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The Prague uprising ( cs, Pražské povstání) was a partially successful attempt by the Czech resistance movement to liberate the city of
Prague Prague ( ; cs, Praha ; german: Prag, ; la, Praga) is the capital and largest city in the Czech Republic, and the historical capital of Bohemia. On the Vltava river, Prague is home to about 1.3 million people. The city has a temperate ...
from
German occupation German-occupied Europe refers to the sovereign countries of Europe which were wholly or partly occupied and civil-occupied (including puppet governments) by the military forces and the government of Nazi Germany at various times between 1939 ...
in May 1945, during the end of
World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the World War II by country, vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great power ...
. The preceding six years of occupation had fuelled anti-German sentiment and the rapid advance of Allied forces from the
Red Army The Workers' and Peasants' Red Army (Russian language, Russian: Рабо́че-крестья́нская Кра́сная армия),) often shortened to the Red Army, was the army and air force of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist R ...
and the
United States Army The United States Army (USA) is the land service branch of the United States Armed Forces. It is one of the eight U.S. uniformed services, and is designated as the Army of the United States in the U.S. Constitution.Article II, section 2, ...
offered the resistance a chance of success. On 5 May 1945, during the
end of World War II in Europe The final battle of the European Theatre of World War II continued after the definitive overall surrender of Nazi Germany to the Allies, signed by Field marshal Wilhelm Keitel on 8 May 1945 in Karlshorst, Berlin. After German dictator Adolf ...
, occupying
German German(s) may refer to: * Germany (of or related to) **Germania (historical use) * Germans, citizens of Germany, people of German ancestry, or native speakers of the German language ** For citizens of Germany, see also German nationality law **Ge ...
forces in Bohemia and Moravia were spontaneously attacked by civilians in an uprising, with Czech resistance leaders emerging from hiding to join them. The Russian Liberation Army (ROA), a collaborationist formation of
ethnic Russians , native_name_lang = ru , image = , caption = , population = , popplace = 118 million Russians in the Russian Federation (2002 ''Winkler Prins'' estimate) , region1 = , pop1 ...
, defected and supported the insurgents. German forces counter-attacked, but their progress was slowed by barricades constructed by the insurgents. On 8 May, the Czech and German leaders signed a ceasefire allowing all German forces to withdraw from the city, but some Waffen-SS troops refused to obey. Fighting continued until 9 May, when the Red Army entered the nearly liberated city. The uprising was brutal, with both sides committing several war crimes. German forces used Czech civilians as
human shield A human shield is a non-combatant (or a group of non-combatants) who either volunteers or is forced to shield a legitimate military target in order to deter the enemy from attacking it. The use of human shields as a resistance measure was popula ...
s and perpetrated several
massacre A massacre is the killing of a large number of people or animals, especially those who are not involved in any fighting or have no way of defending themselves. A massacre is generally considered to be morally unacceptable, especially when per ...
s. Violence against German civilians, sanctioned by the Czechoslovak government-in-exile, continued after the uprising, and was justified as revenge for the occupation or as a means to encourage Germans to flee.
George S. Patton George Smith Patton Jr. (November 11, 1885 – December 21, 1945) was a general in the United States Army who commanded the Seventh United States Army in the Mediterranean Theater of World War II, and the Third United States Army in France ...
’s
Third United States Army Third or 3rd may refer to: Numbers * 3rd, the ordinal form of the cardinal number 3 * , a fraction of one third * 1⁄60 of a ''second'', or 1⁄3600 of a ''minute'' Places * 3rd Street (disambiguation) * Third Avenue (disambiguation) * Hig ...
was ordered by
Supreme Allied Commander Supreme Allied Commander is the title held by the most senior commander within certain multinational military alliances. It originated as a term used by the Allies during World War I, and is currently used only within NATO for Supreme Allied Com ...
Dwight D. Eisenhower not to come to the aid of the Czech insurgents, which undermined the credibility of the Western powers in post-war Czechoslovakia. Instead, the uprising was presented as a symbol of Czech resistance to Nazi rule, and the liberation by the Red Army was used by the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia to increase popular support for the party.


