The Hoaxbusters, #26, Mar 16, 2025, TMOGV #17, SUDETENLAND

THE MYTH OF GERMAN VILLAINY, Chapter 17, SUDETENLAND (Czechoslovakia)
Czechoslovakia was a creature of the peace treaties following WWI; a new state cobbled together out of some of the remnants of the defunct Austro-Hungarian Empire. The population of this new state was made up of 7,450,000 Czechs, 2,300,000 Slovaks, 720,000 Magyars (Hungarians), 560,000 Ruthenians, 300,000 Jews, 100,000 Poles . . . and 3,200,000 Germans who comprised nearly a fourth of the country’s entire population. Czechoslovakia was the antithesis of Woodrow Wilson’s concept of “self-determination” for all peoples, which, ideally, would have manifested itself in ethnically homogeneous nation-states. Combining all these disparate nationalities into a single state had instability and conflict built in from the outset, much as “multiculturalism” has today.

The German population of Czechoslovakia was clustered mainly on its western border adjacent to Germany in a region known as Sudetenland, the word a German compound of “land” and “Sudeten,” the name of the Sudetes, a mountain range stretching from Dresden to Lower Silesia in Poland, onto the Moravian Gate in the Czech Republic. These Sudetendeutsche—Sudeten Germans—had lived in the region for centuries, and had become very prosperous under the Austro-Hungarian Empire. These industrious, meticulous Germans developed a well-ordered society over time, with prosperous farms throughout the region and a highly productive mine and timber industry. Sudetenland also became highly industrialized during the 19th and early 20th centuries, with huge chemical works, lignite mines, as well as numerous textile, china, and glass factories.