Czech and German
I
IT was in the ‘works hotel’ of a mighty iron and steelworks in a district where Czechs, Germans, and Poles were living together in close community. My host, a prominent engineer of the steelworks, ushered me into the canteen, and though we were still in the long corridor he yelled in his stentorian voice: ‘Waitress, beer here, beer here! For Heaven’s sake — Um Gottes willen — bee-eer! We are thirsty! Wir haben ein Durst!’
An ample-waisted Czech waitress soon brought along two large mugs of beer, and my host introduced me to his friends who were seated round a big table. They were apparently all Sudeten Germans, for they spoke German, and, like their Teutonic brethren across the frontier, many had scars on their faces, received at Mensuren — student duels.
I noticed that the people at the next table spoke Czech, and at the third, Polish. My host seemed to have noted my astonishment and explained: ‘Naturally the various nationalities segregate here — we all prefer to be amongst our own people.’
The conversation that followed at my table was for the most part a steady flow of abuse of the existing régime. ‘These Czechs are ruining us, and the government does nothing about it! There remains but one remedy: we must throw in our lot with the Germans across the frontier. We must become part and parcel of the Hohenzollern Reich.’
The incident which I have just described occurred twenty-five years ago, in the spring of 1913. A visit to the same district a quarter of a century later shows that, though many things have changed, the situation there to-day remains fundamentally the same. And yet there have been, indeed, mighty changes. Then an Imperial Austria ruled in the Sudeten German parts. To-day the Czechs are the masters. But the Sudeten Germans complained as bitterly twenty-five years ago as they do to-day.
‘The Sudeten-Deutsche were the gravediggers of the old Hapsburg Monarchy,’ a leading Austrian legitimist declared only recently. And now the Sudeten Germans would like to be the gravediggers of the Czechoslovak Republic. They are assisted by the open support and the secret resources of their powerful Nazi friends across the frontier. Yet a tough, Prussian-like Czech ruling class guards its present possessions more watchfully than did the Hapsburgs.
The problem of the Sudeten Germans of Czechoslovakia contains all the elements that are wont to poison life in contemporary Europe; it involves the conflict between two powerful nationalities, it embraces the all-too-familiar ‘depressed areas,’and it has the characteristics of an ideological struggle. Each of these elements is enough in itself to cause complications; together they make this one of the major problems of Europe.
A radical solution of the minority problem in Central Europe is impossible, because national minorities live next to each other and interlap in a way that makes the drawing of clear-cut frontiers out of the question. On an automobile trip which took me over a stretch of more than six hundred miles within the Czechoslovak Republic, I passed repeatedly from German into Czech districts, and back again. When we drove through rich agricultural country with gently undulating hills, Nordic fair hair and blue eyes predominated in the towns and villages; these were Czech districts. When we came to mountainous regions with many factories and industrial enterprises and a population for the most part brown-haired and brown-eyed, these were German districts.
During this journey, which revealed the predominantly Nordic type of the Czech population, I could not help thinking how hypocritical is the racial pretension of the National Socialists in Germany. All the allies or friends of Germany belong to races which are classed as inferior by the Nazi anthropologists and racial research workers: Japan can hardly be described as being inhabited by Aryans; Hungary is inhabited by the only non-Aryan population in Central Europe; and Italy belongs to the Mediterranean race often referred to by Nazi puriflers as ‘ infected ‘ by Negro blood. But the Third Reich’s enemy, the Czechs, according to the present possessors of power in Germany, show all the physical attributes of the Nordic type which is proclaimed as the ideal for the model Nazi!
II
The uneven distribution of Germans throughout Czechoslovakia becomes evident on an automobile trip such as ours across the country. It is generally supposed, for instance, that the chain of the Sudetic Mountains which surrounds Bohemia on three sides is the backbone of the German settlements; but even here, at Nachod, the Czech population cuts across the German belt right into German Reich territory. From Braunau on, however, there is an almost unbroken belt of German settlement five hundred miles long. At some places this belt is fifty miles wide, at others only two miles or less; near Mies a Czech language enclave pushes into it. Important German language enclaves are found near Iglau (Jihlava), Brünn (Brno), and Melnik.
On our way from Austria, Brno, capital of Moravia, was the first important German city. Here the followers of the Nazi Konrad Henlein were only too ready to pour out their hearts to us. They pointed out that this was an important German city even before the war. One Henlein follower told us: ‘This city was 85 per cent German before the war; now it is alleged that the Germans number less than 20 per cent.’ The 20 per cent, of course, is an important limit for minorities. If in any town or village the national minority, according to the official census, reaches 20 per cent or more, then German may be used on shop inscriptions, and the language of the administration must include both Czech and German.
