Sudetenland

Sudetenland, general name for a frontier region of the Czech Republic, comprising the western and part of the northern and southern boundary areas, and including those districts centered around the Sudety (Sudeten) mountains on the north, the Erzgebirge Range on the northwest, and the Böhmerwald (Bohemian Forest). Before 1945 more than 3 million Sudeten Germans inhabited the region, which was then part of Czechoslovakia. During the 1930s, the maneuvering of the Sudeten Germans who supported German dictator Adolf Hitler brought about an international crisis in 1938, when the Sudetenland was ceded to Germany as part of the Munich Pact. The region was not restored to Czechoslovakia until it was liberated by the Allies at the end of World War II in 1945, after which the German population was transferred to Germany.