This probably sounds like a stupid question, but;
Whenever I look at an ethnic map of Europe/Germany/Bohemia before WW2, the Germans seem to live in the Sudetenland almost as if they were deliberately avoiding living in the Czech Republic. So why were Germans living in the Sudetenland/how did they get there?
The Sudetengermans came mainly in two waves. First in the big Ostsiedlung (German eastward expansion) of the 12th 13th Century as woodcutters and settlers from Bavaria. Those settlerd mostly in the forested and less populated border regions of Bohemia (the laterly so-called "Sudetenland"). Then, after the 30 Years war Germans were invited to repoulate the annihilated population.
The mountainous regions surrounding Bohemia and Moravia were Natural borders Beetween the Slavic Bohemians and the Germanic Bavarians.
