Remembering the Prague Uprising of 1945
I’ve just returned from a visit – my 27th in almost three decades – to Prague. The occasion this time was a wedding of some dear young friends and but, on the last day, I took the opportunity to go on a two-hour walking tour with a World War Two theme.
A major part of the tour was an account of the Prague Uprising of 5-8 May 1945. Hitler’s Germany was almost totally defeated but the Czech capital was still under German control. The Soviet army was a short way to the east but halted when the Czechs rose up against their occupiers because Stalin did not want to support a rising by democrats (the same thing happened in Warsaw in 1944). The American army in the west was even closer and Patton wanted to liberate Prague but Eisenhower insisted that the Allied powers had agreed that the Soviets would take the city.
So, for four days, local Czech forces – poorly armed – battled against some crack German forces. On 9 May, the Soviet Army formally liberated the city but, for all practical purposes, the Czechs has done the job themselves. Over the four days of fighting, some 1,500 Czechs lost their lives, while around 700 Germans were killed. The headquarters of the uprising was in the Old Town Hall which was 80% destroyed by German shelling and our tour concluded in the tunnels under the remainer of the building.
Incidentally the military leader of the uprising was General Karel Kuttelwascher who was a distant relative of Vee’s father of the same name.