The "Sudeten German Question" before and after Munich 1938: from the "Sudeten German Question" in Czechoslovakia over the "Czech Question" in the "Third Reich" to the Expulsion of the Sudeten Germans

The article provides a short overview of the development of the so-called Sudeten German question before and after the Munich agreement of 1938. This includes the grievances of the Sudeten German minority against the Czechoslovak government, the status of Sudeten Germans in the "Third Reich" as well as their part in the solution of the so-called Czech question within the "Greater German Reich" and the Czechoslovakian and Allied arguments for the expulsion of the Sudeten German minority after the war. The participation of many Sudeten Germans in the anti-Czech politics and repression in the Reichsgau Sudetenland as well as in the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia facilitated the Allies' decision. But from the Czechoslovak point of view the main reason was that the Sudeten German Party of Konrad Henlein, and with it the majority of the Sudeten Germans, before Munich turned against the Czechoslovak Republic and helped Hitler's Germany to destroy it. The article is based upon own research projects on the Sudeten German Nazi leader Karl Hermann Frank and on the minority policy of Czechoslovakian Foreign Minister and the President Edvard Benes as well as upon German, Czech and English specialised literature and published sources.