ABSTRACT
The Sudeten German Party was not the only, nor even the first, fascist party to be formed in interwar Czechoslovakia. Although the Nazi German government supported the SdP in some of its endeavours, the party was not Nazi-oriented from the outset, as the Czechoslovak government believed and many Czech historians have continued to assert. The Prague government forced the SHF to transform itself into the Sudeten German Party in April 1935 to participate in Czechoslovakia’s May 1935 parliamentary elections. Long-time DNSAP functionary Karl Hermann Frank became an early member of the SHF, then SdP, a Sudeten German Party parliamentary deputy, and from October 1936, the deputy head of the party. Sudeten German officials reverently welcomed the blood flag, the holiest symbol of National Socialist self-sacrifice, which the Führer had ordered be ceremoniously transported from Munich to Reichenberg.
