Emil Hácha [em-ill haa-kha] -
Czechoslovak lawyer,
translator,
and politician (12.7.1872 - 27.6.1945).
Emil Hácha is perhaps the most
controversial person in modern
Czech history. His name is
synonymous with "
collaboration" to many, but I personally think there are many people who deserve it more than him.
Hácha became a doctor of law at the
Charles University in
Prague in 1895 and subsequently served at the Supreme Court in
Vienna. After
World War I, he was employed at the Supreme Administrative Court of the newly
constituted
Czechoslovakia, and President
Masaryk named him the
Chairman of the
Senate of that
institution in
1925. Hácha was also a respected
expert on English law and served as a
judge at the
International Court in
Haag for some time.
In
October 1938, after the
Munich Pact and the
emigration of
Edvard Beneš,
Czechoslovakia became Czecho-Slovakia. And Emil Hácha became the President. He had to be
persuaded to accept the
function, as there were no
candidates. It was a major
sacrifice from Hácha, as both his
health and the health of the
country was beginning to get worse - the
Munich Pact had undermined the country's
economy and
democratic spirit.
On March 14, 1939, Hácha arrived to
Berlin for a lengthy meeting with
Hitler and
Göring. There he was informed that
Slovakia had declared
independence in his
absence (to become
Hitler's
puppet state). He was
brutally threatened with fierce
military action against the
remainder of the
Czech lands if he didn't allow
Germany to
annex them peacefully. Physically exhausted and seeing the situation as utterly hopeless, he gave in and the remnants of
Bohemia and
Moravia were incorporated into
Germany under the name "
Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia" on March 15.
This was a clear
breach of the
Munich Pact, but
France and
Britain did
nothing. It was only the invasion of
Poland on
September 1, 1939 that finally prompted them to take action against
Germany.
During the Protectorate, Hácha remained in power. The Protectorate had two
parallel administrations -
Czech (with the "State President" maintaining a
government, a
police force and
gendarmerie) and
German (with the "Reichsprotektor" commanding the
SA,
SS and
Gestapo and officially adjacent to the State President). Hácha's
competences were
limited, but crucial: he maintained contact with
resistance forces both home and abroad, regulated the
transports of non-
Aryans to
concentration camps, and could stick up for
Czech politicians when they got in trouble with the German
administration. Gradually, however, he
succumbed to pressure from the
Nazis and
collaborators; mainly because of his
deteriorating health (both physical and mental) and particularly the
Führer's fury after the
assassination of
Reinhard Heydrich in
1942.
The
interior resistance ceased
cooperation with Hácha already in
1940, when he issued a speech wishing Hitler "
Sieg und Heil". He continued to show such signs of
support to the
Nazis on certain occassions. But in
private, he referred to these acts as "swallowing
toads", and the
exile government in
London continued to maintain contact with him.
It was the "Heydrichiade", the
German retaliations for the assassination of Heydrich which included the destruction of
Lidice and Ležáky, that finally broke him. It was then that he irrevokably became a
servant to the Germans, and a puppet in Hitler's hands. He never earned his trust, though. And he had already lost the trust of the resistance and the Czech
people.
After the
war, Hácha was jailed and tried as a
Nazi collaborator. The court decided that he couldn't be held
responsible for his actions from
1943 on, but Hácha died in
hospital before the final
verdict could be issued.