Der Fuehrer - Hitler's Rise to Power (1944) - Heiden

676 DER FUEHRERquarter million Sudeten Germans in Czechoslovakia, forming a ringaround the rest of that country; a few Germans living under a mildDanish rule in the border district of Slesvig; the Germans in the smallarea of Eupen and Malmedy, given to Belgium in 1919; the Germans inthe Italian South Tyrol. But nowhere did National Socialism, in its firstyears, make any attempt to bring these Germans 'home to the Reich.'Two years before, Hitler had proclaimed that the Czechoslovakian statewould have to be smashed with the help of the Sudeten Germans. Nownot a word of this. The relatively small National Socialist Party of theSudeten Germans was dissolved by the Czechoslovakian government inOctober, 1933, its leaders fled to Germany, and thus perished the oldestof all National Socialist parties, the mother movement, twenty yearsolder than the N.S.D.A.P. Many Sudeten German National Socialistswere tried and imprisoned — but Germany took no notice and keptsilent. From Poland came complaints about the persecution of Germanminorities — official Germany, in public at least, was silent. No loudword or unfriendly act toward any of the countries in the French ring ofalliances; with iron self-control the Third Reich waited for its day,which had not yet come.For in these countries the German minorities lived on the soil ofproud and jealous national states. But Austria, in her mutilated post-warform, was solely and purely a product of that Versailles world which itwas the main business of German policy to rend thread by thread.Sudeten Germany, the Vistula Corridor, and German-speaking SouthTyrol were territories which Czechs, Poles, and Italians could regard astheir own — no one except the Aus-trians themselves could regardAustria as his own. No diplomacy in the world could overlook the factthat large parts, even the majority, of these Austrians, wanted, or had atone time wanted, to be united with Germany. In the disputes betweenthe German minorities and the national governments of Poland andCzechoslovakia, people were struggling against people; in Austria thepeople struggled mainly against bureaucracy and diplomacy. And so itwas the internal condition of Austria which influenced German foreignpolicy — and not the other way around. Even those opposed toAnschluss admitted, in spite of themselves, how hard, indeed how