans from Austria.

Then, after another Allied crusade for "freedom," they became the victims of the most brutal atrocity, when the Czech "Democrats" drove three million of them from their homelands and did 241,000 of them to death. Since then the Boehmerwald is cut off from the West like a concentration camp with barbed wire entaglements.

The Sudeten Germans, one of the most Christian and most decent people of the world, had become the unluckiest. That is why I wrote this booklet, and hope you, who read it, will take its message to heart. The book just sort of grew, and if there are some overlappings I hope you will bear with them.

It started when the magazine reason (Santa Barbara, California, 93101) invited me to write a scholarly article on "The Sudeten-German Tragedy." This was published in February, 1976 (pages 29-31). With permission of reason it is here Section I.

The second section, entitled, "The Sudeten Germans from Munich to Potsdam" was first published in two parts in Steppingstones (Box 612, Silver Spring, Maryland 20901. Part I, Spring, 1977; Part 11, Summer, 1978). To both reason and Steppingstones I give thanks.

The third section, "The Sudeten Germans from Potsdam to the Present," is here published for the first time. It more especially features the actual brutality of the expulsion and hopefully is not too schocking.

In this connection an apology is due to that minority of Czechs who did not approve of or participate in the expulsion atrocity the majority of seven million Czechs committed.

Although Moscow and Tel Aviv and New York were the real instigators, the Czech people were the ones who visibly up-rooted and robbed the Sudeten Germans and murdered 241,000 of them, and what women they did no~ rape they handed over to the Soviet soldiers to rape.

In describing such a holocaust one cannot identify every guilty one by name and is forced to do so collectively as "Czechs." May the merciful God reward such of them who were not guilty - or who have since repented.

And may these more and more give proof .of their Christianity by speaking up for restitution to the Sudeten Germans of their homelands and their homes in freedom.

When enough of them so speak up, whatever stigma now attaches to the Czechs will soon be erased and Central Europe will come to enjoy again the Christian amity that prevailed before Wilson and Roosevelt "made democracy work" there by betraying those Christian peoples to the atheistic bolsheviks.

Above all may this booklet induce us Americans to raise our voices to demand truth and justice for the Sudeten people, the restitution to them of their homes and homelands in the Boehmerwald!

Download 'The Sudeten German Tragedy'

About the Author: Dr. App, born and raised in Wisconsin, holds an M.A. and a Ph.D. degree in English literature from the Catholic University of America, Washington, D.C., was instructor or professor of English at several colleges, including the Catholic University, the University of Scranton, LaSalle College.

He has written hundreds of articles and reviews, and eight books, and has published many pamphlets. In 1939 he was awarded the University of Scranton Faculty Gold Medal as "outstanding educator of men." In 1940-41 he was president of the Debating Association of Pennsylvania Colleges.

In February, 1975, he was awarded the "European Freedom Prize" of DM 10,000 in Munich, Germany, by the Deutsche Volksunion and the Deutsche National Zeitung. For ten years he was chairman of the Pastorius Unit of the Steuben Society, Philadelphia; for six years National President of the Federation of American Citizens of German Decent, of which he is still honorary president.

For several years he was on the speaker's bureau of the John Birch Society. He is an honorary member of the German-American National Congress. For several years he was chairman of the Greater Philadelphia Captive Nations Committee.

He considers the liberation of these nation, including the Soviet Zone of Germany, and the dissolution of the Soviet Russian colonialism the only hope for preventing World War Ill. In 1968, after twenty years, he retired from LaSalle College, Philadelphia, where he had been associate professor of English.

Since then he has been speaking, writing, and publishing. His last full-length book was Autobiography: GermanAmerican Voice for Truth and Justice (308 pages, 25 illustrations, index, $6.50).

[Faust]

As I have read just the preface and not the entire book (which I don't find to be interesting after all), I may say it defends a classic stance of Germans being displaced and sometimes slaughtered (the mentioned figure of 200.000 will be in fact much lower) without an obvious reason. The inevitable question is what would any other nation do with it's minority that feels superior and hateful towards the majority and acted accordingly during the whole period of occupation? The atrocities committed by certain paramilitary groups and outraged inhabitants (who had been displaced from the region by the German occupation forces before the WW2) are currently being seen as a shameful moment of the Czech national history that no one is proud about.

[Juthunge]

As I have read just the preface and not the entire book (which I don't find to be interesting after all), I may say it defends a classic stance of Germans being displaced and sometimes slaughtered (the mentioned figure of 200.000 will be in fact much lower) without an obvious reason.

The revised lower numbers are from a joint Czech-German commission after 1990 and they base these 15.000-30.000 deaths on “official”, certified deaths. Needless to say, that at this time, directly after the war, little official record would and could be kept.

On the other hand, the figure of 200.000 missing Sudeten Germans, whose fate has never been solved, is based on a detailed German study from 1958, factoring into it population census, war casualties, emigration etc.
I’d much rather trust an older study, much closer to the relevant time span, than a politically biased study from 50 years later, where the source situation will hardly be better than back then. That the death toll was lower than 100.000, is impossible and ridiculous, these people didn't vanish into thin air.

The inevitable question is what would any other nation do with it's minority that feels superior and hateful towards the majority and acted accordingly during the whole period of occupation?

Perhaps give the people and their land back to the nation they were taken from? The Sudeten Germans never asked to be part of Czechoslovakia nor were they asked in turn in 1919. They and their land weren’t even conquered in war by them but given to Czechoslovakia by foreign powers, merely for divide et impera reasons.
It was pure madness to give 3.200.000 Germans to a foreign state where they constitute 25%(in the Czech part, even 33%) of the population. That is barely a “minority” in the usual sense of the word. It was even more madness, to treat them like third class citizens.

It’s not like most Germans were dispersed within Bohemia, either but overwhelmingly they were settled in a compact block on the borders, which was German for hundreds of, if not a thousand, years.
I understand that those that were settled within Bohemia, like in Iglau, Brünn and Trübau, for example, would have to leave. But that would’ve been possible to happen under different circumstances, meaning, without being murdered on the way and being expropriated without any compensation.

The atrocities committed by certain paramilitary groups and outraged inhabitants (who had been displaced from the region by the German occupation forces before the WW2) are currently being seen as a shameful moment of the Czech national history that no one is proud about.

And so they should be seen.

But the Benes decrees were hardly commited only by "certain paramilitary groups and outraged inhabitants"(there was no displacement of the latter in 1938 anyway) but instead were state policy and commited by both paramilitaries, mostly from Bohemia proper and supported by the government, and the regular army.