Opinions of German Activist Parties in Czechoslovakia 1918-1938. A Contribution to the Question of Czech-German Coexistence in Inter-War Czechoslovakia

Abstract

Sudeten German activism was formed through cooperation within the system of Czechoslovak democracy. Three Sudeten German parties were engaged in activist politics in the First Czechoslovak Republic, despite the fact that many of their expressed convictions contained elements of the antidemocratic thought that was to become the root of national socialism. The activist political parties, as represented by their leading politicians, accepted the democratic system as the basis of their existence, but it proved impossible to reconcile the antidemocratic thinking that permeated their views with the Czechoslovak notion of democracy. In 1935, among Sudeten Germans there was a tide of feeling of appurtenance to the German nation & widespread dissatisfaction resulting from the impact of the global economic crisis on those regions of Czechoslovakia settled by Germans, which paved the way for Konrad Henlein's nationalist party, & later, Adolf Hitler.