Green Plan

(Operation Green; German, Fall Grün), the code name for a plan of the fascist German commanders to eliminate the Czechoslovak state by military means.

The Green Plan was approved by A. Hitler on May 30, 1938. It called for covert mobilization and deployment of the fascist German Army’s main forces for an invasion of Czechoslovakia, planning a swift (four-day) destruction of the main body of the Czechoslovak Army and seizure of Bohemia and Moravia; the remnants of the Czechoslovak troops would be pressed back to Slovakia. Measures were also projected for securing the operation: Germany’s western borders were to be covered, and the German Air Force would be mobilized against the French and Soviet armed forces in the event of their rendering military aid to Czechoslovakia. The intention, however, was to avoid as far as possible any action that might adversely affect the political posture of the major European states toward Germany. The launching of military operations was to be preceded by a full-scale propaganda campaign against Czechoslovakia, border incidents, agitation by the German population of the Sudetenland, and diversionary and provocative actions aimed at intimidating the bourgeois ruling circles of Czechoslovakia, forcing them to renounce military cooperation with Czechoslovakia’s allies, above all the USSR, and give in to fascist Germany. In view of Czechoslovakia’s capitulation as a result of the Munich Pact of 1938, the Green Plan was not carried out.