Assassination: Operation Anthropoid: 1941–1942 by Michal Burian, Aleš Knížek, Jiří Rajlich, and Eduard Stehlík (ISBN: 80-7278-158-8) tells the story of one of the better-known assassinations in World War II, that of Reinhard Heydrich, the commander of the Reich Security Main Office (RSHA), acting governor of the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia, and a principal architect of the Holocaust. The operation was conceived by Czechoslovaks in exile in the UK, but carried out by paratroop commandos in occupied Czechoslovakia in concert with local members of the resistance. Like many of the operations in occupied Czechoslovakia, most of the people involved ended up dead. Radio operators, paratroopers and soldiers, resistance members who helped the paratroopers hide, farmers who lent a place to stay or a warm meal, all of them met the same fate once the Nazis discovered that they were in any way associated with the efforts against Germany. Thankfully for the Czechoslovaks, there were enough people that were willing to risk it all, and two of the paratroopers who had undergone intensive and extensive training in the UK, Jozef Gabčík and Jan Kubiš, were able to execute their plan against Heydrich. The plan was to shoot him, but that didn’t initially work, so a bomb was tossed toward his car. The explosion, which happened just outside the back of the car, didn’t kill Heydrich initially, and the attackers had to run away, chased for a short distance by their target. A week later, Heydrich succumbed to his wounds, and in the coming weeks, Nazi reprisals wiped out complete Czechoslovak towns and eventually also wiped out Gabčík and Kubiš.The book was an interesting look into one of the more important resistance moments in Czechoslovakia during World War II. I was a little surprised by the book because I thought it would be a regular book with a lot of text, but it was actually a coffee table book (I read a PDF version of the book available on the Czech Ministry of Defense’s web site) that essentially re-created what seemed to be a museum exhibition about the assassination. The book was full of pictures of artifacts and didn’t have all that much text. Still, it was easy to follow what was going on and there was lots of information. Even though Heydrich was a very important Nazi, I didn’t know a whole lot about this event, and thought this book was informative and explained the run-up and planning, the operation itself, and the sad aftermath well.
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The Czech Black Book, edited by Robert Littell, is a collection of original source documents from the first week of the invasion. There are press releases, official announcements, and news stories that were curated in response to Russian propaganda that claimed Russia and other Warsaw Pact countries came to Czechoslovakia to help and at the request of the Czechoslovaks (the Russians called their collection the White Book, hence the Czech one being black). The documents from the Czechs show a much different picture. The news reports feature interviews of high-level Czechoslovaks as well as from men on the street, and the feeling is that they simply wanted to be left alone and chart their own course through history unhindered by the Russians, whom they had previously considered friends. There was often a feeling expressed that the invasion had done unrepairable damage to that relationship. The government press releases and communiqués showed a government united around the reformers in the Czechoslovak Communist Party and a total disdain for the few leaders who preferred the Russian socialist path. The Czechoslovak leaders weren’t ready to throw communism or socialism away (it reminded me of Gorbachev a little), but they certainly wanted to be able to choose their own way, and the Russians weren’t ready for their satellites to have that level of independence. Trade unions, clubs, and other organizations also called on the citizens of Czechoslovakia to resist the invaders, although not violently, but by the interesting peaceful means of ignoring them. They were to refuse to help the Russians whenever possible, to continue their everyday lives as if nothing was happening around them since strikes and other resistance would simply give the Russians the excuse they needed to escalate the action. Even when a few Czechoslovak citizens lost their lives, were arrested, or otherwise assaulted, the general population kept its cool, and the Czechoslovak leaders attributed the end of the invasion, in large part, to this reaction (or non-reaction, as the case may be) by the people. In the end, negotiations were carried out, and the invaders left, although not under the conditions that the Czechoslovaks would’ve desired.
Русская Прага (Russian Prague, my translation) by Natalya Ivanovna Komandorova (ISBN: 978-5-9533-3746-5) presents an overview of some of the common history between Russia and the Czech Republic. It starts in tsarist times and ends with a small section about post-Communist interaction between the two countries. The medieval links between the two countries were focused largely on trade with a little religion thrown in, typical for a time when church and state were intimately intertwined. The many interfamilial marriages and constantly changing alliances during the 1700s and 1800s resulted in some interaction between the two nations, and academic and intellectual interests were added to the subjects of correspondence. These reasons for a Russian presence in what was then Czechoslovakia exploded in the early 1900s as Russia experienced what is nowadays referred to as brain drain when the Bolsheviks came to power. Czechoslovakia, and Prague in particular, proved to be a welcoming place for Russian academics, politicians, and intellectuals who wanted to escape persecution and restrictions on their freedoms in Soviet Russia. There were links between the two countries in the post-World War II era, too, but they tended to be less positive. The Soviets worked to keep tabs on and even control the Russian diaspora. Russian-Czechoslovak relations took a hit they would never really recover from when the Soviets invaded in 1968. Modern relations between the two countries have returned to the medieval focus on trade with a significant level of distrust toward the Russians on the part of many Czechs.
