On 10 May 1945, while in American captivity in the barracks of Pilsen, he committed suicide by cutting his veins with his broken glasses. He was buried anonymously in the Plzeň Central Cemetery. The British historian, Keith Robbins, noted that Henlein did achieve his dream of bringing the Sudetenland "home to the "Reich"", but not in the way he wanted, with the entire ethnic German population of the Sudetenland being expelled to Germany in 1945–46, under the Beneš decrees. In the Czech language, "Henleinovci" ("Henleinists") is a term of abuse, meaning a traitor or fifth-columnist. After the way in which most of the Sudeten Germans had supported Henlein in 1938, Beneš – who had once believed that Germans and Czechs could coexist – became utterly convinced of Henlein's point that Germans and Czechs could not co-exist, and to avoid that mistake again, had all of the ethnic Germans expelled in 1945–46. Robbins argued that it would have been better for the Sudeten Germans in the long run, and in their own self-interest, to be loyal to Czechoslovakia rather than following Henlein into a disaster, noting it was because of leaders like Henlein that people in the Sudetenland now all speak Czech rather than German.