2 - War and occupation

Summary

NAZI STRATEGY

The notorious Munich agreement of September 1938 confronted the Czechoslovak government with the demand to abandon immediately all areas where more than half the population was of German nationality. Beneš acquiesced to this pressure and also ceded territory in the south of Slovakia to Hungary even though resisting would have received massive support from the Czech people, the left-wing parties and the armed forces. He also ignored the possibility of Soviet help partly because he thought it might not be adequate, but primarily because of its internal and international political implications.

This led to the Second Republic in which the Agrarians firmly dominated the Prague government. They succeeded in banning the KSČ and merging the right-wing parties, including the National Socialists, into one party leaving the Social Democrats to play the role of a docile legal opposition. Slovakia was granted greater autonomy and the right-wing Catholic nationalist party led by the priest Tiso, the HSL'S, succeeded in merging other right-wing forces into a single party bloc at a meeting of its Executive Committee in Žilina in October. The new Slovak government, headed by Tiso, soon banned all opposition.

After barely five months the Nazis, ignoring the Munich agreement's guarantee of Czechoslovakia's existence, used strong threats to persuade the Slovak leaders to proclaim an independent state. Using the pretext that Czechoslovakia had ceased to exist, the Czech lands were occupied on 15 March 1939 and the ‘Protectorate’ established.

At first there was no clear Nazi plan for the Czech lands: the immediate rationale for the sudden occupation had been the desire to pre-empt any anti-German action from Czechoslovakia at some point in the future.