Happy New Year, 2017 (and good riddance, 2016)!

Wishing all my friends a very happy new year!

A greeting from the vaults.

This is a sentimental old favorite from my collection: nothing special in itself, just an old greeting card from Czechoslovakia that I inherited from my father. The winter scene depicts Prague Castle and St. Vitus' Cathedral viewed from the hill of Strahov Monastery, circa 1930.

šťastný Nový rok!

  Boldog Új Évet!

Prosit Neujahr!

Happy New Year!

From the past: one of my 2014 New Year's entries featured a greeting card from an Austro-Hungarian railroad unit during World War I.

* * *

And: Good riddance, 2016!

For a variety of reasons, a lot of us have been saying that, even though we face 2017 with certain anxieties, we won't be sad to see 2016 use the exit.

Several publications, noting the national mood, decided to consider some other years, for comparison, and perhaps consolation:

 • Smithsonian helpfully offered "Why 2016 Is Only the Most Recent Worst Year Ever:
This year has been miserable for many, but it has plenty of competition from its predecessors in the 20th century."

• Not to be outdone, Charles Nevin in the New York Times made a foray as far back as 75,000 years about but drew most of his examples from the last two millennia (give or take): "2016: Worst. Year. Ever?"

Still, I won't miss 2016.

Not nearly as bad as 1916 or 1816 or many another year I could think of: You think you had it rough? what about 1941? 1348? But it's the lousy year we've had to deal with, so: good riddance. You can't be gone too soon for me.

Civic Forum: The Velvet Revolution of November 1989 and Beyond

Because I'm teaching my course on modern East Central Europe again this fall, it seems an appropriate time to remember the so-called "Velvet Revolution" (a sappy term I never liked) in the course of which dissidents peacefully forced the hard-line Czechoslovak communist regime from power in 1989.

The driving force behind the revolution were the dissidents such as Václav Havel, associated with the Charter 77 human rights movement. As the spirit of protest spread throughout the bloc in the fall of 1989, they organized themselves as  the "Civic Forum" (Občanské fórum, OF).

I acquired this small--I guess you would call it a (?)--mini-placard some years ago in a Prague antiquariat. It displays the name of the organization against the background of the Czechoslovak flag. It is the size of a small bumper sticker (193 x 63 mm.) but is printed on stiff (now yellowed) pasteboard and thus lacks adhesive, which makes me wonder what its intended use was: for display in apartment or store windows? (After all, Havel's famous essay on "the power of the powerless" anchors its notion of "living in truth" in the story of those who agree vs. decline to accede to the regime's supposedly meaningless and harmless demand that they place its propaganda signs in their windows.) For display in an automobile? And when? The dampstaining at the bottom suggests that it was actually placed in a window where it would have been subject to condensation arising from a heated interior in cold weather.

It is at once an inspiring and a sad memento. Although Czechoslovakia had been an island of liberal democracy among the post-World War I successor states that drifted toward authoritarianism, it became one of the most hardline communist states after 1948, and indeed, its leaders (in contrast to those of Hungary and Poland) refused even to nod to the de-Staliniziation "thaw" in the wake of Krushchev's denunciation of Stalin's crimes in 1956. Following the short-lived and optimistic episode of the "Prague Spring," crushed by Warsaw Pact tanks in August 1968, the regime pursued a quietly brutal policy of "normalization."
Despite this long history of resistance to reform, the communist regime collapsed in only ten days in 1989 in the face of determined citizens jingling their keys and refusing any longer to be afraid. Former dissident Václav Havel became president at the end of December 1989.

By 1991, however, the movement split into conservative-capitalist and liberal factions. The latter triumphed in the elections of 1992, and the latter passed from the scene.  A cautionary tale about politics in more ways than one.

18 June 1942: Heydrich Assassins Killed in Prague Church

Following the assassination of the "Reichsprotektor" of Bohemia and Moravia, Reinhard Heydrich, the members of the Czechoslovak paratroop teams went to ground as the Nazis frantically searched for the killers. By mid-June, the Germans were getting desperate: neither the manhunt nor the vicious reprisals, such as the destruction of the village of Lidice, had succeeded in bringing forth the necessary information.

Realizing that the terror might be having the opposite of the intended effect, the more shrewd among the authorities made a final offer, guaranteeing immunity for anyone who came forward by a final deadline of 18 June. A flood of statements came in, including one that identified the assassins by name. The anonymous author was one of the paratroopers, Karel Čurda. Still the Nazis could not find the killers. On 16 June, Čurda went in person to Gestapo headquarters and turned himself in. Although he did not know the hiding place of the assassins, he did reveal the existence of safe houses that had aided the paratroopers. Under torture, the confessions of one of the adolescent residents mentioned the Orthodox cathedral of Saints Cyril and Methodius in downtown Prague. Early on the morning of the 18th, the Nazis surrounded the church. In the course of a lengthy battle, all seven paratroopers there fell in combat or committed suicide. (details in an archived post here)

Since the fall of communism, the cathedral has officially and publicly commemorated the terrible events. In 2002, the Memorial to the Victims of the Heydrich Terror became "A National Memorial to the Heroes of the Heydrich Terror--a Place of Reconciliation." Each year, on the anniversary of the battle, a national commemoration takes place  on the street in front of a memorial plaque on the bullet-pocked wall.

To the accompaniment of martial music and the Czech and Slovak national anthems, soldiers lay wreaths dedicated by a succession of persons, from major political figures and dignitaries to veterans and their families or ordinary citizens.

Here, Czech soldiers practice wreath-laying gestures before the ceremony, 2011.

Here, an honor guard of Czech soldiers lines up in preparation for the ceremony, 2011.

By the end of the ceremony, the sidewalk is covered with flowers and inscribed ribbons.

The event concludes with a brief mass in the church, after which the exhibit hall and the memorial in the crypt, are opened to the public, free of charge. Despite the awkward location, in a narrow and busy urban space, it is one of the simplest but most moving memorial ceremonies that it has been my privilege to attend.


[updated video, stills]

Lidice Shall Live: Anniversary Postal Covers Commemorating the 1942 Massacre.

