74 Facts About Konrad Henlein

Konrad Ernst Eduard Henlein was a Sudeten German politician in Czechoslovakia before World War II.

Konrad Henlein became active in the Deutscher Turnverband movement, a German nationalist and volkisch athletic organization.

Konrad Henlein became of Reichsgau Sudetenland when it was formed on 1 May 1939, and was responsible for mass deportations to death camps.

Konrad Henlein died by suicide in 1945 in American custody after the war.

Konrad Henlein was born in Maffersdorf near Reichenberg, Liberec, in what was then Bohemian crown land of Austria-Hungary.

Konrad Henlein saw Italian Front service in the Dolomites at Monte Forno, Mont Sief, and Monte Maletta between May 1916 and 17 November 1917.

Konrad Henlein was severely wounded, then captured by the Italians, and spent the rest of the war as a POW on Asinara Island, where he studied the history of the German Turner movement of Friedrich Ludwig Jahn.

Konrad Henlein embraced the volkisch movement and joined the Deutscher Turnverband.

Konrad Henlein became an increasingly well known figure in the Sudetenland after club wins in a 1926 gymnastics competition in Prague.

Konrad Henlein called on Sudeten Germans to embrace ideology and condemned liberalism and democracy as "un-German".

In May 1931, Konrad Henlein was elected president of the supposedly apolitical, and it became more overtly and militaristic.

Konrad Henlein saw himself as the founder of a for all Sudeten Germans.

Konrad Henlein presented the Sudeten Germans as a special and unique German community.

Konrad Henlein advocated Sudetenland autonomy, but was vague about what form this would take.

Konrad Henlein spoke of Sudeten Germans living in a Central European "common space" with an identity that transcended loyalty to Czechoslovakia, part of a wider Germanic "common space" that embraced all of Central Europe.

Konrad Henlein advocated "reconciliation" between Germans and Czechs, provided that the Czechs recognised that they and the Sudetenlanders belonged to the Central European "common space".

Konrad Henlein described the SdP as having a "Christian worldview", a code-word for anti-Semitism.

Konrad Henlein capitalized on resentment over the unemployment rate in the Sudetenland, twice that in Bohemia and Moravia.

Konrad Henlein made decisions without consulting the committee he was ostensibly responsible to, and lied and dissembled to even his closest followers.

Konrad Henlein summoned all of the SdP deputies to Eger to publicly swear oaths of personal loyalty to him.

The Czech government rejected Sudeten German autonomy, so Konrad Henlein courted foreign governments, especially Britain, in the hope that they would pressure the Czech government.

Konrad Henlein's voters expected him to achieve his platform of autonomy and his turn to "foreign policy" in 1935 reflected his fear of disappointing his supporters.

Konrad Henlein first met British spy and RAF Group-Captain Graham Christie, his main conduit to the British for the next three years, in July 1935.

Konrad Henlein enjoyed being courted by foreign governments, as it strengthened his authority over his party, where his leadership was frequently questioned.

In December 1935, Konrad Henlein gave a lecture at Chatham House in London on the Sudeten Germans.

Konrad Henlein ruled out not only all questions of German Bohemia uniting with Germany, but admitted the impossibility of separating the German and Czech districts, and insisted on the essential unity of the Bohemian lands throughout history and no less today.

Konrad Henlein told Seton-Watson that he only criticized Czechoslovakia as a "dishonest democracy".

Konrad Henlein admitted his party was volkisch, but denied having any contacts with Germany, and said that claims his party was subsidized by the Germans were a "lie".

Seton-Watson asked if it was really possible for someone to believe in both volkisch ideology and German-Czech equality, but wrote that Konrad Henlein seemed very sincere.

In May 1936, Czechoslovak Prime Minister Milan Hodza declared in a speech: "The government would take care that Konrad Henlein achieved no success, and it was confident that the SdP would then split up into various factions that could then be more easily handed".

On 12 June 1936, Konrad Henlein complained in a speech in Eger that the law in Czechoslovakia protected only the rights of individuals, not "racial groups".

In July 1936, Konrad Henlein again went to London and expounded upon various grievances felt by the volksdeutsche of Czechoslovakia.

London knew from 1936 onward that Konrad Henlein's party was being secretly subsidised by Germany.

The French minister in Prague, Leopold Victor de Lacroix, supported Benes, saying that any concession to Konrad Henlein would weaken Czechoslovakia, and thus the entire cordon sanitaire as the French alliance system in Eastern Europe was known.

Konrad Henlein concluded that each of the "racial groups" needed their own "national organisation" to provide the necessary space to allow them to develop in peace.

Konrad Henlein insisted he was loyal to Czechoslovakia, but talked much about the Czech-dominated government discriminating against the Sudeten Germans.

Konrad Henlein did not become a declared follower of Adolf Hitler until 1937, after the pro-German camp within the SdP represented by Karl Hermann Frank emerged victorious.

On 19 November 1937, Konrad Henlein wrote to Hitler asking him to support him as the sole leader of the Sudeten German community, and declared his belief that ethnic Germans and Czechs simply could not coexist in the same country, and his willingness to support any German foreign move that would bring the Sudetenland "home to the Reich".

On 12 March 1938, British Foreign Secretary Lord Halifax told Jan Masaryk, the Czechoslovak minister in London, that his government should try to negotiate with Konrad Henlein, but Masaryk replied that Konrad Henlein was not to be trusted and it was a waste of time to talk to him.

