A Missed Opportunity? Czech Historiography of Modern War in the 21st Century

ABSTRACT

This article aims to summarize recent developments in Czech scholarship dedicated to the study of war and warfare. Over the past decade, numerous authors have expressed dismay at the state of the field, analyzing its situation with often harsh criticism. This article aims to offer a comprehensive fresh look at the state of research as it has developed over the past twenty years, to prove or disprove these judgments. Its conclusions are far from positive and it is obvious that military historiography — while dominating the popular study of history — is not the most progressive area in Czech historical scholarship. However, individual authors and some particular fields of research are closer to international and mainstream scholarly discourse than previously thought. While the field remains very much disjointed in its topical coverage of the past, being heavily dependent on individual authors and their preferences, some areas, in particular the First World War and the post-1945 period, perhaps even the patchy selection of works on the nineteenth-century Habsburg period, show some promise in terms of methodological innovation. Particularly strong is the “war and society” approach to military history, while the cultureal history of warfare is getting increasingly more attention in recent years as well. On the other hand, the inter-war period and the history of the Second World War remain firmly rooted in a neo-positivist discourse developed throughout the 1990s, producing descriptive biographies or histories of military institutions often attached to a strongly politicized/nationalized perspective on history. In particular, a scant international relevance and self-centered approach is the problem here, with analyses often all but ignoring the current state of research and methodology in a global perspective. As a result, it remains uncertain whether and when Czech military historiography will be able to overcome its conservative tendencies to integrate itself either into the international discourse on the history of warfare or into the academic study of history in general.

KEYWORDS:

• military history
• historiography
• Czech scholarship
• Czech history
• Habsburg history
• Czechoslovak history

Introduction

The purpose of this article is simple — to offer a concise overview of the historiography of war and warfare as it has been produced over the past two decades by scholars who either publish primarily in Czech and/or those with a Czech academic background. For the article to keep its informative value and remain manageable in terms of length, I focus on authors and texts dealing with modern history, understood here roughly as the period beginning with the culmination of the “military enlightenment” as represented in the institutional structures of the “fiscal-military state” of Joseph II, the Holy Roman Emperor from 1780 to 1790. This periodization makes sense in terms of subject matter as well, as the Czech military history of most of the eighteenth century is sorely underdeveloped in comparison to the centuries before or after, making that period a convenient splitting point.¹

Why just the past two decades of scholarship? Besides the mundanely practical considerations of limited space, a thorough survey already exists for the period before 2002. Written by Ivan Šedivý and originally published in the flagship Czech scholarly journal in history, the Český časopis historický, it offers a detailed “overview of Czech military historiography in the period since 1989”.² The text represents both an opportune starting point, as well as a point of reference and I am glad to refer the reader to it for an insight into scholarship developments of the 1990s.

Šedivý’s key conclusion on the “state of the field” was one of mild optimism. He has identified a tendency of Czech post-communist military history to go and try “to fill blank spaces”, while slowly losing methodological touch with both military history abroad — as represented primarily by the already established trends of “new military history” — and the historiographic mainstream at home. The latter seems, with hindsight, to be the biggest issue here, as while all Czech historiography spent the 1990s shedding the confines of the rigid interpretation of Marxism as applied to history by the pre-1989 official scholarship, the historiography of military affairs lagged considerably when it came to “closing the gap” to global methodological developments compared to other sub-fields after 1990.

Admittedly, especially in modern history (the post-1945 period of military history being the glaring example), there were whole segments that, before 1989, remained untouched by serious scholarly work, while other themes suffered from being seen almost exclusively through an ideological lens. In this context, especially the twentieth century military history proved to be, perhaps not surprisingly, a highly politicized topic. As a result, during the first decade of academic freedom, many authors were having a first “proper go” at these new fields of research, often being content with “finding out the truth” and remaining methodologically conservative in the process. On top of this, the Revolution of 1989 brought ideological tendencies of its own, establishing a pattern that would remain strong in the decades to come, one which rooted its perspective on military history in the admiration of the latest non-totalitarian periods of Czech history. This often meant stepping in the shoes of the political and nationalist discourse of the interwar Czechoslovak “First Republic”, adopting a heroizing perspective of its exceptionalism, especially when it came to those themes that were marginalized before 1989 (such as the Czechoslovak Legion of 1914–1918, or the exile armies in the West from 1939 to 1945).