The complaint of the Henlein supporters, however, was exaggerated, for Austrian statistics indicate that Brno had a population of 86,000 at the turn of the century, of which 60 per cent were Germans and 40 per cent Czechs. The reduction of the proportion of the Germans is due to the fact that after the war Brno became an important administrative and trading centre, and its population increased in a third of a century to 300,000, of which about 20 per cent were Germans. In the beginning of their rule, the Czechs employed chiefly their own people in the state administration, and this helped to swell the ranks of the Czech populace. But the Czechs could also argue that the large number of Germans in the administration before the war helped to increase the proportion of Germans.
Since Brno is enjoying a boom at present, the complaints of the Germans were prompted by racial rather than economic considerations.
It was after Littovel that we sighted the next German city: Müglitz (Mohelnice). The inscriptions in both languages revealed that a strong German minority dwelled within the walls of this pretty market town. Then followed the German Mährisch-Hohenstadt (Zabreh), with the fine castle of the Princes Liechtenstein and with linen and cotton weaving mills. Twenty minutes later our automobile reached Mährisch-Schönberg (Sumperk), which is one of the prosperous textile cities of Moravia. It is clean, well-kept, and predominantly German. Though the economic situation is good, the Henlein party have succeeded in making some headway. This seems to be for racial rather than economic reasons; Schönberg is quite near the Czech language district, and conflicts even in the days of the Empire always developed more sharply in these frontier areas. Moreover, Schönberg is only twelve miles distant from the German frontier!
We talked with all kinds of people in Schönberg; in the cafés, in restaurants, in the German Vereinshaus, which seems to be the headquarters of the Henlein people, in the shops and in the streets. The young followers of Henlein complained bitterly about the Czechs. One boasted that he was arrested the other day for possessing a swastika in his house. But after a few hours’ arrest he was released. I wonder what would have been his lot in Germany if the Gestapo had found, let us say, a Communist star in his possession?
Complaints were, in fact, prompted more by hatred than by actual grievances. The Henlein people complained that the Czechs are erecting concrete barriers on the roads leading from Germany to Czechoslovakia so that no automobile or motor lorry shall dash past the frontier. Every municipality has to pay for these barriers out of its own pocket.
But a commercial traveler, just the kind of man one would expect to be a supporter of Henlein, told me: ‘We realize that we cannot expect anything from across the frontier. Certainly we are not prepared to live without butter or eggs, as our friends over the frontier; we do not want to wear cheap substitutes for our textiles. Moreover, we still attribute great value to freedom. I am a German, but I am satisfied with the present regime. We do good business, and in these days that is all we ask for.’
III
From Mährisch-Schönberg we intended to drive into Silesia, where another important section of the Sudeten Germans live. But our automobile stuck fast in snowdrifts on the winding pass leading across the Rothberg, and we had no other choice but to abandon our plan to visit the Silesian minority. At least we learned that the Germans would be likely to have great difficulty in crossing Silesia. Yet it is generally believed that the plans of the German general staff involve cutting off Bohemia from the rest of Czechoslovakia by simultaneous thrusts southwards from German Silesia toward Czech Silesia and northwards through the Danube Valley across Austria.
After our return to Mährisch-Schönberg we detoured and visited the frontier at a point where Germany makes a considerable indentation into Bohemian territory. Across the frontier the area is called the Glatz district, Glatz having been an important German fortress in the old days, while the nearest city on the German side is the well-known market town, Mittelwalde. This district, with the Grosser Schneeberg, 4665 feet high, in German possession, has much strategical importance. But the feverishly constructed Czech fortifications on the Rothberg, and the 4888-foot Altvater only twenty miles away, help to compensate the German advantage in the Glatz pocket.
We traveled back to Rothwasser, and again had to climb a high pass with dangerous turns, icy and snow-covered. When we descended into the valley the villages and cities were again all Czech, though we remained only ten or fifteen miles distant from the German frontier. It was nightfall before we reached Königgrätz, now called Hradec Kralove, a really beautiful city, with a magnificent old church and city hall and fine modern buildings.
Early next morning we drove on, through purely Czech districts, in quest of the Sudeten Germans. After motoring ninety miles (we were never more than twenty miles distant from the German frontier) we reached Libenau, where the twin inscription of the local inn, ‘Gasthaus — Hostinec,’ suggested that we were once more in a district with a strong German minority. After traveling through German cities like Saskal we at last reached Reichenberg (Liberec), once the stronghold of the Bohemian textile industry.
We arrived on the day the Henlein party met in the old Schützenhaus, the ‘hunters’ club.’ Six deputies from the Prague Parliament, all belonging to the Henlein party, were present. When I told local functionaries that I represented American publications, they invited me after the meeting to a private room in a cafe, and there I was able to discuss the situation with the six deputies, the local district leader of Reichenberg, and other leading persons of the Henlein party.
