Die Wahlkampagne der Sudetendeutschen Partei 1935
The Election Campaign of the Sudeten-German Party in 1935

Summary/Abstract: In 1935, the Sudeten German Party (SdP), originally founded as Sudeten German Heimatfront (SHF) just 20 months before, gained more than 63 percent of the German voters and became suddenly the most important voice of the German minority in the Czechoslovak Republic. The victory was the first step on the way to the secession of the German inhabited areas of Czechoslovakia to Nazi Germany by the Munich agreement in 1938. The article analyses the election campaign of the party in 1935 on the basis of archival documents from the Czech National Archives. It aims to find out how it was possible for a completely new movement to gather so much support in such a short time. The examination of the constitution of the party and strategies used to mobilize voters has proved that the idea of the Volksgemeinschaft (“people’s community”) played the most important role for the political success of the SHF/SdP. However, the meaning of the term Volksgemeinschaft, used also by the Nazi movement in Germany, was adjusted by SHF/SdP leaders to the specific Czechoslovak political and social reality. Beside that, an excursion into the finances of the party has revealed the suspicion that SHF/SdP was financed from the Nazi Germany to be only partly true.

• Details
• Contents