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

Chapter IV
500,000 prominent Henlein supporters
and Nazis flee from Czechoslovakia of
their own accord after a German defeat,
the organised transfer should concern
some 1,600,000 Germans.
■ The Germans who remain after the
transfer should not be subject to any civic
discrimination, but on the other hand
they should not receive any special rights
“as a political whole”, and in particular, as
was specified further, “… it is not the
final intention of the Czechoslovak
government (on condition that this is
approved by the free expression of the
will of the Czechoslovak people) to grant
the Germans and Hungarians the
language privileges they have enjoyed so
far, and which constitute the most
important feature of the rights of
minorities in Central Europe. Only
temporarily and as an exception will
language concessions be made to older
people in negotiations with the official
authorities and the courts, and German
children from a purely German
environment will be able to attend
German primary schools in the first
generation. The extent of these
concessions will however be dependent
on the agreement of Czech citizens…”
■ In conclusion the government gave an
assurance that “it hardly needs saying
that Czechoslovakia will be prepared to
accept any obligations that may be
generally accepted and applied in all
European states, relating to linguistic,
religious, or racial minorities.”
■ As a matter of principle, however, the
Czechoslovak government considered it
to be extremely dangerous to allow the
Germans on Czechoslovak territory a
special minority status once more.
The memorandum of November 23 in
fact represents the final formulation of
the resolution of the German issue
reached during the war by the
Czechoslovak government in London, or
by Edvard Beneš as its spiritus rector.A
further and this time final wartime
formula was put forward in the spring of
1945 by the exiled leadership of the
Communist Party of Czechoslovakia in
Moscow. If we compare the
memorandum with the previous plans
The Break up of Czechoslovakia and the Genesis
of the Transfer
188
(and also with the way in which the
transfer was actually carried out after the
war), we have to say that it was not as
radical as the earlier plans and the
completely extremist forms taken by the
transfer in practice. Nevertheless, it
undoubtedly belongs to the “integral”
plans, and signifies the victory of the
nationalist hard line – both in resistance
politics in general and with Beneš
personally in particular. This is clear
from the formulation of the exception
for those Sudeten Germans who were
not to be transferred. In their case, too,
nationalist motivation is used as the
criterion (active participation in the
struggle for the liberation of the
Czechoslovak Republic), while the issue
of anti-fascism (before Munich as well)
is pushed into the background. This
applies even more to the justification for
the transfer. The original thesis about
“guilt for Nazi crimes”, which had been
used in 1942, in particular, is restricted,
and purely national, anti-German
motivation now takes centre stage. It is a
counter-measure against the German
Drang nach Osten; after the terrible mass
murders of Czechoslovakians committed
by the Germans “there can be no hope of
the people of Czechoslovakia living in
peace with most of the German
minority”. This is why the aim is a
national state, in which even the one
third of the Germans who remain are
destined to be assimilated; the nationalist
viewpoint has now become the alpha
and omega.
The memorandum marks the
definitive formulation of the integral
concept of the transfer and the victory of
the nationalist hard line, towards which,
as we have seen, the views of Edvard
Beneš had also gradually evolved. This is
also evidenced by his confidential
message to the resistance movement at
home, passed on once again by means of
the secret transmitter by Prokop Drtina
on July 16, 1944. In it he says that the
Allies could be expected to agree to the
transfer of a maximum of 2,000,000
Germans. It was therefore necessary “for
us to get a lot of things done straight
away in the first few days after liberation,