HENLEIN TAKES OFF THE MASK

Evening Star, Issue 24004, 1 October 1941, Page 2

HENLEIN TAKES OFF THE MASK

NOW SUDETEN CZECHS WERE DUPED

Lest his exploits should fall into oblivion and be lost -to criticism in old newspaper - files, historical Henlein made a report on the whole of his political activity before Munich, and explained the meaning of his policy at a meeting in Vienna on March 4 last. The omy paper in the Protectorate from which he quoted was the German paper ‘ Der Neue Tag ’ —the Czech and foreign Press he did not quote at all, for reasons which can readily be under-, stood. GoebhaJs .apparently angry with Henlein for having blurted- out" the*truth, suppressed the speech in the general Nazi Press. Henlein’s speech is an historical document of great value. The following account of it is taken from ‘ Der Neue Tag.’ Henlein said that despite differences in forms and methods, his fight was part of Germany’s National Socialist revolution. In an historic survey ho mentioned the activity of the German National-Socialist Party in Czecho-S!o----vakia and its ‘ brutal suppression ’ by the Czechs in 1922.

“ During the great wave of persecution in the autumn of 1933, when the leaders of the party asked me to assume leadership of the Sudetens, I had to decide whether the National-Socialist Party was to carry on illegally or whether we should camouflage the movement with a show of legality and fight in that way for our self-preservation as Sudeten Germans and. our return to the Reich. Only the second way lay open to us because it was not a dispute between Germans, but a fight with embittered foreigners intent upon our destruction. It would have been easier, certainly, to confess openly _ to National-Socialism and go to prison, but it was doubtful whether by _ this method we should achieve the political task of smashing Czecho-Slovakia as the spearhead of the anti-Reich system of “ The fact is that the Sudeten Germans succeeded in a short time in endangering the internal stability mf Czecho-Slovakia so thoroughly and creating such confusion that she was soon ripe for liquidation _ within the framework of the new continental order. Wo knew that we could only win if we succeeded in making the three and ahalf million Sudeten Germans • into National-Socialists; but if wo were to avoid Czech interference, we must pretend to deny our allegiance to NationalSocialism. With admirable discipline and unshakeable confidence my comrades realised what was at stake/ and behind our tactics saw our aim to return to Adolf Hitler’s Germany.” This remarkably frank statement must be compared with Henlein’s public speeches in Czecho-Slovakia, with all that he and his friends said on their propaganda lecture tours in England, and with Lord Runciman’s famous report on the Sudeten question. Here we shall only point out that Henlem camouflaged his allegiance to Hitler’s Nazism not merely by his utterances on behalf of Czecho-Slovakia, but also by the public repudiation of Nazism in the principal speech expounding his programme, in which he accused Nazism of insufficient regard for the freedom of the individual and eloquently refuted the charge of pan-Germanism. His confession throws a most important light on his propaganda with regard to the position of the German minority in Czecho-Slovakia,_ and also on the conclusions - of Runciman’e report, which, even without this supplementary evidence of Henlein, remains the most effective criticism of the terrible Munich decision. We must add that the Sudeten Germans who cast their votes for party in the Parliamentary elections of 1934 and the municipal elections of 1938 voted for a manifestly Czeclio-Slovak programme and not for a camouflaged Nazi 'programme .—C. E .0.