Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
under General Patton, had crossed the border in the west, meeting very little German resist-
ance.
On the morning of May 5, the Prague radio station, behind the National Museum, began
broadcasting in Czech only. The
Prague Uprising
had officially begun. Luckily for the
Czechs, Vlasov's anti-Bolshevik Russian National Liberation Army was in the vicinity and
waspersuadedtoturnontheGermans,successfullyresistingthetwocrackGermanarmoured
divisions,nottomentiontheextremelyfanaticalSStroops,inandaroundthecapital.Barriers
were erected across the city, and an American OSS jeep patrol arrived from Plzeň, which the
ThirdArmywereonthepointoftaking.ThePraguers(andVlasov'smen)werepinningtheir
hopesontheAmericans. Intheend,however,theUSmilitary leadership madethepolitically
disastrous decision not to cross the demarcation line that had been agreed between the Allies
at Yalta. On May 7, Vlasov's men fled towards the American lines, leaving the Praguers to
hold out against the Germans. The following day, a ceasefire was agreed and the Germans
retreated, for the most part, and headed, like Vlasov, in the direction of the Americans. The
Russians entered the city on May 9, and overcame the last pockets of Nazi resistance.
The Third Republic
ViolentreprisalsagainstsuspectedcollaboratorsandtheGerman-speakingpopulationingen-
eral began as soon as the country was liberated. All Germans were immediately given the
samefoodrationsastheJewshadbeengivenduringthewar.Starvation,summaryexecutions
andworseresultedinthedeathsofcountlessthousandsofethnicGermans.Withconsiderable
popular backing and the tacit approval of the Red Army, Beneš began to organize the forced
expulsion of the German-speaking population
, referred to euphemistically by the Czechs
as the
odsun
(transfer). Only those German-speakers who could prove their anti-Fascist cre-
dentialswerepermittedtostay-theCzechcommunitywasnotcalledontoprovethesame-
and by the summer of 1947, nearly 2.5 million Germans had been expelled from the country
or had fled in fear. On this occasion, Sudeten German objections were brushed aside by the
Allies, who had given Beneš the go-ahead for the
odsun
at the postwar Potsdam Conference.
Attempts by Beneš to expel the Hungarian-speaking minority from Slovakia in similar fash-
ion, however, proved unsuccessful.
The Communists seize power
On October 28, 1945, in accordance with the leftist programme thrashed out at Košice, sixty
percent of the country's industry was nationalized. Confiscated Sudeten German property
was handed out by the largely Communist-controlled police force, and in a spirit of optim-
ism and/or opportunism, people began to join the Communist Party (KSČ) in droves; mem-
bership more than doubled in less than a year. In the
May 1946 elections
, the Party reaped
the rewards of its enthusiastic support for the
odsun
, of Stalin's vocal opposition to Munich
and of the recent Soviet liberation, emerging as the strongest single party in the Czech Lands
