When I talk about Czechoslovakia during WW2 most people will
think of the Sudeten Crisis and the subsequent Munich Agreement (here
called the Munich Betrayal) and shortly after Hitler annexed the remaining Czech
lands... what exactly happened here during the German occupation? What about resistance; what
about collaboration? This here is another countries in World War II episode we're
going to talk about the Czech lands or Czechia during WW2, keep watching!
Hey good to have you back on the channel. If you're new: I'm Stefan; I'm a Dutch history teacher; I like
to cover history on location as I'm now in Prague and if you find this content interesting consider
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too so see the information below the video and let's start with the episode. What is today known
as the Czech Republic or Czechia was back in the day part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire which
crumbled towards the end of WW1. And then in October 1918 the Czechoslovak National
Council declared Czechoslovakia independent from the Austro-Hungarian Empire. It was supported by
the Allies; now do notice that the country's inhabitants were not only Czechs or Slovaks:
“Czechoslovakia contained more ethnic Germans (23 per cent of the overall population) than Slovaks, plus sizeable communities of Ruthenes and Magyars.”
And this mixed population led to problems in the years to come...
in 1938 there was the Sudeten Crisis in whichs Adolf Hitler demanded the Sudetenland to become part of the
German Reich, because of its many ethnic Germans living in that area. He mobilized his army and he
was prepared to wage war but countries of France and Britain they had an appeasement policy and in
1938 the Munich Conference took place, where British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain
as well as the French Prime Minister Édouard Daladier came together to meet Hitler in Munich.
Also Italian dictator Benito Mussolini was there but there were no representatives of
Czechoslovakia invited and it was decided that the Sudeten Area (the Sudetenland) became part of the
German Reich. Now the Munich Agreement is here called the Munich Betrayal because it left the
remaining Czechoslovak Republic vulnerable for a future attack and that attack came in March
1939. Hitler broke his promise and annexed the rest of the Czech lands. Slovakia became a Nazi
puppet state; Hungary gained some parts and so did Poland actually. With the exception of the
battle of the Czajánek's barracks, where Czech soldiers fought against Germans forces for a
brief while, the German takeover happened without much violence as the Czechoslovak Army was ordered
to stand down. Much of the Czechoslovak defense works were located in the already lost Sudeten
area. On Hitler's orders on the 16th of March 1939 he formally guaranteed the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia:
“The Protectorate had neither its own representation abroad nor rights to an independent army. The government’s army was assigned a symbolic role and filled only ancillary services. Parliament was dissolved and political life was simplified.”
It eventually came down to annexation. The Czech
authorities functioned as a German area executive organs; with the establishment of an autonomous
administration the Reich was able to govern the Czech population more efficiently which
was beneficial for them and it also facilitated the desired changes in the Protectorate way of
life. The ultimate goal was germanization and to make the Czech lands become a part of the
German Reich. However due to the need to utilize the economic potential of the Protectorate and
check workforce for their war efforts the Germans were unable to accomplish their final aim during
the war; the Nazis introduced a wartime focused economic system regarding social development. The
forced labor regime played a crucial role in Germany and the Protectorate; later involving
into forced assignment of work. The Czech lands held great significance for Germany as it had a
lot of Industries and weapons arsenal. Also till late in the war the Czech lands were not bombed by the Allies.
“Many Czech workers were forcibly sent to work in factories in Germany, and by the fall of 1943, their numbers had reached 30,000,
with more to come as the Luftwaffe’s requirements for aircraft production brought in another 10,000 workers in the spring of 1944.”
The property of the Czech Jews quickly fell in German hands and in June 1939 the Nuremberg racial policies
were applied in the Protectorate; in November 1941 the concentration camp of Terezín (Theresienstadt)
was established: it was a Jewish ghetto and from there many Jews were deported to the
death camps. From January 1942 till October 1944 mass deportations took place and the majority
of the 118 300 Czech Jews perished in the gas chambers; an estimated 75 000 Czech Jews did
not survive WW2. Also Roma and Sinti ended in a concentration and death camps
of Auschwitz, Buchenwald and Ravensbrück; 4500 were deported of which only 538 survived. A key figure
in this was the deputy Reich Protector and I'm talking about Reinhard Heydrich. And
this brings me to the resistance because one of the most well-known acts of the Czechoslovak
resistance was the assassination of Reinhard Heydrich. It was codenamed Operation Anthropoid,
Heydrich had become deputy Reich Protector from the 27th of September 1941. He implemented martial
law and hundreds of Czechs were executed. He was nicknamed the Butcher of Prague. Two Czechoslovak
soldiers Jan Kubiš and Jozef Gabčík were parachuted in the area with British help. At the
end of December 1941. After months of planning and cooperation with the resistance organizations and
another parachutist, Josef Valčík, they carried out their mission in Prague on the 27th of May
1942. As a result Heydrich got mortally wounded and would die of his wounds several days later.
The parachutists would fight themselves to death in a local church. The Nazis executed a horrible
vengeance: family members of the parachutists were killed or deported. In total 1 500 Czechs
were killed and 3 000 arrested. The villages of Lidice and Ležáky were razed to the ground and
its inhabitants murdered or deported. After Heydrich’s death, authority passed to State Secretary Karl
Hermann Frank. Czech resistance to the occupier occurred from the get-go; organized resistance
began to take shape at the beginning of 1940 where central resistance body was formed the Central
Committee of Home Resistance (UVOD). This body was recognized by the Czech government-in-exile
that was led by Edvard Beneš. Beneš was a Czechoslovak president before the German takeover.
