Beneš Decrees

Beneš decrees
Edvard Beneš, 1935–1938 and 1940–1948 President of Czechoslovakia
Decrees of the President of the Republic
Enacted by	National Assembly of the Czechoslovak Republic
Introduced by	Czechoslovak government-in-exile

The Decrees of the President of the Republic (Czech: Dekrety presidenta republiky, Slovak: Dekréty prezidenta republiky) and the Constitutional Decrees of the President of the Republic (Czech: Ústavní dekrety presidenta republiky, Slovak: Ústavné dekréty prezidenta republiky), commonly known as the Beneš decrees, were a series of laws drafted by the Czechoslovak government-in-exile in the absence of the Czechoslovak parliament during the German occupation of Czechoslovakia in World War II. They were issued by President Edvard Beneš from 21 July 1940 to 27 October 1945 and retroactively ratified by the Interim National Assembly of Czechoslovakia on 6 March 1946.

The decrees dealt with various aspects of the restoration of Czechoslovakia and its legal system, denazification, and reconstruction of the country. In journalism and political history, the term "Beneš decrees" refer to the decrees of the president and the ordinances of the Slovak National Council (SNR) concerning the status of ethnic Germans, Hungarians and others in postwar Czechoslovakia and represented Czechoslovakia's legal framework for the expulsion of Germans from Czechoslovakia. As a result, many ethnic Germans and Hungarians who had lived in Czechoslovakia prior to World War II or had settled there during the German occupation of Czechoslovakia lost their Czechoslovakian citizenship, property, and in some cases even died during the expulsion process which took place during the late 1940s. The Beneš decrees were enforced differently in different parts of the country with some decrees only being valid in Bohemia and Moravia, while the ordinances of SNR were enforced in Slovakia.