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

Decrees of the President of the Republic from the Contemporary Perspective
by an enemy state or by an “enemy
subject”. In Belgium, all assets and
rights, including securities, that were
directly or indirectly owned, controlled
or at the disposal of an enemy state or an
enemy were placed under the
administration of a governmental
authority based in Brussels.
The Luxembourg authorities issued
similar regulations in the period from
1944 to 1948. When it came to ratify the
Convention on the Protection of Human
Rights and Fundamental Freedoms,
Luxembourg expressed its reservations
about Article I of the Protocol No. 1
(1951) on the Right of Peaceful
Enjoyment of Property in respect of the
continued implementation of the Act of
April 26, 1951 on the Liquidation of the
Confiscated Property of a Former
Enemy.
In Denmark, an act on confiscation of
all German property was approved in
1946, which was preceded by acts
adopted in 1945, on the revision of
certain German payments made after
April 9, 1940, the placement into
receivership or liquidation of some
companies and the retrospective refund
of excessive profits derived from business
transactions carried out on behalf of
German interests.
The Danish Confiscation Act applied
to all Germany enemy property found in
Denmark, except for the property
confiscated by the allied armed forces as
the spoils of war; the confiscated
property also included the property of
natural persons or legal entities of other
than German nationality, which, in the
view of the Ministry of Trade, Industry
and Sea Navigation should be treated as
Germans in the meaning of the Act.
Greece approved an Emergency Act
on Distrainment of Enemy Property as
early as 1940; in 1941, after the
declaration of a state of war with
Germany, the scope of the law was
extended to include German property.
The final wording was contained in the
Legal Regulation on Enemy Property of
1949. Greece declared all German and
Bulgarian assets “enemy property” and
this applied not only to German and
287
Bulgarian public and private
corporations, but also to natural persons,
who were nationals of an enemy State at
the critical date, or persons who were
German nationals at any time from the
entry of Greece into war against
Germany until the critical date. In
Austria, similar regulations were issued
by the military authorities of the Allies.
The issue of the transfer of German
nationals from Czechoslovakia is
somewhat unrelated to the decrees of the
President of the Republic; this was a
measure, which was associated with the
war and which was approved by the three
principal powers at the Potsdam
Conference in August 1945. The
Potsdam Agreement represents the
internationally legal basis for the
transfer. The resettlement of persons of
German nationality from
Czechoslovakia was based on
international law and it was not the
subject matter of any of the decrees of
the President of the Republic. None of
the decrees of the President of the
Republic dealt with the transfer of the
German population. Article XII of the
Potsdam Agreement provided that “the
transfer to Germany of German
populations, or elements thereof,
remaining in Poland, Czechoslovakia,
and Hungary will have to be
undertaken”. The actual implementation
of the transfer, which was to be carried
out in co-operation with the Control
Council in Germany and the Allied
Control Commission in Austria,
remained within the powers of the
national authorities of those states. At
the same time, Article XII of the
Potsdam Agreement provided that the
transfer had to be carried out in an
orderly and humane manner. It is a sad
reality that excesses sometimes took
place especially during the initial stage of
implementation of this measure.
There is an indirect connection
between the expulsion of persons of
German nationality and Constitutional
Decree of the President of the Republic
No. 33 of August 2, 1945 on the
Regulation of the Czechoslovak
Citizenship of German and Hungarian