Historical Photos of German Occupation of Czechoslovakia, 1938-1939

By 1938, Czechoslovakia found itself in a dangerously exposed position. The country had signed defense treaties with France in 1926 and the Soviet Union in 1935, but neither alliance delivered real protection when it mattered most. The Soviet Union stated it would only act if France moved first. France never moved. The Little Entente — a regional alliance between Czechoslovakia, Romania, and Yugoslavia — also failed to offer any concrete defense against Hungarian aggression. Czechoslovakia stood largely alone.

The most immediate pressure came from within. The Sudeten Germans — ethnic Germans living in the western borderlands of Czechoslovakia — had long pushed back against governance from Prague. Their movement was led by Konrad Henlein, who had direct backing from the Nazi government in Berlin. Henlein’s goal was clear: the Sudetenland had to be unified with Germany. Two months after Hitler annexed Austria in March 1938, German troops were positioned near the Czechoslovak border, and the tension reached a breaking point.

The German propaganda machine worked hard to justify intervention by portraying Sudeten Germans as mistreated and living under poor conditions inside Czechoslovakia. Images circulated through German media were used specifically to build that case — even when those conditions were not representative of broader reality. Henlein’s party used these narratives to push for full unification with the Reich, and Berlin used them to pressure both Czechoslovakia and the Western powers.

Czechoslovakia’s military was not unprepared. The army mobilized and took up defensive positions as the crisis deepened. Czech soldiers dug trenches, moved to garrisons near Prague, and readied their air force for potential combat. But the country’s fortifications were concentrated in the Sudetenland — the very territory that was being demanded. Losing that ground meant losing the physical backbone of the country’s defense.

On September 19, 1938, ambassadors from France and Great Britain approached Czech President Edvard Beneš with a note that was effectively an ultimatum: hand over the Sudeten territories to Germany or face an immediate Wehrmacht invasion. Beneš and his government understood that this was not a negotiation. Four days later, on September 23, Czechoslovakia mobilized its armed forces again — a final, desperate signal that the country was not willing to simply give in without resistance.

The political maneuvering happening in Europe’s capitals was drawing significant public attention. In London, protesters filled Trafalgar Square demanding that Britain take a firm stand against German aggression. Members of Parliament visited Downing Street to push for open debate on the crisis. But the British government, led by Neville Chamberlain, was already pursuing a different path.

Chamberlain traveled to the continent multiple times in the weeks following Germany’s annexation of Austria. His aim was to reach a diplomatic agreement that would prevent war. Italian dictator Benito Mussolini proposed a four-power conference to resolve the crisis. The resulting Munich Conference — attended by Germany, Britain, France, and Italy — excluded Czechoslovakia entirely. The Czechoslovak delegation was not allowed in the room where its country’s fate was being decided.

On September 29, 1938, French Premier Édouard Daladier, Chamberlain, Hitler, and Mussolini signed the Munich Agreement. It gave Germany everything it had demanded. Not a single concession was extracted from Berlin in return.

Chamberlain returned to England and addressed a crowd at the airfield. He declared the agreement would bring “peace in our time.” The British public largely welcomed the news. Many were exhausted by the memory of the First World War and desperate to believe that another one had been avoided. Workers in factories and ordinary citizens celebrated what they thought was a victory for diplomacy.

For Czechs, the Munich Agreement was not a peace deal — it was a betrayal. The word “Munich” became synonymous with abandonment. On September 30, just one week after mobilizing its military, Czechoslovakia capitulated. German troops crossed the border on October 1, 1938, and began occupying the Sudetenland. Ethnic Germans in the region lined the streets, saluting and cheering as Wehrmacht columns rolled through their towns.

Hitler himself crossed into the Sudetenland to mark the occasion. He stood in his car and was greeted by crowds as his motorcade moved through the annexed territory. Konrad Henlein, whose years of agitation had helped deliver the Sudetenland to Germany, was there to greet Hitler upon his return to Berlin.

German troops marched into Sudeten towns one after another. In Reichenberg, Rumburg, Schönlinde, Waldhaeusl, and dozens of other towns, Wehrmacht columns moved in while locals lined the streets. A German marching band crossed the Bavarian border near Haidmühle on October 1. German aircraft flew over the newly acquired territory. German armored vehicles pushed through customs checkpoints that had marked the border just days before.

For Czech civilians, October 1938 meant flight. Tens of thousands of people — Czechs and anti-Nazi Germans alike — were pushed out of the borderland districts by the advancing German forces. Families piled their belongings onto carts or carried what they could on foot. Refugee camps filled quickly. Children sat on straw in crowded conditions far from their homes. Some families made it as far as Romania. The human cost of the Munich Agreement was visible on every road leading away from the Sudetenland.

What Czechoslovakia lost in October 1938 went far beyond territory. The Sudetenland contained the country’s main line of fortifications against Germany. It held major iron, steel, and textile industries. Its loss left the remaining Czech state militarily and economically crippled. Czechoslovakia’s shrinking borders also invited further predatory moves from its neighbors. Poland seized the Zaolzie region, citing earlier territorial disputes from 1918 to 1920. Under the First Vienna Award, Hungary took the southern strips of Slovakia and Carpathian Ruthenia, areas with large Hungarian-speaking populations.

