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

Chapter III
Agrarians’ leader Rudolf Beran or the
banker Jaroslav Preiss strove in vain to
reach agreement with the SdP and
Germany. A memorandum from the
Czechoslovak Communist Party to the
government in November 1936, calling
for an urgent solution to the problems
of the German people, was rejected, as
there was a prevailing distrust of that
party, which prior to the 7 th Congress
of the Comintern in 1934 had
championed the principle of national
self-determination even when it would
mean secession. And last but not least,
a major obstacle was the sluggishness
and inflexibility of the Czechoslovak
party and coalition system – albeit
typical of European democratic
systems of the day – which made it
difficult to react effectively to the
quickly evolving situation.
Contrary to the currently widespread
– and widely propagated – view, it was
the President of the Republic, Edvard
Beneš and politicians close to him who
adopted a realistic approach and put
forward acceptable solutions. Beneš
believed the administrative reform of
Czechs and Germans in a Democratic
Czechoslovakia, 1918-1938
96
1927 had been a mistake. In its place he
proposed the decentralisation of the
country’s administration and the
introduction of genuine regional selfgovernment.
A proposal even emerged
from Beneš’s circle for the recognition
of the Germans as a second Staatnation.
The same idea was expressed in the
1934 manifesto “What do the Socialists
want?”, which inspired the “We Will
Remain Loyal” petition group prior to
A march by the “Republikanische Wehr” with Czechoslovak flags after swearing allegiance
to the Czechoslovak Republic in Ústí nad Labem in 1937.
Munich. What Beneš did resist at all
costs was the idea of granting territorial
autonomy for the German and
Hungarian territories. In the light of his
experience in the early days of the
republic, he saw two kinds of danger in
such a move. From the territorial point
of view, the danger was that those
entities could not be effectively
administered because of their
geographical location, nor could they be
precisely defined. In national terms, the
risk was that “The Czechs and Slovaks
could never have the certainty that such
a unit would not break away at the first
possible opportunity and that that
breakaway would be always being