Word: henlein
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Suddenly on Thursday, the radio networks of the Reich crashed out that thousands of Sudetens were fleeing to Germany, scrambling over the frontier at isolated points, and that at Eger, Führer Konrad Henlein had issued a proclamation before entering Germany as Czechoslovak Fugitive No. 1: "The use of machine guns, armored cars and tanks against defenseless* Sudeten Germans has reached the highest point of Czech oppression! ... It is definitely impossible for the Sudeten Germans and Czechs to live in the same state. . . . We want to return to our home† in the Reich! . . . God bless...
...Party Activity." This proclamation the Czechoslovak Cabinet studied for two hours, then decided it was treason. President Benes ordered not only the arrest of Henlein, now a fugitive, should he ever return, but also immediate confiscation of Sudeten Nazi Party funds and property including firearms. Nazi Deputies were not deprived of their parliamentary standing and immunity, but the President declared Parliament adjourned, and his decree enjoined all Nazis against "party activity." The north, east and south districts were still calm, but in the west bloody scuffles continued. The Government, in efforts to convince Sudeten Nazis that their game...
Urchins distributed this proclamation, as adult Nazis had no relish for the risky job, and many Sudeten Germans bitterly complained that it hardly took "iron nerves" for Konrad Henlein to flee. From Germany came tart reminders that during the World War a certain Dr. Eduard Benes was a political fugitive from the Habsburg Empire. Indeed, he had fled out of Austria at the same obscure border point where Henlein fled...
...Neutral correspondents in Czechoslovakia unanimously agreed that the Sudeten Nazis had been armed not only with pistols but also with machine guns and that, in the clashes Henlein spoke of, the Government had used police in riot cars rather than soldiers in tanks...
...Excepting one district with approximately the area of no square miles, no part of the present Czechoslovak Republic ever belonged to Imperial Germany. Konrad Henlein and over 99% of all Sudeten Germans alive before the Republic was founded were born subjects of the Habsburg Kaiser, not the Hohenzollern. Henlein's mother was a Czech, but to him, as to Austrian-born Hitler, there has never been any doubt that Germany is "home...