Keepers of Order? Strategic Legality in the 1935 Czechoslovak General Elections

Abstract

Konrad Henlein founded the Sudeten German Heimatfront (SHF) in October 1933 and in less than a year and a half it would become the largest party in the First Czechoslovak Republic. This achievement is all the more remarkable in light of the initiative undertaken by the Czech and German Social Democrats, as well as the Communists to have the SHF banned in the year before the elections. This initiative would most likely have succeeded had the matter not been referred to Czechoslovakia's ailing President, Tomáš Masaryk. After the state had banned both the Sudeten German Nazi and Nationalist parties on account of their alleged ties to Hitler, Masaryk concluded one month before the 19 May 1935 general elections that the SHF should be allowed to campaign.1 Masaryk, however, mandated that the Heimatfront must change its name to the more democratic “Sudeten German Party” (SdP). Despite the specter of a ban that still haunted the party in the month before the election, the SdP succeeded in transforming itself from a political pariah into a majority German party by using the legal protections and security forces of Czech democracy to wage a legalistic campaign against the state. In light of this stunning success, how then did the party leadership perform this act of political alchemy and what strategies did it deploy in campaigning against the state?