One of the most notorious of the many Nazi crimes of World War II was the liquidation of the (innocent) village of Lidice, on 9-10 1942, in retaliation for the assassination of the "Reichsprotektor" of Bohemia and Moravia, Reinhard Heydrich, by Czechoslovak paratroopers.

(Main post and background)

After the war, the Czechoslovak government decided to rebuild the village, which has also become a memorial and a center for peace and reconciliation. The massacre has been commemorated in the philatelic and numismatic realm. In particular, for example, the government issued special stamps on the major anniversaries of the tragedy. Here are commemorative covers from the fifth and fifteenth anniversaries.


Fifth anniversary, 1942-1947

The cachet at left combines local and national motifs: the miner's lamp, representing the occupation of many of the residents, illuminates both the village at left and the Czech patriotic symbol of the linden leaf, at right with the message, "Lidice Shall Live." The stamp is one of three, in different denominations, issued for the occasion. The first two, identical in design except for the denomination, represent a weeping mother. This one, the highest denomination, signifies hope and rebuilding. The special cancellation echoes one of the iconic memorials, with its wreath of barbed wire (like a crown of thorns) on a cross symbolizing both death and resurrection--but here with the addition of the national linden leaves.


Fifteenth anniversary, 1957

Since 1955, when British group, "Lidice Shall Live," realized the dream of creating a Garden of Peace and Friendship, the rose has been a special symbol for Lidice.



Older posts on the Heydrich assassination and reprisals, and Lidice.

The Bomber that Delivered the Heydrich Assassins

I've been posting a lot lately about the anniversary of the assassination of Nazi Security Office head and Reichsprotektor of Bohemia and Moravia Reinhard Heydrich by Czechoslovak paratroopers. But I haven't mentioned how they got from England to their homeland. They were dropped by a Handley Page Halifax (1 , 2) of the Special Operations Executive (SOE)--the British clandestine warfare group equivalent to the American OSS--piloted by Flight Lieutenant Ron Hockey.


The same issue of the Illustrated London News that reported briefly on the assassination contained a three-page feature on the manufacturing of the Halifax, one of the RAF's two heavy bombers at the time, which entered service in late 1940. It explains with pride, "This notable aircraft carries a heavier bomb-load over a greater distance than any other aeroplane in the world on active service to-day."

The emphasis, though, is on the innovative design and production technique. That the machine was constructed of 24 major components simplified manufacture ("more people on each stage of the job") as well as "transport and repair ." The latter point was a crucial one.

in the field, as well. Hockey called the Halifax "a sturdy aircraft with enough redundant structure to keep it flying if damaged in action . . . also good for servicing repair, with the structure subdivided for component replacement." He contrasted this with the American Liberator (the most widely produced bomber of the war), which it resembled, but which was made in a single unit and therefore had to be disassembled rivet by rivet.

The robustness of the Halifax proved crucial to the SOE missions carried out by Special Duties Squadron 138. At first, the RAF was understandably focused on its strategic role of heavy bombing and thus reluctant to give the unit top-of-the-line aircraft. Initial runs over Poland and Czechoslovakia involved two-engine Whitleys, with limited range and payload; airmen denounced them as "flying coffins." Hockey called Czechoslovakia "Undoubtedly the most difficult country in which we operated . . . a long flight, all over enemy territory, much high ground . . . flights only in the winter to benefit from the long nights, so terrain was often snowbound, and no reception facilities." In October 1941, the RAF finally gave Special Duties Squadrom 138 three Mark I and II Halifaxes, though they had to be modified for paratroop use through the addition of a hatch in the floor. They first saw use at the end of December when Hockey's plane, the NF-V  L9613, delivered three Czechoslovak jump teams to Bohemia. The flight was plagued by problems, and because heavy snow made it impossible to spot the intended landmarks, the two assassins were simply dropped east of Plzeň, after which they were on their own.

senior officers and staff at RAF Tempsford, Bedfordshire.
front right: Wing Commander R C Hockey, Officer Commanding No. 138
(Special Duties) Squadron RAF [Imperial War Museum Photo © IWM (HU 54484) ]

Ron C. Hockey was the only member of the aircraft's crew to survive the war. He was one of a number of distinguished RAF veterans to sign this commemorative large-format bookplate for copies of Keith A. Merrick's 1990 book on the Halifax at the Royal Air Force Museum.

June 1942: Rommel and Heydrich in the News

On June 6,1942, the Illustrated London News ran a little feature on "British and German Personalities in the Public Eye To-Day."

The two "German personalities" were General Erwin Rommel and Reinhard Heydrich, Reichsprotektor of Bohemia and Moravia, and the emerging stories would become among the most important of the war.

Rommel was "again in the news" because he had "launched his long-awaited offensive against the Allies in Libya." Already a week earlier, the New York Times headline announced, "Nazi Tanks Push Toward Tobruk." Rommel's forces captured the crucial port on 20 June, taking over 33,000 Allied prisoners. The victory earned him promotion to Field Marshal.

The Heydrich story was more dramatic news: an assassination attempt, which, the magazine observed with satisfaction, meant that he had "reaped his just deserts." Like most  reports on the attack, this one was based on speculation or fragmentary and often inaccurate information. The magazine explains that Heydrich was wounded on 27 May but describes the incident as a shooting by a Czech patriot, implying a local resistance fighter. In fact, he was the victim of a bomb attack by Czechoslovak paratroopers. Because so little was known, the report hedges its bets by adding, "some say by Nazis." Although the assertion had no basis in fact, it was not quite as far-fetched as it sounds. The ruthless Heydrich had many enemies, and given the failure of the authorities to make any progress in tracking down the assailants, some Germans began to murmur that they must have come from within the Nazi hierarchy.

The report correctly notes Heydrich's role as Himmler's protégé and his reputation for brutality. Indeed, in February, his portrait was featured on the cover of Time magazine, surrounded by hangman's nooses.

However, the report incorrectly ascribes to him the creation of Dachau concentration camp. In fact, Heydrich's role in the Nazi terror apparatus was far greater. As head of the Reich Main Security Organization, not only was he responsible for the operations of the Security Service and Security Police: he also played a crucial role in the emerging Holocaust, a story that was not yet known and as yet had no name. In January, Heydrich had secretly convened a conference of top German officials, which decreed the extermination of the European Jews.

