Let’s begin with a school question: when did WWII start? The generally acknowledged answer is September 1, 1939. But if we define war as a state of actual armed hostilities, regardless of a formal declaration of war, we may find that the answer is not so simple. During the Munich Crisis of 1938 (and here we are talking about the time before the Munich Agreement was signed), paramilitary groups of Sudeten Germans trained and armed in Germany, with headquarters near Bayreuth, were operating within Czechoslovak territory. Small numbers of SS and Wehrmacht personnel (usually company-sized units) even crossed the border to fight there too, carrying out raids and kidnapping hundreds of Czechoslovaks, many of whom would later die in German concentration camps. The Bell of Treason may focus on the conflict of ideas between conceding the Sudetenland or standing up against Germany, but during the same period terror and killing had already started in the Sudetenland. In this article we will look at how the game depicts Germans in two different ways: political and military.

On a political side, Czechoslovak Germans are presented as a space within the Public Dimension. Nearly a third of the Czechoslovak population was of German ethnicity, although that doesn’t mean that the Sudeten territories historically belonged to some previous German state. Even though Czechoslovakia was a young country (founded in 1918), its borders were very old. The Kingdom of Bohemia was a stable medieval entity and an independent part of the Holy Roman Empire, and it was during medieval times that German settlers were invited to help with the colonization of the mountainous areas along its border. The Czech-German relationship occasionally came to light as a potential problem throughout history, but in reality, this was often just someone’s political agenda. Czechs and Germans lived peacefully together for centuries, and therefore it was no surprise that the borders remained the same even after the 1919 Versailles conference (the subject of another great GMT game…), despite being clearly in conflict with Wilson’s ideal of the right for self-determination. Until Hitler and Nazi ideology appeared on the scene, it would be fair to say that the Germans in Czechoslovakia were a happy and mostly well-integrated minority.

Sudeten Germans were represented in Czechoslovaks politics by several parties, however during the build-up to the Munich Crisis the fascist Sudetendeutsche Partei (SDP) managed to absorb all of these except for the German Social Democratic Workers’ Party. A loud majority of Germans in Czechoslovakia followed the SDP during the crisis, either by choice or out of fear of reprisals from the party. At a rally in Carlsbad (western Bohemia) on April 24, 1938, the SDP demanded complete autonomy for the Sudetenland and the freedom to profess Nazi ideology, which was deemed unconstitutional by the Czechoslovak government. This rally marks the beginning of the game, being depicted on the first Turn card.

Prior to the Carlsbad declaration, the SDP leader Konrad Henlein had been given a secret (and simple) direct order from Hitler himself: the SDP should continue to escalate their demands, while making it seem like it was the Czechoslovak government that was being unreasonable. President Edvard Beneš was one of the few people who understood clearly what was going on, later putting a blank sheet of paper in front of two SDP delegates and telling them: “Dictate, we will accept anything”. The government couldn’t ignore the SDP demands and therefore worked hard to come to a compromise, eventually proposing four different plans in an attempt to satisfy them. Of course none of these plans were accepted, as the SDP did not really want to make a deal, but rather just sought an excuse for Hitler to invade Czechoslovakia. There was even a so-called ‘fifth plan’, taking the form of a secret diplomatic mission put together by Edvard Beneš (represented in the game by the use of International objective cards that either side can secretly pursue). The possibility of a political solution to the crisis was therefore very remote, even as international pressure was brought on Beneš to negotiate with Hitler and the SDP.

For a description of the military side of the German activities, we can borrow the name of a recent book by Jiří Padevět (currently only available in Czech) covering the subject: Bloody Autumn. It started with the Czechoslovak government allowing the SDP to form its own security service in May 1938, called the Freiwilliger Schutzdienst (FS). It was common for political parties to have their own private security service in this period, but the SDP of course didn’t use these so-called ‘Ordners’ only to provide security, they also started smuggling weapons and preparing sabotages. Terror attacks carried out by extremist Sudeten Germans soon began, with the first big wave coming right after Hitler’s Nuremberg speech on September 12, 1938. The main target of these attacks were border guards and gendarme stations, and in response the government declared martial law in several regions. The State Defense Guard replied with force, and in many cases the Czechoslovak army intervened with armored cars or even tanks. The Czechoslovaks operated under strict rules of engagement though, for example being ordered not to retaliate when they came under machine-gun fire from across the German border. The SDP was, however, declared illegal, and most of its fighters fled to Germany, including leaders such as Konrad Henlein. Hitler then established the Sudetendeutsche Freikorps, training and arming willing Sudeten Germans. Their mission was to continue attacks and sabotages with the aim of destabilizing the Sudetenland, and after Hitler’s second speech in Berlin, these attacks grew in intensity. To give some sense of scale, the Freikorp’s final size was 34,500 men, and they reported 140 successful missions and 70 unsuccessful ones.

After their general mobilization, the Czechoslovak army units withdrew to the fortification line, which was built following the example of the Maginot Line but was never completed (heavy weapons were often the missing component). Significant portions of Czechoslovakia were now de facto under German control, and Freikorps were replaced by SS companies in some key positions. The Czechoslovak army was ready to defend the fortification line, but not any of the territory behind it.

All of the German activity in Czechoslovakia, as well as the preparations for a general German attack, are represented in the game by the Sudeten Germans track, which three red discs are sequentially placed on, representing increased German activity. Each of these tells a bit of a story, being placed by events on some strategy cards, as well as by a mandatory event at the beginning of Turns 2 and 3 (coinciding with the Berchtesgaden and Godesberg talks). The intensity of German terror has an impact on Public and Military opinion, depicted through events that place cubes up to the number of red discs on the track. The biggest impact this track has, however, is to determine the occurrence and timing of the  Czechoslovak Partial and then General Mobilizations, which release more green cubes into the game and also allows their direct placement in certain spaces (according to the current political situation). If the Defend player can get the timing right, they might even be able to place these cubes directly into the United Kingdom and France spaces, as these foreign powers react positively to signs of Czechoslovak willingness to fight. General Mobilization has a particularly big impact on the game, as it did in history. Imagine the change in the will of a nation when all able men are both mentally prepared and equipped for war, and the effect this might have on international opinion. However, each red German disc also releases an additional white cube, which can go either to the Concede cube pool or directly to the ČSR Germans space, representing radicalization within the German community. The Sudeten Germans track therefore has a mixed effect on the game, emboldening SDP supporters and intimidating their opponents while also pushing the Czechoslovak army towards mobilization.

Small skirmishes went on even after the Munich Agreement. Although Czechoslovakia was never in a state of war with Germany, approximately 200 soldiers and members of the State Defense Guard were killed in action between May 1938 and March 1939. Hundreds of them were dragged to the Reich, and while some of these were later able to return, many others ended up in concentration camps.

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