Background


German occupation

In 1938, the
Chancellor of Germany The chancellor of Germany, officially the federal chancellor of the Federal Republic of Germany,; often shortened to ''Bundeskanzler''/''Bundeskanzlerin'', / is the head of the federal government of Germany and the commander in chief of the Ge ...
,
Adolf Hitler Adolf Hitler (; 20 April 188930 April 1945) was an Austrian-born German politician who was dictator of Germany from 1933 until his death in 1945. He rose to power as the leader of the Nazi Party, becoming the chancellor in 1933 and the ...
, announced his intention to
annex Annex or Annexe refers to a building joined to or associated with a main building, providing additional space or accommodations. It may also refer to: Places * The Annex, a neighbourhood in downtown Toronto, Ontario, Canada * The Annex (New ...
the
Sudetenland The Sudetenland ( , ; Czech and sk, Sudety) is the historical German name for the northern, southern, and western areas of former Czechoslovakia which were inhabited primarily by Sudeten Germans. These German speakers had predominated in the ...
, a region of
Czechoslovakia , rue, Чеськословеньско, , yi, טשעכאסלאוואקיי, , common_name = Czechoslovakia , life_span = 1918–19391945–1992 , p1 = Austria-Hungary , image_p1 ...
with a high ethnic German population. British Prime Minister
Neville Chamberlain Arthur Neville Chamberlain (; 18 March 18699 November 1940) was a British politician of the Conservative Party who served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from May 1937 to May 1940. He is best known for his foreign policy of appeaseme ...
and French Prime Minister Édouard Daladier acquiesced to Hitler's demands at the
Munich Agreement The Munich Agreement ( cs, Mnichovská dohoda; sk, Mníchovská dohoda; german: Münchner Abkommen) was an agreement concluded at Munich on 30 September 1938, by Germany, the United Kingdom, France, and Italy. It provided "cession to Germany ...
, in exchange for guarantees from
Nazi Germany Nazi Germany (lit. "National Socialist State"), ' (lit. "Nazi State") for short; also ' (lit. "National Socialist Germany") (officially known as the German Reich from 1933 until 1943, and the Greater German Reich from 1943 to 1945) was ...
that no additional lands would be annexed. No Czechoslovak representatives were present at the negotiations. In March 1939, German forces invaded and occupied the remaining Czech territories, establishing the
Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia The Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia; cs, Protektorát Čechy a Morava; its territory was called by the Nazis ("the rest of Czechia"). was a partially annexed territory of Nazi Germany established on 16 March 1939 following the German oc ...
. Although France had a defensive alliance with Czechoslovakia, neither the French nor British intervened militarily. The Nazis considered many Czechs to be ethnically Aryan, and therefore suitable for
Germanisation Germanisation, or Germanization, is the spread of the German language, people and culture. It was a central idea of German conservative thought in the 19th and the 20th centuries, when conservatism and ethnic nationalism went hand in hand. In lin ...
. As a consequence, the German occupation was less harsh than in other predominantly Slavic nations, with wartime living standards being actually higher than in Germany itself. However,
freedom of speech Freedom of speech is a principle that supports the freedom of an individual or a community to articulate their opinions and ideas without fear of retaliation, censorship, or legal sanction. The right to freedom of expression has been recogni ...
was curtailed by occupational government and 400,000 Czechs were conscripted for forced labour programs in Nazi Germany. During the six-year occupation, more than 20,000 Czechs were executed by German forces and thousands more died in concentration camps. While the general violence of the occupation was much less severe than in
Eastern Europe Eastern Europe is a subregion of the European continent. As a largely ambiguous term, it has a wide range of geopolitical, geographical, ethnic, cultural, and socio-economic connotations. The vast majority of the region is covered by Russia, whi ...
, it nevertheless incited violent anti-German sentiment in many Czechs.


