860F.00/863
The Consul General at Prague (Linnell) to the Secretary of State
[Received June 9.]
Sir: On pages 4 to 6 of the report which accompanied my despatch No. 84 of May 15, 1939,8 I mentioned a few of the main features of the unsatisfactory state of political developments in the Czech lands. I now have the honor to report that the past week has shown a still further deterioration in the relations between Czechs and Germans, and that the resulting tension is approaching a point where the Czech leaders themselves may find it impossible to continue their cooperation in the maintenance of the fiction of a Czech autonomous regime.
[Page 64]That Czech “autonomy” has proved a fiction is no longer open to doubt. Despite continued German assurances to the contrary the Protectorate system, as guaranteed to the Czechs by the Reichschancellor in his decree of March 16, has never been seriously put into effect. Such steps as were originally taken towards even the formal observance of its provisions are now being steadily retracted in practice if not in theory.
The civil administration, which was supposed to have been restored to the Czech authorities upon the relinquishment of executive authority by the Reichswehr in April, has actually remained in German hands. There has been no move to withdraw the numerous commissars, many of them Sudeten Germans with various personal axes to grind, who were appointed to all the central ministries and to many municipal offices and state enterprises in March. The same is true of the German “Landrats” who were set up throughout the countryside during the period of the exercise of civil authority by the Reichswehr. Each of these officials has assigned to him a given field of competence comprising several of the existing Czech administrative districts (comparable to our counties). In these territories they continue to exercize real administrative authority with no legal basis whatsoever. The Czech district officials often report to them and take orders from them rather than from their own dormant Ministry of the Interior. Cases are known where failure to do this, or at least to obey the Landrat’s instructions, has been followed by prompt arrest. The Landrats themselves are subordinated through the Reichsprotektor’s office to the Reich Ministry of the Interior. Last week they were all summoned to Prague to confer directly with Herr von Stuckart, who handles Protectorate affairs in that Ministry and who came to Prague expressly for this purpose.
In many instances, the Czech authorities are being simply displaced by those of the Reich. This has been the case, for example, with the customs officials on the Polish and Slovak borders. It is characteristic that the Czech central authorities no longer even know precisely where these borders lie. There are indications—although the Slovaks deny this—that the Germans have been altering the Slovak-Moravian border at will, during the last few weeks, with no consultation of the Czech authorities. Quite probably, the same thing has been happening on the other frontiers as well.
In their administrative activities the German authorities are actively assisted by the various German police units—Schutzpolizei, SS and Gestapo—which are present in all sizeable Czech communities despite the fact that the Law of March 16 provides as little justification for their presence as for that of the Landrats and the Commissars. Quite recently, these police units have developed intense activity. As [Page 65] nearly as can be ascertained in the absence of official information, the number of arrests has been increasing daily. The existing prisons are overcrowded and old ones, long in disuse under the Czech regime, are again being put into operation. Tales of brutality, of physical and mental torture, seem unfortunately to be only too well authenticated. All in all, it would scarcely be an exaggeration to say that “terror”, in the accepted totalitarian sense, had now begun, and that the Czech authorities are quite powerless to oppose it.
It is obvious that in these circumstances, the position of the Czech Government is anything but enviable. As far as I am aware, it has had nothing of any importance to do during the last month but to draft two laws at German behest and submit them to the Reichsprotektor for consideration. Meanwhile, personal relations between some of its members and leaders of the Reichsprotektor’s office have become strained. As was anticipated, Baron von Neurath9 seems to be playing a much less conspicuous rôle in Prague than certain of his subordinates. Herr Frank (formerly deputy Gauleiter in the Sudeten district) and Dr. Sebekovsky (formerly Regierungspräsident in Karlsbad) are now said to be the most active members of his staff. Both are Sudeten Germans and neither is in any sense persona grata to the Czechs. In general, it may be said that if the Germans ever had any intention of appeasing the Czechs, the wide-spread admission of Sudeten-Germans to positions of influence in the Protectorate has been the worst mistake they could have made. During the past century, if we may believe the historians, it was largely the Sudetens who ruined relations between the Czechs and Vienna. They are now in a fair way to repeating this performance with respect to the relations between the Czechs and Berlin.
But Czech anxiety is not confined to the future of the Czech administration, which they regard as a lost cause in any case. It is the German attitude with respect to President Hacha’s new Czech political movement, the so-called “National Community”, which is arousing the greatest apprehension in influential Czech circles. For it is on this movement that they are depending for the preservation of their own unity and discipline pending the day when it may again become possible for them to assert themselves actively in opposition to the German rule.
