By Dr. Max Schindler

Hundreds of books and articles from a dozen western countries convince me that the start of World War II has petrified to dogma: During the 1930s, a Fifth Column of Sudeten German Nazis undermined the Czechoslovak democracy to render it defenseless against Hitler's threats. The resulting "Munich Treaty" of 1938 dismembered Czechoslovakia, and de facto started World War II. Ask school children in France, England, Germany, or the USA, and that will be the answer — provided they have heard of World War II at all.

But why did the Germans never correct this dogma, even after they regained the esteem of their former enemies? First, to topple dogmas takes bloody upheavals (as we shall see) and second, as Napoleon Bonaparte had put it before his campaign to conquer Europe: "The Germans are the most  credulous nation of all Give them a dictum, and they will make it their own" After1946, young Germans indeed embraced the victors' dogma they were taught in school.

The dogma's source is easily traced. When Czechoslovak president Edvard Benes left his country after "Munich", he used his international connections (dating back to World War 1) to spread his views. And once Germany had become the hated enemy of the whole western world, nobody could credibly refute them. Yet, as I will show, the war would have proceeded almost identically if these Sudeten Germans had never existed.

Germans began to settle the inhospitable forests along Bohemia's borders around 1200, encouraged by Bohemian kings eager to profit from their skills and trade relations. As part of the "Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation" which dated back to AD 1000, Bohemian rulers participated in the Empire's government, and in 1347 one of them was elected Emperor, known as Charles IV. Making Prague his capital, he naturally amplified the German presence in town — much to the discomfort of some Czech nobles.

In 1402 a Czech preacher named Jan Hus began to attack the politicization of the Roman (Catholic) church, embodied in the "Holy Empire". But much blood would yet flow before Rome's dogma would change. After Hus was burned at the stake inl415a savage "war of faith" erupted, that soon targeted Germans in (and beyond) Bohemia. But enough German-Bohemians (as they were called until 1918) remained to repopulate the region they had cultivated.

However, the Hussite leader. Captain Zhizhka, could easily have succeeded in his goal to ethnically cleanse the land. Even so, in 1565 the Bohemian crown would have passed to the house of Habsburg through marriage — nationality played no political role then. During the 353 years Czechs were ruled from Vienna the nearby southern part of Moravia would have attracted GermanAustrians. In the absence of German-Bohemians, Moravia would likely have become the more industrialized of the Czech lands and, north of it, Austrian Silesia (a separate province until 1928) would also have remained German.

So, as cofounder of Czechoslovakia, Benes would have "inherited" some Germans in 1918 — perhaps I million instead of 3.5. And, less industrialized than the Sudeten Germans, they would have posed a lesser problem for then President Benes in the 1930s. But Hitler would still have activated "Plan Green" at the Hossbach conference on May II, 1938, which detailed a war against Austria and Czechoslovakia. Hitler had gained power in Germany largely on the promise of more "Lebensraum" (living space) for her people, and that was to have included the provinces lost to Poland in the 1918 Peace Treaty of Versailles.