Sudetendeutsche Partei

[koppel71]

Sdp

[lach470]

Interesting buckle! How big is it? 35mm? 45mm? I've not seen one like this before.

Cheers!

Rob

[koppel71]

48 x 68 mm

[David North]

May perhaps a forum member provide a German translation of this response? Greatly appreciated.

koppel71
This is truly a fantastic buckle that you have shown. Perhaps I am right in thinking that this ultra rare and highly specialised SDP buckle does not appear in any of the buckle reference works. A basic but striking buckle with a simple method of manufacture and I do so like the full size brass box without the presence of fold over ears. Although I do not collect within this area, I must say that this is the first one of the type that I have ever seen and again, it is in my opinion an ultra rare and highly specialised buckle. Great that it has been shown on the War Relics Forum.

Regards,

David

[Ben Evans]

David, Gerolf are we talking a date of between 1918-1921 with this buckle?

Gerolf, fur dieser schloss, ist datem 1918-1921?

Grusse

Ben

[koppel71]

Hallo Ben

Is not Freikorps Sudetenland 1918 21 in my opinion 1933 -1945.

Gruß Gerolf

[Ben Evans]

Mmmm Gerolf, interesting, so there was a SDP party between 1933-1945? I thought it was the SDP which eventually turned into the NSDAP, I pressumed that from the make up of the buckle. Unless just reading what you said again there was also a South German Party? Man this gets confusing LOL

[David North]

Ben

Extracted from Wikipedia and edited.

The Sudeten German Party was created by Konrad Henlein under the name of Sudetendeutsche Heimatfront on 1st October 1933, some months after the state of Czechoslovakia had outlawed the German National Socialist Workers' Party. In April 1935, the party was renamed the Sudetendeutsche Partei following a mandatory demand of the Czechoslovak government. At the parliamentary election of May 1935, the SdP won about 80% of the German votes in Czechoslovakia, thus becoming the strongest of all parties in CSR (including the Czech parties).

In 1903, a group of Sudeten Germans created the German Workers Parties (DAP's) that developed under the old empire in Bohemia and Moravia. At the end of World War I, the Austro-Hungarian Empire broke up into constituent nation states and the new Czech dominated government considered the Pan-German party to be offensive. In 1933 the party decided to dissolve in order to prevent the imminent ban by the Prague government.

The newly established SdP did not see itself as a successor of the DNSAP and in fact, the SdP leader Henlein sharply rejected the idea. In his earlier speeches (up until 1937), Henlein stressed his distance from German National Socialism, affirming loyalty to the Czechoslovak state and stressing approval of the idea of individual freedom. In 1935 Karl Hermann Frank became the deputy leader of the SdP and in 1938, the majority of the party advocated Anschluss with Germany.

From 1935 some groups within the party were financed from Germany. From November 1937 the leaders of the SdP coordinated policy with Nazi leaders in order to separate the Sudetenland from the Czechoslovak state and reintegrate the German speaking parts of Bohemia and Moravia into the German Empire. This policy took the form of the so called "Grundplanung OA" (Basic Planning) from summer 1938 and later, in the interior policy of the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia.

The policy of SdP succeeded in September 1938 with the annexation of Sudetenland by Nazi Germany and in late 1938, the party was officially disbanded and many of its members entered the Nazi Party.

Regards,

David

[David North]

Konrad Henlein

[koppel71]

Page 235 by F.Catella to the sdp