The Making of the “March Fallen”: March 4, 1919 and the Subversive Potential of Occupation

Abstract

For more than eighty-five years, Sudeten German communities have gathered together to commemorate the so-called “March Fourth Massacre.” On this date in 1919, Czechoslovak troops opened fire on crowds of Germans who were demonstrating for national self-determination in thirty-five towns across Czechoslovakia's western frontier. By day's end, the violence in seven towns across the border region had claimed a total of fifty-four lives and had left hundreds wounded. The bloodiest altercation took place in the northwestern Bohemian town of Kadaň (Kaaden), which left twenty-two dead and ninety wounded. On that fateful day in Kadaň, this violence was precipitated by an altercation between unruly German students and anxious Czechoslovak guardsmen, who were stationed in front of the town hall. This altercation triggered two minutes of sustained and indiscriminate gunfire upon the crowd of nearly 10,000, who found themselves trapped by Czechoslovak machine gun nests at opposing ends of the market square.