The Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia was a partially annexed territory of Nazi Germany that was established on 16 March 1939 after the German occupation of the Czech lands. The protectorate's population was mostly ethnic Czechs.
After the Munich Agreement of September 1938, the German Reich had annexed the German-majority Sudetenland to Germany from Czechoslovakia in October 1938. Following the establishment of the independent Slovak Republic on 14 March 1939, and the German occupation of the Czech rump state the next day, Adolf Hitler established the protectorate on 16 March 1939, issuing a proclamation from Prague Castle.Decree of 16 March 1939 establishing the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia (in German) The creation of the protectorate violated the Munich Agreement.C
The protectorate remained nominally autonomous and had a dual system of government, with German law applying to ethnic Germans while other residents had the legal status of Protectorate subjects and were governed by a puppet Czech administration. During World War II (1939–1945), the well-trained Czech workforce and developed industry were forced to make a major contribution to the German war economy. Since the Protectorate was just out of the reach of Allied bombers based in the United Kingdom, the Czech economy was able to work almost undisturbed until the end of the war. The Protectorate administration became deeply involved in the Holocaust in Bohemia and Moravia.
The state's existence came to an end with the surrender of Germany to the Allies in May 1945. After the war, some Protectorate officials were charged with collaborationism, but according to the prevailing belief in Czech society, the Protectorate was not entirely rejected as a collaborationist entity.
Background
The Four Year Plan that Hitler launched in September 1936 to have the German economy ready for a "total war" by 1940 was faltering by 1937 owing to a shortage of foreign exchange to pay for the vast economic demands imposed by the ambitious armaments targets as Germany lacked many of the necessary raw materials, which had to be imported. The British historian Richard Overy wrote the huge demands of the Four Year Plan "...could not be fully met by a policy of import substitution and industrial rationalization". In November 1937 at the Hossbach Conference, Hitler announced that to stay ahead in the arms race with the other powers, Germany had to seize Czechoslovakia in the very near-future. Czechoslovakia was the world's 7th largest manufacturer of arms, making Czechoslovakia into an important player in the global arms trade.
After Czechoslovakia accepted the terms of the Munich Agreement of 30 September 1938, Nazi Germany incorporated the ethnic German majority Sudetenland regions along the German border directly into Nazi Germany. Five months later, the Nazis violated the Munich Agreement, when, with Nazi German support, the Slovak parliament declared the independence of the Slovak Republic, Adolf Hitler invited Czechoslovak President Emil Hácha to Berlin and the latter accepted his request for the German occupation of the Czech rump state and its reorganization as a German protectorate.
Hitler's wish to occupy Czechoslovakia was largely caused by the foreign exchange crisis as Germany had exhausted its foreign exchange reserves by early 1939, and Germany urgently needed to seize the gold of the Czechoslovak central bank to continue the Four Year Plan. The British historian Victor Rothwell wrote that the Czechoslovak reserves of gold and hard currency seized in March 1939 were "invaluable in staving off Germany's foreign exchange crisis".
On 16 March when Hitler proclaimed the protectorate, he declared: "For a thousand years the provinces of Bohemia and Moravia formed part of the Lebensraum of the German people."
There was no real precedent for this action in German history. The model for the protectorate were the Princely states in India under the Raj. In the same way that Indian maharajahs in the Princely states were allowed a nominal independence, the real power rested with the British resident stationed to monitor the maharajah, Hitler emulated this practice with the Protectorate of Bohemia-Moravia as the German media quite explicitly compared the relationship between the Reich Protector, Baron Konstantin von Neurath and President Emil Hácha to that of a British resident and an Indian maharajah. Neurath seems to have been chosen as Reich Protector because, as a former foreign minister and a former ambassador to the United Kingdom, he was well known in London for his avuncular but dignified manner, which were personality traits associated with the popular image of a British person. Hitler believed that emulating the Raj would make this violation of the Munich Agreement more acceptable to Britain; as that proved not to be the case, the German media launched a lengthy campaign denouncing British "hypocrisy". The German authorities intentionally allowed the protectorate "all the trappings of independence" in order to encourage the Czech inhabitants to collaborate with them. However, despite the protectorate having its own postage stamps and presidential guard, real power lay with the Nazi authorities.