However, even Šedivý concluded that hope was to be found in the “methodological and topical innovation” of the youngest generation of historians, in particular those studying the Early Modern era. In his eyes, this was a sure sign that even such a conservative field would follow the path toward methodological innovation apparent in mainstream Czech historiography around the turn of the century.³

Most reflections on the state of the field written ever since were, however, much more critical. The majority of the authors used language of despair and hopelessness, seeing Czech scholarly work in the field of military history as sealed off from the greater community of academic history, in a “methodological and conceptual ghetto”⁴, where the study of war and warfare is seen as “a mere appendix to the study of political history, with positivist biographies of great military men, descriptions focusing on the issue of arms and equipment, and overviews of organizational structures dominating a field”⁵ that is generally “unable to offer competent answers to theoretically driven research questions” or “reflect contemporary methodological and theoretical standards in the field of history or humanities and social sciences in general”⁶, “sailing towards the edge of permanent irrelevance as far as a scholarly study of history goes”⁷ According to Šedivý´s own damning and somewhat disillusioned final judgment written in 2014, the “Czech historiography of war has missed the opportunity it had been offered”, drowning itself in “trivial methodologies” with no “real effort to ask true research questions”.⁸

In this article, I would like to revisit this self-flagellation of Czech military history and ask whether it is deserved. The term “military history” and/or “military historiography” is used here in its broader meaning, reflecting developments in the field during the past several decades. It is not limited to the traditional study of operational history, strategy, tactics, or military technology. Rather, it tries to follow the pattern of new military history, a trend that over the past five decades aimed to study war and warfare as a complex historical phenomenon that is connected to human historical experience on an individual, social, and – ultimately, in its most recent iteration, cultural level.⁹

Therefore, the literature covered here deals not just with military institutions in both peace and war, but also with topics that connect to the manifold consequences their existence and activities had for society at large, whether there was an armed conflict or not. This article cannot offer a complete bibliography and references primarily those books and articles that best characterize a given strain of scholarship in a given period.

The “Long Nineteenth Century”

Czech scholarly works in military history of the nineteenth century lack a systematic reflection of the position of the Bohemian Lands in the military system of the Habsburg monarchy, or of the role the military and its activities played in the lives of the local population. Overall, the selection of themes covered is dependent on a few individual authors and their interests, which seem to coalesce around two main topical areas: the Revolutionary and Napoleonic periods and the Austro-Prussian War of 1866. The former, however, is dominated by popular histories ranging from standard operational history mixed with geopolitics and diplomacy to poorly researched “battleology”.¹⁰ While it is easy to disregard these texts because of their lack of any methodology and often extremely selective approach to history, their popularity helps to define what military history is in the eyes of the general public and, to a certain extent, of mainstream academic historians as well. In a sense, such texts form the public image of the field, and their power of representation makes them important far beyond their actual scholarly qualities. This is true for all the periods that follow as well.

Symptomatically, the coverage of the French Wars is conspicuously missing from all the recent collections summarizing the social experience of modern warfare.¹¹ The only exception is the valuable insight into the military recruitment of the period offered by a couple of recent case studies¹² and a data-based quantitative essay by Ondřej Král that shows how much the Habsburg regimental system had become territorialized across the nineteenth century.¹³ These texts, methodologically following the pattern of “war and society” studies, are strong in offering insight into how war and military institutions interacted with local populations.

A similar pattern of more or less ignoring the Napoleonic period is apparent in the field of fortification history.¹⁴ Commendably, a series of interesting works mixing the history of fortresses with economic, social, and even hints of cultural history has emerged over the past decade, offering insight into why and how fortresses were built and rebuilt over the century. Jiří Hofman‘s book on the building process of Theresienstadt/Terezín shows clearly the high-level organizational, bureaucratic, economic, and social efforts required to complete the task,¹⁵ while Michael Viktořík leaves the traditional technologically determinist approach to fortifications completely behind in his social history of the fortress of Olmütz/Olomouc.¹⁶

Social histories covering a thin patchwork of themes are another characteristic of Czech scholarly interest in the nineteenth-century military. These revolve either around the social history of the Habsburg officer corps,¹⁷ focus on the everyday life of the rank-and-file troops, often with an overt emphasis on material conditions of service,¹⁸ or try to fill the shoes of the “army and society” approach by adding reflections on cultural representations of war in Czech society into the mix.¹⁹ The social consequences of war are the focus of several essays about Moravian towns and villages during the War of 1866.²⁰ On the other hand, the wider socio-economic context gets only cursory attention in a descriptive, but otherwise solid history of Habsburg military communications by Vojtěch Szajkó.²¹