By the time the report appeared, Heydrich was in fact already dead, having succumbed to his wounds on 4 June. The vicious reprisals that followed would be a bigger news story than the assassination itself.




Further pieces on the Heydrich assassination

29 May 1942: The New York Times reports on reprisals for the Heydrich Assassination

Two days after the assassination of the acting Nazi "Reichsprotektor" of Bohemia and Moravia, Reinhard Heydrich, the New York Times reported that reprisals were taking place, and added more details to what was known of the incident.


The emphasis was on the initial executions but information about both the crime and the reprisals was still sketchy.

6 IN CZECH FAMILY EXECUTED BY NAZIS

Seventh Person Put to death in Attack on Heydrich, Who Is Reported Dying

By DANIEL T. BRIGHAM
By Telephone to THE NEW YORK TIMES.

   BERNE, Switzerland, Friday, May 29— Vengeance executions for the attempt on the life of Reinhard Heydrich began in Bohemia early yesterday morning with the execution of six members of one family, including two women and another person declared implicated for failing to denounce to the authorities the two men who late Wednesday afternoon attacked the car in which the deputy Gestapo chief was traveling.

(The report then discusses the attack itself, returning to that topic later in the article.)

More Killings Threatened
   The German "vigilance committee," headed by Heinrich Himmler, Gestapo Chief, rapidly completed arrangements for what appears to be the beginning of one of the worst bloodbaths in Czech history. A decree ''issued by local authorities'' in the Province of Prague ordered all civilians over the age of 15 to report to the police before midnight tonight and obtain a certificate of registration. Past that hour, any one failing to possess such a card or found harboring a person without such a card will be shot, "with his entire family."

   Throughout the protectorate groups of military patrols accompanying police and Gestapo men are stated to be arresting people by the hundreds as house-to-house searches are being made in a wide area around which a cordon has been thrown.

(The report goes on to provide details on the curfew and martial law decree.)

The coverage here is reasonably accurate, under the circumstances. In his anger at the assassination, Hitler had initially ordered the arrest of 10,000 Czechs and execution of political prisoners already in custody, but shrewder heads prevailed, arguing for the continuation of Heydrich's policy of targeted terror combined with coopting of the general population. Still the reaction was harsh: Fearing that the assassination was the beginning general insurrection, the authorities took no chances.

21,000 German and Czech police, Waffen SS, and German soldiers carried out the manhunt. Callum MacDonald describes the Germans as "vengeful and trigger-happy," citing an escaped British POW's description . Even German detectives described "random shooting at open or lighted windows," saying the troops (a direct quote) "are completely mad." MacDonald speaks of a wave of executions, including "those convicted of marital law offences or who had merely expressed approval of the act," but dates the first family execution from only May 31.

Regarding the attack itself, the report includes an initial background summary and an update:

From indications received here this morning it now develops that the attack occurred about eighteen miles east of Pilsen on the Prague-Munich road at a town called Rotkitzen, which was the place of residence of all of the seven executed.

Meanwhile, from a German radio broadcast to the German people it was learned this morning that Herr Heydrich had been so badly injured that it was deemed necessary to issue a bulletin on his condition, which was stated to be "stationary." Another bulletin announced that he was under the care of Adolf Hitler's personal physician. Herr Heydrich was believed to be hovering between life and death. A report on a Balkan radio early this morning stated that his condition had taken a turn for the worse.

[Three bullets that had injured Herr Heydrich's spine and spinal cord were removed by a specialist, The Associated Press reported today, quoting Exchange Telegraph, British news agency.]

This
section is more problematic. The only really accurate statement is that Heydrich's life hung in the balance. The asserted location is completely wrong, for the attack took place as Heydrich's car, traveling from his outlying estate, was entering the northern Prague district of Libeň. Heydrich was not hit by bullets, for the first assassin's Sten gun had jammed, and none were fired. The injuries came from a grenade and injured a rib and internal organs, but not the spine. The physician sent from the Reich was Himmler's not Hitler's.

The update is generally more accurate.

Preliminary reports from usually well-informed German quarters as to exactly how the attack on Herr Heydrich was made indicates that at least two men were involved. One is stated to have thrown a bomb at Herr Heydrich's moving automobile, which swerved to avoid being hit. A second man is then reported to have stepped out from concealment with a submachine gun or automatic pistol and to have fired several shots into the automobile as it rolled into the ditch.

The assassins are then reported to have escaped by bicycle. Another bicycle, a briefcase and a raincoat were found near the scene. These articles are now being shown to persons suspected of knowing who the criminals might be. An official announcement warns that anyone recognizing the articles and not giving information will be shot. News of the attempt to assassinate Herr Heydrich was published in Germany in a brief communique only, and the press so far has not ventured any comment of an authoritative sort.

Two paratroopers did indeed carry out the attack, but in the reverse of the order described here. Jozef Gabčík made the first, failed attempt with the Sten gun, and when Heydrich ordered the car to stop, Jan Kubiš threw the bomb (a modified anti-tank grenade). Because the attack took place in the city, the car did not roll into a ditch, and instead, came to a stop in the gutter near the curb.  By contrast, the description of the paratroopers' belongings and the threats of reprisal are reasonably accurate. The two men arrived on bicycles, but only Kubiš managed to escape on his, whereas Gabčík had to flee on foot. accurate. Although the weather was temperate, Gabčík had brought along a raincoat to hide his motions as he assembled the Sten gun carried in his briefcase. The Germans, noticing the British origin among the items found at the scene, quickly deduced that the attackers were paratroopers. They placed the objects on display in a downtown store window and distributed photographs throughout the Protectorate in an attempt to solicit or coerce information from the public.



Further pieces on this topic.

May 27, 1942: Czechoslovak Paratroopers Assassinate Reinhard Heydrich in Prague

On May 27, 1942, Czechoslovak paratroopers Jan Kubiš and Jozef Gabčík, trained by the British Special Operations Executive (SOE), assassinated Reinhard Heydrich, Nazi "Reichsprotektor" of Bohemia and Moravia, on his way into Prague. Heydrich died of his wounds on June 4. The paratroopers were betrayed and killed two weeks later.

