…Following the Anschluss Hitler’s eyes turned towards the east and Czechoslovakia. Twenty Two and a half percent of the country was made up of ethnic Germans, predominantly living in the border areas of the country known as the Sudetenland. This group had been largely marginalized in the formation of the state, which had been a Czech and Slovak nationalist project. The grievances of the Sudeten Germans were largely ignored by the government at large and when the Depression hit two thirds of the unemployed in the country were Germans, as the government in Prague decided that support industries in ethnically Czech lands and Slovak farmers was of higher priority.
As a result of this in 1933 the Sudeten Volkspartei, or the SuVP to distinguish it from the SVP, was formed. Entering an alliance with the Carpatho-German Party representing the ethnically German areas of the Carpathian mountains in Czechoslovakia, the party became the second largest in the country by 1935, showing a shocking degree of support among the German population. No less then 90% of the ethnically German population voted for the SuVP by 1938. Originally the SuVP had advocated a union with Austria, by 1936 that had shifted to a desire for a union with Germany as the SVP gained in influence and the success of Hitler’s Germany at revising the Versailles order became more apparent.
It was not for this reason that Hitler turned his eyes towards Czechoslovakia. He personally cared not for the plight of the Sudeten Germans, even if he publicly stated otherwise. Rather it was for the countries industry not its German population that he was covetous. Czechoslovakia had inherited almost 80% of the Austro-Hungarian Empire’s industry, placing it at number 10 in the world. Especially important was the Skoda Works in Pilsen, one of the worlds biggest arms conglomerates and a major producer of tanks and heavy naval equipment. Control of this industry would make Germany significantly stronger and accelerate Hitler’s rearmament timetable by years.
To this end in October 1938 soon after the Anschluss had officially concluded Hitler ordered that plans be drawn up for an invasion of Czechoslovakia while he took the SuVP under greater control. In January 1939 the SuVP under its leader, the former gymnastics teacher Konrad Henlein released a program of demands to the Czechoslovak government. The Karlsbad program called for Germans to receive full equality with Czechs in various ways, a German autonomous area in the Sudetenland and reparations for actions against ethnic Germans by the Czechoslovak state. This program was specifically intended to be impossible for the Czechoslovak government in Prague to agree to by Hitler, thus a reason for violence to emerge. Indeed the Czechoslovak government refused the autonomy and reparations portion of the program soon after it was presented, with violence starting immediately afterwards as an SuVP associate torched a post office.
Hitler planned that violence would escalate over the winter and spring, in time for a war in June. However in April after various acts of terrorism by the SuVP had already started Hitler pushed back his invasion to August after the Heer stated that they were unready for a major war in June. This resulted in tensions briefly lowering before spiking again in July as incidents by of violence by the SuVP resumed. The Czechs conducted a partial mobilization and began asking covertly for backing from the other powers.
The Soviets were willing to honor the alliance they had made, but stated that actual aid depended on Poland or Romania and Hungary allowing them through, as they lacked a land border. The French were willing to go to war, so long as either the British or the Soviets did as well, but they would not do so alone. The British were not willing to go to war, but sent a peace mission to try and persuade the Czechs to back down.
Seeing public support for the Czechs by the French the Heer asked for another delay to allow work of the Westwall fortifications to further progress and deter the French from interfering. Hitler begrudgingly approved of this, but stated that this would be the absolute last delay. The invasion of Czechoslovakia would take place no later than October 15th no matter what. Actions by the SuVP slowed down once more in August before heating up in September. 750,000 troops were moved to the Czech borders as an act of intimidation while newspapers played up supposed Czech atrocities against Germans.
The Czechs at this point realized that not only did the Germans want war, but that they would receive no help from abroad. The French were ambivalent, the British were begging them to give in and the Soviets had no way to intervene. The Italians were willing to guarantee their independence, and only that, but at the price of renouncing their alliance with the USSR. Their neighbors in Poland and Hungary both had territorial grudges against them, and would be just as happy to join the Germans in attacking them. Thus the Czech President Edvard Benes decided to agree to the SuVP demands of the Karlsbad program.
This move came as a shock to Hitler, who had expected the Czechs to fight tooth and nail. He ordered the SuVP to step up provocations, and shortly afterwards several SuVP parliamentarians were arrested, giving them a cause for more demonstrations. By October 1st there was a near revolt going on in the Sudetenland as border skirmishes between the Heer and the Czechoslovak Army occurred daily.
Many of Germany’s leading generals began to worry as the French announced their support of the Czechs, and the Soviets began mobilizing. The Czechs alone possessed an army 40% as large as Germany’s and one that was well equipped and on the defense with fortifications on much of the border and decent defensive ground. Combined with the probability of intervention and it was feared that Hitler was about to lead them into an unwinnable war. Thus plans were made to coup Hitler if October 15th arrived and he continued to press for war.
Hitler had every intention of doing that, but as it turned out he was not the only foreign leader with plans for Czechoslovakia…
-Into the Abyss: The leadup to the Second World War, Harper and Brothers, New York, 2009
…It is commonly believed that the actions of the Czechoslovak state are solely to blame for the radicalization of the Sudeten Germans into the most strongly Volkist population in the Greater German Reich. This paper will show that while there is strong evidence that the Sudeten German population had legitimate grievances with the Czechoslovak government, there is significantly more evidence that the Sudeten German elite deliberately sabotaged cooperation with the Czechoslovak government and fostered an attitude of negativism in denying its legitimacy from the beginning of the Czechoslovak state in 1919…
-Excerpt from Revisionist Viewpoints in History Volume XXVII, University of California Press: Berkley, 2017