<P> Shortly after the liberation of Czechoslovakia in May 1945, the use of the term Sudety (Sudetenland) in official communications was banned and replaced by the term pohraniční území (border territory). </P> <P> After World War II in summer 1945 the Potsdam Conference decided that Sudeten Germans would have to leave Czechoslovakia (see Expulsion of Germans after World War II). As a consequence of the immense hostility against all Germans that had grown within Czechoslovakia due to Nazi behavior, the overwhelming majority of Germans were expelled (while the relevant Czechoslovak legislation provided for the remaining Germans who were able to prove their anti-Nazi affiliation). </P> <P> The number of expelled Germans in the early phase (spring--summer 1945) is estimated to be around 500,000 people . Following the Beneš decrees and starting in 1946, the majority of the Germans were expelled and in 1950 only 159,938 (from 3,149,820 in 1930) still lived in the Czech Republic . The remaining Germans, proven anti-fascists and skilled laborers, were allowed to stay in Czechoslovakia, but were later forcefully dispersed within the country . Some German refugees from Czechoslovakia are represented by the Sudetendeutsche Landsmannschaft . </P> <P> Many of the Germans who stayed in Czechoslovakia later emigrated to West Germany (more than 100,000). As the German population was transferred out of the country, the former Sudetenland was resettled, mostly by Czechs but also by other nationalities of Czechoslovakia: Slovaks, Greeks (arriving in the wake of the Greek Civil War 1946--49), Carpathian Ruthenians, Romani people and Jews who had survived the Holocaust, and Hungarians (though the Hungarians were forced into this and later returned home--see Hungarians in Slovakia: Population exchanges). </P>

Who were the sudetens and where was the sudetenland