CZECHS AND :GERMANS , RARELY has a detailed and scholarly
monograph, dealing with a -somewhat remote subject, made a more timely appearance, when events are Arcing that subject upon the attention of a much wider public. And it may be said at once that Miss Wiskemann has done a public service by her researches into the German-Czech question. For although the book contains much that would unduly tax the patience of the man in the street, it should serve as an invaluable guide to those who really wish to understand the problem, and indeed as a mine from which surface nuggets of information may easily and rapidly .be extracted. Above all, it should explode many of the superficial theories that still linger in certain sections of the British Press—as, for instance, that the Sudeten German problem was created by the Peace Settlement of 1919 and could be comfortably solved by a rectification of frontiers.
In reality Bohemia has had her present frontiers for at least loo years, and inside them Czechs and Germans have manoeuvred for position ever since the Slav national dynasty of Bohemia began to bring in German settlers—townsmen and miners—in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, following in this the policy pursued by their contemporaries, the no less national Kings of Hungary. Czechs and Germans took different sides in the days of John Hus, both in the matter of Church reform and in the vital question of the control of Prague University. In the long Hussite Wars the Czechs successfully defended themselves against a whole series of German crusading armies and reorganised themselves on a more narrowly national basis than ever before. The Reforma- tion brought the two races closer together, and both suffered from the downfall of Bohemian independence in 162o. But by the nineteenth century, when the Czech national revival slowly transformed the situation, the Germans of Bohemia were in large measure identified with the hegemony of German over Slav in Austria. During the 6o years preceding the Great War there was an obstinate political struggle between the two races : and Miss Wiskemann in no way exaggerates when she calls Bohemia " the most difficult and dangerous of the internal problems of Austria," despite the fact that the Czechs (unlike several other races of the Dual Monarchy) had no kindred State towards which they could gravitate or which could give them its diplomatic support, and that indeed their leaders—even those who at times flirted with Tsarist Russia—never pursued separatist aims until the supreme crisis of the Great War drove them to desperation and offered an opportunity for the recovery of independence. In this pre-War period the Sudeten Germans stubbornly adhered to the view that the Czechs were an inferior race, not entitled ‘to equal educational advantages (witness the fact that a Czech University was refused till 1882 and a second, at BrCum, refused to the bitter end in 1918) and speaking a language unfit for the purposes of government and administration.
" Rather die as Germans than decay as Czechs," was the catchword of the day, and to this many Czechs retorted by a systematic refusal to speak or learn German, with the result that more and more, with every decade, the two races lived in watertight compartments. Periodic attempts were made by the more enlightened statesmen on both sides to reach a compromise, by linguistic decrees, and by the so-called Zweiteilung or partition of the Bohemian Lands. The story of how these efforts failed is highly germane to present-day controversies : for it shows that the Austrian State, even at the height of its pre-War power, was unable to devise an internal line of division between Czech and German. Today it is more impossible than ever to separate the two races, either with • a view to separation or even to racial autono:ny : in either event there would be a large Czech minority in the German, and a still larger German minority in the solidly Czech, territory. Moreover, as the existing frontier is one of the best natural boundaries in all Europe—following as it does the watershed of several high mountain ranges—its abandon- ment would create quite impossible economic conditions for the over-industrialised German districts, cut off, in the event of a new Anschluss to Germany, from their natural outlets in the Czech kernel of Bohemia, but also lacking easy com- munications with their kinsmen on the other side of the mountains. No one whiz) studies the details of the geographical and economic situation can fail to reach the conclusion that the transference of the main German districts (apart from certain frontier rectifications, which would only solve one quarter or at most one third of the problem) would make the position of the Czech districts altogether untenable, alike from the political, economic, social and military points of view, and would therefore lead logically to the absorption of all Bohemia, Czech and German alike, within the Reich, with all its tremendous effects upon the balance of forces in Central Europe.
The issues involved are simply incomprehensible to the Western reader, without careful study of racial and physical maps : but from these it speedily becomes clear that anything approaching the Swiss cantonal system is inapplicable to Czechoslovakia, and indeed that the districts containing a German minority fall into six, if not eight, entirely distinct units, grouped round the periphery of the State, and not capable of being administered from a single centre. Incidentally those who suggest the Swiss model forget that the Swiss cantons are sovereign States, 22 in number, and ultra-democratic in their whole composition, and therefore quite unlikely to commend themselves to the imitation of German totali- tarians.
This book contains the fullest and most accurate account as yet available in England of the rise and aims of the now t dominant Sudeten German Party, led by Konrad Henlein. Its origins can be traced back to Georg von Schonerer, the pagan Pan-German who tried at the turn of the century to lead the Germans of Bohemia " Away from Rome and Away from Juda," and so away from the Habsburg to the Hohenzollern allegiance. Thus Bohemia is seen to be " the cradle of German National Socialism," and all the extravagances of Schonerer's political creed may be recognised in Hitler and his leading disciples, and notably in the Jew-baiter Julius Streicher. But though only three years have elapsed since Henlein's party won its electoral victory, there has been a striking evolution of principles and aims. The liberalism which he professed at his first big speech at Bohrnisch Leipa has been altogether discarded : the emphasis laid in London upon his respect for the existing constitution has been replaced by a growing insistence upon racial unity (Volksgemeinschaft) and totalitarian doctrine towards all other German parties : until his speech at Karlsbad last April proclaimed his adherence to full-fledged National Socialism and demanded a radical change of foreign policy by Czechoslovakia, the renunciation of existing alliances such as would isolate her in Europe and place her altogether at the mercy of the Third Reich.
Of these more recent developments, which the Anschluss has brought to a head, Miss Wiskemann doe3 not write, and she is not 'directly concerned with foreign policy. But she provides the indispensable background against which both the foreign and domestic policy of the Republic can be clearly focussed, and there are very full chapters on " The Economic Aspect
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