Military situation

During the spring of 1945, partisan forces in Bohemia and Moravia totalled about 120 groups, with a combined strength of around 7,500 people. Partisans disrupted the railway and highway transportation by sabotaging track and bridges and attacking trains and stations. Some railways could not be used at night or on some days, and trains were forced to travel at a slower speed. Waffen-SS units retreating from the Red Army's advance into Moravia burned down several villages in reprisal. Despite losing much of their leadership to a March 1945 purge by the ''
Gestapo The (), abbreviated Gestapo (; ), was the official secret police of Nazi Germany and in German-occupied Europe. The force was created by Hermann Göring in 1933 by combining the various political police agencies of Prussia into one orga ...
'', Communist groups in Prague distributed propaganda leaflets calling for an insurrection. German soldiers and civilians became increasingly worried and prepared to flee violent retaliation for the occupation. In an attempt to reassert German authority, SS police official Karl Hermann Frank broadcast a message over the radio threatening to destroy Prague and drown any opposition in blood. In early 1945, former
Czechoslovak Army The Czechoslovak Army ( Czech and Slovak: Československá armáda) was the name of the armed forces of Czechoslovakia. It was established in 1918 following Czechoslovakia's declaration of independence from Austria-Hungary. History In the f ...
officers set up the commanded by General Karel Kutlvašr to oversee fighting inside Prague, and the under General František Slunečko to direct insurgent units in the suburbs. Meanwhile, the
Czech National Council The Czech National Council ( cs, Česká národní rada, ČNR) was the legislative body of the Czech Republic since 1968 when the Czech Republic was created as a member state of Czech-Slovak federation. It was legally transformed into the Cham ...
( cs), with representatives from various Czech political parties, formed to take over political leadership after the overthrow of the Nazi occupational government and the collaborationist authorities. Military leaders planning an uprising within Prague counted on the loyalty of ethnically Czech members of the city police,
gendarmerie Wrong info! --> A gendarmerie () is a military force with law enforcement duties among the civilian population. The term ''gendarme'' () is derived from the medieval French expression ', which translates to " men-at-arms" (literally, ...
and the Government Army of the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia, as well as employees of key civil services, such as transport workers and the fire brigade. The Russian Liberation Army (ROA), composed of Soviet POWs that had agreed to fight for Nazi Germany, was stationed outside of Prague. Hoping that the ROA could be persuaded to switch sides in order to avoid accusations of collaboration, the Czech military command sent an envoy to General
Sergei Bunyachenko Sergei Kuzmich Bunyachenko (russian: Серге́й Кузьми́ч Буняче́нко, uk, Сергій Кузьмич Буняченко; October 5, 1902, Korovyakovka, Kursk Governorate – August 2, 1946, Moscow) was a Soviet Red Army d ...
, the commander of the 600th Infantry Division. Bunyachenko agreed to switch sides help the Czech resistance. On 4 May, the US Third Army under General
George S. Patton George Smith Patton Jr. (November 11, 1885 – December 21, 1945) was a general in the United States Army who commanded the Seventh United States Army in the Mediterranean Theater of World War II, and the Third United States Army in France ...
entered Czechoslovakia. British Prime Minister
Winston Churchill Sir Winston Leonard Spencer Churchill (30 November 187424 January 1965) was a British statesman, soldier, and writer who served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom twice, from 1940 to 1945 during the Second World War, and again from ...
was the only political leader to advocate the liberation of Prague by the Western Allies. In a telegram to General Dwight D. Eisenhower, the
Supreme Allied Commander in Europe Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe (SHAPE) is the military headquarters of the NATO, North Atlantic Treaty Organization's (NATO) Allied Command Operations (ACO) that commands all NATO operations worldwide. ACO's and SHAPE's commander ...
, Churchill said that "the liberation of Prague...by US troops might make the whole difference to the postwar situation of Czechoslovakia and might well influence that in nearby countries."
Joseph Stalin Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin (born Ioseb Besarionis dze Jughashvili; – 5 March 1953) was a Georgian revolutionary and Soviet Union, Soviet political leader who led the Soviet Union from 1924 until his death in 1953. He held power as Ge ...
, leader of the Soviet Union, also wanted his forces to liberate the city, and asked that the Americans stop at
Plzeň Plzeň (; German and English: Pilsen, in German ) is a city in the Czech Republic. About west of Prague in western Bohemia, it is the fourth most populous city in the Czech Republic with about 169,000 inhabitants. The city is known worldwid ...
, to the west. The
Red Army The Workers' and Peasants' Red Army (Russian language, Russian: Рабо́че-крестья́нская Кра́сная армия),) often shortened to the Red Army, was the army and air force of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist R ...
was planning a major offensive into the Protectorate, due to start 7 May. Eisenhower, disinclined to accept American casualties or risk antagonising the
Soviet Union The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, it was nominally a federal union of fifteen nationa ...
, acquiesced to the Soviet demands that the Red Army enter Prague.


