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The Karpatendeutsche Landsmannschaft Slowakei (English: Carpathian German Homeland Association Slovakia) is an organization of German refugees expelled from their homes in Slovakia after World War II. The organization is based in Stuttgart, and it was founded in 1949.
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Czechoslovakia, or Czecho-Slovakia, was a sovereign state in Central Europe that existed from October 1918, when it declared its independence from the Austro-Hungarian Empire, until its peaceful dissolution into the Czech Republic and Slovakia on 1 January 1993.
The Sudetenland is the historical German name for the northern, southern, and western areas of former Czechoslovakia which were inhabited primarily by Sudeten Germans. These German speakers had predominated in the border districts of Bohemia, Moravia, and Czech Silesia from the time of the Austrian Empire.
During the later stages of World War II and the post-war period, Germans and Volksdeutsche fled or were expelled from various Eastern and Central European countries, including Czechoslovakia, and the former German provinces of Silesia, Pomerania, and East Prussia, which were annexed by Poland and the Soviet Union. In 1957, Walter Schlesinger discussed reasons for these actions, which reversed the effects of German eastward colonization and expansion: he concluded, "it was a devastating result of twelve years of National Socialist Eastern Policy." The idea to expel the Germans from the annexed territories was considered by Winston Churchill and by the Polish and Czechoslovak exile governments in London at least since 1942. In late 1944 the Czechoslovak exile government pressed the Allies to espouse the principle of German population transfers. On the other hand, Polish prime minister Tomasz Arciszewski, in an interview for The Sunday Times on 17 December 1944, supported the annexation of Warmia-Masuria, Opole Regency, north-east parts of Lower Silesia, and parts of Pomerania, but he opposed the idea of expulsion. He wanted to naturalize the Germans as Polish citizens and to assimilate them.
The German occupation of Czechoslovakia (1938–1945) began with the German annexation of Sudetenland in 1938, continued with the March 1939 invasion of the Czech lands and creation of the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia, and by the end of 1944 extended to all parts of the former Czechoslovakia.
With the collapse of the Habsburg monarchy at the end of World War I, the independent country of Czechoslovakia was formed as a result of the critical intervention of U.S. President Woodrow Wilson, among others.
The First Vienna Award was a treaty signed on November 2, 1938, as a result of the Vienna Arbitration. The Arbitration took place at Vienna's Belvedere Palace. The Arbitration and Award were direct consequences of the Munich Agreement the previous month and decided the partitioning of Czechoslovakia.
The Decrees of the President of the Republic and the Constitutional Decrees of the President of the Republic, commonly known as the Beneš decrees, were a series of laws drafted by the Czechoslovak government-in-exile in the absence of the Czechoslovak parliament during the German occupation of Czechoslovakia in World War II. They were issued by President Edvard Beneš from 21 July 1940 to 27 October 1945 and retroactively ratified by the Interim National Assembly of Czechoslovakia on 6 March 1946.
German Bohemians, later known as Sudeten Germans, were ethnic Germans living in the Czech lands of the Bohemian Crown, which later became an integral part of Czechoslovakia in which before 1945 over three million German Bohemians inhabited, about 23 percent of the population of the whole country and about 29.5 percent of the population of Bohemia and Moravia. Ethnic Germans migrated into the Kingdom of Bohemia, an electoral territory of the Holy Roman Empire, from the 11th century, mostly in the border regions of what was later called the "Sudetenland", which was named after the Sudeten Mountains. The process of German expansion was known as Ostsiedlung. The name "Sudeten Germans" was adopted during rising nationalism after the fall of Austria-Hungary after the First World War. After the Munich Agreement, the so-called Sudetenland became part of Germany.
Vyškov is a town in the South Moravian Region of the Czech Republic. It has around 21,000 inhabitants.
Czechization or Czechisation is a cultural change in which something ethnically non-Czech is made to become Czech.
German Hungarians are the German-speaking minority of Hungary sometimes called the Danube Swabians, in Germany, many of whom call themselves "Shwoveh". There are 131,951 German speakers in Hungary. Danube Swabian is a collective term for a number of German ethnic groups who lived in the former Kingdom of Hungary.
Chrastava is a town in Liberec Region in the Czech Republic about 10 kilometre (6 mi) northwest of the regional capital Liberec. The town is situated on the Jeřice brook near to its confluence with the Lusatian Neisse. Chrastava is surrounded by hills of the Ještěd Mountains and more distant Jizera Mountains.
Kľačno is a village and municipality in Prievidza District in the Trenčín Region of western Slovakia.
The presence of German-speaking populations in Central and Eastern Europe is rooted in centuries of history, with the settling in northeastern Europe of Germanic peoples predating even the founding of the Roman Empire. The presence of the independent German states in the region, and later the German Empire and also in other multi-ethnic countries, such as Austria-Hungary, Poland, Imperial Russia, etc., demonstrates the extent and duration of German-speaking settlements.
Chabařovice is a town in Ústí nad Labem District in the Ústí nad Labem Region of the Czech Republic. It has about 2,500 inhabitants. The centre of the town is historically significant and is protected by law as Urban monument zone.
The expulsion of Germans from Czechoslovakia after World War II was part of a series of evacuations and deportations of Germans from Central and Eastern Europe during and after World War II.
Czech–German relations date back some 1,500 years. Today, the two countries share 815 km of common borders. The Czech Republic has an embassy in Berlin, 3 general consulates, and 6 honorary consulates. Germany has an embassy in Prague. Both countries are full members of NATO and of the European Union.
The Czechoslovak–Hungarian population exchange was the exchange of inhabitants between Czechoslovakia and Hungary after World War II. Between 45,000 and 120,000 Hungarians were forcibly transferred from Czechoslovakia to Hungary, and their properties confiscated, while around 72,000 Slovaks voluntarily transferred from Hungary to Czechoslovakia, half of whom eventually moved back to Hungary.
Franz Karmasin was an ethnic German politician in Czechoslovakia, who helped found the Carpathian German Party. During World War II he was state secretary of German affairs in the Slovak Republic, and rose to the rank of SS-Sturmbannführer. Tried in absentia and sentenced to death, he fled to West Germany where until his death he was active in the Witikobund, a right-wing extremist organization that claimed to represent Sudeten Germans.
Freiwillige Schutzstaffel was a paramilitary organization in the World War II Slovak Republic. FS was founded in late 1938. Modelled on the German Sturmabteilung (SA) and the Allgemeine SS, FS organized members of the German community in Slovakia. It functioned as the paramilitary wing of the German Party (DP). Walter Donath served as the national commander (Landesführer) of FS.