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The Sudetenland, Czech and Slovak: Sudety; Polish: Kraj Sudecki) is the historical German name for the northern, southern, and western areas of former Czechoslovakia which were inhabited primarily by Sudeten Germans. These German speakers had predominated in the border districts of Bohemia, Moravia, and Austrian Silesia from the time of the Austrian Empire. The word “Sudetenland“ did not come into existence until the early 20th century and did not come to prominence until after the First World War, when the German-dominated Austria-Hungary was dismembered and the Sudeten Germans found themselves living in the new country of Czechoslovakia. The Sudeten crisis of 1938 was provoked by the Pan-Germanist demands of Germany that the Sudetenland be annexed to Germany, which happened after the later Munich Agreement. When Czechoslovakia was reconstituted after the Second World War, the Sudeten Germans were expelled or killed and the region today is inhabited almost exclusively by Czech speakers.