Uprising


5 May

Staff of Czech Radio opposed to the occupation began the morning by broadcasting in the banned
Czech language Czech (; Czech ), historically also Bohemian (; ''lingua Bohemica'' in Latin), is a West Slavic language of the Czech–Slovak group, written in Latin script. Spoken by over 10 million people, it serves as the official language of the Czech Re ...
. The Bartoš Command and Communist groups met separately and both scheduled the armed uprising to begin 7 May. Czech citizens gathered in the streets, vandalised German inscriptions, and tore down German flags. Czechoslovak flags appeared openly in windows and on jacket lapels. Tram operators refused to accept Reichsmark or to give the stops in German, as was required by the occupiers. Some German soldiers were surrounded and killed. In response to growing popular agitation, Frank threatened to shoot Czechs gathering in the streets, and increased armed German patrols. Some German soldiers began to fire into the crowds. Around noon, the radio broadcast a series of appeals to the police and gendarmerie requesting aid in fighting SS guards inside the radio building. A detachment of Government Army policemen responded to the call, and met stiff resistance as they retook the building. During the entire time, the radio continued to broadcast. Although not directed at the populace, the appeal ignited fighting all over the city, concentrated in the downtown districts. Crowds of unarmed civilians, mostly young men with no military training, overwhelmed German garrisons and stores. Many casualties were inflicted by German soldiers and civilians sniping from strong-points or rooftops; in response, Czech forces began to intern Germans and suspected collaborators. Czech noncombatants assisted by setting up makeshift hospitals for the wounded and bringing food, water, and other necessities to the barricades, while German forces were often resorted to looting to obtain essential supplies. Czech forces seized thousands of firearms, hundreds of Panzerfausts, and five armoured vehicles, but still suffered a shortage of weapons. By the end of the day, the resistance had seized most of the city east of the
Vltava Vltava ( , ; german: Moldau ) is the longest river in the Czech Republic, running southeast along the Bohemian Forest and then north across Bohemia, through Český Krumlov, České Budějovice and Prague, and finally merging with the Labe at ...
River. The insurgents held many important buildings, including the radio, the telephone exchange, most railway stations, and ten of twelve bridges. Three thousand prisoners were liberated from
Pankrác Prison Pankrác Prison, officially Prague Pankrác Remand Prison (''Vazební věznice Praha Pankrác'' in Czech), is a prison in Prague, Czech Republic. A part of the Czech Prison Service, it is located southeast of Prague city centre in Pankrác, not ...
. By controlling the telephone exchange, resistance fighters were able to sever communication between German units and commanders. German forces held most of the territory to the west of the river, including an airfield at Ruzyně, northwest of the city, and various surrounded garrisons such as the Gestapo Headquarters. At the orders of Field Marshal Ferdinand Schörner, in command of Axis forces in Bohemia, Waffen-SS units were pulled from fighting the Red Army and sent into Prague. The SS was relatively well-equipped with tanks, armoured carriers, weaponry and motorised units. Information on this force movement reached insurgent headquarters late in the day. The radio broadcast appeals in English and Russian for an air attack on the tanks. Hearing of events in Prague, Patton asked for permission to advance to the Vltava in order to aid the Czech resistance, but Eisenhower refused. The Red Army was ordered to advance the launch of its offensive to 6 May.


