Sudetenland

Sude­ten­land (from Ger­man) – a term refer­ring to the ter­ri­to­ries in north­ern, west­ern and south­ern Bohemia, Sile­sia and north­ern and south­ern Moravia, annexed by Ger­many after the Munich Agree­ment in Sep­tem­ber 1938. Orig­i­nal­ly, these were areas where the major­i­ty of the pop­u­la­tion spoke Ger­man. The Sude­ten­land was not part of the Pro­tec­torate and were rein­cor­po­rat­ed in Czecho­slo­va­kia in 1945. Fol­low­ing a pres­i­den­tial decree of August 1945, per­sons of Ger­man nation­al­i­ty were deprived of Czechoslo­vak cit­i­zen­ship and the gov­ern­ment decid­ed to expel them. More than three mil­lion peo­ple were thus dis­pos­sessed and expelled. The sub­se­quent short­age of labour in the bor­der areas meant that the inhab­i­tants of oth­er parts of Czecho­slo­va­kia were — some­times forcibly — relo­cat­ed there. Sev­er­al thou­sand Roma from Slo­va­kia and the Czech inte­ri­or also end­ed up in the for­mer Sude­ten­land after the war.