Streikbewegungen und Arbeitsproteste im Protektorat Böhmen und Mähren

• Authors: Kokoška Stanislav

Title variants

EN

Strikes and working protests in the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia

• Languages of publication: DE

Abstracts

EN

A traditional type of strike movement the aim of which was to achieve better wages was seen mainly in the initial phase of the Nazi occupation. Its main reason was inflation, and the Protectorate government reacted to it as early as on 13 June 1939, by banning strikes and lockouts. It is true that the strike wave continued even after this date, but it was petering out fast, thanks to government decrees on wage adjustments. Since the beginning of 1940, strikes were regarded as attempts to sabotage industrial production. Strike cases were initially tried by German military courts, but the jurisdiction over the prosecution of acts of sabotage later fell under special tribunals of the Land Courts in Prague and Brno. Another strike wave in the Protectorate took place in the summer of 1941 and was one of the reasons why Reinhard Heydrich was ultimately appointed the Acting Reichsprotektor. The occupation power reacted not only by swift actions of the Gestapo, but mainly by exemplary punishments. As a result of the repressions, strikes ceased to be used as an organized form of social protests. There were therefore only a few strikes between 1943 and 1944, which broke out quite spontaneously. The best known of them was the one which took place in the ČKD factory in Vysočany on 24 August 1943; although causing only negligible damage, the special court passed one death sentence and four sentences of imprisonment for three to seven years. These intimidating punishments were the reason why strikes as a form of protest were quickly receding into the background, being replaced by slow work or escapes of individuals assigned to forced labour. Strikes as a form of political protest appeared mainly on the list of actions of the illegal Communist Party of Czechoslovakia, for the first time in the autumn of 1939 in connection with the cancellation of the national holiday commemorating the birth of the republic. While the democratic resistance was organizing public demonstrations on the occasion of 28 October 1939, the illegal Communist Party of Czechoslovakia was preparing manifestation strikes which indeed took place in Prague, Plzeň, Rakovník, and a few other places. Between 1939 and 1941, the Communist press was also promoting a traditional-type strike movement, but attempting to direct the illegal movement in the Protectorate only toward the struggle for social requirements. In the final phase of the war, the Communists’ concept was that of an all-out general strike as a prologue to a nationwide uprising. However, the concept was illusory; first, it overrated the abilities of the heavily decimated illegal Communist Party. Second, it disregarded the fact that the industrial production in the Protectorate in the spring of 1945, only a few months until the final defeat of Germany, would quickly collapse, and the importance of strikes would thus be significantly reduced.

Keywords

EN

strikes; working protests; Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia

Discipline

• HISTORY: HISTORY

• Publisher: Silesian University in Opava, Faculty of Public Policies, Czech Republic
• Journal: Central European Papers
• Year: 2018
• Volume: 6
• Issue: 1
• Pages: 157-175

Contributors

author

Kokoška Stanislav