From 1938 to 1945 it was one of the municipalities in Sudetenland. During World War II, Falkenau was the site of a sub-camp of the Flossenbürg concentration camp. The camp at Falkenau was captured by the U.S. 1st Infantry Division on May 6, 1945. Nearly all of the town's population, being Germans, were expelled after 1945. It was renamed "Sokolov" in 1948 in honour of the Battle of Sokolovo in which Czechoslovak soldiers had fought alongside Soviet soldiers on the Eastern Front in World War II.