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

Eastern Poland to Siberia, Central Asia
and the Far East, as well as tens of
thousands of Jews, and hundreds of
thousands of citizens of the Baltic states).
Later, in 1942 when the Soviet-British
accord was being prepared, US President
Roosevelt commented on this point that,
having regard to American public
opinion, a clause should be inserted into
the agreement that the citizens of the
Finnish, Baltic and Polish territories
annexed by the Soviet Union should have
the right to leave. The British, however,
worried that such a commitment would
lead after the war to a mass exodus of
inhabitants of the Baltic to the west.
It is fundamental that by 1944 British
foreign policy had definitely decided to
support the concept of post-war
repatriation of German minorities from
the eastern part of central Europe to
Western Germany. Post-war Germany
was not to be divided into several states,
but weakened in the long-term by the
loss of the eastern territories, and the
expulsion of Germans living there. In this
context it is important that in the latest
work on the preparation for expulsion
and transfers from Czechoslovakia and
Poland, quoting a list of several sources,
the foremost European expert on this
problem, Detlef Brandes, proves that the
decision of the British War Cabinet of
July 6, 1942, concerning the invalidity of
the Munich agreement, and concerning
the post-war repatriation of German
minorities from central and south-east
Europe, was reached after Heydrich’s rule
of terror in the Protectorate, and after the
wave of terror against resistance groups
and also the civilian population of Czech
lands that followed his assassination by
Czechoslovak parachutists. It was not,
however – even taking into consideration
the wider concept of repatriation – an
immediate reaction of the British
government to Lidice, but the
culmination of the long-term
development of British thinking. In the
memoranda which Eden had already
given to the British government on July 2
as a basis for this decision, the parallels
with post-war “repatriation” he thought
necessary recalled mainly Hitler’s and the
The International Framework for the
Transfer of the Sudeten Germans
201
Chapter V
Soviet Union’s widespread compulsory
resettlement programmes. De Gaulle’s
National Committee of the Free French
also accepted as its own goal the concept
of the expulsion and repatriation of
German minorities from liberated
territories.
At this time, Edvard Beneš was very
flexibly circumnavigating the demands
and fears of individual groups of
Czechoslovak émigrés (very radical anti-
German opinions were being expressed,
for example, by the Czechoslovak army
attaché in London, Josef Kalla, and the
London representative of the
Czechoslovak Communist Party, Václav
Nosek) and the resistance at home, as
well as among the reflections of British,
Russian and American diplomats on the
question of giving up part of
Czechoslovak territory in return for the
compulsory repatriation of the majority
of Sudeten Germans. On the contrary,
during the debates concerning how many
and which Germans, and on the basis of
what status they would be able to stay in
post-war Czechoslovakia, he maintained
the biggest manoeuvring space he could
for himself. (The historian, Kamil Krofta
– pre-war Czechoslovak Minister of
Foreign Affairs – in the research into
possible post-war arrangements which
he was working on shortly before he was
arrested by the Gestapo, was working on
the assumption that pro-Czechoslovak
Germans who had helped with the
resistance would, in the renewed
Republic, get the status of foreigners
with a permanent residence permit).
However, at this time it was already clear,
both in exile and in the homeland, that
after the war one or other form of basic
diminution of the German minority
would take place in Czechoslovakia, and
on a yet larger scale in Poland.
In May 1943, Edvard Beneš spoke
about the question of the post-war
organisation of Central Europe with the
British Prime Minister, Winston
Churchill. Before his meeting with the
Soviet leadership Churchill told him that
transfer of the population would be
inevitable. Whoever wanted to leave the
Baltic states would be free to do so. This