THE SUDETEN GERMANS AND THE THIRD REICH:

The picture of the brutal expulsion of Volksdeutsche from the former Sudetenland imprints itself on the minds of many Germans who saw such pictures and films after the end of the Second World War and in subsequent documentaries about the subject.  But what led to such a horrible reaction against their German neighbors by the newly liberated Czechs in the years 1945 - 1949?  Formerly Austro-Hungarian, the newly independent Czech lands found itself with a sizable German minority after the defeat of the Entente in 1918.  How these Germanic peoples felt about being part of the Czech state and what they did -- or did not do -- to eliminate its existence is at the core of how Czechs and Germans treated each other before, during and after the War.  This film shows the history of the Sudetendeutsche in Czechoslovakia shortly before and after the annexation of the region by Hitler's Germany in 1938 and what led to their expulsion in the postwar years.