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

Czechs and Germans in a Democratic
Czechoslovakia, 1918-1938
relations with Czechoslovakia soon
deteriorated markedly.
Where is one to seek the causes of
the growing tension between Germany
and Czechoslovakia which was to be
turned into a German hostility that was
to force Czechoslovakia, from the mid-
1930s to regard Germany as its
enemy No. 1?
They lay in the Czechoslovak state’s
key location in the middle of Europe
and in the Nazis’ racial concept of the
Czech provinces at “pars Germaniae” –
as part of a future Greater German
Reich. It would seem that by the middle
of 1932 Hitler was already considering
the complete Germanisation of the
Czech provinces and the resettlement of
their Slav population. The Nazi regime’s
hostile attitude to Czechoslovakia also
had contemporary causes.
Germany regarded Czechoslovakia as
a firm ally of France, always ready to
intervene at the side of the French army.
The German high command was
therefore very wary of Czechoslovakia’s
hostility in the event of a Franco-
German conflict. Therefore by 1935 it
was already considering a pre-emptive
strike against Czechoslovakia and to
that end prepared a draft invasion study
known as the Schulung. Within two
years it had transformed it into an
invasion plan in which Czechoslovakia
99
Chapter III
became the “Green case” (Fall Grün).
Another area of friction between Berlin
and Prague was the fact that in October
1933 the Nazi Deutsche
nationalsozialistische Arbeiterpartei
(DNSAP) was banned in
Czechoslovakia. It was a fraternal
organisation of Hitler’s party and in its
origins in 1904 was actually the
forerunner of the entire German
National Socialist movement. Hitler’s
Hitler’s government of “national concentration” from the beginning of 1933 (left).
Intellectuals left Germany en masse.The writer Thomas Mann found asylum in
Czechoslovakia and adopted its citizenship.
hatred for Czechoslovakia was also
fuelled by the fact that as a democratic
state it offered asylum to many German
anti-fascist émigrés and assured them
basic conditions for their political and
cultural activity. Germany’s leading
writers Heinrich and Thomas Mann
were accorded Czechoslovak
citizenship.
Germany was also irritated by
Czechoslovakia’s endeavours to achieve
collective security. Czechoslovakia
displayed lively interest in ensuring the
viability of the League of Nations and in
1934 took part in talks about an eastern
pact that was to achieve regional
collective security for eastern and
central Europe. The pact was the
brainchild of France and the Soviet
Union, but it never assumed the form of
a treaty because of the opposition of
Germany and Poland. Only a fragment
of it remained in May 1935 in the form