The Czech Refugee Trust Fund and Czechoslovak Émigrés: Part One, Its Genesis and Funding

Jan Kuklík, Jana Čechurová

Soudobé dějiny 2007 (vol.14) 1: 9-43 | DOI: 10.51134/sod.2007.001  

This is the first part of a two-part article on the creation and financing of the Czech Refugee Trust Fund. The article considers the state of affairs that emerged after the Munich Agreement of September 1938: the break-up of the Republic of Czechoslovakia, the accession of parts of Czechoslovakia to Hitler's Germany, the creation of the short lived Czecho-Slovakia (or Second Republic), and the great number of refugees fleeing the country.The most important prerequisite for the creation of the Czech Refugee Trust Fund, which was active in Great Britain throughout the Second World War and, in fact, all the way into the 1970s, was the provision of...

Poetry in Volumes Published by Czech Wartime Émigrés in Great Britain

Michal Jareš

Soudobé dějiny 2007 (vol.14) 1: 44-77 | DOI: 10.51134/sod.2007.002  

This article is considers four volumes of Czech verse, which were published by Czech émigrés in Great Britain in the early years of the Second World War. They are Hlasy domova/Křik koruny české (Voices from Home/The Cry of the Bohemian Crown, 1939), Domů... (Homewards, 1939), Ústy domova (The Voice of Home, 1941), and Z lyriky války (Lyric Verse in Wartime, 1941). The author first seeks to provide an overview of the literary culture of the Czech wartime émigrés in context. Apart from quotations from hard-to-access source material he also provides a summary of verse of this origin. He chose the topic owing to both the involvement in it of writers who...

Belarusian Émigrés in Czechoslovakia, 1918-38

Daniela Kolenovská

Soudobé dějiny 2007 (vol.14) 1: 78-105 | DOI: 10.51134/sod.2007.003  

Using records from Czech archives this article outlines the situation of the Belarusian émigrés in Czechoslovakia from 1918 to 1938. It first presents a brief overview of the development of the Belarusian national movement and the reactions of this movement to the changes brought about largely by the First World War. In this context it traces the efforts of Belarusian émigrés who formed a government-in-exile and, after the stabilization of the Soviet Union, continued to push for an independent Belarusian state, despite the absence of truly international support, a lack of funds, and in-fighting. The archive records reveal that Belarusian émigrés began...

A Struggle of Two Cultures in a Totalitarian System: Some Thoughts on Jiří's Knapík's Most Recent Book

Karel Hrubý

Soudobé dějiny 2007 (vol.14) 1: 124-136  

Knapík, Jiří. V zajetí moci: Kulturní politika, její systém a aktéři 1948-1956. Prague: Libri, 2006, 398 pp.In the first part of this review the reviewer praises Knapík for providing a systematic, comprehensive, and vivid picture of the institutional framework of culture in the years when the Communist system of controlling the arts in Czechoslovakia was established. Knapík provides a suitable periodization of this period, contributing a considerable amount of new or more precise information and also some remarkable interpretations of specific events. He describes without bias the conflicts among the centres competing to make policy on the arts...

Diary Entries of a Czechoslovak Diplomat from the Capital of the Third Reich

Jiří Kosta

Soudobé dějiny 2007 (vol.14) 1: 137-141  

Hoffmann, Camill. Politický deník 1932-1939. Preface by Dieter Sudhoff. Trans. from the German by Alena Bláhová and David Kraft. Prague: Pražská edice, 2006, 239 pp.Poet, editor, and diplomat, Camill (Kamil) Hoffmann (1878-1944) is an example of Czech-German-Jewish symbiosis. After the First World War he founded the Prager Presse, a pro-government German language newspaper, and later, from 1920 to 1939, was press attaché of the Czechoslovak embassy in Berlin, till he was recalled to Prague. The diary, first published as Politisches Tagebuch, 1932-1939 (Klagenfurt, 1995), describes the rise and growing power of the Nazi régime, and constitutes a...

