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

Chapter IV
One of the main tasks of the forces of
repression was to combat all hostile
movements and the national tendencies
of the Czech minority. They were
assisted in this by the party organisations
of the NSDAP, that permeated the
whole of society and by means of the
system of party leaders and party
education were even able to penetrate
families. All party members and
members of organisations affiliated to
the NSDAP, or at least an absolute
majority of them, stood by the threat
already voiced by Henlein on October 7,
1938, “Wir wollen die politischen Gegner
einsperren, bis sie schwarz werden” (We
intend to let our political opponents rot
in jail). An immediate indication that the
statement was meant seriously was the
so-called “Operation Albrecht”, a first
strike against all known opponents of
Nazism launched immediately after the
arrival of the various police units,
particularly the operational divisions of
the Gestapo and the Sicherheitsdienst.
Thus throughout the occupied border
areas, conditions were created by means
of the first wave of terror and then the
entire system established by the regime
which hampered to the maximum any
form of opposition or resistance,
conditions aggravated still further by the
prevailing enthusiasm for the
“liberation” among the overwhelming
majority of the German inhabitants, and
an almost fanatical devotion to the
Führer and the Nazi ideology. And the
fact that the occupation of the border
areas was carried out unexpectedly and
at great speed meant that the anti-fascist
forces did not have time or space to
create a resistance movement. This all
served to seriously reduce the extent of
opposition and resistance in the
“Sudetenland”.
Nonetheless there was spontaneous
opposition and organised resistance
throughout the war. Although, in
general, it can be divided along ethnic
lines, many of the illegal groups were
international with Czech-German,
Czech-Polish or, in some cases German-
Polish membership. In the final months
of the war they were joined by Russian,
The Break up of Czechoslovakia and the Genesis
of the Transfer
150
French and other prisoners of war, forced
labourers and even paratroops.
One of the most important illegal
anti-fascist organisations from the ranks
of the former German social democrats
was the group of the former mayor of
Ústí nad Labem, Leopold Pölzl. Even
before 1938, the group had carried out
operations across the border in Saxony
and in spite of the arrest of some of its
members in October 1938, its activity
continued and actually intensified. It also
engaged in information and
disinformation activity, as well as
sabotage and support of the families of
detainees; it also supported prisoners and
deported workers, and also continued
that activity during the following years.
However its activity flourished
particularly after June 1941. For a while
it was in contact with Prague via Václav
Jandečka and with Dresden via Herta
Lindner. Part of its activity included
listening to foreign radio broadcasts and
acquiring typewriters and duplicating
machines for printing and distributing
anti-Nazi leaflets. Its members paid
regular subscriptions.
It is likely that there were other,
smaller groups operating on a smaller
scale but along similar lines elsewhere in
the border areas.
A relatively strong Czech-German
resistance organisation based in Ustí nad
Labem and linked to a centre in Prague
had existed since 1939. Its active radius
extended as far as Most and it was linked
to a German resistance group in the
Teplice area (Herta Lindner) and to Ota
Král’s group. On the orders of the Czech
resistance organisation Obrana národa
(Defence of the Nation) Bohumil
Bachura took over the leadership of the
Ústí group and ran it from Prague, where
he and others (Capt. J. Kňourek,
J. Vondra, V. Tichý and O. Král) had
moved to from Ustí when the border
area was occupied.
In spite of the powerful blow to the
resistance caused by the arrests in the
wake of the occupation and the
ideological uncertainty caused by the
Comintern’s theses on the anti-Nazi
convictions of the German proletariat