The immediate protection of Prague was provided by a fortress half-arc line consisting of 830 light fortification buildings. Even today, after almost 75 years, we can find bunkers in the vicinity of the capital that have survived the liquidation works from the occupation. Although the emphasis on the location and method of fortification of Czechoslovakia’s…
After the outbreak of the war, the anti-Russian political groups had no idea how to work and pinned all their hopes on the negotiating powers. At first it was also believed that the war would be short and the Russians would soon occupy the Czech lands. This idea was especially indulged in by K. Kramář,…
In order to understand the motivation behind Břetislav’s unusual behaviour, it is necessary to go back to the roots, so to speak. The future hero was the only son of the Bohemian prince Oldrich. There would be nothing strange or unusual about this, but the key point is that he was born as a son…
At the end of June 1419 an interesting confrontation took place in a heated atmosphere. The New Town Hussites, under the leadership of Nicholas of Hus and probably at the instigation of Jan Želivský, stopped their ruler right on a Prague street! These subjects of the king demanded a return to the conditions before the…
The Czech St.Wenceslas Crown, which was made by Charles IV, also contains power symbolism. It was dedicated to the patron saint of Bohemia, Saint Wenceslas, which added to its almost sacred character. It was used only on particularly important occasions, especially the coronation of new Czech kings. The first monarch crowned with this jewel in…
On 3 April 1678, a beggar woman, Marina Schuchová from Vernířovice, was caught in the church in Sobotín stealing a holy host, which was supposed to be given to a cow to feed it during a magic incantation so that it would give more milk. It was obvious that this was a crime of witchcraft….
It is November 11, 1918, about 5:30 in the morning. Field Marshal Ferdinand Foch, Generalissimo of the armistice troops, signs an armistice agreement with representatives of the German Empire in his private train. Thus ends the First World War. As the end of the war approached and the German ranks were slowly revolting, Ferdinand Foch…
It was the bloodiest war in American history, killing 210,000 soldiers and claiming a total of 625,000 lives, including civilians. The war killed 30% of all male residents of the South between the ages of 18 and 40. After the Battle of Gettysburg, the victors collected the discarded rifles and took them to Washington, D.C.,…
Maria Ivanovna Lagunova (born 1921) volunteered after the USSR invaded. She was accepted to the auto-tractor school in Chelyabinsk and served for the whole of 1942 with the airfield service battalion at one of the bases of the Volkhov Front, where as a tractor driver she landscaped the airfield and transported fuel and ammunition. Later…
The road to the standard French heavy tank was a complicated one. From the commissioning of the development to the entry into service took more than a decade. Several companies undertook the development during the 1920s, with Renault emerging as the winner, whose prototype was accepted into service in 1929 after modifications. In 1929, a…
In 1917, the Austro-Hungarian soldiers got their hands on an inconspicuous weapon, which fully characterised the unprecedented brutality of trench warfare, in which there was no place for chivalrous manners or flashy weapons. It fulfilled all the elements of mass consumption and its purposeful shape was underlined by its durable construction. The cheap materials used…
The motorized units of armoured grenadiers proved their worth in combat, and all of Western Europe was conquered by blitzkrieg tactics. Yet it remains true that the German armed forces were largely dependent on non-motorised means of transport, including bicycles In German propaganda weeklies we do see images of infantrymen riding on trucks, but the…
The first mass-produced and then deployed light machine gun was not built by a Briton, German or American, but by a Danish engineer and captain Vilhelm Herman Oluf Madsen (1844-1917) in 1890. The weapon was then purchased by 34 armies in 13 modifications with cartridges in calibers from 6.5 to 8 mm. The successful weapon…
Crime was a big problem for medieval Vikings – so much so, according to Dr Gardin Wills of the Centre for Scandinavian Studies in Aberdeen, that artists devised a special way of depicting the worst criminals. The historian has examined the earliest descriptions of Vikings in Icelandic literature and found that the authors very accurately…
Nicolae Ceausescu, leader of the Romanian Communist Party, used to tease his foreign colleagues by always taking his food with him. And he loved stewed chicken, but the whole thing, including beak, claw and other parts. Tito, the head of Yugoslavia at the time, avoided solid food on principle and sipped his vegetable juices through…
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