Stories about the Identity of Jews of the Bohemia Lands, 1918-38

Květa Jechová

Soudobé dějiny 2007 (vol.14) 1: 142-146  

Soukupová, Blanka. Velké a malé českožidovské příběhy z doby intenzivní naděje. Bratislava: Zing Print, 2005, 284 pp. (Etnické studie, vol. 2.)The book under review is not the usual treatment of the history of one minority. Rather, it is an integrated collection of historical-ethnological essays about the searching, forms, and changes of the identity of Czech Jews during the First Republic. In the collective stories of Jews the author discusses phenomena such as antisemitism, assimilation, Zionism, national consciousness, Czech patriotism, and Czech Jews' attitudes towards Tomáš Masaryk. According to the reviewer Soukupová has fully demonstrated...

"They Became his Victims": Hitler and His Army

Pavel Mücke

Soudobé dějiny 2007 (vol.14) 1: 147-153  

Bartov, Omer. Hitlerova armáda: Vojáci, nacisté a válka ve Třetí říši. Trans. from the English by Jiří Voňka. Prague: Naše vojsko, 2005, 217 pp.This is a review of the Czech translation of Hitler's Army: Soldiers, Nazis, and War in the Third Reich (New York, 1992). The work, by the respected American historian Omer Bartov, is a classic among books on the Wehrmacht. In it, Bartov is concerned primarily with the ideological indoctrination of Hitler's army, the social links within it, war crimes, and the punishment of Wehrmacht soldiers, and, ultimately, the mechanisms of self-justification and the post-war memories of German soldiers. The reviewer...

An Inspiring Search for Alternatives

Jiří Pešek

Soudobé dějiny 2007 (vol.14) 1: 154-162  

Alte, Rüdiger. Die Außenpolitik der Tschechoslowakei und die Entwicklung der internationalen Beziehungen 1946-1947. Munich: Oldenbourg, 2003, 571 pp. (Veröffentlichungen des Collegium Carolinum, vol. 96)In this published version of his dissertation the author asks the following fundamental questions: What reasons, motives, and foreign-policy conceptions were decisive for Czechoslovak policy, parties, and the government when deciding to integrate Czechoslovakia into the East bloc? What internal conflicts consequently emerged in the Czechoslovak leadership? And what were the external factors that positively or negatively influenced these developments?...

The Worker in State Socialism

Peter Heumos

Soudobé dějiny 2007 (vol.14) 1: 163-165  

Hübner, Peter, Kleßmann, Christoph, and Tenefelde, Klaus (eds). Arbeiter im Staatssozialismus: Ideologischer Anspruch und soziale Wirklichkeit. Cologne, Vienna: and Weimar: Böhlau, 2005, 515 pp. (Zeithistorische Studien, vol. 31)The volume under review comprises papers given at a conference in the Zentrum für Zeithistorische Forschung, Potsdam, September 2003. It has three sections: the worker's state as a political construct and the attempt to make it a reality; labour relations, working conditions, and the status of the worker; and, last, the working class in social and political conflict. The reviewer considers both the conference and volume...

New Information about the Show Trials of the Fifties

Vladimír Březina

Soudobé dějiny 2007 (vol.14) 1: 166-171  

Pernes, Jiří and Foitzik, Jan (eds). Politické procesy v Československu po roce 1945 a "Případ Slánský": Sborník příspěvků ze stejnojmenné konference, pořádané ve dnech 14.-16. dubna 2003 v Praze. Brno and Prague: Kateřina Mikšová, Nakladatelství Prius and Ústav pro soudobé dějiny AV ČR, 2005, 391 pp.This is a review of an edited volume of papers from an international conference on the political trials in Czechoslovakia after the Second World War, particularly the show trials of the early 1950s. The conference was held in Pankrác Prison, Prague, 14-16 April, 2003. The volume comprises almost thirty articles, which are grouped into three sections...

