Karl Hermann Frank was a Sudeten German Nazi official in the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia prior to and during World War II. Attaining the rank of Obergruppenführer, he was in command of the Nazi police apparatus in the protectorate, including the Gestapo, the SD, and the Kripo. After the war, he was tried, convicted and executed by hanging for his role in organizing the massacres of the people of the Czech villages of Lidice and Ležáky.
(c. 1941)
Frank with Heydrich and Böhme, September 1941
Destruction of Lidice
Emil Hácha (in the background), State President of Bohemia and Moravia, Daluege and Frank, September 1942
German Bohemians, later known as Sudeten Germans, were ethnic Germans living in the Czech lands of the Bohemian Crown, which later became an integral part of Czechoslovakia. Before 1945, over three million German Bohemians constituted about 23% of the population of the whole country and about 29.5% of the population of Bohemia and Moravia. Ethnic Germans migrated into the Kingdom of Bohemia, an electoral territory of the Holy Roman Empire, from the 11th century, mostly in the border regions of what was later called the "Sudetenland", which was named after the Sudeten Mountains.
Der Ackermann aus Böhmen, 15th-century manuscript, Heidelberg University
German dialects with overlaps to Sudeten
Sudeten German Freikorps
Neville Chamberlain (left) and Adolf Hitler leave the Bad Godesberg meeting on 23 September 1938.