German Citizenship versus Protectorate Membership in the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia (1939–1945)
German Citizenship versus Protectorate Membership in the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia (1939–1945)

Summary/Abstract: As a direct consequence of the Nazi occupation of the Czech lands in 1938–48, the institution of German citizenship (i.e., Reich citizenship as established by the Nuremburg Race Laws) was introduced in the Czech lands. Pursuant to newly promulgated German laws, ethnic German inhabitants of the Czech lands became citizens of the territorially expanding Reich in two phases, in 1938 and 1939. In the occupied Czech lands, ethnic Germans acquired the status of privileged citizens, but nonetheless their rights were significantly restricted by the totalitarian power of the Nazi state. In autumn 1939 more than three million people living in the Sudetenland, including come Czechs, became German citizens. After the establishment of the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia on 15 March 1939 the institution of German citizenship penetrated the Czech interior, where ethnic Germans comprised only 2 % of the population. For the Czech inhabitants of the Protectorate, the occupiers created a citizenship status known as Protectorate membership because, in the eyes of the Germans, the Czechoslovak state, and hence Czechoslovak citizenship, had ceased to exist. Czechs, who became Protectorate members, were denied »political rights« and the right to govern their own country. They became mere inhabitants of a territory. In 1939–45 two legal systems, one for Germans and one for Czechs, and two analogous administrative and judicial systems existed side by side in the Protectorate. Legal historians refer to this unusual situation as legal dualism.

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