Mobilization in Czechoslovakia 1938

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Government declaration 183/1938 Sb. On the mobilization of the armed forces of September 23, 1938

The immediate threat to Czechoslovakia from the National Socialist German Reich led to two mobilizations during the Sudeten crisis of 1938 - a partial mobilization in May 1938 (under the Milan Hodža III government ) and a general mobilization in September 1938 (under the Jan Syrový I ).

Background and process

After 1918 the Czechoslovak Army was established. This was done with the help of the French military mission , which also had an influence on the Czechoslovak General Staff . After the consolidation phase and heavy armament in the 1920s and 1930s, this army was one of the best equipped in Europe.

In peacetime the army had more than 200,000 soldiers in 17 infantry divisions and 4 fast divisions plus 50,000 reservists. From the mid-1930s, the Czechoslovak Wall was built, on which experts who built the Maginot Line in France also participated in an advisory capacity . In autumn 1938 up to 263 heavy and around 10,000 light bunker fortifications and 9 large fortresses were completed. General Karel Husárek was entrusted with the management of the work on the wall .

In 1936 a mobilization plan was drawn up which envisaged the drafting of over 972,000 soldiers, 60 percent of whom were to be stationed in Moravia, 25 percent in Bohemia and 15 percent in Slovakia, i. H. on the borders with the revisionist states Germany, Austria and Hungary as well as Poland . These included over 192,000 soldiers of German and over 61,000 soldiers of Hungarian descent; it was planned to station them in the Slovak part of the republic or in Carpathian Ukraine , not in the particularly threatened border areas with Germany.

May 1938

In spring 1938, a few weeks after the annexation of Austria , the situation in the border areas to the German Reich was very tense: the radicalization of the Sudeten Germans increased. The Hodža government had been informed by the double agent Paul Thümmel of Hitler's plans drawn up after April 21, 1938 to attack Czechoslovakia militarily. But she gave them little credibility. British informants and intelligence services of Czechoslovakia delivered reports of a concentration of Wehrmacht troops in Saxony and northeast Bavaria. It was supposed to be parts of 10 divisions that were grouped there, as an agency news from May 18 and 19, 1938 stated. Under this impression, the government decided on May 20, 1938 to partially mobilize the armed forces. 180,000 reservists were called up and placed in understaffed defense positions. The army quickly grew to 380,000 soldiers. During the month of June, however, the mobilization was gradually reduced again as it was based on a false report: Analyzes by the French General Staff showed that troops were being redeployed to new training areas in Grafenwoehr in Bavaria and Königsbrück in Saxony.

The day after the partial mobilization, the Sudeten German Party (SdP), which had meanwhile grown to 1.3 million members, received around 90 percent of the Sudeten German votes in the municipal elections. An anti-National Socialist press campaign in Czechoslovakia presented the partial mobilization as a Czech triumph and a German defeat.

September 1938

Mobilization 1938

At the beginning of September 1938, Lord Runciman's mission failed . At the same time it became increasingly clear that the allies (along with France , which had tried in vain to obtain a commitment from Great Britain , also the Soviet Union ) were more and more reluctant to fulfill their contractual obligations. In the border area to the Third Reich, the SdP, the Sudeten German Freikorps (SFK) and the Voluntary German Protection Service (FS) broke out into ever more open unrest , which in some places grew into armed incidents. Adolf Hitler's speech at the party congress of the NSDAP in Nuremberg on September 12, 1938, in which Hitler made open threats to the Czechoslovak government, aroused great concern . This was followed by negotiations between the British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain and Hitler on September 15 in Berchtesgaden , during which the British recognized the Sudeten Germans' right to self-determination . On September 19, Chamberlain conferred with the French Prime Minister Édouard Daladier in London and informed him that Hitler insisted on an annexation of the Sudetenland . It was agreed to urge the Hodža government to agree to this. The British and the French wanted to prevent a war between Germany and Czechoslovakia, in which France would be drawn because of the Franco-Czechoslovak Assistance Pact of January 24, 1924. In return, an international guarantee from Czechoslovakia was envisaged. On September 23, 1938, the Czechoslovak government received indications that France and Great Britain would apparently no longer reject a self-defense action by Czechoslovakia - as before.

Under these circumstances, the government of General Jan Syrový , which had just been installed the day before, decided to call for general mobilization and put the country in a state of defense emergency. This happened at 10:50 p.m. in Government Order No. 183/1938 Sb.

The previous Chief of Staff, General Ludvík Krejčí , was appointed Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces (usually the President) . General Krejčí immediately transferred the General Staff, the General Command and the Operational Department to the Račice Castle in Račice . A total of 18 age groups of the reserve were mobilized, a total of around 1,250,000 soldiers, so that a good 1.5 million soldiers were under arms. Ludvík Krejčí thus had 34 infantry divisions, 4 fast divisions and 3 divisions for special tasks, as well as 2,300 cannons, 350 tanks and 950 aircraft as well as the fortifications of the so-called Czechoslovak Wall.