The vicious reprisals took some 5000 lives, most notoriously, the murder of the villagers of Lidice and razing of the entire town, which aroused international outage.

Czechoslovak postage stamp (part of a series commemorating World War II), issued on the fiftieth anniversary of the assassination:

Below, commemorative t-shirt sold at the shrine to the resistance movement at the Church of Saints Cyril and Methodius, where the two assassins and other paratroopers were killed.

The motto means, die in order to live.

Previous posts on this theme:

• 27 May 1942: Assassination of Reichsprotektor Reinhard Heydrich by Czech Paratroopers  (2009)
• The Heydrich Assassination: "Killing Heydrich" (documentary) (2010)
• 4 June 1942: Death of Reichsprotektor Reinhard Heydrich; reflections on the new monument at the assassination site (2010)
• 9-10 June 1942: Nazis Destroy the Czech Village of Lidice (Heydrichiade) (2010)
• "this most savage single act of repression": the Washington Post reports the Lidice massacre, June 1942 (2015)
• Commemorations of Lidice on Medals and Stamps (2015)
• 18 June 1942: Nazis Kill Heydrich Assassins in Bloody Church Shootout (2010)

Commemorations of Lidice on Medals and Stamps

The previous post described the Nazi massacre of the inhabitants of the Czech village of Lidice and the powerful emotional and historical echo of the crime.

In Czechoslovakia, the memory of the crime became a regular part of national rituals and identity. Over on the Tumblr, I posted a few of the numismatic and philatelic commemorations.

This medal, depicting some of the victims--echoing a monument to the murdered children at the site--is the first installment. Just click on to the subsequent posts (or look for Lidice using the search bar at the upper left of the page) for the rest.

"this most savage single act of repression": the Washington Post reports the Lidice massacre, June 1942

Today, in a world in which the West knows only limited wars, and in which many journalists and commentators lack both military experience and historical perspective, it is common to see terms such as "war crimes" and "atrocities" and "massacres" tossed around with abandon. It can therefore be salutary to be reminded of what real crimes against humanity were like: specifically, the sort that inspired the laws and conventions so often and and casually invoked today.

One example, whose anniversary I mark every year, may suffice.

"this most savage single act of repression in the history of German occupation of continental Europe"

In revenge for the assassination of Nazi governor of Bohemia and Moravia Reinhard Heydrich by Czechoslovak paratroopers, the Nazis exacted a terrible price, taking--all told, it is estimated--some 5,000 lives.

The most notorious reprisal occurred on the night of 9-10 June 1942, when German forces wiped out the Czech village of Lidice, near Prague, which, they wrongly charged, had sheltered the parachutists. Of the 503 inhabitants, 173 adult males and several women were shot, and some 200 women were deported to concentration camps (143 survived). A handful of the nearly 100 children were given to “Aryan” families to be Germanized, and the rest were deported and later gassed at Chełmno (17 adoptees could be located by 1947). The entire town was then burned and obliterated, a process estimated to have consumed some 20,000 man-hours of labor by 100 workers, and lasting until July 3. (read the rest)

The crime was so horrible that Churchill planned to bomb three German villages into oblivion as retaliation; only the resistance of his cabinet prevented him from carrying out this desire. (UK National Archives document release)

The Nazis were determined to erase Lidice from memory as well as the earth, but plazas, districts, and towns around the world were renamed Lidice in order to deny Hitler that victory. Shortly after the end of the war, in June 1945, the Czechoslovak government decided to rebuild the village. The cornerstone was laid in 1947. 

Among the things that were so striking about Lidice was not just the brutality, but the fact that the Nazis openly proclaimed their actions (in contrast, for example, to the murder of the Jews, which was to be kept secret). The news was therefore almost instantly public knowledge.

Here, for example, is how the Washington Post covered the story only a day after the assault. Note that it received prominent billing second only to emerging reports of the epochal Battle of Midway:

Czech Town of 1200 Wiped Out to Avenge Death of Heydrich

Community Razed, Men Slaughtered

Women and Children Sent to Other Areas; Population Accused of Harboring Killers

By the Associated Press

London. June 10.--German vengeance squads utterly wiped out Lidice, a Czech village of 1200 persons today, killing all the men and deporting the women and children on the ground that the population harbored the two assassins of Reinhard Heydrich, the late German ruler of Bohemia-Moravia.

  Completing this most savage single act of repression in the history of the German occupation of continental Europe, Gestapo and German soldiery razed the village, leaving nothing but rubble: the German-controlled radio announced from Prague. Then the Nazis removed the name of the village from their records.

  Lidice is--or was--a village of coal miners and woodworkers a few miles west of the Czech capital and not far from where Heydrich "the hangman" was fatally wounded by two patriots while driving along a winding road two weeks ago.

Assassins Still at Large

   The assassins, who leaped upon Heydrich's car with automatic pistol and bomb, have not been caught.
  Shortly after Prague and Berlin radios had announced the fate of Lidice "as the hiding place of the Heydrich murderers," German authorities in Prague disclosed that 25 more Czechs had been executed today in the capital and 6 in Brunn for a total of 306--exclusive of the Lidice dead--to be slain since the attack on Heydrich.
  In London, authorities of the Allied and exiled governments estimated that nearly 300,000 persons had been shot or hanged in all Europe since the beginning of the German conquest.
  Only yesterday, during Heydrich's elaborate funeral rites in Berlin, Gestapo Chief Heinrich Himmler vowed complete revenge on his killers. The slaughter of Lidice was his macabre sequel.
  The Prague broadcasts did not give the number of men of the village who were shot. It said the women had been sent to a concentration camp and the children to "educational centers."

