Sudeten German Party

(SGP; Sudetendeutsche Partei), a fascist party in bourgeois Czechoslovakia from 1933 to 1938. It was established by K. Henlein in October 1933 on the basis of German nationalist parties and organizations in Czechoslovakia that were banned for their subversive activities.

At the parliamentary elections in 1935, the SGP received two-thirds of the votes of the German population in the country. From 1935 the party was officially known in parliament as the Sudeten German and Carpathian German Party (Sudetendeutsche und Karpatendeutsche Partei). In July 1936 a congress of the SGP openly declared the party’s adherence to the ideology of German fascism. At a congress in April 1938 the party demanded that the government grant autonomy to the Sudetenland, which was essentially tantamount to its separation from Czechoslovakia; in addition, it demanded ministerial posts in the government and an annulment of the Czechoslovak-Soviet Treaty of 1935.

In September 1938 Henlein’s armed bands attempted a putsch on the border of Czechoslovakia in an effort to establish a ground for Hitlerite aggression. With the suppression of the putsch, the SGP was disbanded and its leaders fled to Germany.