Newsgroups: bit.listserv.slovak-l
Date:         Fri, 4 Sep 1992 17:35:11 EDT
From:         Henry Kucera <HENRY@BROWNVM.BITNET>
Subject:      Re: Benes and Sudeten Germans (was Re: poetry in s

>    Eesh.  My leanings are pro-Czech (I believe my ancestors to be
>Moravian), and I usually agree with Mr. (Dr.?) Kucera.  However, he's
>stretching things a bit here.
>    My reading of history isn't very favorable to Mr. Benes.  He
>seemed to be more interested in expelling the Sudeten Germans after
>the war than in fighting the Nazi Germans in 1938.
>
>Henry Kucera <HENRY@BROWNVM.BITNET> writes:
>>...                                                            You know, the
>>Germans (including the Sudeten ones) behaved atrociously towards the Czechs
>for
>>some six years. Perhaps the situation should have been handled differently.
>>...
>
>    I don't know much about the Sudeten Germans' actions during the
>war.  From my readings about the Munich crisis in 1938, the vast
>majority of Sudeten Germans reported to their reserve assignments,
>were prepared to defend Czecho-Slovakia, and did not support the Nazi
>fifth column.
>    What "atrocious" actions are attributed to the Sudeten Germans
>during the war?  Excluding, of course, the minority that was Nazi
>before 1938.
>--
>Paul Havlak                     Dept. of Computer Science
>Graduate Student                Rice University, Houston TX 77251-1892
>PFC/ParaScope projects          (713) 527-8101 x2738    paco@cs.rice.edu

  Konrad Henlein founded the equivalent of the Nazi Party in the Sudentland in
1934. The party grew rapidly in power and was a main instrument of Hitler's
pressure that led to the Munich appeasement. Perhaps Benes could have ordered
the Czechoslovak army to fight in 1938 alone (his allies, France and Britain
betrayed him at Munich) but he did not. There are many who are critical of
him for that. But I don't understand what that has to do with the expulsion of
the Germans after the war.

 After Munich, when the Sudetens went "back home" as the Sudenten Germans
called it (or shouted in joy--it just so happened that I was there then), all
Czechs were expelled from the border territories immediately.

  During WW2, of course, Bohemia and Moravia formed a so-called German
"protectorate", as cynical a misnomer as ever invented. The Vice-Protector,
throughout the whole period of the War, was a Sudeten German thug, named Karl
Hermann Frank. The "protector" -- until assasinated by the Czechs -- was the
author of the "final solution", R. Heydrich. All Czech universities and
technical institutes were closed immediately (November 17, 1939), the Czech
student leaders executed on that day (12 of them , I think), most of the
intelligentsia sent to concentration camps, villages leveled (in Lidice , all
men were shot on the spot, women sent to concentration camps, children to
Germany and the Sudetenland for adoption, some never found). And so on.

I really don't know where you got the idea that only a minority of the Sudenten
Germans were Nazis. Henlein's was the strongest party among them.

  As I said once on this list--before I had to resort to irony in self-defense
against the fanatical hatred expressed against the Czechs--I have reservations
about Benes. However, to equate him with Hitler, to spread falls stories about
how many Germans were killed during the transfer (250,000, given on this list,
is a vicious lie) that is not only  revisionims, that's indefensible.
As you know, Havel apologized for the transfer of the Sudenten Germans in 1990
in a speech in which he, however, also spoke harshly and truthfully of Hitler's
crimes. Yes, there were abuses during the transfer: if you could read the
Czech journals Obzory and Vyvoj, published in Prague in 1946-48, you would
find many stories by such well-known anti-communist journalists as Bohdan
Chudoba, Helena Kozeluhova, Pavel Tigrid, Ivo Duchacek (and yes, even by me
to a small degree--I was a very young man then) protesting the abuses of
the process.

  Little knowlege can be dangerous thing. There is no question that Benes
wanted to expel the Sudeten Germans. But the decision was made by the allies
who, after all, had to receive them, one and all, in the four occupation zones
of Germany, mostly the American and Brish, of course. And that was in addition
to the 5 million or so  Germans moved from the new Polish territories and East
Prussia. It was all a consequence of one of the most violent wars in history
and a price that the Germans--in some individual cases surely unjustly--paid
for their Fuehrer, for the war behavior and for their defeat.

Finally, it makes no sense to me to have any criticism of Slovakia answered
by saying, essentially, "the Czechs are worse," as Mr. Frajkor does
constantly. That is not an intellectual debate and will not make for a better
world. And as for Benes, perhaps he may even deserve some Slovak gratitude.
By restoring Czechoslovakia on the side of the Allies, he may have saved
the defeated Slovakia from becoming a part of the USSR, as Carpatho-Russia did.

 I am sorry but I will have to take some time off from this list, it has just
become too venomous. But I thought that I should comment on your remarks, which
seem well intentioned.

Henry Kucera (Prof. Emeritus, Brown University, Providence, RI, USA)
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