Czech-German Relations and the Politics of Central Europe: From Bohemia to the Eu

ISBN-13: 9780333734490 / Angielski / Twarda / 2002 / 213 str.

Professor Jurgen Tampke

Opis

The German-speaking population of the Bohemian lands has been the centre of political controversy for over a century. The success of the fascist Sudeten German Party in the 1930s led to the Munich Agreement of September 1938 - the event that was soon to signal the beginning of World War Two. After harsh years of Nazi German occupation, the Czechs and Slovaks expelled the great majority of the Sudeten Germans from their country at the end of the war. Although most of the expellees did well in the Federal Republic, their chief representative, the Sudeten Homelands Association, never ceased to wage a relentless campaign for the right of the Sudeten Germans to return to their ancestral lands. After the collapse of Communism in Eastern Europe, the leaders of the expellee associations insisted that Czech entry into the EU should be made conditional on meeting Sudeten German restitution demands - an issue that is still afflicting negotiations today.

Recenzje

Relations between Germany and Czechoslovakia were not only crucial for the development of Nazi foreign policy and the origins of the Second World War but continue to be of significance today in the context of the enlargement of the EU. This book provides both a timely insight into these issues and a scholarly history of ethnic relations between Germans and Czechs in Central Europe. - Dick Geary, Professor of Modern History, University of Nottingham

'Jurgen Tampke's concise and thoughtful book provides the reader with a very good account of the fate of the Sudeten Germans and their role in the often fraught relations between Czechs and Germans'. - Tim Haughton, Nations and Nationalism, Volume 10, Part 3

Spis treści

Acknowledgements Glossary of Geographical Terms Abbreviations Map of the Bohemian Lands Introduction The Lands of the Weceslav Crown Czechoslovakia The Reichsgau Sudetenland and the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia Expulsion and Forced Resettlement Expellee Politics In the Forefront Lest We Forget

O autorze

JÜRGEN TAMPKE is Associate Professor in European History and Politics at the University of New South Wales in Australia. He has published a number of books and articles, including Australia Willkommen: A History of the Germans in Australia and Ruthless Warfare: German Military Planning and Surveillance in the Australia-New Zealand Region Before the Great War.