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Law enforcement in the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia was conducted by several agencies established by the Czechoslovak Republic, control of which was transferred to the government of the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia following the German occupation of the Czech lands and the creation of the Slovak Republic. Over time, these agencies were consolidated and reorganized according to the German model. German military and civil authorities also played a significant role in law enforcement within the protectorate.

At various points during the occupation, German authorities expressed frustration with non-cooperation by the Protectorate's law enforcement services, including instances of their covert coordination with anti-occupation resistance movements, and confrontations between Czech police and off-duty German soldiers over the treatment of Jews. At the same time, Protectorate Police exhibited a level of zeal in enforcement of discriminatory laws against communists and Roma that surprised even the Germans. And, the Protectorate's Gendarmerie played a supporting role during the Lidice massacre.

Protectorate police fought on the side of the Czech resistance during the Prague Uprising and ultimately arrested State President Emil Hácha.

History

A Czech policec officer directs traffic during the entrance of German military forces into Prague on March 15, 1939.

The first formal contact between German officials and police commanders of the rump Czech state occurred on March 15, 1939 when Otto Rasch met with police executives at Náměstí Republiky, Prague. Rasch requested that Czech police assist German authorities in identifying and detaining suspected communists, a duty which the Czech police accomplished with what was, to Rasch, surprising efficiency and zeal. At the March 15 meeting, Rasch also directed the dissolution of the State Security service, though its political policing and counterintelligence responsibilities were eventually replaced by a newly created Department B, which consisted of 152 personnel and reported directly to local Gestapo officials.

During the early period of the Protectorate, police operations continued in much the same way as before the occupation, occasionally leading to run-ins with German personnel. In July 1939, for instance, after an episode in which the windows of several Jewish businesses in Moravská Ostrava were smashed by off-duty SS personnel, Czech police arrested the perpetrators. Schupo officers created a distraction that ultimately allowed the detainees to escape custody. Additional police operations during the summer of 1939 to intervene in attacks against Jews by Germans, German-speaking Czechs, and members of the Vlajka created tension which culminated in an arrangement by which crimes against Jewish establishments were to be reported directly to the Schupo and not investigated by Czech police. Additional arrangements required Schupo to handle murder and sabotage investigations, as well as any investigations in which a German citizen was the victim or perpetrator.

Czech police initially took a restrained approach to public demonstrations in opposition to the occupation. In response to increasingly large demonstrations, the Protector informed State President Hacha that Czech police needed to act more assertively in controlling crowds or the 1st SS Panzer Division Leibstandarte SS Adolf Hitler would assume responsibility for policing. On September 1, 1939, a new decree was issued requiring police authorities in the protectorate to submit to the orders of Gestapo when required. During protests coinciding with Wenceslas Day celebrations that month, Czech police took an aggressive approach with demonstrators.

Enforcement of racial laws

Prior to the occupation, Czechoslovak police enforced Act No. 117/1927, which required "wandering gypsies" to avoid certain tourist areas and to register with local authorities. Enforcement was stepped-up in the period prior to the occupation, due to the large number of Roma migrants relocating to Czechoslovakia after the promulgation of more onerous discriminatory legislation in Germany. Following the occupation, Czech police continued enforcement of Act No. 117/1927.

In July 1942, after consolidation of the uniformed security forces into the Uniformed Protectorate Police, a new law was enacted by the Protectorate government "to combat the Gypsy malevolence”. Under the revised statute, the police undertook a census of Roma residing in the Protectorate. Roma engaged in full-time employment were cautioned against adopting a nomadic lifestyle, while those who lacked full-time employment were detained in the Protectorate government's Lety concentration camp.

In 1943, the Uniformed Police and Criminal Police assisted in the mass deportation of Roma from the Protectorate to the Auschwitz concentration camp in the General Government (Poland).

Resistance activities

Frantisek Famfulik, commander of the gendarmerie station in Proseč, was executed in 1943 after his involvement in resistance activity was uncovered.

