THE PRAGUE UPRISING
As peace broke out across Europe, the battle for the Czech capital was still raging
“IN THE CZECH CAPITAL, THE REBELS CLUNG ON TO THEIR LAST POSITIONS. AT 5.00AM ON 7 MAY, GERMAN ARMOURED VEHICLES BREACHED THE BARRICADES AND INFANTRY BROKE INTO THE TOWN HALL”
On 8 May 1945, America, Britain and most other European countries were happily celebrating VE Day. On the same day, Czech insurgents were fighting for their lives. Amid the heady rush of events at the war’s end, the Prague uprising usually receives scant attention – and unjustly so. It is a story full of unexpected twists and turns, where courage and heroism triumphed against all military odds.
The Czechs had suffered the longest period of occupation in Europe and yearned to be free of the Nazi yoke. The Germans had annexed the Sudetenland in October 1938, and occupied the remainder of the country in March 1939, setting up an independent, pro-fascist republic in Slovakia and forging the remnants into the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia. After the assassination of Hitler’s henchman SS General Reinhard Heydrich (the region’s brutal Protector) in Prague in the summer of 1942 the Germans butchered thousands of Czech citizens in reprisal. After the death of Hitler, the country’s underground movement made preparations for a revolt against Nazi rule. Its focal point would be the Czech capital.
The uprising began shortly after midday on 5 May with a fight for the Radio Building in the centre of Prague. Once the rebels were in control, at 12.33pm, an appeal for help went out, “Calling all Czechs! Calling all Czechs! Come to our aid immediately.” The leader of the revolt was 50-year-old General Karel Kutlvasr, a member of the Czech resistance, a brave and skilful soldier – and above all, a patriot. The Protectorate guard and city police joined him, capturing the nearby telephone exchange, railway station and main post office. The first German attacks were beaten off, with Kutlvasr directing the insurgents through the police communications system. By 4.00pm fighting had spread all over Prague, with thousands of civilians flinging up barricades to block the enemy’s progress.
Prague’s Wehrmacht garrison had initially retreated. But the rebels were short of weapons and there were wellequipped SS units all around the city. On the morning of 6 May the Germans counter-attacked in strength, bringing in tanks, artillery and air support. That afternoon, Kutlvasr and his fellow fighters were pushed back to their last defences. To hold on, they desperately needed support from one of the Allied armies converging on the Reich, for the city lay between advancing American and Russian forces.
On 6 May all eyes were on the Americans. General George Patton’s Third Army had advanced into Czechoslovakia from Austria, capturing Pilsen, and Patton now wanted to aid the rebels, pushing his reconnaissance units towards the
Czech capital. “Those patriots in the city need our help!” he exclaimed. “We have no time to lose.” But a demarcation line further west had already been agreed with the Russians and General Eisenhower forbade him to cross it. “I doubt the wisdom of this,” a frustrated Patton confided to his diary. Soviet Marshal Ivan Konev’s First Ukrainian Front, moving towards Prague from southern Germany, would be unable to reach the Czech capital for another three days.
On the evening of 6 May the British government received ULTRA decrypts (an Allied intelligence project which tapped into German military communications) of SS radio transmissions in Prague. “Our tactics of terror are working,” they stated with grim satisfaction, “and we will soon be in control of the city.” Winston Churchill now contacted General Eisenhower. “I am hoping that your plan does not inhibit you to advance to Prague,” the British Prime Minister implored, “if you have the troops and do not meet the Russians earlier.” However, Eisenhower refused to budge.
In the Czech capital, the rebels clung on to their last positions. At 5.00am on 7 May, German armoured vehicles breached the barricades and infantry broke into the town hall. The Wehrmacht traded blows with Czech fighters on the staircases and in the corridors, while the wounded, and terrified women and children, stayed huddled in the basement. The Luftwaffe joined the fray, its planes bombing and strafing remaining rebel positions. A column of 30 German tanks assembled outside the SS headquarters, ready to deliver the coup de grâce. The uprising was about to collapse.
But assistance came from a most unexpected quarter. The First Division of the Russian Liberation Army (an anticommunist force formed by renegade General Andrei Vlasov, recruited for the Wehrmacht in the autumn of 1944) fell out with the Germans, and – no longer obeying their instructions – marched south into Czechoslovakia. It then made contact with the Czech resistance. The First Division’s commander, General Sergei Bunyachenko sympathised with Prague’s plight and wanted to help the insurgents. Bunyachenko’s force was equipped with artillery and anti-tank weapons – and on the morning of 7 May, with the SS poised to crush the uprising, his soldiers dramatically entered the battle.
