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

Chapter IV
economic, social and cultural fields.
Immediately after the occupation Czech
political parties were banned, and soon
afterwards so also were Czech
associations and clubs with the sole
exception of the Czech voluntary fire
corps, which was placed under German
leadership. All Czech middle, secondary
and vocational schools were abolished
and most of the primary schools; in the
surviving Czech-language primary
schools the curriculum was Nazioriented
and geared to Germanisation.
There was no opportunity for young
Czechs to attend Czech secondary
school or university. There was no longer
any Czech press, theatre, radio or cinema
and no publicly guaranteed scope for
Czech national cultural activities.
The Czechs were no longer
represented in any way in the
administration, politics, the economy or
culture, which meant that the German
administration had less chance to involve
them actively. Pro-German or pro-Nazi
sympathies tended to be expressed only
in ethnically mixed or ambivalent
families. On the other hand, the
isolation of the Czech populace – the
absence of social contacts and the lack of
information – contributed to their
increasing disorientation, sense of
friendlessness, anxiety, constant fear and
worry. And so whereas the German
ethnic minority prior to Munich enjoyed
national rights and autonomy, the Nazis
in the Reichsgau Sudetenland adopted
quite the opposite approach to the
Czechs and condemned them to be a de
facto workforce with no rights.
An extremely tricky and sensitive issue
for the Czech population was the
possibility of opting for Czechoslovak
citizenship under the agreement signed
between Germany and the Czecho-
Slovak Republic on November 20, 1938,
which also allowed Germans living in
Czecho-Slovakia to opt for German
citizenship. The snag was that if Czechs
so opted, as they could according to the
agreement up until March 31, 1940, they
would be allowed to emigrate but could
only take their moveable assets with
them. Neither of the parties to the
The Break up of Czechoslovakia and the Genesis
of the Transfer
146
agreement were very keen on too many
people opting for different citizenship,
however. The Germans wanted to retain
their ethnic minority, and hence their
political representation, in the rump
Republic, while the Czecho-Slovak
government feared that another influx of
Czechs from the border areas would
multiply the already serious economic
and social problems caused by the arrival
of refugees. There are no available figures
for the precise number of those who
opted for Czecho-Slovak citizenship, but
it may be assumed that they accounted
for most of those who declared
themselves to be Czech or Protectorate
subjects in the census of May 1939.
There are no precise figures either for
the population of the “Sudetenland” in
later years. We simply know that the
overall natural population increase in the
occupied border areas amounted to about
120 thousand up to May 1945, although
some sources claim figures of 124
thousand or 133 thousand. That growth
was pronounced in the case of the
Germans in the first years of the
occupation before sharply falling. The
trend among the Czechs was the
opposite.
We only have detailed information
about the natural demographic growth
for the Sudetengau for the first years, and
then for the entire occupied territory for
the year 1944. In the Sudetengau overall
growth rose until 1940, when the
absolute increment was 28,137 which
represented an annual growth rate of 9.5
per thousand which exceeded the Reich
average of 7.4 per thousand and was
much higher than in the Protectorate
(3.3 per thousand. In the subsequent
years, however, the rate rapidly declined
so that by 1942, the absolute increment
in the Sudetengau was only 7,822 or 2.5
per thousand. On the other hand, the
population drop was also due to the
almost 200,000 war losses.
Natural growth therefore had only a
slight effect on the demographic
situation in the occupied territories. In
normal circumstances, by 1945, the
Sudetengau should have had 3,046,000
inhabitants, and the occupied border