World War II Database

Contributor: C. Peter Chen

ww2dbaseKonrad Henlein was born in north Bohemian Maffersdorf, Czechoslovakia. He attended a German business academy in Liberec and served in the Austrian Army during WW1. During the inter-war years he worked for a bank in Sudetenland region of Czechoslovakia while becoming active in politics. A quarter German by blood, in mid-1930s he decided being pro-German would progress his political career. In 1933, he became a prominent figure of the pro-German Sudetendeutsche Partei, which became the second largest political party in Czechoslovakia after the 19 May 1935 election. Starting in 1938, the Nazi propaganda machine fabricated false stories of the three million ethnic Germans being oppressed in Czechoslovakia. By now the leader of the violent Sudetendeutsche Partei, Henlein instigated many incidences of these "acts of oppression". By 1938, Henlein was advertising to the world his wishes to see an independent Sudetenland, while he was secretly on Berlin's payroll and receiving directions from Adolf Hitler and Joachim von Ribbentrop. The Sudetenland issue eventually led to the Munich Agreement of 30 Sep 1938 where European powers agreed to cede the region under German control. After the annexation, the Sudetendeutsche Partei merged into the Nazi Party on 5 Nov 1938. Henlein received the title of SS Gruppenführer and, as the Gauleiter of the regional branch of the Nazi Party, governed Sudetenland. He was arrested by Allied troops at the end of the war and committed suicide at Plzeň.

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