The Sudeten German representatives poured out their hearts and explained their difficulties and complaints. When I argued that the Czechoslovak Government had made a declaration to German representatives regarding the extension of the rights of the Germans in Czechoslovakia, especially affecting the employment of a larger number of Germans in the civil services and allowing more schools for the German minority, the Sudeten German spokesman answered as follows: —
‘The value of this government declaration of February 18, 1937, consists only in the admission that nothing has happened since 1918 in regard to the solution of the nationality question. It admits only that absolutely natural privileges of the minorities, guaranteed by the peace treaty, were not granted to us.’
Then he explained that the Sudeten Germans considered this declaration of the government valueless from the legal point of view, because it is not anchored in any law or decree — it was just the promise of the head of the government.
‘On April 27, 1937, the Parliamentary Club of the Sudeten German deputies in Prague handed in a draft of a bill to the presidential office of the parliament,’ he said, ‘in which we proposed the passing of six laws for the preparation of a legal nationality order in the state. These six laws were: first, the protection of national rights by proclaiming the minority as a “public person” and equipping it with rights to which such bodies are entitled; second, the establishment of full equality of Germans in all branches of public services; third, responsibility of the state for damages caused by its organs in injuring the economic interests of national minorities; fourth, a law against forcible denationalization of the minorities; fifth, the establishment of an obligatory register for all members of a nationality; sixth, an alteration of the law about the Constitutional High Court. Only if these six bills should be passed should we feel that the promises of the government were safely anchored in law. These six bills amount, of course, to a kind of autonomy for us Germans in Czechoslovakia. The Czechs could have their democratic institutions if they wanted them, but on the basis of the first bill we should have the right to a Sprecher, or spokesman, who would be a kind of Führer, and we could live a political life more fitting to our temperament and inclination, such as is led by our brethren across the frontier.’
Reichenberg, with nearly 40,000 inhabitants, is to-day about 80 per cent German. For miles in all directions there are factories — cotton and wool spinning and manufacturing mills, paper works, carpet and rug industries, engineering works, leather and hide, soap, varnish and lacquer factories. Thirty-eight of the surrounding villages live on the proceeds from their spinning and weaving mills — or, rather, they used to live on them. To-day the neighborhood offers a desolate picture. In the Katherinenthal, especially near Habendorf, factory after factory stands idle, the windows broken, the smokestacks cold. On one chimney birds were establishing their nests, on another grass was growing. Mills once employing 2000 hands now employ only 300; others, once with large payrolls, stand empty and derelict. Mill machinery has been sold to Yugoslavia or to Hungary, so that there is no hope of resuming work.
The people with whom we talked were Germans and full of violent complaints. There is no doubt that the disaster which has come to the once-flourishing industries of the Reichenberg district is largely due to world-wide causes and less to the Czechoslovaks than to the Japanese, who are allied with the very power to which the Reichenbergers look for aid. Little help could, in any case, come from across the frontier; the Reich buys raw materials, not finished textile goods.
The Sudeten Germans also complained that most of the textiles contracts for the army were placed with Czech firms in the interior of the country. Consideration of future safety may dictate this policy: in wartime the looms of Reichenberg would be exposed to the big guns of Germany, whose frontier is only eight miles away.
The root of the trouble, of course, has been that until 1918 the Germans were the masters in parts of what is now Czechoslovakia, and after the war the tide turned. The former national minority, the Czech, gained ascendancy over the Germans, much of whose complaint is due to resentment of the fact that their former ‘slaves’ are now masters over them. The moderate Germans of the district explain that since 1926 at least three German parties have coöperated in the Czechoslovak government coalition, but not until February 18, 1937, did the rulers in Prague attempt any real solution of the grievances of their German citizens. The blame for the past cannot be blotted out, but the existence of a firm determination, on the part of the highest government quarters, to carry out the February agreement is not doubted.
In Gablonz (Jablonec), another Henlein stronghold, there were similar complaints. The Gablonz industries are different from those of Reichenberg; they are mostly in the hands of home workers and consist of the manufacture of glass beads. The glassworks are on the hills, some miles distant from Gablonz; in the city virtually every family manufactures beads or other glassware on a small scale, destined mostly for the Far and Near East. India, formerly the chief market for Gablonz ware, has been lost through Japanese competition. It is even alleged that the Japanese spread the tale in India that Czech beads, which can stand the test of fire, bring misfortune, and that only Japanese beads, which crack in the fire, bring luck!
