CHAPTER 9 ’s “Protectorate,” 1939–1945

Two sorts of memories thus emerged: that of things done to “us” by Germans in the war, and the rather different recollection of things (how- ever similar) done by “us” to “others” after the war [. . .]. In this circum- stance, the uncomfortably confusing recollection of things done by us to others during the war (i.e., under German auspices) got conveniently lost. (Tony Judt)1

In late , Hitler decided that time had come to play his Slovak card. Accordingly, February was dedicated to a series of meetings between Nazi German and fascist Slovak representatives. attempted to inter- fere into these direct German-Slovak contacts. It deposed the new “Minister Plenipotentiary for Slovakia” Tiso, and on , 1939, the Czecho-Slovak army took over power in Slovakia. Tiso, however, was promptly invited to Berlin for a meeting with Hitler, who convinced him to declare Slovak independence. On , 1939, Tiso convened Slovakia’s provincial diet, which declared a Slovak State. This gave Hitler the argument that Czecho-Slovakia had ceased to exist and that he was thus no longer bound by the .2 President Emil Hácha took a train to Berlin, where Hitler and top Nazis pressured him in a meeting at 1:15am to sign over his powers (after physically collapsing and passing out). The events of these hours were dramatic indeed. Nazi German troops had already begun pouring into the Czech-speaking areas before that meeting. Hácha’s return train was deliberately delayed “on account of snow storms,” and when he finally arrived, Nazi German military already greeted him on the platform of Prague’s Wilson Station. Hácha moreover soon found out that Hitler had also traveled to the Czech capital, and had arrived a little before him by switching to a car. Hitler had even made himself at home at Prague Castle, the presidential residence, and had it flagged with a swas- tika banner! On , 1939, the creation of a Nazi German “Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia” was announced over the radio. General Jan Syrový as Minister of Defense had himself photographed shaking Hitler’s hand.3

1 Judt, “Myth and Memory,” 298 [emphasis in original]. 2 Rychlík, Češi a Slováci, 1: 168–70. 3 Procházka, Disintegration of Post-Munich Czechoslovakia, 132–46.

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ���6 | doi ��.��63/9789004301276_010 196 CHAPTER 9

In spite of clear intelligence reports that the end was near, the invasion of the Czech-speaking center of the Bohemian lands caught Prague largely unpre- pared. Max Brod reported that already on , 1939, huge Nazi German flags were hoisted all over Prague, protected by Czech-speaking police. On March 14, the local branch of the Nazi German Hitler Youth marched in Prague’s streets, shouting Nazi slogans, accompanied by Czech-speaking police units.4 Jan Rataj described the “bizarre scenery” in the center of Prague on , the day of the invasion of the city, where fascist groups “used the external inter- vention to speed up the prepared fascist putsch [. . .] Czech fascist shock troops started taking over and smashing up Jewish shops, offices, doctor’s consulting rooms and companies.”5 An armed resistance against the Nazi German invasion and the Czech fas- cist putsch attempts at this point could have only been a symbolic act of self- sacrifice to draw international attention to the consequences of the Munich Agreement. However, Theodore Procházka specifically mentioned the large amounts of intact arms that were handed over to Nazi Germany. Similarly, Rataj pointed out that no provisions for a future Czech resistance were made in these critical last hours. Indeed, there were few reported cases of a large- scale document burning. The destruction of Jewish congregational records alone might have saved many lives, as Theresienstadt historian Hans G. Adler has pointed out.6 The clearest indication that the Nazi German invasion of the Czech-speaking areas was in fact not perceived of as a conquest, but more as a takeover by a friendly state, was the strange behavior of the last Czecho-Slovak govern- ment: it simply became the first government of Nazi Germany’s “Protectorate.” On , 1939, top representatives showed up in a military parade of the Nazi German army on Prague’s Wenceslaus Square. Shortly after, Hácha trans- formed the SNJ into the Národní souručenství [Czech: National Partnership], a mass organization including almost all Czech (nominally) Christian men, and banned all other political parties and organizations. The abbreviation N.s. was suspiciously similar to that of German National Socialism. The elite of the Second Republic thus mostly became the elite of the “Protectorate.” According to Rataj, the Nazi German occupation of the Czech-speaking center of the Bohemian lands in March 1939, merely “prevented the complete fascistic

4 Brod, Streitbares Leben, 286–87. 5 Rataj, O autoritativní národní stát, 221. 6 Adler, Theresienstadt, 19; Procházka, Disintegration of Post-Munich Czechoslovakia, 146; Rataj, O autoritativní národní stát, 221; Rothkirchen, Facing the Holocaust, 136 [on Adler’s position].