Today, when a monument to the liberator of this city, Soviet Marshal Ivan Konev, has been demolished in Prague, its streets and squares are being renamed demonstratively, in opposition to Moscow, and many Czech politicians are practicing Russophobia, it's time to ask the question: what are we dealing with in this case? Was it only with the ungrateful, who forgot how the Red Army, not sparing the lives of its soldiers, saved the country from the Nazi yoke in 1945, or with the descendants of those for whom the Soviet Union was not an ally at all, but just the Third Reich?
The question of the participation of Czechs in the Second World War and the Great Patriotic War is not as simple as it might seem at first glance. Yes, among about 70 thousand Czechs and Slovaks who were prisoners of war in our country in 1945, the overwhelming majority were still representatives of the second of these nationalities, represented in the Wehrmacht and the SS in much larger numbers. Yes, in the Red Army there was the 1st separate Czechoslovak battalion (in which, however, at the time of the formation of the Czechs and Slovaks there were less than half), which later grew into an infantry brigade, and then into the 1st Czechoslovak corps … There was Ludwig Svoboda and others heroes. However, to do on the basis of all the Czechs "victims of Nazism" and loyal allies of the USSR in the anti-Hitler coalition, really, it is not worth it.
To begin with, if it were not for the most elementary cowardice of Czech politicians and generals, the Nazi attack on our country might not have happened! In any case, in 1941 and with the forces that they had. Having excellent fortified areas in the Sudetenland, according to experts, they were practically not inferior to the famous Maginot line (thousands of forts, tens of thousands of pillboxes capable of withstanding a direct hit from a large-caliber projectile), huge stocks of weapons (in the 30s of the twentieth century on Czechoslovakia, according to some estimates accounted for up to 40% of its world production) and an impressive army, the Czechs chose to simply lift their paws in front of Hitler. Their only battle against the Wehrmacht, mention of which can be found in sources, did not last even half an hour, ending without a single one killed on both sides. Do you know what one of the German officers wrote? "To have such opponents is simply disgusting …"
Didn't Czechs serve the Nazis? Nothing like this. The natives of this country were highly valued in the tank units of the Wehrmacht, where they were almost the best mechanics and repairmen. However, not only. The then head of the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia, Emil Hacha, who was the former president of Czechoslovakia before the Nazi occupation and, in fact, “surrendered” it to the Germans, initiated the creation of the Czech Legion in the Hitlerite armed forces. He came out exactly in June 1941, immediately after the attack on our country. The Teutons refused such an offer - they needed locals for another need, which will be discussed below. Nevertheless, the Czechs, who were particularly eager to fight the "Soviets", found their way to the Eastern Front.
About a thousand former members of the Czech Army formed the backbone of the 37th SS-Freiwilligen-Kavallerie-Division "Lützow". At least a hundred more joined the Czech SS-Freiwillige St. Wenzels-Rotte Volunteer Company. The Czechs also labored as part of the SS Brisken police regiment, which was part of the 31st SS Volunteer Grenadier Division Bohemia and Moravia (31. SS-Freiwilligen-Grenadier-Division). There were Czech SS men, and how were they …
With the Wehrmacht, the situation is somewhat more confusing: for obvious reasons, after 1945, service in it was hidden in socialist Czechoslovakia as soon as possible. However, according to estimates of modern historians, the number of Nazi soldiers with Czechoslovak origins should be counted in tens of thousands. In the Hluchinsky region of the Czech Republic alone, there were at least 12 thousand "veterans" who faithfully served the Nazis and fought on the Eastern Front, in particular, near Stalingrad.
However, the Czechs made the main contribution to the enemy invasion that fell on our homeland in 1941 not so much by holding weapons in their own hands, as by regularly putting them into the hands of the invaders who came to our land. This topic is quite worthy of separate coverage, so I will be brief.
The arsenals of Czechoslovakia, captured by the Nazis in 1938, gave the Wehrmacht the most serious part of the weapons with which it attacked the USSR. Thousands of artillery pieces, tens of thousands of machine guns, both light and heavy, which were very popular in the German army, millions of small arms … Nine infantry divisions of the Wehrmacht were fully armed by Czechoslovakia by 1941! All this fired at our soldiers from the first day of the Great Patriotic War.
Tanks are a separate topic. At the time of the attack on the USSR, each of those in the German armed forces was of Czech production. By the second stage of the war - almost every third. According to available recollections, the Czechs regularly riveted weapons for the invaders until May 5, 1945. And not only tanks and armored vehicles - cars and planes, ammunition, machine guns and rifles. According to the confessions of the Germans themselves, for all the time from the diligent Czechoslovak hard workers "not a single act of sabotage" has followed against the invaders "! There were, of course, their own heroes in Czechoslovakia, participants in the resistance. But on the whole, the vector is slightly different.
Alas, we have to admit: Czechoslovakia, for the liberation of which almost 140 thousand of our soldiers laid down their heads during the war, was in fact its loyal ally. Agree, after understanding this fact, today's egregious events in Prague look somewhat different.
