How Did Adolf Hitler Establish The Protectorate In Germany?

On 16 March 1939, Adolf Hitler issued a decree which served as legal foundation for the establishment of the Protectorate. Consequently, territories of the former Czechoslovak Republic, specifically the regions Bohemia, Moravia and Silesia, which were inhabited by a total of seven million people, now belonged to the territory of the German state. Following the decree, the regions of Bohemia, Moravia and Silesia now formed the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia and existed as a puppet state of the Third Reich. The Protectorate was considered an autonomous state with its own head of state, the Czech president, yet its government had to act "in accordance to the political, military and economic needs of the German state" , which were represented and endorsed by the Reichsprotektor. Furthermore, the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia was represented by the Third Reich in foreign affairs and stood under its military protection.

By April 1939, the military occupation of the Czech lands by the German state was completed. The former Czechoslovakian army was dissolved while the task of protecting the state was assigned to the German troops and the new secret police, the Gestapo. Furthermore, numerous
As such, he acted as main representative of the Third Reich, controlled all German agencies and institutions in the Protectorate apart from the military department, monitored the Protectorate's economy, as well as cultural and law enforcement affairs, and supervised important legal acts.5 The new administrative unit called Amt des Reichprotektors became a powerful, centralised apparatus within the Protectorate by progressively gaining control over Czech administrative authorities. The process of German authorities gaining control over and re-shaping the Protectorate is also called the