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

Chapter IV
and Nazi gangs took place at Moravská
Chrastová in the district of Svitavy as the
result of an attempt to seize a further
Czech village.
Open acts of resistance were
suppressed at a fairly early stage by the
Nazi terror. Here, too, these had already
occurred during the rigged elections to
the Reich parliament in early December
1938 and by officially opting for the
Republic. It is worth pointing out here
that there were isolated cases of Czech
municipalities voting in the majority
against Hitler, some of them in the
Opava Regierungsbezirk.
Although there are recorded instances
of various statements by members of the
German and Czech populations
comparing the new status quo
unfavourably to the situation in pre-
Munich Czechoslovakia, but to judge by
the surviving reports of Czech
institutions, it would seem that those
critical voices were overrated.
Admittedly Czech and German antifascist
leaflets and signs did appear and
even the occasional expression of
discontent on the part of certain
Germans, but they were more or less
negligible in extent and significance.
The overall situation in the border
areas of Bohemia, Moravia and Silesia
occupied since October 1938 did not
change until Nazi Germany’s invasion of
the Soviet Union on June 22, 1941. The
main feature of the new situation was
that life in the rear was more and more
affected by the war and events on the
front, as well as by the increasingly
significant anti-fascist opposition and
resistance, particularly in their more
active and effective forms. The effects of
the war were felt not only in the
economy and society, particularly in
respect of supplies, but also in political
and ethnic terms and in the sphere of
policing.
The initial advances of German troops
into Soviet territory gave rise to a fresh
wave of fanatical enthusiasm among the
Sudeten-German population,
accompanied by hopes of all sorts of
employment opportunities in the
occupied areas. Although that
The Break up of Czechoslovakia and the Genesis
of the Transfer
152
enthusiasm gradually waned in the face
of the setbacks on the eastern Front
suffered by Germany and its allies, there
was no marked drop in support for
Hitler Germany’s war policies and
aggressive Germanisation. The mood of
the majority of the German population
at that period may be summed up as
tenaciousness, reflected in dogged
fulfilment of all orders and coping with
the worsening employment and supply
situation in the rear.
The situation among the Czech
population in the border areas was in
total contrast. Here too certain mood
and attitude swings were noted,
particularly in connection with events
on the war fronts, but only in respect of
how near was the defeat of fascism and
the extent to which it was necessary to be
cautious and sometimes even to keep
one’s head down. There was no
acquiescence, however; even in 1940,
when people’s fears of a German victory
were at their height, the Nazis were
forced to concede that, in spite of a slight
reticence, the Czechs in the
“Sudetentland” continued to entertain
hopes of the USA and USSR entering
the war against Hitler.
The Nazi authorities were unanimous
in their opinion that the Czechs’ loyalty
to the regime was out of the question
because they viewed all events solely in
terms of the future restoration of their
nationhood and national independence.
After the victory of the Soviet troops at
Stalingrad, the Czechs hopes gave way
to an unswerving conviction, and in that
respect the situation was the same in the
Sudetengau and the Protectorate. As far
as resistance was concerned, the problem
was chiefly that the end of the war was
expected by those circles sooner than it
in fact occurred, and the opening of a
Second Front in Europe was awaited
with impatience.
So when the Soviet Union entered the
war it meant a further widening and
intensification of the anti-fascist
resistance in the border areas of the
Czech provinces, albeit not on such a
scale as in the Protectorate of Bohemia
and Moravia. This is mainly because