Throughout the occupation, some German officials expressed frustration that, particularly within the Gendarmerie, personnel were slow or lax in enforcement of certain matters, including responding to reports of sabotage and enforcing blackout restrictions. There were also cases of disruptive excessive enforcement. For instance, Gendarmes who located Allied propaganda leaflets were supposed to send samples to their immediate superiors, however, had a tendency to proactively report them to a wide range of authorities – including those who had nothing at all to do with the matter – thereby aiding their distribution.

In Prague and Plzeň, contingency resistance cells were established by some within the police. While these cells didn't take any active measures against the occupation, they drew-up plans to secure critical infrastructure should an uprising occur.

In the summer of 1942, Karel Knÿz – a gendarme who had assisted a resistance radio operator in avoiding arrest – committed suicide to avoid arrest by the Gestapo after his activities were discovered. The following January, seven police in Ostrava were arrested by the Gestapo after their involvement with a resistance movement was revealed. Also in 1943, Frantisek Famfulik, the commander of the gendarmerie station in Proseč was executed after his involvement in resistance activity was uncovered.

On the morning of May 5, 1945, Protectorate Police assisted staff of Czech Radio to infiltrate the Czech Radio broadcasting center on Vinohradská Street. A firefight between police and German forces charged with guarding the building ensued. At 12:33 p.m., Czech Radio broadcast an appeal for assistance, marking the start of the Prague Uprising:

"Calling all Czechs. Come to our help at once ... The SS are murdering Czech people here ... We are calling on the Czech police, Czech gendarmes and the government's military forces to help Czech Radio."

On May 13, 1945, Czech police entered the grounds of Lány Castle (pictured here in 2012) and arrested State President Hacha.

Reinforcements from the 1st Battalion of the Protectorate's Army arrived sometime before 1:00 p.m., entering the building's top floors through adjacent structures. Jaroslav Záruba, leading the Government Army troops, took command of the combined force of Protectorate Army, Protectorate Police, and partisans, eventually driving German troops from the building and securing their surrender.

On May 13, on orders of Václav Nosek – serving as Interior Minister in the transitional Košice Government Program – Czech police entered the grounds of the presidential residence of Lány Castle and arrested State President Hacha, bringing to an end the protectorate.

Uniformed Protectorate Police

During the First and Second Czechoslovak Republics, uniformed law enforcement agencies chiefly consisted of the centrally-controlled Gendarmerie and Order Police, as well as the locally-controlled Municipal Police. On July 1, 1942, the Protector ordered the consolidation of the Order Police and the Gendarmerie into a single command structure, designated the Uniformed Protectorate Police. While the two forces remained operationally separate under a single command structure, ranks and pay rates were standardized and plans were made - though never realized - for standardization of uniforms. The Municipal Police, renamed the Municipal Executive Police, were later folded into the Uniformed Protectorate Police as well.

Gendarmerie

An occupation-era Czech gendarme is pictured in Prague in March 1939.

Established in 1850 by Austria-Hungary, during the First Czechoslovak Republic the Gendarmerie — which was organized and disciplined according to Army regulations — was principally responsible for border security, highway safety, and fugitive retrieval. Its rapid deployment forces, the so-called "emergency units", were stationed in major cities as well as areas with German-speaking majorities to provide riot control support for local police and the capability to respond to militarized threats.

Following the onset of the occupation, the Gendarmerie's air wing was disbanded, Jewish gendarmes were dismissed as were veterans of the Czechoslovak Legion, and gendarmes married to Jewish women were required to either divorce or resign. The emergency units were combined with other elements into several barracked, alert companies suitable for response to sudden civil disturbances or other serious exigencies. These principally consisted of three companies in Prague and three companies in Brno, all of which were armed with pistols and rifles.

