Czech Hell

Burning of German children in Prague (Lebende Fackeln); The notorious burning alive of German children, hanged by their feet and doused in petrol, in the Wenzelsplatz in Prague on May 20, 1945.

Bohemia and Prague had been under the reign of Austria for centuries and was at times the capital of the Holy Roman Empire. Germans and Czechs had lived together in peace during that time, and during WWII the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia had a very quite time.

This page refers to the massacres and atrocities committed by Czech communists and fanatical nationalists against ethnic German civilians, the Wehrmacht and Waffen-SS soldiers on and after 5th of May 1945.

History

A provisional government of "Czechoslovakia" was proclaimed by the Soviet Union on 5 April 1945. The Communist Party were immediately awarded a third of the government, including the Ministers of the Interior and Defence, the two most crucial ministries.

Terrorism began on May 5, 1945, in the last days of World War II in Europe. At about 1:00 am on the May 5, armed Czech communist and nationalist terrorists overwhelm the Waffen-SS defending the Prague radio buildings. A radio announcer then broadcasted a call to the "Czech nation" to rebel and asked the people in the streets of Prague to build barricades. Elsewhere, Czech terrorists occupied the Gestapo and SiPo Headquarters, killing any opposition.

German forces outside Prague then started to move toward the city centre in order to relieve their trapped countrymen and restore order. During May 6, the Germans attempted to recapture the radio station building. As the German advance ran into significant resistance, both in the building itself and at the barricades in nearby streets, the Germans decided to use bombs instead. This attack was a success. However, the Czech terrorists managed to continue to broadcast their messages of insurrection from another location.

On May 7, Waffen-SS armoured and artillery units stationed outside of Prague, frustrated by the lack of decisive progress made by the German Wehrmacht infantry, launched several tank attacks on the terrorists.

On May 9, 1945, the Soviet Red Army arrived in Prague. American Army units had been closer to Prague than the Soviets, and their reconnaissance units were already in Prague suburbs when the insurrection began. However, the Americans did not help the Czech terrorists. Instead they overlooked the insurrection and the carnage that followed.

Communist propaganda and actions then contributed to large-scale atrocities against Germans and their allies, including Estonians stationed in the Protectorate. Czech communist and nationalist partisans (terrorists) demanded that German units surrendered their arms. The surrendering German troops included thousands of officers and soldiers of the Estonian volunteer division who had not committed any crimes. Regardless, the terrorists hunted them down and took some of the unarmed men prisoner, tortured and humiliated them. The number of prisoners of war killed has been estimated as 500−1000, but the actual number is unknown.

Massacres

Ordinary German civilians residing in Prague, as well as administrators, officials, and family members of the German military were the easiest targets of the Czechs. They began to flee by any means, including in stolen vehicles, in order to save their lives. The local Czechs continued their attacks on the surrendered Waffen-SS troops regardless of the fact that the Czech Republic was a signatory to the Geneva Conventions protecting POWs. The soldiers of the 20th Waffen Grenadier Division of the SS (1st Estonian), who had mistakely laid down their weapons in May 1945, were humiliated and tortured by both the terrorists and local civilians, who murdered more than 500 Estonian POWs, among them Sturmbannführer Paul Maitla.

Many other atrocities were committed against ethnic Germans.

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  German civilians in Prague rounded up by Czech terrorists await their fate, 1945.

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  German civilians being expelled from Pilsen, May 1945.

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  German civilians murdered by Czechs await the mass grave.

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  German civilians being expelled from their homes in the Sudetenland by the Czechs.

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  German civilians executed at the side of a road by Czech terrorists

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  Germans forced to dig roadside graves for their executed kin (above) before being executed themselves by the Czechs.

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  Memorial in Germany to the murdered ethnic German population of the Sudetenland.

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  In 1963, Sudetenland expellees and their families gathered in Berlin for a rally celebrating the 'Day of the Homeland' (Tag der Heimat).

See also

• Edvard Benes: The Liquidator
• Documents on the Expulsion of the Germans from Eastern-Central Europe
• Documents on the Expulsion of the Sudeten Germans
• Killing in the Czech way (documentary)
• Czechoslovakia
• German Expellees

External links

• Waffen-Sturmbannführer der ϟϟ Paul Maitla
• Tod der Nichte (Czech atrocities in German)

Sources

• Schneider, Professor Theodor, et al: The Expulsion of the German Population from the Territories East of the Oder-Neisse-Line, vol. 1, German Federal Ministry for Expellees, etc., Bonn 1954
• Schneider, Professor Theodor, et al, The Expulsion of the German Population from Czecho-Slovakia, vol. iv., published by the German Federal Ministry for Expellees, Refugees and War Victims, Bonn, West Germany, 1960
• Dr. Austin J. App: The Sudeten-German Tragedy, Maryland, U.S.A., 1979.
• de Zayas, Professor Dr. Alfred Maurice, A Terrible Revenge - The Ethnic Cleansing of the East European Germans, 1986, UK 1994, paperback edition, New York, 2006. [(https://de.metapedia.org/wiki/Zayas,_Alfred_de de)]
• Dedina, Sinonia, Edvard Benes: The Liquidator, U.S.A., 2001, ISBN: 0-9663968-4-7