Not only he but also the puppet prime minister of the Proctorate, Alois Eliáš, cooperated with
the resistance; he was murdered by the Nazis in 1942. The Communist Party, the KSC, developed an
underground organization. Edvard Beneš lobbied for international recognition of his post-war
government of Czechoslovakia. Czechoslovak soldiers were also fighting in France, North Africa as well
as the Middle East and Czechoslovak pilots took part in the Battle of Britain. So let's discuss
Czech collaboration... well, this here is a fairly gray area. I mean of course the were the Sudeten
Germans that were more than happy to support the Nazi regime but let's talk about the Czechs.
One important person was President Emil Hácha who succeeded Beneš and basically functioned as the
Czech president under the Nazi regime. Hácha became more and more compliant with the Germans;
do notice that he's deteriorating health played a part in this and he had sworn oath of allegiance
to Hitler but do notice that the Nazi threatened to kill 2 000 Czech students if he did not comply.
Now from the get-go the Germans presented themselves as occupiers; now do notice that the
Czechs were seen as suitable for germanization but there were no recruitment policies to
recruit Czechs for the Eastern Front. There was a Czech organization against bolshevism (Ceska Liga prori Bolsevismu) but they
held meetings and that was it and there was one demented ex-Czechoslovak army officer that wanted
to raise a volunteer army to fight on the Eastern front which the Germans categorically refused... only
towards the end of the war when Germany was losing the war, they did comply and he eventually managed to
raise 13 volunteers! Yes, you heard it correctly thirteen: one-three. I believe the project was
quickly abandoned. A Czech force on the Germans that was raised was the Government Army which
consisted of 12 battalions as well as police and gendarmerie. Most of the Government Army was sent
to Northern Italy in 1944 to serve as laborers and guards. There is a debate to whether the Government
Army should be considered a collaboration is force but its commanding officer, Jaroslav Eminger, was
acquitted of collaboration charges after World War II. Some of his members joined the Czechoslovak
resistance and joined the Czech resistance during the Prague Uprising, which took place in May 1945
and this brings me to the .iberation: let's take a look at neighboring Slovakia first. Slovakia became
a Nazi puppet state in 1939 under Josef Tiso. From the spring of 1944 it became clear to most
Slovaks that the Slovak Republic would not survive this war. Around that time Soviet partisans were
dropped in the east in the center of the country and organized resistance. Slovak communists and
they're sympathizers and joined them. They committed acts of sabotage martial law was declared but it
merely existed on paper since the Slovak police was not able to get the situation under control.
As a result the Slovak Army revolted against the Axis: sixty thousand Slovak insurgent forces were
able to stop the Germans for two months. Towards the end of October the Germans had suppressed
the uprising and occupied the whole nation; eventually the Red Army reached Bratislava
early April 1945 and they then moved up to Prague. The Slovak National Uprising resulted
in an intensification of resistance activities in the Protectorate. From September till October
1944 also parachutists were dropped in Bohemia and Moravia to organize resistance but they were not
able to raise an effective resistance organization. “Though the partisans did not succeed in organizing
a unified staff due to the constant pressure of the occupiers, an increased concentration of German troops, and the movement of the front line, they did in various places influence the rebellion and the liberation of Moravia and Bohemia.”
In the west the first American troops were ready
to push into Bohemia from Germany; now the Germans had multiple goals at this point:
preventing internal unrest and holding off the Allies as long as possible. On the 25th
of April command authority in the protectorate was transferred to Field Marshal Ferdinand Schörner, a
Nazi hardliner who had condemned countless soldiers to death for cowardice. Karl Hermann Frank tried to
prevent rebellion by attempting to negotiate with the Americans... as days progressed Hitler committed
suicide and Berlin, the Reich's capital fell in the hands of the Soviets. Yet Prague was still in the
hands of the Nazis. Different factions of the Czech resistance headed by the Czech National
Council, the CNC, launched an uprising in Prague on the 5th of May 1945. The Czech radio broadcast
gave the signal for the uprising and served a coordinator for the resistance fighters. On the
first days of the uprising the rebels achieved some victories and put the Germans on the defense.
At the same time the Americans pushed into the country from the West... this disrupted
to German plants to evacuate their troops from east to west. German units made a counter-attack
on the 6th of May '45 and SS troops rushed to the city leaving a trail of death and destruction. The
Czechoslovak resistance found an ally that had switched sides from the Germans: these were the men
of the pro-Axis Russian Liberation Army (ROA) that was led by Nazi collaborator Andrey Vlasov. The
resistance also learned about the Soviet-American demarcation line which meant the Americas were not
coming to liberate Prague... as the German signed document ofcapitulation in Rheims (France)
the Battle of Brock raged on. In the outlying districts as well as the city center, on the
8th of May German General Rudolf Toussaint signed a protocol which allowed their retreat west. Finally
in the early hours of the 9th of May the German unconditional surrender became a fact and on that
day Soviet forces entered the Czech capital. Now to all Czech viewers I'm really curious what do
you think of this video how is World War II mostly remembered in this country?