the nationality of all inhabitants of the czech provinces and ...

Chapter IV
Heydrich and Hácha in front of the crown jewels, the most important
symbol of Czech statehood.
by those frontiers two national
(“ethnographic”) areas would be created
– Czech and German. By the first he
meant the territory within the line of
Czechoslovak fortifications, by the
second, the area between that line and
the state frontiers, in the form of three
administrative districts (župy) based on
Karlovy Vary, Liberec and Krnov. That
meant, Beneš stated in his conclusion,
that “we want the Germans in the
Republic.” Therefore “we must not
entertain unrealisable hopes that it is
possible to destroy or expel three million
Germans, as some of us naively
imagine”. In this Beneš drew on the
ideas of Julius Grégr, T.G.Masaryk and
his own. He added, however, that it was
possible to assume “the departure or
The Break up of Czechoslovakia and the Genesis
of the Transfer
172
expulsion or hundreds of thousands of
compromised Nazi Germans and the
forced resettlement of some further
hundreds of thousands from the areas
mentioned above [the German enclaves
in the Czech hinterland] to the three
German districts or to Austria or
Germany.” If the Germans chose to
remain in the Czech hinterland they
would forego their minority language
rights (as was the case in Switzerland).
He estimated that a total of one million
Germans would be affected by these
expulsions and resettlements. (Beneš did
not give any more precise figure in the
document). The transfer should be
carried out, as Beneš told Jaksch, “in an
amicable fashion” and would involve
financial compensation. The Germans