Editing Sudetes (section)

== History ==
[[File:536viki Karpacz. Foto Barbara Maliszewska.jpg|thumb|[[Karpacz]]]]
[[File:Kościół Wang - panoramio - Jola Sik.jpg|thumb|[[Vang Stave Church]]]]
The area around the Sudetes had by the 12th century been relatively densely settled<ref name="Mazurski1986" /> with agriculture and settlements expanding further in the [[High Middle Ages]] from the 13th century onward.<ref name="Glinaetal2016" /> The majority of settlers were Germans from neighbouring Silesia, founding typical ''[[Waldhufendorf|Waldhufendörfer]]''.<ref>{{cite book|author=Charles Higounet|title=Die deutsche Ostsiedlung im Mittelalter|pages=167|language=de}}</ref> As this trend went on [[thinning]] of forest and deforestation had turned clearly [[Sustainable development|unsustainable]] by the 14th century.<ref name="Barz">{{cite report |author-last=Barzdajn |author-first=Wladyslaw |year=2004 |title=Report of the second (20–22 September 2001, Valsaín, Spain) and third (17–19 October 2002, Kostrzyca, Poland) meetings |chapter=Rehabilitation of silver fir (''Abies alba'' Mill) populations in the Sudetes |pages=45–51}}</ref> In the 15th and 16th centuries agriculture had reached the inner part of [[Table Mountains]] in the [[Central Sudetes]].<ref name="Mazurski1986" /> Destruction and degradation of the Sudetes forest peaked in the 16th and 17th centuries<ref name="Barz" /> with demand of firewood coming from [[Forest glass|glasshouses]] that operated through the area in the [[early modern period]].<ref name="Mazurski1986">{{cite journal |last1=Mazurski |first1=Krzysztof R. |year=1986 |title=The destruction of forests in the polish Sudetes Mountains by industrial emissions |journal=[[Forest Ecology and Management]] | volume=17 |issue=4 |pages=303–315 |doi=10.1016/0378-1127(86)90158-1|bibcode=1986ForEM..17..303M}}</ref>

Some limited form of [[forest management]] begun in the 18th century<ref name="Barz" /> while in the [[industrial age]] demand for firewood was sustained by metallurgic industries in the settlements and cities around the mountains.<ref name="Mazurski1986" /> In the 19th century the [[Central Sudetes]] had an economic boom with sandstone quarrying and a flourishing tourism industry centered on the natural scenery. Despite this there was at least since the 1880s a trend of depopulation of villages and hamlets which continued into the 20th century.<ref name="MigonLatocha2013" /> Since [[World War II]] various areas that were cleared of forest have been re-naturalized.<ref name="MigonLatocha2013" /> Industrial activity across Europe has caused considerable damage to the forests as [[acid rain]] and [[Toxic heavy metal|heavy metals]] has arrived with westerly and southwesterly winds.<ref name="Mazurski1986" /> [[Abies alba|Silver firs]] have proven particularly vulnerable to industrial [[soil contamination]].<ref name="Barz" />

=== Sudetes and "Sudetenland" ===
[[File:Osowka 0005.jpg|thumb|[[Project Riese]], [[Owl Mountains]]]]
After [[World War I]], the name ''[[Sudetenland]]'' came into use to describe areas of the [[First Czechoslovak Republic]] with large [[Ethnic Germans|ethnic German]] populations. In 1918, the short-lived rump state of [[Republic of German-Austria|German-Austria]] proclaimed a [[Province of the Sudetenland]] in northern [[Moravia]] and [[Austrian Silesia]] around the city of [[Opava]] (''Troppau'').

The term was used in a wider sense when on 1 October 1933 [[Konrad Henlein]] founded the [[Sudeten German Party]] and in [[Nazi Germany|Nazi German]] parlance ''Sudetendeutsche'' ([[Sudeten Germans]]) referred to all autochthonous ethnic [[Germans in Czechoslovakia (1918–1938)|Germans in Czechoslovakia]]. They were heavily clustered in the entire mountainous periphery of Czechoslovakia—not only in the former Moravian ''Provinz Sudetenland'' but also along the northwestern Bohemian borderlands with German [[Lower Silesia]], [[Saxony]] and [[Bavaria]], in an area formerly called [[Province of German Bohemia|German Bohemia]]. In total, the German minority population of interwar Czechoslovakia numbered around 20% of the total national population.

Sparking the [[Sudeten Crisis]], [[Adolf Hitler]] got his future enemies Britain and France to concede the ''Sudetenland'' with most of the [[Czechoslovak border fortifications]] in the 1938 [[Munich Agreement]], leaving the remainder of Czechoslovakia shorn of its natural borders and buffer zone, finally [[German occupation of Czechoslovakia|occupied]] by Germany in March 1939. After being annexed by Nazi Germany, much of the region was redesignated as the ''[[Reichsgau Sudetenland]]''.

After [[World War II]], most of the previous population of the Sudetes was forcibly [[Expulsion of Germans after World War II|expelled]] on the basis of the [[Potsdam Agreement]] and the [[Beneš decrees]], and the region was resettled by new Polish and Czechoslovak citizens. A considerable proportion of the Czechoslovak populace thereafter strongly objected to the use of the term ''Sudety''. In the Czech Republic the designation ''Krkonošsko-jesenická subprovincie'' is used in academic context and usually only the discrete Czech names for the individual mountain ranges (e.g. Giant Mountains) appear, as under [[#Subdivisions|Subdivisions]] above.