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

The Break up of Czechoslovakia and the Genesis
of the Transfer
detained was more like fifteen thousand,
the overwhelming majority of whom
died in prison or concentration camp, or
were executed, including the former
president of the social democrats in the
Czechoslovak Republic, Ludwig Czech.
A similar fate awaited the Czech social
democrats there. In Nazi reports they are
referred to as “Marxists” or mentioned in
connection with “Marxist plots”.
The arrests also affected other groups
of people. The register of new arrivals
from October to December 1938 at the
Dachau concentration camp alone
includes 2,500 Sudeten Germans. So it
would seem that there were more people
victimised in the annexed Czech border
areas in the first months of the
occupation than in Germany after
Hitler’s accession to power. It succeeded
in weakening the bases of resistance. It
must also be stated that as well as the
left-wing activists mentioned, some 300
members of civic associations and the
catholic church also emigrated from the
border areas. And in addition to all of
those, there were the refugees, the
outcast Jews and those who left for
economic reasons.
Apart from the German anti-fascists,
the Czech minority were also subject to
close scrutiny by the Nazi authorities. Its
national orientation, not to mention the
left-wing tendencies of many members
of the community, rendered it
“unreliable” and hostile to the Reich.
Surveillance was particularly intense in
the case of officials of the Social-
Democratic and Communist parties,
members of patriotic organisations such
as the Sokol and the Ústřední matice
školská (Central Educational
Foundation), former Legionaries, etc.
The Czechs (in common with the
German anti-fascists) were encircled by
a network of police spies, agents
provocateur and informers. In view of
their situation, subject to police terror
and inadequate grassroots organisation,
there were not many collaborators within
the Czech minority, but their were not
many active members of the resistance
either. Even though most of those
arrested at the beginning of October had
149
Chapter IV
been gradually released by the end of
November, the surveillance of Czech and
German anti-fascists continued. Apart
from police harassment, the German
anti-fascists in particular had to contend
with being transferred to workplaces in
the Reich (e.g. on their release, German
anti-fascists from Děčín were transferred
to Berlin), where the wages were lower,
or they were without work for some
time. The Gestapo headquarters in
Liberec, for instance, ordered extra
vigilance in searching for illegal
newspapers, leaflets and contacts. Young
German communists were soon pressed
into the army and left for the front as
soon as war broke out.
Resistance activity might therefore be
said to have been “nipped in the bud”.
The situation in the Sudetengau was
much more difficult than in the
Protectorate, because the Czech
minority and the German anti-fascist
were hemmed in by a powerful and agile
party and police machine. Prosecutions
for resistance activity were dealt with by
the relevant provincial courts and the
Higher Provincial Court at Litoměřice,
while more important cases were brought
before the special courts which came
under the People’s Court in Berlin and
its Dresden branch.
The organs of repression were the
police and the gendarmerie, who were
under the supervision of the relevant
institutions of the Reich. As of February
1944, the Sudetengau was totally
answerable to K.H.Frank, the supreme
commander of the SS and the police in
Prague. Units of the Ordnungspolizei were
stationed throughout the territory, there
was a gendarmerie post in almost every
village and the security police covered
most of the towns. The urban police and
the gendarmerie in the countryside were
assisted respectively by the so-called
Stadtwacht and Landwacht, armed patrols
made up of local Nazis, who kept closer
watch on their fellow citizens than the
actual police. The principal organ of
repression and most dangerous of all was
the Gestapo, with its headquarters in
Liberec and branch offices in all the main
centres of the Sudetengau.