Czechia–Germany border

Germans inside Czechoslovakia

The Sudetenland, the parts of northern and western Bohemia and northern Moravia near the Sudeten mountains, had a mainly German population. It was included in Czechoslovakia when the new state’s frontiers were drawn in 1918–19, and the Treaty of Saint-Germain put its people under Czechoslovak rule, which they accepted with great reluctance. About 3 million Germans lived in Czechoslovakia between the wars.^[1]

In the 1930s the Great Depression hit the region’s industry hard, and Konrad Henlein’s Sudeten German Party exploited the unemployment and complaints of discrimination by Czech officials. In the May 1935 elections it won almost two-thirds of the Sudeten German vote.^[1]

Munich

In 1938 Hitler used the Sudetenland as a pretext against Czechoslovakia. Britain and France, anxious to avoid war, pressed Prague to give up the German-majority areas, and on 21 September Czechoslovakia was forced to accept.^[2] At Munich on 29–30 September, Britain, France, Italy and Germany agreed that Czechoslovakia must hand the Sudetenland to Germany by 10 October.^[1][2]

Czechoslovakia had mobilised and had strong fortifications along its mostly mountainous frontier with Germany, but it could not win alone.^[2] After World War II the Sudetenland was restored to Czechoslovakia, which expelled most of its German inhabitants and resettled the area with Czechs.^[1]

A declaration of regret

Germany and Czechoslovakia signed a treaty on good-neighbourliness and friendly cooperation on 27 February 1992. On 21 January 1997 the German and Czech governments issued a joint declaration on their past.^[3]

In it, Germany acknowledged its responsibility for the path that led to the Munich Agreement, the flight and expulsion of people from the Czech border area, and the breakup and occupation of Czechoslovakia. The Czech side regretted that the expulsion and forced resettlement of Sudeten Germans after the war, with collective guilt attached to them, brought much suffering and injustice on innocent people. Both agreed that past injustice “belongs in the past”, and Germany backed the Czech Republic’s entry into the EU and NATO.^[3]

“Both sides agree that injustice inflicted in the past belongs in the past, and will therefore orient their relations towards the future.”^[3]