The war between Austria and Prussia in 1866 is another focus point of the Czech military historiography of the nineteenth century. In fact, the topic brought us one of the few “grand syntheses” produced over the past twenty years — the massive book by Pavel Bělina and Josef Fučík on “the War of 1866”, written in the best tradition of operational history, with only a slight and rather intuitive addition of a final chapter dedicated to “rituals and psychologies” of everyday war experience.²² The operational history of smaller engagements dominates other writings,²³ although a recent collection of essays shows that topics such as social experience, memory, or cultural representations are being slowly picked up even by Czech historians.²⁴ Only some of these works, however, do overcome positivist description with a more contextual cultural and social analysis.²⁵ The war of 1866 is, at least in the context of Czech military historiography, actually rich in authors focusing on memory in the form of war memorials and monuments,²⁶ while research by Matouš Holas brings in the interesting perspective offered by battlefield archaeology to the fray.²⁷

The history of the “nineteenth century” also has to offer Petr Wohlmuth´s methodologically inspired history of the Crimean War. Drawing upon anthropological approach to portray the conflict as a clash of military cultures at the turn of modernity, it shows how profoundly did the culture of war influence the practice on the ground, including the realities of combat itself.²⁸ This work belongs to the few works by Czech military historians dealing with topics outside of Central Europe.²⁹

Czech military history of the “long nineteenth century” represents a rather typical reflection of the whole. It lacks any coherent narrative and is patchy in chronological coverage, with most texts focused on the period between 1850 and 1900. It is even more patchy in terms of approach to the subject matter. While descriptive operational and organizational histories used to prevail, the recent decade or so has certainly brought innovation in terms of emphasis on social or even cultural history, still mostly in the form of case studies. On the other hand, greater contextual problems and processes connected to nineteenth-century warfare tend to be overlooked, with issues such as the emergence of mass armies and military participation in the increasingly liberal and nationalized modern societies remaining mostly untouched.

The First World War

Thanks to the nature of warfare between 1914 and 1918, one might expect that social history driven by new military history optics would see a significant expansion. Sadly, regarding both Czech historiography and the Bohemian Lands as one of the “home fronts” of the Habsburg Empire, recent scholarship is left wanting, especially in comparison with the current state of research globally. In that context, the study of the home front of 1914–1918 is quite representative of the study of other “home fronts” in Czech historiography in general and can be used well as a good example.

Of course, Ivan Šedivý´s book on the Czechs and the “Czech Lands” during the Great War remains a seminal work, if hardly definitive, as it is rather conservative in its methodology as well as in its national optics.³⁰ It is still immensely valuable, though, as it has refuted the traditional image of Czech “national resistance”. For any update of this perspective, Czech historiography remains dependent on historians from abroad³¹ and currently does not offer the methodological equivalent of, for example, Gabriela Dudeková Kováčová´s work on Slovakia in wartime.³²

What results is a large knowledge gap that is only slowly being filled by thematic and local case studies. This trend led to a series of inspired texts often focusing on specific social groups such as children,³³ workers,³⁴ or the public and expert discourses of violence.³⁵ Sadly, the important issue of civil-military relations remains largely ignored, with the majority of works that reflect the effects of war focusing instead on material deprivation undermining the loyalty of the citizens.³⁶ Of particular interest is urban space, but research here is not systematic and lacks focus. In a typical manner, the two essays in a collection on Central European cities at war that deal with the Bohemian Lands only study administrative structures and identities of urban populations post-war.³⁷ The best analysis of urban community at war therefore remains Claire Morelon’s as yet unpublished dissertation thesis on Prague, showing war as an economic, social, and cultural event performed in urban space.³⁸ Research into smaller towns and rural areas is mostly stuck with simplistic imagery of political conflict of local nationalist elites played against the background of a crumbling war economy or left out of the picture altogether. The only exception is Jakub Beneš´s socio-historical work on the “Green Cadres” of deserter guerillas in Moravia as a reflection of rural anti-system attitudes.³⁹

