MINORITY POLITICS IN A MULTINATIONAL STATE: THE GERMAN SOCIAL DEMOCRATIC PARTY OF CZECHOSLOVAKIA

摘要

The attempt of the German Social Democratic Party of Czechoslovakia during the interwar period to balance economic goals versus national goals and class struggle versus national struggle is the subject of this dissertation. The party tried to approach politics in a manner that represented its economic and national interests, which came into conflict at different times during the interwar period. The balancing act that the party attempted brought it under attack not only from the communist side but also from the Czech and German nationalist political parties. German nationalist politicians accused the German Social Democrats of betraying the national interests of the Sudeten Germans through their internationalist politics. The Czechoslovak Communists and Social Democrats accused the German Social Democrats of placing (reactionary) national interests ahead of class interests and Czech nationalist politicians criticized both the economic and the national goals of the German Social Democrats. Despite such opposition, the German Social Democratic Party remained the most popular German political party in the country until the advent of the Depression.;During the 1930s, however, the German Social Democratic Party declined from the largest German political party in Czechoslovakia to a numerically and politically insignificant party. Given the completeness of the eclipse of the party, one must ask to what degree the decline was due to internal political problems and to what extent the German Social Democrats were the victims of larger European circumstances. The following evaluation of the German Social Democratic Party's interwar history considers it in three different, but interrelated contexts: the party's internal situation, the political milieu of the First Czechoslovak Republic, and the European political situation.