Bunyachenko sent one of his regiments to seize the airport, to stop the Luftwaffe bombing the city and to prevent more reinforcements reaching the SS. Two more blocked the approach roads to Prague, from the north and south. His remaining fighters joined the rebels on the barricades and fought for control of the city centre.
Sigismund Diczbalis was one of these soldiers. “Our men fought with desperate ferocity, street by street, house by house,” Diczbalis said. “I remember a platoon of Vlasov soldiers arriving at our barricade,” Antonin Sticha added. “They pushed straight past us and began attacking a nearby German stronghold.” Fighting for Prague’s airport was particularly bloody. Bunyachenko’s men clashed with the SS on the runways and brought up their artillery to fire on the German planes. By evening the airport was in the Russian Liberation Army’s hands. The Germans were driven out of the Old Town Square and the barricades reinforced. “Without the Vlasov forces we would not have held the city on 7 May,” Sticha emphasised. General Bunyachenko and his men had saved Prague.
But a day later, in a remarkable turnaround, the renegade Russian force was suddenly ordered to leave. On 7 May Radio Prague hailed them as heroes. On 8 May the procommunist Military Council, co-ordinating the uprising with General Kutlvasr, demanded they go. The council knew that the Red Army was rapidly approaching and they loathed the Vlasov forces. “In a matter of hours our euphoria – a belief that we were engaged in a historic and important struggle – changed to despondency,” said Sigismund Diczbalis. “At first General Bunyachenko, in the thick of the street fighting, simply did not believe it. But after a while it sank in, and he ordered our immediate withdrawal.”
As the Vlasov forces departed westwards, in an attempt to reach American lines, the Germans launched a powerful new offensive, “At about 11.00am on 8 May the SS attacked our area in force,” Antonin Sticha recalled. “We pulled back towards the town square once more. It was terrible – everything was ablaze. There was a ceaseless din of tank and artillery fire.”
German troops broke through into the Old Town Square, in even greater strength. They began shelling the last bastions of Czech resistance, the Old Town Hall and Radio Building. Soon the town hall was in flames and part of the structure collapsed. The Radio Building was hit by over 40 shells. The SS and the Wehrmacht began rounding up and shooting civilians. Women and children were herded in front of German armoured vehicles and used as human shields. More and more troops pushed past the barricades and converged on the city centre. They were closing in for the kill.
At 1.00pm Prague’s Military Council held another emergency meeting. The underground passages that ran from the town hall offered an escape route, but there was a mass of wounded in the building. Rather than abandon them, the defenders resolved to fight to the death. Small groups of insurgents, armed with bazookas, were sent out into the square to try to slow the advancing German tanks. Some were teenage boys. “The weapons were easy to use and very effective in city fighting,” Jan Svacina remembered. “They bought us precious time. I saw one 19 year old standing behind the corner of a house. He let a tank go right past him, then stepped out and blew it up with one bazooka shot.”
However, at 3.00pm the town hall was completely in flames and its roof had collapsed. Fighting was going on in the building and the square outside it. “We were living by the hour, by the minute,” Antonin Sticha said. “Only one thought was in our minds – to hold off the Germans.”
But at 4.15pm another little miracle occurred. General Rudolph Toussaint, the Wehrmacht commander in Prague, received reports of the rapid approach of the leading Soviet forces. Toussaint and his men had no wish to surrender to the Red Army. Instead, he decided to move westwards without further delay, in an attempt to reach the Americans. To bring this about, Toussaint opened negotiations with the insurgents. He offered to halt the fighting in return for safe passage out of the city. At 6.00pm an agreement was reached – and the leading column of German troops left Prague 15 minutes later. Against all odds, the Czech capital had survived.
The first Red Army units reached Prague at 6.00am on 9 May. Their main force arrived four hours later. The few diehard SS units holding out in the city were quickly dealt with. “We now knew that we were safe,” Antonin Sticha said. “At about 10.00am a column of Soviet tanks rumbled past us. I remember a Russian soldier, sitting atop one of the vehicles, machine gunning a German sniper position. To him, it was a simple reflex action.”
On 9 May 1945, Russian soldiers were welcomed as liberators. However, these celebrations were quite brief. Marshal Ivan Konev cut short the festivities so that his soldiers could push on and surround the remnants of Germany’s Army Group Centre.
Over the following years, Czechoslovakia would endure more suffering, with the crushing of the ‘Prague spring’ in 1968. But its brave uprising against Nazi oppression in May 1945 deserves to be remembered with respect.
“WOMEN AND CHILDREN WERE HERDED IN FRONT OF GERMAN ARMOURED VEHICLES AND USED AS HUMAN SHIELDS”