IV
While most of the Sudeten Germans deny any wish to be united with Germany, they do demand autonomy. Moderate Czechs explain that it is impossible to grant autonomy to a semi-Faseist party. It would mean, they say, the establishment of a Third Reich in miniature within the territory of a democratically ruled Czechoslovakia. Culturally, these Germans enjoy more advantages than any other German minority in Europe, and the present government is anxious to help them. On the other hand, however good the intentions of the Prague government, the carrying out of the February agreement of last year is by no means a simple affair. First, there is a good deal of sabotage on the part of subordinates — and, from a human point of view, this is not surprising. The Czech official who is asked to be kind to the Germans knows that he is hanging himself in the process; for each German policeman, postman, official, or tax collector employed means one less opening for the Czechs. Nevertheless, with patience and a fair amount of good faith the difficulties between Germans and Czechs may be amicably settled. Much depends, of course, on the attitude of the Third Reich toward Czechoslovakia.
The growth of the Henlein party in Czechoslovakia in 1935 was, no doubt, facilitated by the growing grievances of the German minority, but also by the incessant underground work of the Nazis. The Henlein party is securing open and clandestine support from Germany, and Henlein, formerly a teacher of gymnastics in Asch, is a frequent guest at the Brown House in Berlin or at the Führer’s house in Berchtesgaden. This German support of the Henlein adherents complicates the situation.
In her southeastern expansion policy Germany, ever since the Great War, has kept her eyes on three countries: Poland, Austria, and Czechoslovakia. For a decade and a half the Polish Corridor was felt to be the sorest loss to the German Republic, but in January 1934 Hitler’s Third Reich concluded a ten-year treaty with Poland. This gave a freer hand to the Nazis in their dealings with Austria. But in 1935, and especially in the spring of 1936, when Germany and Italy sensed the increasing necessity for liquidating the feud between themselves in order to assure the existence of the Fascist system of rule, it was necessary to eliminate the quarrel between Germany and Austria, and thus to do away with the last stumblingblock in the way of a reconciliation. With the July 11, 1936, agreement the danger of Nazi action in Austria seemed — temporarily at least — eliminated. This increased the pressure on Czechoslovakia, both internally and externally. At the end of 1936, indeed, it appeared that the German Nazis were ready to create trouble in Bohemia on the pattern of the intervention in Spain. It was the resistance of the Reichswehr which then frustrated the plan for such a diversion.
Early in 1938 it suddenly became Austria’s turn once again. The recent Ausirian ‘peaceful’ invasion was another attempt to isolate Czechoslovakia. Germany viewed with increasing misgivings the improved relations between Austria and Czechoslovakia, fearing that such Austro-Czech coöperation might become the starting point of a further collaboration of the smaller countries of Central Europe to form a defensive group against Pan-German ambitions. And so Chancellor Schuschnigg was ‘ invited ‘ to Berchtesgaden. The Austrian Chancellor, perhaps naïvely trusting that his host had not forgotten the rules of civilized intercourse, accepted the invitation and was exposed there to handling which he himself described in his speech as ‘hard treatment.’
In the presence of General von Keitel (commander of the Germany army), General von Reichenau, and General Sperrle, the Munich air chief, he was forced to sign an agreement. In case of his refusal he was threatened with an invasion of Austria, for the Bavarian army was mobilized on the frontier. Thus not only did the Chancellor have to sign the document presented to him, after succeeding in gaining some alterations, but the threat of invasion remained until he carried out the chief promises in this treaty — namely, to make Dr. Arthur Seyss-Inquart Minister of Interior and Public Security, and to grant a complete amnesty to Nazis. One of the chief demands, however, was not published : the return to an Austrian foreign policy such as existed before 1933 — a policy parallel to that of Germany.
This part of the Berchtesgaden agreement was undoubtedly directed against the Austro-Czechoslovak rapprochement. The Austrian Nazi news sheet, the Österreichischer Beobachter, in its mid-February issue, stated openly that Hitler asked Schuschnigg to come to Berchtesgaden to put an end to an Austro-Czech coöperation which apparently was not sufficiently discouraged by Count Ciano (the Italian Foreign Minister) at the last Budapest conference of the Rome Protocol States. Seemingly it was necessary for Germany to have a free hand in Austria and to bring Vienna into the group which wished Czechoslovakia’s isolation. Nobody knows what surprise is in store for Czechoslovakia; yet all acknowledge that Czechoslovakia will be next.
The new German Foreign Minister, Joachim von Ribbcntrop, has never been well disposed toward Czechoslovakia. Moreover, for the last twelve months the Reichswehr forces of the Dresden garrison have been increased to 100,000 men. Now, in addition, General von Reichenau, known to be the only high officer willing to execute the party’s will, has received a command in Leipzig, sixty miles from the Czechoslovak frontier!
The plan of the Nazi Party is, of course, to foment revolt among the Sudeten Germans, and then to intervene. But intervention is by no means an easy proposition. It is believed that the Czech home forces could exterminate a domestic revolt within twenty-four hours; and in case of invasion Czechoslovakia can offer resistance for a long time. But war in Czechoslovakia probably means a general conflagration in Europe.