the nationality of all inhabitants of the czech provinces and ...

The Break up of Czechoslovakia and the Genesis
of the Transfer
Sudeten Germans, who became citizens
of the German Reich. They too were
now covered by the regulation protecting
“German blood” and “German honour”
and were subject to German courts. This
regulation was further defined by the
ruling of the Reich’s Minister of the
Interior of April 20, 1939 (p. 815 of the
legal code of the Code). Specifically, the
rights of Germans in the Protectorate
were widened. This related to the
provisions of the Reich citizenship
decree, based on Law I of the Reich
p. 1146 of September 15, 1939. Article 2
of this law states: “A citizen of the Reich
is that subject only who is of German or
kindred blood and who, through his
conduct, shows that he is both desirous
and fit to serve the German people and
Reich faithfully.” Paragraph 3 stipulated
that: “Only the citizen of the Reich
enjoys full political rights in accordance
with the provision of the Laws.” Not
every German had the right to be a
citizen of the Reich.
By virtue of the decree, the other
inhabitants of Bohemia and Moravia
became subjects of the Protectorate of
Bohemia and Moravia, although they
too could be judged by German courts
under the terms of a ruling
of April 14, 1939.
Hitler’s decree establishing the
“Protectorate” of Bohemia and Moravia
defined the status of the occupied Czech
provinces from the very next day. The
reason for the inverted commas is that not
only was the entire ruling more
improvised than conceptually framed, it
was deliberately framed in very vague
legal terms so that the letter of the law
was virtually meaningless. During the
Berlin talks, Hitler had promised the
Czecho-Slovak President that the Czechs
would enjoy “the fullest autonomy and
their own existence”, such as they had
never enjoyed even in former Austria. The
“Führer’s” decree of March 16 also stated
that “the Protectorate … is autonomous
and self-administrating”. However
autonomy essentially never amounted to
any more than this statement. The first
problem was the fact that any decision by
the leaders and officials of the
121
Chapter IV
Protectorate could be altered by the
Reichsprotektor. By virtue of Hitler’s later
rulings the Reichsprotektor enjoyed total
independence from the Protectorate
bodies in matters of legislation. He could
issue, cancel or change legal regulations in
all spheres. He could decide the issues
about which the Reich and Protectorate
authorities were to report to him and
could specify the range of measures
requiring his personal approval. The
principle of the de facto supremacy of
German occupation administration was
gradually implemented in areas of
administration and the economy in the
Protectorate. The rate of the Reichsmark
to the Protectorate crown was fixed at the
discriminatory level of 1:10 (in reality it
was 1:8, the rate that applied in the
Sudeten canton), whereby the economic
and monetary strength of the crown was
undermined. In addition, the Protectorate
had to pay a “war tax” that in 1940
amounted to some 3,000 million crowns
and by 1944 had risen to as much as
12,000 million crowns. Administrators
(Treuhänder) were placed in charge of
enterprises, property was “Aryanised”,
German officials were appointed to the
ministries of the Protectorate. Germans
started to appear as local bosses in even
purely Czech towns, particularly the cities
such as Prague, Plzeň, Brno, etc., and
subsequently in smaller towns and
villages. Thus on the territory of the
Protectorate there was a dual
administration – one for the Germans, as
citizens of the Reich, and another for the
subjects of the Protectorate who were
subordinate to the former. A visible sign
of that situation were the powers
conferred on the German secret police
(Gestapo) and the German police in
general. Those powers were so extensive
that they had de facto oversight over the
very decisions of the Protectorate bodies.
More and more activities regarded as
criminal were now came under German
jurisdiction so that even investigation and
the courts were increasingly taken out of
the hands of the Protectorate
administration.
A fundamental legal problem was
created by the fact that the text of the