In June 1942, Gendarmerie companies were used by German forces to establish a security perimeter around the village of Lidice prior to the Lidice massacre. The Gendarmerie was also used — along with SS forces — to control the perimeter of the Theresienstadt Ghetto, while the interior was patrolled by the Jewish Police. According to Arnošt Lustig, writing in The Kenyon Review, gendarmes were rotated in to perimeter guard duties on Sundays to relieve SS troops who were given that day off. Lustig described the role of the Gendarmerie at the Theresienstadt Ghetto:

“ We all knew that the Czech gendarmes didn't execute anybody. That duty went to the Germans, who determined the time, place, and method of punishment. The gendarmes functioned only as telegraph instruments, communicating the text of the telegram. ”

New personnel were not recruited into the Gendarmerie until Autumn of 1942 when a call was put out for Czech men aged 18 to 29 to apply. More than 1,000 applicants were ultimately selected and tasked to undergo eight months of training. However, this training was cut short when – in the spring of 1943 – trainees were moved to Hamburg, Münster, and Düsseldorf to reinforce German police in those cities. There, they were largely responsible for guarding neighborhoods destroyed in Allied air raids from looters, as well as assisting in search and rescue work. A large number of the gendarme trainees were decorated with the Reichsluftschutzbund's Air Defense Badge for their service in Germany.

Municipal Police

Prior to 1942, the Municipal Police – which could be voluntarily established by cities and towns to provide local control of law enforcement – were largely unaffected by institutional changes. In 1942, the Municipal Police were renamed the Municipal Executive Police and came under the joint control of the mayors of the municipalities in which they were established, as well as the Ministry of the Interior. In addition, cities with a population of 10,000 or more were required, for the first time, to establish a Municipal Executive Police.

Ranks

The final rank structure used by the Uniformed Protectorate Police after 1944 was as follows.

Officer ranks (1944-1945)

Plukovník	Podplukovník	Major	Štábní kapitán	Kapitán	Nadporučík	Poručík	Podporučík
Colonel	Lieutenant Colonel	Major	Staff Captain	Captain	First Lieutenant	Lieutenant	Ensign

Other law enforcement services

Jewish Police

See also: Jewish Ghetto Police

In Terezín, German authorities recruited physically fit Jewish males into a force informally known as the Jewish Police, but officially called the Ghetto Guard. Unlike other law enforcement agencies in the protectorate, the Jewish Police were not equipped with firearms and their jurisdiction was limited to the Theresienstadt Ghetto. By 1942, the Jewish Police reached 150 men in number. Upon learning that Jewish Police officers were maintaining contacts with the outside world via sympathetic gendarmes, the Germans ordered the force disbanded on May 14, 1942 and all its members deported. A second Jewish Police service was organized following the deportation of the first. Under the leadership of Karl Loewenstein it became too large and efficient for the liking of the occupation authorities and it, too, was disbanded and and its members deported. In 1943, a final attempt at organizing a Jewish Police service for Terezín was made. This force continued in operation until the end of the war.

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Government Police branch headquarters shown on a map of the contemporary Czech Republic. The six branches were sub-divided into 46 districts.

Nonuninformed Protectorate Police

On March 11, 1940, the Ministry of the Interior prescribed new badges for the Nonuninformed Protectorate Police. These were circular devices that bore, in both Czech and German, the words "Government Police". Above the arms was imprinted the unique serial number of the badge.

Illustration of a badge of the Nonuninformed Protectorate Police after 1940

In November 1942 ranks and pay rates between the Government Police and Gendarmerie were standardized. Plans for standardization of uniforms were never accomplished.

A monument in Olšany Cemetery commemorates personnel of the Uniformed Protection Police and pre-consolidation Czech police.

Legacy

In 2015, at Prague's Olšany Cemetery, a monument to Uniformed Protection Police and pre-consolidation Czech police personnel who died as a result of their participation in resistance actions during the occupation was established.

See also

• Blue Police
• Ukrainian Auxiliary Police