History
The population of the protectorate was mobilized for labor that would aid the German war effort, and special offices were organized to supervise the management of industries important to that effort. The Germans drafted Czechs to work in coal mines, in the iron and steel industry, and in armaments production. Consumer-goods production, much diminished, was largely directed toward supplying the German armed forces. The protectorate's population was subjected to rationing. The Czech crown was devalued to the Reichsmark at the rate of 10 crowns to 1 Reichsmark, though the actual rate should have been 6 crowns for 1 Reichsmark, a policy that allowed the Germans to buy everything on the cheap in the protectorate. Inflation was a major problem throughout the existence of the protectorate, which was made worse by the refusal of the German authorities to raise wages to keep up with inflation, making the era a period of decreasing living standards as the crowns bought less and less. Even members of the volksdeutsche (ethnic Germans) living in the protectorate complained their living standards had been higher under Czechoslovakia, which was quite a surprise to most of them, who expected their living standards to rise under German rule.
German rule was moderate by Nazi standards during the first months of the occupation. The Czech government and political system, reorganized by Hácha, continued in formal existence. The Gestapo directed its activities mainly against Czech politicians and the intelligentsia. In 1940, in a secret plan on Germanization of the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia, it was declared that those considered to be racially Mongoloid and the Czech intelligentsia were not to be Germanized, and that about half of the Czech population were suitable for Germanization. Generalplan Ost assumed that around 50% of Czechs would be fit for Germanization. The Czech intellectual elite were to be removed from Czech territories and from Europe completely. The authors of Generalplan Ost believed it would be best if they emigrated overseas, as even in Siberia, they were considered a threat to German rule. Just like Jews, Poles, Serbs, and several other nations, Czechs were considered to be Untermenschen by the Nazi state. The Czechs however, were not subjected to a similar degree of random and organized acts of brutality that their Polish counterparts experienced. This is attributed to the view within the Nazi hierarchy that a large swath of the populace was "capable of Aryanization", such capacity for Aryanization was supported by the position that part of the Czech population had German ancestry. There is also the fact that a relatively restrained policy in Czech lands was partly driven by the need to keep the population nourished and complacent so that it can carry out the vital work of arms production in the factories. By 1939, the country was already serving as a major hub of military production for Germany, manufacturing aircraft, tanks, artillery, and other armaments.
The Czechs demonstrated against the occupation on 28 October 1939, the 21st anniversary of Czechoslovak independence. The death on 15 November 1939 of a medical student, Jan Opletal, who had been wounded in the October violence, precipitated widespread student demonstrations, and the Germans retaliated. Politicians were arrested en masse, as were an estimated 1,800 students and teachers. On 17 November, all universities and colleges in the protectorate were closed, nine student leaders were executed, and 1,200 were sent to the Sachsenhausen concentration camp within Nazi Germany; further arrests and executions of Czech students and professors took place later during the occupation.
During World War II, Hitler decided that Neurath was not treating the Czechs harshly enough and adopted a more radical policy in the protectorate. On 29 September 1941, Hitler appointed SS hardliner Reinhard Heydrich as Deputy Reichsprotektor (Stellvertretender Reichsprotektor). At the same time, he relieved Neurath of his day-to-day duties. For all intents and purposes, Heydrich replaced Neurath as Reichsprotektor. Under Heydrich's authority Prime Minister Alois Eliáš was arrested (and later executed), the Czech government was reorganized, and all Czech cultural organizations were closed. The Gestapo arrested and murdered people. The deportation of Jews to concentration camps was organized, and the fortress town of Terezín was made into a ghetto way-station for Jewish families.
On 4 June 1942, Heydrich died after being wounded by Czechoslovak Commandos in Operation Anthropoid. Directives issued by Heydrich's successor, SS-Oberstgruppenführer Kurt Daluege, and martial law brought forth mass arrests, executions and the obliteration of the villages of Lidice and Ležáky. In 1943 the German war-effort was accelerated. Under the authority of Karl Hermann Frank, German minister of state for Bohemia and Moravia, within the protectorate, all non-war-related industry was prohibited. Most of the Czech population obeyed quietly until the final months preceding the end of the war, when thousands became involved in the resistance movement.
For the Czechs of the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia, German occupation represented a period of oppression. The number of Czech victims of political persecution and murders in concentration camps totalled between 36,000 and 55,000. After Heydrich assumed control of the Protectorate, he instituted martial law and stepped up arrests and executions of resistance fighters. Heydrich allegedly referred to Czechs as "laughing beasts", reflecting Czech subversion and Nazi racial beliefs about the inferiority of Czechs.
The Jewish population of Bohemia and Moravia (118,000 according to the 1930 census) was virtually annihilated, with over 75,000 murdered. Of the 92,199 people classified as Jews by German authorities in the Protectorate as of 1939, 78,154 were murdered in the Holocaust, or 85 percent.