The Sudeten German Party (German: Sudetendeutsche Partei, SdP, Czech: Sudetoněmecká strana) was the party founded by the political leader of the Sudeten Germans Konrad Henlein in 1933, some months after the government of Czechoslovakia outlawed the local branch of the Nazi Party.
Henlein initially denied ties to Nazi Germany and claimed that his party merely defended the rights of the Sudeten Germans to self-determination, but from 1937 it was clear that the SdP was financed by the German government and that its main aim was annexation of the Sudetenland to Germany. Through September 1938 the SdP also helped organize several terrorist attacks and two failed uprisings coinciding with the Munich Conference that ended with Henlein fleeing into exile.
Nevertheless, France and Britain's accession to German demands meant that the SdP succeed in its goal in the end. It was disbanded right after the Sudetenland was annexed to Germany and most of its members joined the Nazi Party.
Sudeten German Party in The War That Came Early[]
While Adolf Hitler valued the chaos that the Sudeten German Party had caused within Czechoslovakia during the last half of 1938, he didn't have any love for it nor considered its goal of annexing the Sudetenland to Germany an end on itself but a means to the true end, which was domination of Europe through the breakout of a new general war. If accomplishing that required him to drop the SdP, he would do it without hesitation.
Hitler's pretext for war came finally when a Czech nationalist, Jaroslav Stribny, assassinated the leader of the SdP, Konrad Henlein, while the latter was in Germany, on 29 September 1938.
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