Abstract

Titel of dissertation: Nazi Germanisation and Settlement Policy in the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia

This work focuses on land and settlement policies in the territory of the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia. They are treated as an integral part of a unified Germanisation policy which the Nazi regime had implemented within a broader territory of the German Reich. The aim of this study is to evaluate the structure and organisation of the settlement policy and mechanisms of its functioning on both lower and higher levels within the context of administration and implementation of the settlement process. Germanisation was, within the territory of Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia, one of the key aspects of German economic policy. Its implementation was based on a combination of assimilation, evacuation, and physical liquidation. In practice, Germanisation measures in the Protectorate took either of the three following forms: 1) transfer of share ownership, 2) Aryanisation of Jewish property, 3) a settlement of Germans on Czech-held land. This sequence more or less corresponded also to the sequence in which the individual measures were to be applied in practice. It was envisioned that Germanisation and settlement policy would be fully implemented and completed only after the end of the war operations. Even so, steps had been undertaken which anticipated the planned future developments. This work focuses mainly on mechanisms underlying the land and settlement policy and on activities of the key institutions involved in these policies, especially the Land Office for Bohemia and Moravia and Czech–Moravian Association for Agriculture. The author also follows the activities of other agents who influenced the settlement process in the Protectorate, mainly SS institutions such as the SS Race and Settlement Main Office (RuSHA), the person and office of the Reich Commissioner for the Consolidation of German Nationhood, the Reich Main Security Office (RSHA), the Coordination Centre for Ethnic Germans, and the German Charles University in Prague. The Nazi settlement activities in all settlement districts had affected a total of 1,714 agricultural objects in 430 cadastral municipalities, 19 large agricultural estates, 58 residential properties, and 48 businesses amounting to an area of 31,125ha of agricultural land and 5,175ha of woodland. According to an estimate from early June 1945, the total value of confiscated properties amounted to 1,215,743 CSK.