Iron Curtain: The Crushing of Eastern Europe, 1944–1956 by Anne Applebaum (ISBN: 978-1-4000-9593-3) discusses just how Communist regimes came to power in Europe following World War II. The book chronicles how the Communists came to power in Eastern Europe, focusing on Hungary, Poland, and East Germany, with a fair number of examples from Czechoslovakia and occasionally Romania. The Communists rose to power quickly in post-war Europe through a comprehensive strategy that thoroughly encompassed the lives of the people. This included the police, youth organizations, the media, political organizations, the arts, and the economies of the countries where the Soviet Union was victorious over Germany. In many cases, a combination of factors worked together to make the Communist takeover work. First, it was the Soviet Union that was in control in these areas. Even in places where there was arguable Allied control, it was the Soviets doing the day-to-day administration, so they worked to install people and organizations that were compatible with their ideas of how things should work. Second, there had already been strong support for Communist, socialist, and other Left-leaning ideologies before and during the war. This only continued after the war. Third, the activists were the ones most involved. They were also the ones who were willing to use violence to reach their goals. While most regular people were concerned about getting a job, rebuilding their homes and businesses, and helping their friends and families, activists were getting involved in politics, unions, youth and religious organizations, and the media. This helped them make sure that things were done they way they wanted. In the rare cases when there was some push-back, the activists, often with help from the police or the newly formed secret police organizations, violently quashed any dissent. Applebaum does discuss resistance a little, but this is a short section, which seems to accurately represent the proportions of active and passive support or acquiescence to the regime and resistance.
KGB: The Secret Work of Soviet Secret Agents by John Barron tells some of the stories of the main Soviet agency of oppression and secrecy, the KGB. It provides an overview of all the Soviet intelligence agencies, but focuses on the KGB, which the author assessed to be the brains behind all of them. After the more academic portion of the book, it recounts a few fantastic stories. Most of the stories, a few which I had read elsewhere previously, had to do with the stuff of movies. The book contains the stories of Americans who betrayed their country and of Russians who betrayed theirs. They are fascinating accounts full of sneaking around big cities, breaking into vaults, offers of money, international intrigue, “seductresses” (as promised by the paperback version’s typically sensationalist cover art), and, of course, spies. It was interesting to read of a disgruntled U.S. Army soldier, his former prostitute wife, and his giving the Russians access to something they likely figured was impossible to access. I was also really intrigued by the stories of Russians and other eastern Europeans who risked it all to do what they figured was their part in the battle against authoritarianism and for liberty. One interesting story was that of a Czech who was sent to Canada by the Russians, but who ultimately decided that all he had been taught in years of intense training was not true now that he’d been in the West and seen how things really worked.
In On All Fronts: Czechoslovaks in World War II, Part 3 (ISBN: 0-88033-456-8), edited by Lewis M. White, there are many stories of people with Czechoslovak heritage fighting and resisting the Nazi occupation of their beloved land, fighting with the Allies to overthrow the Germans, and then fighting an unexpected enemy, their major liberator, when the USSR decided to prop up a Communist dictatorship in the post-war years. The book consists of short contributions from a wide variety of Czechoslovaks involved in the war in one way or another. The vast majority are contributions from men who served as officers in Czechoslovak regiments of Allied militaries. Many served in the French Foreign Legion, others in the Royal Air Force, and a disproportionately large number served in the Red Army. Other stories were from members of the underground resistance or partisans. All had a very common theme: the liberation of what was a free and democratic country from the grips of a totalitarian Nazi government. Stories of tense minutes hiding under the floorboards of a stranger's house, fighting off German tanks on swampy riverbanks, forced treks through the snowbound and freezing Tatras, and high-flying adventure in the skies over enemy territory make for interesting reading, especially since it is about a group that doesn't get much billing in the usual run-down of the history of World War II. While the book largely focuses on military successes, there is room for a few stories of defeat as well as some realism that describes the banalities and redundancies that afflict all military bureaucracies the world over in all eras. The end of the book sees a little change in focus as the stories do not have so much to do with the vanquished Germans, but with the intruding Red Army that presented a much different face than the French, the British, and the Americans.