TRANSLATION OF DOCUMENT 2863-PS

FOUR FIGHTING YEARS '
A publication of the Czechoslovak Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Department of Information, London, 1943. Pages 29-30.
Lecture by Konrad Henlein, "The Fight for the Liberation of the Sudetens," delivered on 4 March 1941 in the Auditorium of the University of Vienna under the auspices of the Wiener Verwaltungsakademie. .
"National Socialism soon swept over us Sudeten Germans. Our struggle was of a different character from that in Germany.
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Although we had to behave differently in public we were, of course, secretly in touch with the National Socialist revolution in Germany so that we might be a part of it. The struggle for Greater Germany was waged on Sudeten soil, too. This struggle could be waged only by those inspired by the spirit of National Socialism, persons who were true followers of our Fuehrer, whatever their outward appearance. Fate sought me out to be the leader of the national group in its final struggle. When * * * in autumn, 1933, the leaders of the NSDAP asked me
to take over the political leadership of the Sudeten Germans, I had a difficult problem to solve. Should the National Socialist Party continue to be carried on illegally or should the movement, in the interest of the self-preservation of the Sudeten Germans and in order to prepare their return to the Reich, wage its struggle under camouflage and by methods which appeared quite legal to the outside world? For us Sudeten Germans only the second alternative seemed possible, for the preservation of our national group was at stake. It would certainly have been easier to exchange this hard and mentally exhausting struggle for the heroic gesture of confessing allegiance to National Socialism and entering a Czechoslovak prison. But it seemed more than doubtful whether by this means we could have fulfilled the political task of destroying Czechoslovakia as a bastion in the alliance against the German Reich."