As a result of the political situation in Eastern Europe, the Commission has only been officially active in the successor states of the former Czechoslovakia (CSSR) since 1990. According to the records of the German office, there were 18,368 graves in 1,635 communities in the present-day Czech Republic. The number of soldiers who died on the territory of the former Czechoslovakia is estimated at a minimum of 178,000.
The Commission has already expanded 10 cemeteries in the past eighteen years. 26,775 German war dead currently rest there. The current expansion of the last facility in Cheb will mark the completion of construction work in the Czech Republic. The focus of the Volksbund's work will then shift to the search for the war dead, their recovery and burial. The Volksbund knows little about the civilian dead (victims of expulsion).
For eighteen years, the Commission has been searching for the graves and recovering the bodies of the fallen. Although the former Czechoslovak government formally accepted the provisions of international humanitarian law (Geneva Red Cross Convention of 1949) by signing and ratifying it, caring for German war graves remained almost impossible until the political turnaround.
Article 30 of the 1992 German-Czechoslovakian Neighboring States Treaty contains a declaration of intent by both governments to protect the war graves and to enable their registration and maintenance. The German-Czech Declaration of 1997 also includes the question of the renovation of graves.
A bilateral war graves agreement is still pending, which would place the work of the German War Graves Commission in the Czech Republic on a legal and thus binding basis for all contractual partners (e.g. municipal administrations). Initial negotiations were held at the beginning of 2001, but have not yet been concluded.
Since 1990, the Commission has been working with various Czech companies, whose activities are closely coordinated with the Czech Ministries of Foreign Affairs, the Interior and Defense. The foreign affairs committees of the parliament and the senate, as well as the municipal administrations, are involved in this task.