In March 1939, the final act began. Slovakia declared itself an independent state, and on that same day Hungary occupied and annexed the remainder of Carpathian Ruthenia. The Czech prime minister, fearing a full Hungarian invasion of the remaining Czech lands, asked Germany to send in the Wehrmacht for “protection.” It was a fatal decision. On March 15, 1939, German troops entered what remained of Czechoslovakia. The only organized armed resistance came from a single infantry company in Místek, commanded by Captain Karel Pavlík, which fought the invaders before being overwhelmed. Elsewhere, the takeover was effectively unopposed.

German columns entered Prague on March 15. Tanks rolled through Wenceslas Square. Motorcycles crossed the Charles Bridge. Trucks towing anti-aircraft guns moved down the city’s main avenues. Czech mounted police watched from the sides of the road as German military vehicles passed. Some bystanders raised their fists in defiance. Others stood in silence. German machine gunners were positioned in the streets, bundled against the cold, weapons pointed outward.

On March 16, 1939, Hitler traveled to Prague and stood at Prague Castle. From there, he declared Bohemia and Moravia a German Protectorate. The proclamation stated that “Bohemia and Moravia have been the Lebensraum of the German people for thousands of years.” With that declaration, Germany had absorbed seven million Czechs — people who were not ethnically German and had no desire to be part of the Reich. This directly contradicted Hitler’s repeated public claims that his territorial ambitions were about uniting ethnic Germans, not conquering non-German peoples.

German troops paraded through the streets and squares of Prague in the days that followed. Crowds on the sidewalks watched as motorcycle infantry, cavalry, and motorized columns moved through the city. A formal Wehrmacht parade passed through Wenceslas Square on March 18. The German army also marched into Prague Castle, the historic seat of Czech power, in a deliberate show of conquest. Street names were changed — one was renamed “Adolf Hitler Platz” almost immediately after the occupation began.

The occupation spread beyond Prague. German troops marched into Brno in Moravia as crowds watched. In newly declared Slovakia, pro-German paramilitary groups known as the Hlinka Guards wore swastika armbands and stationed themselves near public buildings. Slovak political leaders, including Prime Minister Vojtech Tuka, traveled to Berlin to meet with German officials, cementing Slovakia’s role as a German client state.

German propaganda played an active role in managing public perception of the occupation. Photos of destruction in the Sudetenland — blown bridges, wrecked vehicles, torn-up railway tracks — were distributed with captions blaming Czech forces for the damage. Shop windows displayed Hitler’s portrait next to swastika flags. The German news service published its own accounts of the occupation that shaped how events were reported in Germany.

For ordinary Czechs under occupation, daily life deteriorated sharply. Food became scarce. Long lines formed outside shops in Prague. Czech women were pressed into forced labor. The village of Lidice was destroyed by German soldiers as a reprisal — its buildings burned to the ground. By 1939, Germany had also redirected Czechoslovakia’s industrial capacity toward its war machine. Czech factories produced aircraft, tanks, artillery, and other armaments for the Wehrmacht.

Czechoslovak pilots who had escaped the occupation flew with the Royal Air Force from airfields in England. Czech units contributed to the Allied war effort from abroad, even as their homeland remained under German control. In occupied Czechoslovakia, German forces maintained a constant armed presence — anti-aircraft positions overlooked the Sudetenland countryside, and German military engineers operated in the Carpathian Mountains on the Eastern Front.

Germany occupied Hungary in March 1944 during Operation Margarethe, and Slovakia faced German military intervention in August 1944 during the Slovak National Uprising. The scale of killing during the entire occupation period was immense. Between 294,000 and 320,000 people were murdered under German occupation — the majority of them Jews. The occupation of Czechoslovakia was not a bloodless administrative exercise. It was a systematic process of conquest, exploitation, and mass killing that lasted until Germany’s defeat in 1945.

As Germany’s military situation collapsed in 1945, the occupation of Czechoslovakia came to a violent and chaotic end. German forces retreated from Prague in trucks and were captured in large numbers. Soviet troops entered Prague in May 1945 and were met by crowds of civilians in the streets. Czech General Ludvík Svoboda decorated members of the Revolutionary Factory Committees who had seized control of industrial facilities from the retreating Germans. The cease-fire on the Western Front — announced by bugle call at the German-Czech border — marked the formal end of German military operations in the region.

In the aftermath, captured German troops — including SS members, Luftwaffe personnel, and volunteers from Poland and Czechoslovakia who had served Germany — were held as prisoners. Josef Pfitzner, the German deputy mayor of Prague who had served the Nazi administration, was publicly hanged on September 6, 1945, after being convicted of participation in Nazi organizations. President Edvard Beneš, who had been forced into exile, returned to Czechoslovakia. Soldiers celebrated Germany’s defeat in the streets as refugees continued to make their way across the country’s roads.

Below is a broader collection of historical photographs documenting the German occupation of Czechoslovakia from 1938 to 1945.