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Chapter VIII Interpretation of the Transfer
immediate reality of those times,
summed up by Zdeněk Mlynář when he
wrote: “Czechoslovak society has
a political and moral need to analyse the
past in order to identify the real causes of
the moral collapse of central values,
which normalisation represents.”
That intellectual background hid both
its greatest strength and its main
weakness. The discussion was
a responsible attempt to define the
spiritual marasmus of “normalisation” by
means of its possible historical roots.
Thus it necessarily focused on the
transfer of the Germans from the
Czechoslovak Republic before
broadening out to encompass the key
factors and open wounds of modern
Czech history, as evidenced by the
collective monograph Češi v dějinách
nové doby (The Czechs in recent history)
issued by a group concealed behind the
pseudonym Podiven and harshly
criticised by many historians, or other
essays and articles by members of that
group, namely, Petr Pithart, Petr Příhoda
and Milan Otáhal. It was more ethicallyoriented
examination of the period than
historical research. Besides it lacked an
appropriate institutional base or available
sources. That lack was also felt in the
part of the discussion involving
professional specialist historians.
Indeed the argument is still latent
today. However, the context is now quite
different; historical research no longer
suffers from political restrictions and the
archives have been opened. The two
sides of the debate – for ease of
identification we will label them
simplistically “ethically-oriented” and
“specialised historical” – have therefore
drawn even further apart in the interim.
The search for some kind of universally
moral, “suprahistorical”, eternally valid
meaning and characterisation of
historical events, processes and
phenomena is part and parcel of certain
interpretations of historical reality,
particularly of the philosophical variety,
as well as of many historical essays. It is
also typical of the treatment by
journalism, although there it often
involves oversimplification, with
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particular historical periods being
perceived solely as “open sores”, which
must be come to terms with and
“healed”, not only for the benefit of the
present day and present circumstances,
but also of the future. The past is
therefore “updated” and viewed and
assessed through the prism of present
needs and legal standards, or simply in
terms of personal or narrowly communal
attitudes, as a result of which historical
facts and circumstances often go by the
board. We would mention in this
connection the frequent articles by
Emanuel Mandler and Bohumil
Doležal. The most recent contribution of
that variety was M.Churaň’s book
Postupim a Československo (Potsdam and
Czechoslovakia, 2001) and
Mandler’s Benešovy dekrety. Proč vznikaly
a co jsou (The Beneš Decrees, why they
were issued and what they are, 2002).
As we pointed out in the introduction
to this booklet, the transfer is becoming
the subject of all sorts of frequently
contradictory assessments and
interpretations. We have therefore tried
to give some idea why this is so. In this
final chapter, we must point out again
that in much of the writing, the transfer
and its interpretation consciously
become a political argument – on both
the Czech and the German sides. This
applies to much of the earlier Czech
historiography and recent journalism of
a Communist persuasion. It applies also
to most of the so-called “Sudeten-
German” historiography and journalism.
The latter presents the fate of the
Sudeten “ethnic group” simply as an
object of great-power games and as
a “dual victim”: firstly of Czechoslovak
ethnic policies, including the creation of
the Czechoslovak Republic, and
secondly, of Hitler’s policies. It focuses
above all on the transfer itself and its
development and outcome; the
suggestion is that the rift between the
Czechs and Germans dates from May
1945. It ignores or distorts its wider
historical context and causes. It generally
makes no reference to the involvement of
the Sudeten Germans in the occupation
regime and side-steps the question of the