6 May

Late in the evening on 5 May, the radio broadcast an appeal to the people in the streets of Prague to build
barricade Barricade (from the French ''barrique'' - 'barrel') is any object or structure that creates a barrier or obstacle to control, block passage or force the flow of traffic in the desired direction. Adopted as a military term, a barricade denot ...
s in order to slow the anticipated German attack. Despite poor weather, tens of thousands of civilians worked overnight to construct over 1,600 barricades by morning. A total of 2,049 were constructed by the end of the uprising. SS General
Carl Friedrich von Pückler-Burghauss Carl Friedrich von Pückler-Burghauss (October 7, 1886 – 12 May 1945) was a German politician and a SS functionary during the Nazi era. He was a member of the German parliament during the Weimar Republic. During World War II, Pückler-Burgha ...
ordered the Luftwaffe to firebomb Prague, but the attack had to be scaled back due to lack of fuel. The first strike was made by two
Messerschmitt Me 262 The Messerschmitt Me 262, nicknamed ''Schwalbe'' (German: " Swallow") in fighter versions, or ''Sturmvogel'' (German: " Storm Bird") in fighter-bomber versions, is a fighter aircraft and fighter-bomber that was designed and produced by the Ge ...
A jet fighter-bombers from elements of KG 51 at Ruzyně. One of their targets was the radio building, which was hit by a 250-kg bomb that disabled the transmitter. However, the radio continued to broadcast from alternate locations. In successive attacks, the Luftwaffe bombed barricades and hit apartment buildings with incendiary bombs, causing many civilian casualties. At midday, the First Battalion of the ROA entered Prague and attacked the Germans; during its time in Prague, it disarmed around 10,000 German soldiers. An American reconnaissance patrol met with an ROA officer as well as Czech leaders. This was when the Czechs learnt of the demarcation line agreement and that the Third Army was not coming to liberate Prague. As a consequence, the Czech National Council, which had not been involved in negotiations with Bunyachenko, denounced the ROA. A Soviet liberation meant that they could not politically afford to endorse the ROA, whom Stalin considered traitors. Despite the rejection of the ROA, their aid to Prague became a point of friction between Moscow and Czechoslovakia after the war.


7 May

Under the terms of the provisional unconditional surrender, signed in the early hours of 7 May, German forces had a forty-eight-hour grace period to cease offensive operations. Eisenhower hoped that the capitulation would put an end to the fighting in Prague and therefore obviate American intervention. However, the German leadership was determined to use the grace period to move as many soldiers as possible westward to surrender to the Americans. Schörner denounced the rumours of a ceasefire in Prague and said that the truce did not apply to German forces fighting the Red Army or Czech insurgents. In order to gain control of Prague's transportation network, the Germans launched their strongest attack of the uprising. Waffen-SS armoured and artillery units arriving in Prague gradually punched through the barricades with several tank attacks. Intense fighting was accompanied with the SS use of Czech civilians as human shields and damage to the
Old Town Hall Old or OLD may refer to: Places *Old, Baranya, Hungary *Old, Northamptonshire, England *Old Street station, a railway and tube station in London (station code OLD) *OLD, IATA code for Old Town Municipal Airport and Seaplane Base, Old Town, Mai ...
and other historic buildings. When the Bartoš Command learnt of the Rheims surrender, it ordered an immediate ceasefire for Czech forces. This caused some confusion among the defenders, who were also suffering from desertion due to the worsening military situation. The ROA played a decisive role in slowing the progress of the Germans, but withdrew from Prague over the afternoon and evening in order to surrender to the US Army. Only a few ROA units stayed in the city, departing late on 8 May. With the bulk of the ROA gone, the poorly armed and untrained Czech insurgents fared badly against the reinforced German forces. By the end of the day, German forces had taken much of the rebel-held territory east of the Vltava, with the resistance only holding a salient in the Vinohrady-Strašnice area. ROA forces captured the Luftwaffe airfield at Ruzyně, destroying several aircraft.