Konrad Henlein declared at these rallies that now more than ever his party was the only party that spoke for the Sudetenland.

Konrad Henlein secretly visited Berlin to meet Hitler, and agreed to provide a pretext for a German invasion by demanding autonomy for the Sudetenland,.

Finally, Konrad Henlein was told to ask only for autonomy, but to subtly promote the message that ethnic Germans and Czechs could not co-exist in the same country.

On 24 April 1938, at a party congress in Karlsbad, Czechoslovakia Konrad Henlein announced the eight-point Karlsbad programme for Sudetenland autonomy, while insisting that he and his party were loyal to Czechoslovakia.

Hitler wanted the demand for German regiments to be the ninth point in the Karlsbad programme, but Konrad Henlein persuaded him that it was too inflammatory and too likely to alienate public opinion abroad.

At the Karlsbad party congress, Konrad Henlein added the "Aryan paragraph" to the StP, formally adopting volkisch racism.

Konrad Henlein told British politicians that he was not working for Hitler, that the Czechs were "oppressing" the Sudetenland by forcing the children in some districts to attend classes taught in Czech, and insisted he only wanted autonomy for the Sudetenland.

Konrad Henlein promoted the idea that he only wanted a "fair deal" for the Sudeten and claimed that he opposed the Sudetenland joining Germany, noting that after the Anschluss Austrian Nazis were pushed aside by the Germans.

Konrad Henlein said he did not want the same thing to happen to him, but did admit that if Prague refused to give in to all eight demands of the Karlsbad programme, Germany would definitely invade.

Konrad Henlein was however unable to explain just precisely how a one-party state could co-exist inside a democracy.

On 15 May 1938, Konrad Henlein left London for Berlin, where he called his visit a great success.

Konrad Henlein was said to have told Henlein to stop inciting violence, but the report he wrote largely reflected Henlein's ideas, for example, that ethnic Germans and Czechs simply could not live together and should be separated.

On 17 August 1938, General Louis-Eugene Faucher, the French military attache in Prague, reported to Paris that Czechoslovak military intelligence had presented him with conclusive evidence that Konrad Henlein was planning, together with the Abwehr, a September uprising in the Sudetenland.

From 12 September 1938 forward, Konrad Henlein helped organise hundreds of terrorist attacks and two coup attempts by the Sudetendeutsches Freikorps a paramilitary organisation affiliated with the SS-Totenkopfverbande, immediately after Hitler's threatening speech in Nuremberg at the Nazi Party's annual rally on 12 September 1938.

Konrad Henlein fled to Germany, only to start numerous intrusions into Czechoslovak territory around As as a commander of Sudeten guerilla bands.

Konrad Henlein's flight was widely seen as cowardice, and he remained always very sensitive about criticism of his actions in September 1938.

Hitler saw the Munich Agreement as a diplomatic defeat as it "cheated" him out of the war he had planned to start the next day, but Konrad Henlein was greatly relieved.

Konrad Henlein organized the Kristallnacht pogrom in the Sudetenland on 9 November 1938, which smashed Jewish homes and businesses.

Konrad Henlein himself confiscated a villa in Reichenberg from a Jewish businessman.

Konrad Henlein was elected to the Reichstag in December 1938 and formally joined the Nazi Party on 26 January 1939.

When Germans took over what remained of Czechoslovakia in March 1939, Konrad Henlein served one month as head of the civil administration of the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia, nominally making him the number-two man in the Protectorate behind Konstantin von Neurath.

On 1 May 1939, Konrad Henlein was named of Reichsgau Sudetenland, thereby holding both the highest party and governmental offices in his jurisdiction.

Konrad Henlein continued to hold these positions until the end of the war.

Konrad Henlein attempted to place his long-term followers in key positions in his Reichsgau and, starting in the spring of 1939, became locked into a battle over patronage with Reinhard Heydrich.

Hitler tended to side with his Gauleiters, and made clear that he was behind Konrad Henlein, so removing him was not practical for Heydrich, who therefore tried to neutralize him by removing his followers from the local NSDAP.

Konrad Henlein's pursued a "merciless" vendetta against the Czechs in the Sudetenland, who numbered about 300,000.

Konrad Henlein said that Czechs were to serve as to the Germans, and banned Czech children from going beyond primary school, believing that education would encourage them to demand equality.

Konrad Henlein's policy was the complete Germanization of the Sudetenland, and only the unwillingness of the authorities in Bohemia-Moravia to accept the ethnic Czechs of the Sudetenland prevented Konrad Henlein from expelling them all.

Konrad Henlein protested against bringing Czechs from Bohemia-Moravia to work in the Sudetenland's factories and farms, which counteracted his policy of reducing the Czech population, but Berlin said that the needs of war industry and agriculture were far more important than his anti-Czech obsessions.

When Konrad Henlein heard of Heydrich's assassination, he celebrated by visiting the local beer-hall.

In late 1942, Konrad Henlein deported the last Jews to Theresienstadt.

Konrad Henlein was buried anonymously in the Plzen Central Cemetery.

Harry Turtledove's The War That Came Early alternate history novel series begins with Konrad Henlein being assassinated on 28 September 1938, causing a version of WWII to begin in 1938.

Konrad Henlein is the subject of a murder investigation by detective Bernie Gunther in Philip Kerr's novel "Prague Fatale".

Konrad Henlein was portrayed in the Czechoslovak film "Jara Cimrman lezici spici", where he is a child living in the fictional village of Liptakov,.