"Other Hostile Acts" Charged

  Besides being accused of hiding Heydrich's slayers, the population of the village was accused in the broadcast of having "committed other hostile acts, such as keeping an illegal dump of ammunition and arms and maintaining an illegal transmitter."
  Meanwhile, it was apparent from German advices received today in Switzerland that a new wave of

[p. 2]

punitive measures was on the way, not only in Czecho-Slovakia but in other occupied countries.
  Prague, Paris, Amsterdam, all Poland and Yugoslavia probably will be the first to feel the chill of this new terror campaign, it was indicated.
  Of the approximately half-million Europeans already believed dead by the hand of the Nazi executioner, approximately 5 per cent were wiped out in mass "reprisal" killings of hostages. The remainder, including many women, were executed on various charges, such as sabotage, plotting, and aiding the enemy.

Increased Resistance Seen

  The Norwegian, Belgian and Netherlands governments and the Free French Committee here said the increased tempo of executions in the last few weeks indicated resistance to the Germans was increasing in direct ratio to the shootings.
  The governments, in estimating the number killed, did not consider "the countless thousands who have died in concentration camps or from ill treatment and hunger as a result of the 'New Order.'"
  The Yugoslav government estimated 350,000 killed in Yugoslavia, alone, and the Polish government said 90,000 Poles had been executed. They attributed the stupendous totals to German massacres of "entire villages in their attempts to wipe out guerilla [sic] activity."
  Incomplete totals picked up from German broadcasts tell a grim story of their own, with the best compilations showing nearly 7000 shootings and hangings reported by the Germans themselves.
  A majority of the executions were never broadcast. Some were published in local papers which never reached London. One Czecho-Slovak official said:

Germans Don't Tell All

  "A vast number of those killed was never made public at all, but we hear of them eventually via underground routes. For example, last November the Germans said nine students were executed as a result of riots in Prague, but we know of 120 who were killed."
  In Norway, Belgium, the Netherlands, and Czecho-Slovakia, and lately in France, the list of those shot reveals the Gestapo is following a definite pattern of wiping out "intellectual" leaders. Teachers are frequent victims in Norway, while professors, students and "liberal" officials have fallen in other countries.

[There follows a brief tabulation of executions announced by the Germans vs. estimated real figures established by the Allies.]

    "To build a sustainable, climate-resilient future for all, we must invest in our world's forests. That will take political commitment at the highest levels, smart policies, effective law enforcement, innovative partnerships and funding."

    Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon

March 21 is the International Day of Forests.

In celebration of that event, some tree- and forest-themed bookplates over on the book blog, habent sua fata libelli.

Happy New Year, 2015!

This is a sentimental old favorite from my collection: nothing special in itself, just an old greeting card from Czechoslovakia that I inherited from my father. The winter scene depicts Prague Castle and St. Vitus' Cathedral viewed from the hill of Strahov Monastery, circa 1930.

click image to enlarge

šťastný Nový rok!

Boldog Új Évet!

Prosit Neujahr!

Happy New Year!

From the past: one of my 2014 New Year's entries featured a greeting card from an Austro-Hungarian railroad unit during World War I.

Un-bombs (2)

Ever since Isaiah had a vision of men beating their swords into ploughshares, it has been pleasant to imagine or witness other examples of the tools or symbols of war being converted into those of peace. I've posted a couple of examples over on the Tumblr.

Ballet bomb

Un-bombs (1)

Ever since Isaiah had a vision of men beating their swords into ploughshares, it has been pleasant to imagine or witness other examples of the tools or symbols of war being converted into those of peace. I've posted a few examples over on the Tumblr.

Books, not bombs

Prosit Neujahr! The Imperial and Royal Austro-Hungarian Army railroad engineers wish you a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

As I pondered which historical Christmas or New Year's artifact to share this year, I managed to settle on a modest one that addresses both holidays and moreover anticipates the course on twentieth-century Europe that I am teaching this spring.

It is a combined Christmas and New Year's military Field Post greeting card from the 11th Railroad Company of the Imperial and Royal (k.u.k.) Austro-Hungarian army, from 1915. An elf, using the railroad emblem as his wheelbarrow, trundles a tiny snow-covered sign denoting the Company down the track.

The address side depicts the leader of the chief allied state, a fiercely martial German Emperor Wilhelm II.

The card thus seems to differ from the typical commercial card of the era in that it has prominent graphic content on both sides. Early postcards reserved one side for the image and the other exclusively for the address. Senders therefore scribbled any message on the image side, which seems strange to modern sensibilities. After the advent of the "divided back" postcard in 1907, senders could use one side for both address and message, in the manner familiar to us (or which was familiar, until the rise of mobile electronic communication), although some of the more verbose correspondents allowed their prose to overflow onto the "picture" side.


The card, dated Christmas Eve, 1915, and postmarked 26 December, is from one Lieutenant Hugo Mischek to his wife Bertha in "Ober Erlitz," a small town (1930 population: 374) within the larger precincts of Grulich, Bohemia: today, Olomoucký Kraj in the Pardubice region of the Czech Republic. (The mixture of German personal names and Slavic family name—though in Germanized spelling—reminds us that the relation between nominal ethnic ancestry and personal identity was often complex in the multiethnic Danube Monarchy.)

The address and inscription are written in the purplish indelible pencil typical of the era: in that context, a sort of "predecessor to the ball-point pen", very useful in the field. Lt. Mischek wishes his wife "a most lovely Christmas celebration," with "warmest greetings." Immediately beneath this, a comrade adds, "Hugo is doing quite well" and the Austrian salutation, "I kiss your hand!" while other members of the unit simply add their signatures. Presumably, the men came from the same region. The intimacy suggested by the use of the first name may also be in part a matter of cultural style. The Berlin-born historian Felix Gilbert recalled being "highly astonished," "almost shocked" to hear Austrian officers, upon meeting one another for the first time, promptly slip into the informal address, "Du," which the reserved and punctilious Prussians would never countenance.

The modest artifact is noteworthy in at least two ways.

First, it reminds us that this was a new kind of war. Almost since the inception of the railroad, governments sensed its military usefulness, but it took them some time to put this insight into practical effect. The success of the Prussian army in rapidly bringing 370,00 troops to bear against the 240,000 of France in 1870 was a wake-up call. "Build no more fortresses, build railways," was the advice of General von Moltke, and other nations began to heed the lesson. By the end of the nineteenth century, the Austro-Hungarian army, which had itself fared poorly against the more mobile Prussians in 1866, had 12 Railroad Companies, a number that would soon increase.