8 May

In the morning, the Germans made an air and artillery bombardment followed by a renewed infantry attack. The fighting was almost as intense as the previous day. One particularly fierce battle took place at the Masaryk train station. At 10 am, SS troops captured the station and murdered around 50 surrendered resistance fighters and noncombatants ( cs). In one of the last battles of the uprising, Czech insurgents regained the train station at 2 am on 9 May and photographed the victims' bodies. Faced with military collapse, no arriving Allied help, and threats to destroy the city, the Czech National Council agreed to negotiate with Wehrmacht General Rudolf Toussaint. Toussaint, running out of time to evacuate Wehrmacht units westward, was in an equally desperate position. After several hours of negotiations, it was agreed that on the morning of 9 May, the Czechs would allow German soldiers to pass westward through Prague, and in exchange German forces leaving the city would surrender their arms. A ceasefire was finally agreed to around midnight. However, some pockets of German forces were unaware of or disobeyed the ceasefire, and civilians feared a continuation of the German atrocities which had intensified over the previous two days. Late in the evening, reports reached Prague of the liberation of
Theresienstadt concentration camp Theresienstadt Ghetto was established by the SS during World War II in the fortress town of Terezín, in the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia ( German-occupied Czechoslovakia). Theresienstadt served as a waystation to the extermination ca ...
, northwest of the city, and the advance of the Red Army into other areas north of Prague.


9 May

The last of the German forces to escape Prague left in the early hours of the morning. At 4:00, elements of the
1st Ukrainian Front The 1st Ukrainian Front (Russian: Пéрвый Украи́нский фронт), previously the Voronezh Front (Russian: Воронежский Фронт) was a major formation of the Soviet Army during World War II, being equivalent to a ...
reached the suburbs of Prague. Fighting was mostly with isolated SS units that had been prevented from withdrawing by Czech insurgents. Over the next few hours, the Red Army quickly overcame the remaining German forces. Because most of the Germans had already left, the 1st Ukrainian Front avoided the house-to-house fighting that had occurred in the capture of
Budapest Budapest (, ; ) is the capital and most populous city of Hungary. It is the ninth-largest city in the European Union by population within city limits and the second-largest city on the Danube river; the city has an estimated population o ...
and
Vienna en, Viennese , iso_code = AT-9 , registration_plate = W , postal_code_type = Postal code , postal_code = , timezone = CET , utc_offset = +1 , timezone_DST ...
. The Red Army lost only ten soldiers in what has been described as their "easiest victory" of the war. At 8:00 am, the tanks reached the centre city and the radio announced the arrival of the Soviet forces. Czechs poured out into the streets to welcome the Red Army.


War crimes


German

German forces committed war crimes against Czech civilians throughout the uprising. Many people were killed in
summary execution A summary execution is an execution in which a person is accused of a crime and immediately killed without the benefit of a full and fair trial. Executions as the result of summary justice (such as a drumhead court-martial) are sometimes includ ...
s, and the SS used Czech civilians as human shields, forced them to clear barricades at gunpoint, and threatened to shoot hostages in revenge for German soldiers killed in action. When tanks were halted by barricades, they were known to fire into surrounding houses. After violently evicting or murdering the inhabitants, German soldiers looted and burned Czech houses and apartment buildings. On several occasions, more than twenty people were killed at once; most of the massacres occurred on 7 and 8 May. Among those killed were pregnant women and young children, and some of the dead were found mutilated. After the uprising, a Czech police report described war crimes committed by the Nazis: In addition to the war crimes committed by the Wehrmacht and the SS, Luftwaffe soldiers, along with the SA, participated in the torture and murder of prisoners held at the Na Pražačce school.


