What is "sudetenland"

The Sudetenland ( Czech and , ) is the German name (used in English in the first half of the 20th century) to refer to those northern, southwest, and western areas of Czechoslovakia which were inhabited primarily by ethnic German speakers, specifically the border districts of Bohemia, Moravia, and those parts of Czech Silesia located within Czechoslovakia, since they were part of Austria until the end of World War I.

Sudetenland is a compound word where Land means "country" and Sudeten is the German name of the Sudetes mountains, which run along the northern Czech border and Lower Silesia (now in Poland), although Sudetenland encompassed areas well beyond those mountains.

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 demands of Nazi Germany that the Sudetenland be annexed to Germany, which in fact took place after the later infamous Munich Agreement. When Czechoslovakia was reconstituted after the Second World War, the Sudeten Germans were largely expelled, and the region today is inhabited primarily by Czech speakers.

Parts of the current Czech regions of Karlovy Vary, Liberec, Olomouc, Moravia-Silesia, and Ústí nad Labem are situated within the former Sudetenland.