It has been related in previous communications from this office that the organization of the National Community was a conspicuous success and that its leaders even succeeded in gaining the adherence of over 97 percent of those eligible for membership. While the movement first seemed to find favor in German eyes as a gesture towards totalitarianism, [Page 66] its success aroused definite irritation in German circles. The Czechs, it seems, were expected to make the effort but they were not expected to succeed. The Germans had evidently hoped that a large proportion of the Czechs would remain outside the movement and would thus constitute an element which could always be played off against the remainder of the Czech population for the advancement of German aims. Since this hope did not materialize, the Germans have now adopted a definitely hostile tone toward the movement and are using the only remaining available element, namely the Czech fascists, as a lever for the creation of dissension among the Czech population.
It will be recalled that the Czech fascists, under the leadership of General Gayda, endeavored to gain control of Czech political life immediately after the occupation but were pushed out with German connivance in favor of President Hacha and his friends. For some time after that the fascists wavered. They were torn between admiration for Nationalist-Socialist methods, which drew them toward the Germans, and nationalistic tendencies, which drew them toward the overwhelming anti-German majority of the Czech population. Their indecision was aggravated by the personality of their leader, who commanded little confidence among the Germans and who was himself never marked by any great clarity or firmness of decision. Dissension soon developed between the Moravian and the Bohemian sections. More recently, the Moravian section began to receive extensive support, financially and otherwise from the Gestapo. At the beginning of May, Gayda, finally disillusioned of German motives, tried to lead his followers into a dissolution of the whole movement, to be followed by a merging with the “National Community”. Had this step succeeded, the Czech nation would have been truly united in the face of German occupation. But the Moravian wing, acting doubtless on Gestapo inspiration, revolted, carrying with it a portion of the Bohemian party as well, and has now set itself up in opposition not only to Gayda but also to President Hacha and the “National Community”. The result has been retaliation on the part of the President through the removal of the recalcitrant fascist members of the Committee of National Community. The break is now complete, and is fraught with danger for the preservation of Czech unity. For while the fascists have thus far been numerically insignificant, German support is nothing to be sneezed at. Money is always a powerful weapon, and the fascist press claims that membership is now increasing rapidly, ten thousand members having been added within the last week.
In the face of this situation the Czech leaders are now wondering whether the disadvantages of nominal cooperation with the Germans are not beginning to outweigh the advantages. They see clearly [Page 67] what the Germans are trying to do to them. They are afraid that their continued participation—however devoid of content—in the Protectorate Government will only compromise them in the eyes of their own people without accomplishing anything tangible for their followers. They are coming to the conclusion that they would have better chances of preserving Czech unity as frank opponents of the German rule rather than as nominal participants in it.
For these reasons, I am reliably informed, they are contemplating some sort of a voluntary step on their own part which would put an end to their participation in the Government and to their cooperation with the Germans in general and would leave them in a position to come out openly, in opposition to the Germans, as whole-hearted protagonists and leaders of Czech separatism. They would prefer this course, which might well turn out to be a form of martyrdom, to the continuance of a cooperation which has proved so one-sided.
They are only waiting at the present moment for the favorable outcome of the Anglo-Russian conversations10 before taking this step. Despite the various disillusionments of the past year, they still have great hopes for the eventual efficacy of support from England and the United States, and they feel that if Germany were to be backed to the wall diplomatically there might be some possibility for at least a partial retraction of the action which the Germans have taken in the Czech lands. How long they can continue to wait, however, is problematical. The situation is becoming daily more difficult for them, and they have always to bear in mind the possibility that the Germans may anticipate them by abolishing or changing the Protectorate before they get around to making their own move.
If President Hacha and the National Community should back out on the Germans in this fashion, it is difficult to predict what would follow. The fascists are already pressing for seats on the Protectorate Government, and there might be an attempt to set up another Government composed exclusively of Czech fascists. But the moral authority of such a body—which represents its chief value to the Germans—would be minimal, and its popularity no greater than those of the puppet regimes established by the Japanese in China. The job of finding a new president would present a problem of particular difficulty.
Whether such a regime could serve as an effective instrument of German control is doubtful. I consider it more probable that the Germans will find themselves forced in the end to sweep away the last figments of Czech autonomy, to place their reliance solely on their bayonets and to attempt to crush by sheer force the powerful Czech nationalism which they have hitherto tried to exploit. In this case, it is outright war: an undeclared war in which imprisonments, shootings, [Page 68] deportations, intimidation and bribery on the one side would be pitted against passive resistance, sabotage, espionage and conspiracy on the other. If it comes to this, the Germans will probably hold the upper hand without undue difficulty as long as the broad basis of national-socialist power remains intact. But they will have no happy time of it, and if the tide ever turns, Czech retaliation will be fearful to contemplate.
Respectfully yours,