The situation was complicated in view of the national composition of Czechoslovakia and also of the army, because the minorities made up a considerable part of the armed forces. The historian Jörg K. Hoensch states that the 300,000 Sudeten Germans and 100,000 Hungarians and Poles affected largely obeyed their call-up. According to other accounts, more than half of the reservists of German descent who were called up did not follow the mobilization order.

The mobilization lasted a week: on September 30, 1938, President Beneš accepted the results of the Munich Agreement - against the will of the generals and some members of the government. The defensive emergency for the territory of Czechoslovakia, which was declared with the mobilization , was not formally lifted until December 11, 1945 with the government declaration 162/1945 Sb.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d Květnová ostraha hranic a mobilizace v září 1938 , in: Eduard Stehlík: Srdce armády (Generální štáb 1919–2009) , publication by the Ministry of the Interior of the Czech Republic, AVIS, Prague 2009 (2nd edition), ISBN 978-80 -7278-515-5 , p. 30 f. and 32 f. ( online ).
  2. ↑ Peter Duhan: Bojovat ven nebojovat? , Report by the radio station Český rozhlas from September 29, 2008, online at: rozhlas.cz / ...
  3. ↑ Pavel Šrámek: Čs. opevnění do roku '39 , in: Armády, technika, militaria , Vol. 3, 12/2005, pp. 70–72, quoted in to: Čs. opevnění do roku '39 , online at: armada.vojenstvi.cz/.../1.htm
  4. ↑ Jan Máče: Rok 1938: Přípravy na konflikt , in: atm ( Armádní technický magazín ) 9/2008, online at: legacy.blisty.cz / ...
  5. ^ Oswald Kostrba-Skalicky: Armed powerlessness. The Czechoslovak Army 1918–1938 . In: Karl Bosl (Ed.): The First Czechoslovak Republic as a multinational party state . Oldenbourg, Munich 1979, ISBN 3-486-49181-4 , pp. 439–527, here: p. 520. Browse online at: osmikon.de / ...
  6. ^ A b c Oswald Kostrba-Skalicky: Armed helplessness. The Czechoslovak Army 1918–1938 . In: Karl Bosl (Ed.): The First Czechoslovak Republic as a multinational party state . Oldenbourg, Munich 1979, ISBN 3-486-49181-4 , pp. 439–527, here: p. 514. Browse online at: osmikon.de / ...
  7. ↑ Karel Straka: Částečná mobilizace v květnu 1938: od domněnek k faktům , publication of the Vojenský historický ústav VHÚ (Military History Institute) of the Ministry of Defense of the Czech Republic, online at: online .
  8. ^ Jean-Baptiste Duroselle : La décadence (1932–1939) , Imprimerie nationale, Paris 1979, p. 338; Klaus Hildebrand : The Third Reich (=  Oldenbourg floor plan of history , Bd. 17). Oldenbourg, Munich 1991, p. 33.
  9. ↑ Jörg K. Hoensch: History of Czechoslovakia , Stuttgart 1992, ISBN 3-17-011725-4 , p. 83 ff.
  10. ↑ Manfred Messerschmidt : Foreign policy and war preparations. In: The German Reich and the Second World War , Vol. 1: Causes and requirements of German war policy. Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, Stuttgart 1979, p. 652 f.
  11. ^ Jean-Baptiste Duroselle: La décadence (1932-1939) , Imprimerie nationale, Paris 1979, p. 345 f.
  12. ↑ a b c Jan Máče: Krize v září 1938 a mobilizace armády , in: Britské listy of November 10, 2008 ( online ) (taken from: atm - Armádní technický magazín 11/2008).
  13. ↑ 183/1938 Sb. Vyhláška ze dne 23.9.1938 o vstupu státu do branné pohotovosti , government declaration of 23 September 1938 ( online ).
  14. ↑ Pavel Šrámek et al .: Mobilizace v roce 1938 , in: Historie a vojenství , Jg. 47, 5/1998, pp. 86–90, quoted. based on: Mobilizace v roce 1938 ( online ).
  15. ↑ Jörg K. Hoensch: History of Czechoslovakia , Stuttgart 1992, p. 93 f.
  16. ↑ a b Mobilizace v září 1938 trvala jen týden, vůle bránit se ale byla veliká , report by the TV station Česká televize / ct24 from 23 September 2013 ( online ).
  17. ↑ Vyhláška č. 162/1945 Sb. Vládní vyhláška o ukončení stavu branné pohotovosti státu , government declaration of December 11, 1945 ( online ).
  18. ↑ January Šach: Konec BRANNE pohotovosti státu , publication of the Vojenský ústav historický Vhu on (Military History Institute) of the Ministry of Defense of the Czech Republic, online: online .

Web links

Commons : Mobilization in Czechoslovakia 1938  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files

literature

  • Igor Lukes: The Czechoslovak Partial Mobilization in May 1938: A Mystery (almost) Solved . In: Journal of Contemporary History 31, Issue 4 (1996), pp. 699-720.