Trial of the Major War Criminals before International Military Tribunal ...

.directives, requests and even commands from Berlin, although
there was still in Prague an apparently independent Czechoslavak
State machinery (President, Government, Parliament).
b) The "Protectorate".
The very title of "Protectorate" imposed on Bohemia and
Moravia was a constitutional offence; on one of the oldest and polit-
ically, economically and culturally matured nations a status was
imposed which is normally reserved by European colonial Great
Powers for backward native nations in Africa who are unable te
administer themselves independently.
The "Fuehrererlass" (Decree of the Fuehrer and Reich Chancellor
on the Establishment of the Protectorate "Bohemia and
Moravia") of March 16th, 1939, R.G.Bl. I, p. 485 (Annex 1) the fun-
damental Act of the "Protectorate", proclaimed in its Article 3
that "the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia is autonomous", but
- Page 48 ­
it involved in itself the abolition of a real autonomy by authorising
the Reich Protectbr and the Reich to interfere with that autonomy.
But even its doubtful autonomy was subsequently openly violated
by the Germans by enactments and just via facti as well. One of
those enactments is e.g. "Ordinance on legislation in the Protec-
torate of Bohemia and Moravia" dated June 7th, 1939, R.G.Bl. I,
p. 1039. According to Section 1, the Reich Protector is authorised
to change by Decree the autonomous law if there is some joint
interest; if there is any danger in delay the Reich Protector has
the authority to issue provisions of any kind. (The Reich Protector,
of course, decides himself whether there is a danger in delay.)
2. Abolition of Human Rights and Liberties.
(a) After Munich..
@a) I n the areas ceded to Germany.
Even before Munich in the so-called "Sudeten Area", Czechs,
non-Henlein Germans and Jews had to suffer under the terror of
the Henlein Nazi (see Part I).
The Agreement of Munich forced the Republic to cede 738,502
citizens of Czech language and race to Germany. Those people were
thus deprived, with a stroke, of all democratic rights and liberties
enjoyed under the Republic.
The Jews in the ceded areas were completely outlawed. Czechs,
German democrats and Jews, in so far as they did not succeed in