Occupation of Czechoslovakia Was Inevitable

German occupation of Czechoslovakia (of Bohemia and Moravia, to be more precise – of whatever remained of it after it lost Sudetenland to Germany) was inevitable for four key reasons.

First and foremost, the Great War with the Bolshevist Soviet Union was inevitable – whether Hitler wanted it or not (he did). To fight and win this war, he desperately needed Czech military (especially tanks) and economic resources (Czech military industry was second only to German).

Second, by March of 1939 Germany faced a murderous (literally) foreign exchange crisis as it had run down its foreign exchange reserves and urgently needed to seize the gold of the Czechoslovak central bank simply to survive. Nothing personal – just the basic survival instinct. Cut and dry, plain and simple.

Third, after the loss of Sudetenland, Czechoslovakia became militarily indefensible (without the natural defensive barrier of the mountains of the Sudetenland and system of border fortification its army stood no chance against the Wehrmacht).

And, finally, the Munich Agreement of 1938 proved beyond the reasonable doubt that neither Britain nor France would go to war with Germany to defend the independence of Czechoslovakia.

So, Hitler predictably scheduled German invasion of Bohemia and Moravia for the morning of March 15, 1939. However, this time he decided to use proxies – pro-German leaders of Hungary and Slovakia.

On March 13, he held talks with Slovakian Prime Minister Jozef Ga;par Tiso (a Catholic priest) and on the next day, the Slovak parliament convened and unanimously declared independence of Slovakia.

Carpatho-Ukraine also declared independence but Hungarian troops occupied and annexed it on the same day. No surprise here – Carpatho-Ukraine historically belonged to Hungary and had been detached in 1920 by the 1920 Treaty of Trianon (same thing as Treaty of Versailles – only with Hungary) from the Kingdom of Hungary and attached to newly created Czechoslovakia.

After the secession of these two regions, Czechoslovakia ceased to exist for all practical purposes. Hence, its president Emil H;cha had no other choice but to agree to German occupation of Bohemia and Moravia.

On the morning of March 15, German troops entered the remaining Czech parts of Czechoslovakia, meeting practically no resistance. Hungarian invasion of encountered some resistance but the Hungarian army quickly crushed it.

On 16 March, Hitler from Prague Castle proclaimed the formation of German protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia claiming that “Bohemia and Moravia have for thousands of years belonged to the Lebensraum of the German people“.

Thus reviving the (in)famous Drang nach Osten – a 19th-century German nationalist intent to expand Germany into Slavic territories of Central and Eastern Europe.

Adolf Hitler was not disappointed – by occupying Czechoslovakia, Germany gained 2,175 field cannons, 469 tanks, 500 anti-aircraft artillery pieces, 43,000 machine guns, 1,090,000 military rifles, 114,000 pistols, about a billion rounds of ammunition and three million anti-aircraft shells.

This amount of weaponry would be sufficient to arm about half of the then Wehrmacht. Czechoslovak weaponry later played a major part in the German conquests of Poland, France and the Soviet Union.

Czechoslovakia had fielded a modern army of 35 divisions and was a major manufacturer of machine guns, tanks, and artillery, most of them assembled in the Skoda factory in Plzen. Czechoslovakia also had other major manufacturing companies. Entire steel and chemical factories were moved from Czechoslovakia and reassembled in Austrian city of Linz.

German occupation of Czechoslovakia became a significant step on the Road to Holocaust because it continued to accumulate a “critical mass” of Jews under German control that two years later launched the “Holocaust Avalanche” killing four million Jews. In Bohemia and Moravia, the Nazis acquired 118,000 Jews. By 1946, only about 14,000 remained.

It should be noted that occupation of Czechoslovakia resulted in establishment (on November 24 1941) of Theresienstadt Ghetto that would play an important role in the “Holocaust by Gas” project.

Operation of Einsatzgruppen was expanded: Einsatzgruppe I Prague and Einsatzgruppe II Brno were set up. They were in turn divided into nine Einsatzkommando – and arrested around 10,000 people.

However, the most important consequence of German occupation of Bohemia and Moravia was that Hitler got convinced that no one would prevent him from expanding the Lebensraum in the East. This belief led to German invasion of Poland and the Soviet Union… and ultimately to the Holocaust.