Czech

The Czechoslovak government-in-exile planned to expel the German minority of Czechoslovakia in order to create an ethnically pure Czech-Slovak nation-state. Throughout the occupation, Czech politicians had broadcast messages from London calling for violence against German civilians and suspected Czech collaborators. President Edvard Beneš believed that vigilante justice would be less divisive than trials, and that encouraging Germans to flee would spare the effort of deporting them later. Before he arrived in Czechoslovakia, he broadcast that "everyone who deserves death should be totally liquidated... in the popular storm" and urged the resistance to avenge Nazi crimes "a thousand times over." Minister of Justice asked resistance leaders to make liberation "bloody" for the Germans and to drive them out with violence. Communist leaders also supported the violence. Military leaders not only overlooked anti-German massacres and failed to punish the perpetrators, but actively encouraged them. The Czech Radio likely played a role in inciting the violence by passing on the anti-German messages of these political leaders, as well as broadcasting anti-German messages on its own initiative. Almost no one was prosecuted for violence against Germans, and a bill was proposed in the postwar parliament that would have retroactively legalised it. In Prague, Czech insurgents murdered surrendered German soldiers and German civilians both before and after the arrival of the Red Army. Historian argues that there was no clear-cut distinction between the end of the uprising and the beginning of the expulsions. Some captured German soldiers were hung from lampposts and burned to death, or otherwise tortured and mutilated. Czech rioters also assaulted, raped, and robbed German civilians. Not all those killed or affected by anti-German violence were actually German or collaborators, as perpetrators frequently acted on suspicion, or exploited the chaos to settle personal grudges. In one massacre at Bořislavka on 10 May, forty German civilians were murdered. During and after the uprising, thousands of German civilians and surrendered soldiers were interned in makeshift camps where food and hygiene were poor. Survivors claimed that beatings and rape were commonplace. The violence against German civilians continued throughout the summer, culminating in the expulsion of Sudeten Germans. About three million Czechoslovak citizens of German ethnicity were stripped of their citizenship and property and forcibly deported.


Legacy

As "the greatest military action of the Czechs for freedom and national independence fought on their own territory," in the words of journalist , the Prague uprising became a national myth of the new Czechoslovak republic and the subject of much literature. The Western Allies' failure to liberate Prague was seen as emblematic of their lack of concern for Czechoslovakia, first demonstrated by the Munich Agreement. It also served as a blow to democratic forces within the country who opposed Czechoslovakia's drift towards communism in the years after the war. It was not forgotten that Stalin had opposed the Munich Agreement and Prague's liberation by the Red Army turned public opinion in favour of communism. Few Czechs were aware of the demarcation line agreement between the Western Allied and Soviet forces, allowing communists to accuse the American forces of "having remained a cowardly or cynical onlooker while Prague was struggling for life," in the words of Hungarian historian Stephen Kertesz. According to British diplomat Sir Orme Sargent, the Prague uprising was the moment that "Czechoslovakia was now definitely lost to the West." In 1948, the democratic government of Czechoslovakia was toppled by a Communist coup d'état. Following the coup, Czechoslovakia became a communist state aligned with the Soviet Union until the
Velvet Revolution The Velvet Revolution ( cs, Sametová revoluce) or Gentle Revolution ( sk, Nežná revolúcia) was a non-violent transition of power in what was then Czechoslovakia, occurring from 17 November to 28 November 1989. Popular demonstrations agains ...
in 1989. The Communist government attempted to discredit the Czech resistance, which was considered a threat to Communist legitimacy, by purging or arresting former resistance leaders, and distorting history, for instance overstating the role of the working class in the uprising and inflating the number of Red Army soldiers killed in Prague.


References


Notes


Citations


Bibliography

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *Roučka, Zdeněk. ''Skončeno a podepsáno: Drama Pražského povstání (Accomplished And Signed: Pictures of the Prague Uprising)'', 163 pages, Plzeň: ZR&T, 2003 (). * * * * * *


External links


Czechs commemorate Prague revolt
BBC News BBC News is an operational business division of the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) responsible for the gathering and broadcasting of news and current affairs in the UK and around the world. The department is the world's largest broadc ...
, 5 May 2005
Prague's war: Legacy of questions - Historians still debate myths and mysteries of the liberation
'' The Prague Post'', 5 May 2005
Summary of the Prague uprising


- a gallery located at the official website of The Prague City Archives
Execution of German civilians in Prague (9 May 1945)
(Czech TV documentary) (
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, 2:32 min)
War crimes committed by Germans in Prague, including graphic images
{{Authority control 1945 in Czechoslovakia 20th century in Prague Battles and operations of World War II involving Germany Conflicts in 1945 Czech resistance operations Czechoslovakia in World War II History of Prague May 1945 events Uprisings during World War II Urban warfare Rebellions in Czechia