A Comparison of Propaganda and Censorship in the Bohemian Lands and Germany

Matěj Hušek

Soudobé dějiny 2007 (vol.14) 1: 172-176  

Anděl, Michal, Brandes, Detlef, Labisch, Alfons, Pešek, Jiří, and Ruzicka, Thomas (eds). Propaganda, (Selbst-)Zensur, Sensation: Grenzen der Presse- und Wissenschaftsfreiheit in Deutschland und Tschechien seit 1871. Essen: Klartext, 2005, 309 pp. (Veröffentlichungen zur Kultur und Geschichte im östlichen Europa, vol. 27)This is a review of an edited volume of papers from a German-Czech conference held in Düsseldorf, May 2003. According to the reviewer it usefully explores various aspects of the limits of press and academic freedom in Germany and the Bohemian Lands from 1871 onwards. The first two sections of the volume contain articles concerned...

Budapest 1956, Brügel, Baťa: Three Conferences in Moravia

Vladimír Březina

Soudobé dějiny 2007 (vol.14) 1: 227-230  

A report on three history conferences held in three Moravian towns in autumn 2006. The first was an international conference on the Bohemian-German historian Johann Wolfgang Brügel (1905-1986), which was held in the town of his birth, Hustopeč, in September. The second conference was about the anti-Communist uprising in Hungary in 1956, and was held in Brno in November. The last was the international conference about the internationally renowned businessman Tomáš Baťa and the society and times he lived in, which was held in Zlín in late November and early December.

Slavík on the End of the Český časopis historický and on Nejedlý's History of the Czech Nation

Jaroslav Bouček

Soudobé dějiny 2007 (vol.14) 1: 190-226  

As editor, Bouček presents two manuscripts by the historian Jan Slavík (1885-1978) from the period after the Communist takeover of February 1948, when Slavík was not permitted to publish. Among other things, Slavík was a leading expert on Russian history. In the first Czechoslovak Republic he was involved in debates about the meaning of Czech history and the methodological starting points of historiography. After the Communist takeover, however, he was practically silenced for ever. The first text published here is a parody in verse, "Zpěv o pádu Čečehoně" (Song of the Fall of Čečehoň, 1950), stylized in the genre of a chivalric epic. In it, the author...

Too Many Nazis? Contemporary History in Great Britain

Detlev Mares

Soudobé dějiny 2007 (vol.14) 1: 106-123 | DOI: 10.51134/sod.2007.004  

This is a translation of the article "Too Many Nazis? Zeitgeschichte in Großbritannien" originally published in Alexander Nützenadel and Wolfgang Schieder (eds) Zeitgeschichte als Problem: Nationale Traditionen und Perspektiven der Forschung in Europa (Göttingen, 2004). According to the author contemporary history in Great Britain begins in the period just after the Second World War, when the public in general and historians began to ask questions about the causes of the war and sought critically to come to terms with the pre-war policy of appeasement. (Nazism itself has continued to be a frequent topic of research in Great Britain.) In terms of institutions,...

The Wartime and Post-war Years Considered in Polish History Periodicals, 2005-06

Jaroslav Vaculík

Soudobé dějiny 2007 (vol.14) 1: 177-189  

This contribution to a regular section of Soudobé dějiny reports on interesting articles on contemporary history published in Polish history journals over the last two years. It pays most attention to Dzieje Najnowsze, a key quarterly published jointly by the History Institute of the Polish Academy of Sciences and the Pułtusk Academy of the Humanities. It also discusses articles in Przegląd Historyczny, a quarterly from Poznań, Sobótka, a quarterly from Silesia, Wiadomości Historyczne, a bimonthly about teaching methods, and Biuletyn Instytutu Pamięci Narodowej, a monthly.

Anotations

Soudobé dějiny 2007 (vol.14) 1: 231-241