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

Decrees of the President of the Republic from the Contemporary Perspective
When examining the decrees of the
President of the Republic, one needs to
take into account the historical and legal
context of their issue as well as their
relation to the legal system of the Czech
Republic and to international law,
including the law of the European
Communities.
The Historical and Legal Context of
the Presidential Decrees
World War II, started by Nazi Germany,
later on waged together with its allies
from the so-called “Axis”, was based on
the concept of a “total war” focused on
physical and spiritual liquidation of the
enemy’s civil population with the aim of
gaining “living space” (Lebensraum).
Hitler’s Germany forced a significant
part of its own population, including
young people, to become members of
NSDAP and the associated quasimilitary
organisations; from the legal
point of view, these organisations thus
became de facto bodies of the state.
Former Czechoslovak citizens of
German nationality were made German
citizens, some of whom, under the
influence of Henlein’s SdP and
particularly through participation in
“Henlein’s Free Corps” (known as
“Sudetendeutscher Freikorps”) became de
facto bodies of the German state
operating on Czechoslovak territory
with the aim of destroying Czechoslovak
statehood.
It was Czechoslovakia that became
the first victim of the total war. The
Munich Agreement, resulting in the
cession of part of the Czechoslovak
Republic’s territory to Germany and in
subsequent occupation of the rest of the
Czech and Moravian territory, is
evidence of Nazi Germany’s intentions.
Proof of how great was the threat
underlying the conclusion of the Munich
Agreement, is also provided by a
document (No. 2798-PS, USA-118,
published in the collection of materials
“Nuremberg Trial”, Volume I, Prague,
1953, page 386), according to which “If
Czechoslovakia had not given in autumn
last year (i.e. in 1938) the Czech nation
would have been exterminated. Nobody
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could have stopped him (i.e. Hitler) from
doing so.”
The decrees issued by the President of
the Republic were a form of legislative
activity at a time of constitutional
emergency when the constitutional
organs of the Czechoslovak Republic
were unable to work according to the
Constitution of the Czechoslovak
Republic of 1920 (the Constitutional
Act No. 121/1920 Coll.) or the
Czechoslovak legal system as a whole.
The decrees of the President of the
Republic were being issued following the
institution of the Provisional State
System in the United Kingdom in 1940
when the President of the Republic was
officially recognised by the British
government, and subsequently by other
states of the anti-Nazi coalition, in his
capacity as a representative of a
resistance movement abroad.
According to the Constitutional
Decree of the President of the Republic
No. 2 of October 15, 1940, on the
Interim Exercise of Legislative Powers
(published under No. 20/1945 Coll.), the
decrees of the President of the Republic
were issued on the government’s
initiative and usually after a hearing
before the State Council, an advisory
political body sui generis, and were cosigned
by the Prime Minister and the
Ministers responsible for
implementation of the decrees.
The Legal Council, an expert legal
body, also participated in the drafting of
the decrees until its dissolution, which
took place, like the dissolution of the
State Council, after the government of
the Czechoslovak Republic had been
established in Košice on April 4, 1945.
The decrees continued to be issued until
the Provisional National Assembly was
established (October 28, 1945).
The decrees of the President of the
Republic were subdivided into
constitutional decrees and others
according to their subject matters. The
method of approving them was the same;
only their contents were different.
The decrees issued by the President of
the Republic regulated the entire
constitutional , administrative, social and