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

ensure the running of agriculture and
industry were to be allowed to remain in
the country, but they were only to have
the status of foreign workers, without
any civil rights.
The attitude of the soldiers was clearly
determined by the army guidelines,
summarised for example in the Ten
Commandments for Czechoslovak Soldiers
in the Border Regions, issued on June 5:
“The Germans have remained our
irreconcilable enemies. Do not cease to
hate the Germans… Behave towards
Germans like a victor… Be harsh to the
Germans… German women and the
Hitler Youth also bear the blame for the
crimes of the Germans. Deal with them
too in an uncompromising way.” The
tone and content of these instructions
resembled those of similar instructions
that British and American soldiers
deployed in occupied Germany received
in the form of orders and pamphlets. For
example, in the American army
pamphlet Pocket Guide to Germany,
issued in 1944, the main command was:
“Do not fraternise with the German
instigators of the war! Remember that
victory had to be bought with the lives of
American soldiers. Germany is an enemy
country which has not been liberated but
conquered. Today Germans may have
had enough of the Nazi party, but in the
past they sinned against the rights of
humanity. They cannot return to civilised
society, and simply say ‘Sorry’”.
[Retranslated from the Czech, ed.] The
Allied pamphlets also warned soldiers
about the hundreds of thousands of
trained and resolute Nazi saboteurs and
killers who were waiting for them among
the civilians in the occupied territories.
Hatred, a clearly defined partition
between one's own people and the
Germans, and warnings of mortal
danger, were the main themes to be
found in the army material.
On 15 June the army was entrusted by
a government decree with implementing
measures to apprehend Nazi criminals
and carry out the transfer of the German
population. In rounding up the
Germans, putting them to forced labour,
deporting them and confiscating their
The Implementation of the Transfer
217
Chapter VI
property, the army was supposed to work
together with the local authorities and
the police. The army command was also
the main initiator of the transition from
smaller campaigns to expel and remove
the Germans to a systematic transfer. A
secret order issued by the First Section at
the headquarters of the Ministry of
National Defence on July 27, stipulated
that the transfer should be carried out on
as large a scale as possible, and so quickly
that the Western powers would be faced
with a fait accompli. In this the Ministry
of National Defence was following the
Polish example and taking advantage of
the Soviet “goodwill” towards carrying
out the transfer. British and American
representatives, by contrast, were at this
time, in their response to a diplomatic
note from the Czechoslovak government
dated July 3, already calling for
discussions on the policy of the transfer,
which in the form it had taken up till
then had aroused a certain unease among
the Allies. The Czechoslovak
government’s plans to carry out the
resettlement of 2,500,000 Germans
within one year were not even welcomed
by Soviet military leaders, who asked for
the beginning of the systematic transfer
to be postponed for practical reasons.
The Anglo-American plan at this stage
was for the resettlement to start in five
years’ time. Until then they only wanted
to see partial, internal transfers of the
German population and them being put
to forced labour; this should also apply to
German fugitives from the Reich and
prisoners of war to be found in
Czechoslovakia at the time.
On June 8, an ordinance issued by the
Ministry of the Interior set up settlement
departments at the District National
Committees or administrative
commissions which were supposed to
ensure the removal of the Germans from
areas under their jurisdiction and their
parallel resettlement by Czechs.
However, the actual functioning
organisation of the transfer and the
entire system of forced migration was not
created until the second half of 1945 – a
process accompanied by continuous
conflicts over jurisdiction, in which the