More than any other conflict, the Great War has come to be associated with the railroad. Historians have long noted that the mobilization of the immense new mass armies raised logistics and timing to an unprecedented level of importance (a policy that reached its logical conclusion—or reductio ad absurdum—in the "launch on warning" stance during the thermonuclear doomsday scenarios of the Cold War). The late great military historian John Keegan, taking as his point of departure Wellington's observation that "In military operations, time is everything," wrote that space as well as time played a crucial role in the German and Austrian calculations involving railroads and mobilization schedules vis-à-vis Russia. And Stephen Kern devotes an entire chapter of his provocative The Culture of Time and Space 1880-1918 to "The Temporality of the July Crisis," in which both the railroad and the telegraph, as well as more psychological or metaphysical notions of "national" time play a prominent role.

Second, we are reminded that the Great War did not take place only on the Western Front, whose static "war of position" epitomized by trench warfare has come to define our image of the entire conflict. The fighting in the east, by contrast, was a traditional "war of movement," made possible in part by the bungling as much as the successes of the two sides. The city of Czernowitz, capital of the Bukovina, the easternmost district of Galicia, is said to have changed hands 15 times in the course of the war. The German forces scored great initial successes against the Russians in the north, establishing the fame of Hindenburg. To the south, the Austrians did not fare as well: by the fall of 1914, the Russians had advanced to the hinterlands of Kraków. In December, the Austrians turned the tide, and none too soon. They had lost 1,268,000 killed, wounded, or captured. A year later, at the end of 1915, the combined German and Austrian forces, supported by the Bulgarians, took Belgrade and pushed the Serbs into Albania, but none of the great powers had lost its fighting capacity, and victory was in sight on neither front. As Keegan writes, "The coming year of 1916, all parties recognised, would bring crisis on land, east and west, and at sea also. It would be a year of great battles between armies and fleets."

The elf on the postcard looks businesslike rather than particularly cheerful, for which he might be excused, given the circumstances.



Postscript

A website devoted to the history of a local Austrian railway station lists a certain Hugo Mischek who was involved with railway administration in the vicinity of Olomouc (thus, the home region of the sender of this postcard) but who is then described as having been sent through retirement relocation to Vienna in 1915-15 and in retirement there, 1915-1918. This does not seem to fit the description of a Lieutenant apparently in active service, but one wonders whether there might not be some family connection. A later Hugo Mischek was a leading builder and developer in post-World War II Vienna. The full history behind our little postcard remains to be explored.

What's on the President's Plate These Days (and in his glass)

Hops, from an edition of Lonicer's Kreuterbuch, circa 1590

Speaking of President Obama and meals, there is a fine blog that allows you to keep track of his conspicuous consumption, from sumptuous state dinners to the more staid fare of the state fair: Obama Foodarama, by Eddie Gehman Kohan, calls itself "The Blog Of Record About White House Food Initiatives, From Policy To Pie." (So, there's some serious stuff there, too.)

Naturally, I am interested, among other things, in the beer coverage (all part of being a cultural historian). One report noted that the President consumed a Bud Light at a pub in Cedar Falls, Iowa. This preference for an insipid, mass-market substitute for real beer concerns me because it forms part of a disturbing and well-established pattern: in Amherst, Ohio (of all places!) last month, Mr. Obama also had light beer (one Bud, one Miller), as he did at the so-called "beer summit" of 2009 at which he brought together distinguished African-American scholar (and Massachusetts resident) Henry Louis Gates and the police officer who arrested him in a notorious case of racial profiling.

Evidently there are experts who worry about what sort of beer the leader of our nation and the free world should drink. It's just that they're not beer experts. So, it seems that a "light" beer is seen as the safest, healthiest, and politically correct choice, a well-intentioned but misguided attempt to present Mr. Obama as a (suitably restrained) man of the people. (Not that Mr. Romney would be any more successful, for some similar reasons as well as some very different ones.)

Still, we find both hope and change in the knowledge that the White House has, since 2011, been producing its own signature malt beverage, which our leader takes with him on these campaign outings. As the blog—which broke the news—also observes with some frustration, the information about the Presidential mini-brewery has in fact been out there for all with eyes to see for quite a while, but the mainstream media somehow just never bothered to absorb and cover it. (In that regard, I suppose it's a bit like the progress of the Iranian nuclear program.) But news of the POTUS private stock is not an unmitigated blessing. Obama Foodarama worried, "The President's regular-guy beer drinking image was dismantled somewhat on Tuesday by the revelation that he's toting White House homebrewed beer aboard Ground Force One."

I'll say. But again, the analysts got things wrong. I would be worried about the President's image less because this is an "elitist" craft brew than because it is an effete "Honey Ale" that should not pass muster as real beer with either the toiling masses or the zymurgic cognoscenti. Bud Light is lousy beer, but it does convey a simple, no-nonsense populist message. "Honey Ale"?  Come on.

What should the President drink, then? I think a classic American India Pale Ale would do the job. Not one of those faddish ones so overhopped that drinking it feels more like a masculinity test than a social and gustatory pleasure; that's more reminiscent of George W. Bush's brutish and blustery foreign policy. Instead, a well-balanced IPA, medium-bodied and highly but not heedlessly hopped, would convey just the right message of strength and sophistication befitting a superpower comfortable with its status, neither pusillanimous nor posturing.

I mean, seriously: Are you surprised that Netanyahu felt there was no cost to rebuffing Obama's demands? Do you think Assad and Ahmadinejad lie awake at night worrying about a guy who drinks "Honey Ale"? Seriously. Now, photograph Obama with a "Victory Hop Devil" in hand, and you'll see world leaders start to show him some respect.

Back to domestic politics. As for that "man of the people" thing: forget it. It's a lost cause, and the worst thing you can do is try to pretend to be something that you aren't. (Romney and Obama in blue jeans? Dukakis in a tank?) So, even if the President served this White House Honey Ale at his Superbowl Party, it just doesn't quite give off that "normal guy" vibe.

