No. 87 - Sudeten German Homeland Association: „change through closeness”

Institute for Western Affairs' Bulletin (No. 87/2012):  prof. Z. Mazur - Sudeten German Homeland Association: „change through closeness”

The Sudeten German Homeland Association (Sudetendeutsche Landsmannschaft) is one of the best organized and most aggressive organizations of this sort in the Federal Republic of Germany. Its political foundations are located in Bavaria, where the expellees from the Czech Republic, particularly numerous in this area, form a very dynamic pressure group. It is very well established in the local environment and sometimes functions as the “fourth Bavarian tribe”. Within  Bund der Vertriebenen, the  Sudeten German Homeland Association has been characterized by radical demands towards Czechoslovakia and then the Czech Republic. They were strongly against the Eastern policy initiated in the 1960s by the governmentalcoalition of social democrats and liberals, then they criticized Helmut Kohl for his allegedly submissive stance towards the Eastern neighbors during the negotiations concerning the reunification of Germany, while at the end of the 1990s they very vigorously demanded that the accession of the Eastern countries to the European Union depended on the fulfillment of the conditions set out by  Bund der Vertriebenen.  One of the favorite targets of the Association were, and still are, the so called Benes decrees (1945), which deprived German people of their citizenship and wealth; in the Association’s propaganda, Benes is considered to be one of the greatest criminals of the past century. The Sudeten Germans greatly contributed to the deterioration of the relations between West Germany and Czechoslovakia and, later on, between Germany and the Czech Republic, receiving the  constant support of the Christian democratic Bavarian governments.