Talking Point "Hitler's Fifth Column"
By David Vaughan The Czech Prime Minister Milos Zeman recently stirred up a hornets' nest in neighbouring Germany and Austria when he said that Sudeten Germans - the German minority in Czechoslovakia - had been Hitler's "fifth column" in the run-up to the Second World War - and bore the direct blame for the collapse of Czechoslovakia, followed by the grim years of Nazi occupation. In an interview for the Austrian weekly "Profil", Mr Zeman justified the mass expulsion of over two million ethnic Germans after the war with the argument that they were traitors - pure and simple. But is Mr Zeman right?
Sudeten Germans
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