President Obama redeemed himself (sort of) as a populist on two occasions, first by giving one of those special homebrews to a resident in Knoxville, Iowa, and then, at the State Fair, by buying a round for ten people, who were chanting, "Four More Beers! Four More Beers!" (Who says we Midwesterners are slow thinkers lacking wit and humor?)

This was of course a play on words on "Four More Years!" But for those of us possessed of historical knowledge or direct experience of the Nixon era, this slogan first became prominent in the ill-starred electoral campaign of 1972, which took place under the growing shadow of the Watergate scandal. The appropriately nicknamed "CREEP" (Committee to Re-Elect the President) came up with the slogan, which was widely circulated, even on buttons and stickers in the languages of the various ethnic constituencies that the Republicans had wooed away from the Democratic Party.

Thank God, we've come a long way since the Nixon era, in more ways than one.

Speaking of which: the President himself has got a long way to go before he can be a real man of the people. That populist publicity stunt in Iowa came at a cost: literally. In the words of Obama Foodarama:

But the State Fair beer was reportedly an expensive cup, and came with a foamy head of criticism: Secret Service essentially shut down the fair for the President's visit. Mark Cunningham II, 39, a Republican and the third generation owner of the 65-year-old Bud Tent where the President enjoyed his brew (they were photographed drinking together), later complained to the Des Moines Register that the President's photo op cost him $25,000 in profit.

And the President has a really long way to go before he can catch up with the late Czech President Václav Havel. Havel, although a scion of one of the wealthiest families in pre-Communist Czechoslovakia, was nonetheless a man of the people in a way that Obama never can be. And when he wanted to go to the pub for a beer with the guys, he wasn't about to have his security forces clear the guys out.

As Radio Praha explained:

Ex-President Vaclav Havel may be the best spokesman beer has ever had in the Czech Republic, at least in public office. Havel loves to take visiting politicians to pubs. He once skipped a function in the U.S. to go drink beer and watch John Cale. In fact, one of Havel's plays is based on the time he spent working in a brewery before the Revolution.

It quotes Havel as saying (1995):

"I suppose that drinking beer in pubs has got a good influence on the behaviour of Czech society, because beer contains less alcohol than for example wine, vodka or whisky and therefore people's political chat in pubs is less crazy." 

Given the nastiness and lies of the US Presidential campaign at this stage, "less crazy" sounds pretty good. Maybe it's time that we all just relax and enjoy a good Czech beer.



Update

19 August: I was pleased and amused to see that our friends at The Propagandist cited this post, adding a fine video of President Obama at the Iowa State Fair, ordering up that round of beers for his supporters (and denying one to the guy with the Romney sign).


Resources


Historical context:

• the recent post on the problem of student drinking in Amherst also describes the historical drinking habits of the early American republic (including politicians and clergy), which may come as a surprise

• the habits of a famed British wartime leader, by contrast, will come as no surprise: "Winston, Churchill: Smoker, Drunk, One Tough Dude—With Good Judgment"

Our colleague, @AmyMittelman, has both a book and a blog
about beer and (in the latter case) other matters (mostly political), as well.

March 7: A Date That Will Live in Irony

[revisions underway; back up soon]

Milan Kundera on Vandalism and Historic Preservation

When called upon to explain the philosophy and values of historic preservation to an outsider, I often liken it to environmentalism, and I invariably refer to humility and caution: the idea that we should not rush to take irreversible action, so confident of our own tastes and power that we presume to dictate the future shape of the world.

Thinking about history and historic preservation in that vein, I often recall a wonderful passage by Czech novelist Milan Kundera, from an essay of June 1967. In a sense, it is only nominally about historic preservation and really about other, much bigger things. Still, the fact that he uses historic preservation is indicative and hardly accidental.

Kundera begins with a point that he elaborates elsewhere, namely, that small nations, unlike large ones, cannot take their continued existence for granted. In the standard narrative, Czech identity was almost destroyed when political sovereignty was lost: first, under the three centuries of German imperial domination, and then again, under Nazi rule, separated by only two glorious decades of modern independence. It was the maintenance of a distinct Czech culture that kept peoplehood alive. Stalinism proved a threat of a different kind: the state remained, but the culture atrophied. Writing in the era of the post-Stalinist "thaw" that preceded the famous "Prague Spring" of 1968, Kundera is both optimistic and cautious: he acknowledges and applauds the relaxing of political controls, the achievements of the Czech New Wave in film, and a new freedom in literature.

At the same time, he worries, a true national culture is threatened in new ways both from without and from within. On the one hand, there are the homogenizing forces of what we have now come to call "globalization," which threaten, in an entirely new way, to limit the relevance or even existence of the languages and literatures of small nations. On the other hand, a vibrant Czech culture cannot be only inward-looking and parochial. Historically, he said, the distinctive Czech culture derived much of its strength from the rootedness in a wider European tradition, the consciousness of which is fast disappearing, and not only in his native land.

Provincialism, he says, is mental as well as geographical. "Provincialism doesn't only have its impact on the nation's literary achievements, but is a problem of the nation's whole existence, especially in its schooling, its journalism. and so on."

He illustrates this point with an example taken from avant-garde film that in turn takes him into the realms of history and art, and then back to party politics:

  A little while ago, I saw a film called Daisies. It concerned two splendidly repulsive girls, supremely satisfied with their own cute limitations and merrily destroying everything which they didn't understand. It seemed to me then that I was watching a profound and very topical parable about vandalism. What is a vandal? He certainly isn't an illiterate peasant who burns a hated landowner's castle in a fit of anger. A vandal, as I observe him around me, is socially secure, literate, self-satisfied, and with no very good reason for trying to get his own back on somebody. A vandal is an arrogant, limited person, who feels good in himself and is willing at any time to appeal to his democratic rights. This arrogant limitedness thinks that one of its basic rights is to change the world into its own image, and because the world is too big for it to understand, it chooses to change the world by destroying it. In exactly the same way, a youngster will knock the head off a sculpture in a park because it seems to insult him by being bigger than he is, and he'll do it with great satisfaction, because any act of self-assertion satisfies man.

  People who live only in the immediate present, unaware of historical continuity and without culture, are capable of transforming their country into a desert without history, without memory, without echoes, and without beauty. Vandalism today is not just something that is fought by the police. When representatives of the people or the relevant officials decide that a statue or a castle, a church, an old lime tree, is pointless and order it to be removed, that is just another form of vandalism. There's no substantial difference between legal and illegal destruction and there is not a great deal of difference between destruction and prohibition. In the chamber a certain Czech deputy recently demanded, in the name of twenty-one deputies, a ban on two 'difficult' films, one of them, by an irony of fate, Daisies, a parable about vandals. He uncompromisingly denounced both films and at the same time declared quite explicitly that he didn't understand them. There is no real contradiction in such an attitude as this. The biggest sin of these two works was that they were above the heads of those who did not like them and thus insulted them.

—"A Nation Which Cannot Take Itself for Granted," in Gale Stokes, ed., From Stalinism to Pluralism: A Documentary History of Eastern Europe Since 1945, second ed. (NY and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996), 151-55; here, 153-54

For him, then, respect for the past, humility regarding the future, and freedom of expression go hand in hand. It is a potent mix.

6 July 1415: Death of Jan Hus (would he have used Google+ and Twitter?)

On 5 July, 1415, the Council of Constance (Konstanz) condemned the Bohemian religious reformer and past rector of Prague University, Jan Hus, to death for heresy. On 6 July, refusing to recant, he went to the stake. (Here, his final declaration.)

A follower of John Wyclif, Hus had challenged both papal authority and traditional doctrine, calling for more democracy in the Church, questioning the existence of Purgatory, and condemning priestly abuses and sale of indulgences alike. In part because of the emphasis on preaching in the vernacular, Hus also took up the reform of the Czech language and was responsible for the introduction of modern diacritical marks.

In the years after Hus's death, his followers' continued quest for reform led to open and successful revolt against the Papacy and Empire. Hus came to be seen—condemned by some, claimed by others—as a forerunner of the Reformation. Luther claimed to walk in Hus's footsteps. By contrast, the entry in the 1556 edition of Sebastian Münster's Cosmography portrays Hus as intelligent and eloquent ("Er het ein scharpffe vernunfft vn[d] wz wol beredt") but a divisive figure, whose preaching to the common people against the Papacy and monks sowed dissension ("vil zwytracht") and heresy ("eytel ketzerey") in the land:

For Czechs in the modern era, he also became the founder or at least symbol of a national movement. Generally speaking, the Czech nationalists came to celebrate Hus and the Hussites in both national and universal terms, seeing in them moral exemplars whose ideals the nation sought to embody.

Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk, then a parliamentarian in the Austro-Hungarian empire and not yet the head or even advocate of an independent Czech state, was typical in that regard. Interestingly, he also likened the popular oral culture of the late medieval period to the press of the modern era. Today, the analogy would be to the blogosphere and social media. Speaking at a commemorative event in 1910, he urged listeners:

  Let us recall that Hus and his forerunners began as moral reformers. . . .In Prague, the predecessors of Hus delivered moralistic sermons from the pulpits. In those days, pulpits played the role of today's newspapers and books in disseminating ideas. The sermons were directed at the improvement of morality in the towns and at the reformation of the wealthy classes and rich clergy.

[in his: The Meaning of Czech History, ed. René Wellek, trans. Peter Kussi (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1974), 5]

Masaryk, who had little interest in the minutiae of theology, portrayed the Reformation as a temperate and "predominantly non-mystical" spiritual movement devoted to "reason," in which "great emphasis was placed on political and social justice" (11, 10):

From the leaders of our reformation we get a desire for clarity, reasonableness. Morality must be the decisive element in religion, Morality means the establishment of fraternal ties with one's fellows, it means energetic work for one's fellows; today, we would express it in terms of coming to grips with the social question. Further, we see that our religious striving was democratic, nonaristocratic; we see the anti-clerical emphasis of our reformation. (11)

Masaryk was well aware that the Reformation was a religious and not merely political movement, but he saw the two as intimately connected, both causally and intrinsically. He argued:

The American Constitution, imitated in Europe, grew directly out of the Reformation and the movement for religious freedom. A person who is free spiritually, a person enjoying religious freedom, will find his true political way. And conversely, political freedom facilitates religious freedom. As soon as we reach political liberty, our first act will be to separate church and state. Religion must be—as it was to Hus—a matter of conscience and not of politics. (14)

He summarized:

I can think of no better conclusion to these remarks than the well-known prayer of Hus. Let us heed it, let us heed it well: "Seek truth, listen to the truth, learn the truth, love the truth, speak the truth, keep the truth, defend the truth with your very life!" (14)

As Erazim Kohák observes,

  For Masaryk, shared commitment to that ideal of humanity with its concomitants, democracy and social justice—basically respect and love for one's neighbor—is what made a Czech nation out of the ethnically Czech population of the Czech lands. In anticipation, Czechs first turned to it in their struggle for freedom of faith within the Church in the Reformation. In the name of that ideal they entered upon modern national identity in their nineteenth century rebirth. In the name of the same ideal they triumphed in the creation of the free Czechoslovak state.  However imperfectly, that state embodied the ideal of humanity in its commitment, as a token of a future humankind committed to human dignity and mutual respect, to freedom and social justice.

[Hearth and Horizon: Cultural Identity and Global Identity in Czech Philosophy (Prague: Filosofia, 2008), 141]

In the Czech Republic, 6 July is now a holiday honoring Hus (Den upálení mistra Jana Husa). Here, a discussion of Hus's legacy from Radio Prague on that date in 2010.

I'll soon have a little piece on the impact of the Reformation in the Czech lands for The Public Humanist.



Resources

Letters of John Hus

David Binder, "On the Trail of Jan Hus," New York Times, 16 Nov. 1997

[restored from draft; updated w. new image]

Jan Wiener, 1920-2010

Just a brief note on the sad news of the passing of historian Jan Wiener.

Here's the AP story, via Haaretz:

Jewish Czech who fought Nazis with British army dies

Jan Wiener, who fought in the British air force during World War II after fleeing Nazis in Germany and Czechoslovakia, died at age 90. (read the rest)

A more detailed appreciation will follow here soon.