The 1990s have inspired a wave of interest in Alltagsgeschichte into the Czech historiography of the First World War, and it has continued to build upon its promise over the past two decades, often relying on soldiers’ personal accounts. This has brought us two collections of essays, with one focusing on individual reflections of war experience,⁴⁰ and the other contextualizing several accounts into an analysis of local war memory.⁴¹ Several authors also employed a systematic analysis of personal accounts to follow patterns based on specific methodology. Be it Alltagsgeschichte itself⁴² or gender analysis of masculine identities and their value for understanding soldiers’ motivation,⁴³ these have brought some methodological inspiration into the field. The ever-present legacy of the war has also brought several authors to the study of war monuments, mostly in a form that rarely goes beyond a catalog for a given region.⁴⁴

What is common to most of these works, is that they try hard to eschew the dire straits of descriptive positivism exemplified by the renewed popularity of regimental histories or biographies of individual servicemen.⁴⁵ But even they are not able to ignore the one key issue that more or less defines the Czech historians‘debate about the First World War – loyalty. This “elephant in the room” is so persistent that, according to some authors, it metamorphosed into a “perennial debate on the Czech soldier of the Great War”.⁴⁶ This debate has, in the works of authors such as Josef Fučík or Jindřich Marek, taken on a form of bizarre rhetorical battles between staunch defenders of the Czech soldiers‘ military qualities and their critics who see their service in the Habsburg army redeemed only through the activities of the Czechoslovak Legion.⁴⁷ As most of these debates tend to revert to the same nationalist stereotypes and anti-Habsburg sentiments typical of these discussions ever since the early 1920s, sober-minded, well-researched analyses of Czech soldiers‘ loyalty and motivation in the face of an ever-powerful nationalist movement remain rare.⁴⁸ Any effort to employ methods that may add to this debate and perhaps help it to move forward, such as those of military psychology, sociology, or cultural history, is practically non-existent.⁴⁹

The 1990s, with their quest to “fill the blank spaces” left out by the communist historiography, brought renewed interest in the history of the Czechoslovak Legion. Ever since, however, its scholarship seems to be stuck in place, consisting mostly of texts rarely venturing beyond a mere description of key events of “everyday experience”. Intuitive Alltagsgeschichte or positivist, often heroizing biographies written from the Czech national perspective, prevail.⁵⁰ Older texts such as those by Jan Galandauer therefore remain the more inspiring take on the Legion‘s history and, in particular, on its place in national memory.⁵¹

The Czech military history of the First World War remains patchy in terms of recent methodological trends, especially if we discount the works dealing with the home front. In some areas, it is almost as if most Czech military historians existed in a bubble, which is even more obvious if we look at the work being done by other historians on the history of the Bohemian Lands. As a result, most debates miss out on transnational perspectives, questions of self-identification and national indifference, or issues of coercion and consent, which — as seen in the few exceptional works mentioned above — actually may help to unstuck local scholarship from its interpretative and methodological limbo. The few exceptions mentioned are mostly inspired by new military history or by approaches borrowed from cultural and social history. Their promising results show that civilian and military spheres are indeed parts of one continuum of total war experience, not separate universes.

The Interwar Period

Reflecting the tendency of today’s historiography to question the temporal boundaries of the First World War, the recent Czech military history of the interwar years has begun to show interest in the long shadow cast by the world conflagration, often in connection with international (and transnational) scholarship. This happens on several levels, the first being increased interest in the erstwhile forgotten “continuation conflicts” of 1918–1919. There are some popular histories dedicated to these struggles⁵² and authors offering interesting insight into the social background of the volunteer forces⁵³ or into the process of forming collective memories among the veterans.⁵⁴ Interwar veterans’ movements also came into focus, both those of former members of the Czechoslovak Legion, as well as of those who served in the Habsburg army during the war. Their organizations, attitudes, memory-making efforts, as well as social identities, became the subject of several essays.⁵⁵ As veterans’ affairs were at the crux of Czechoslovak state identity, they were also closely tied to its welfare policies,⁵⁶ while the specific position of the Czechoslovak Legion in the republic‘s political system and politics of memory has traditionally attracted the attention of historians as well.⁵⁷ However, this promising research into the social and political consequences of the Great War reaching out far out into the interwar period consists mostly of shorter texts and there is yet to be a synthesis of these phenomena.

The lack of a systematic approach, partially a consequence of large knowledge gaps, in fact, characterizes the state of the field regarding the military institutions, military practices, and military ideologies of interwar Czechoslovakia as a whole. Compared to the relative interpretative “richness” of the veterans’ studies, this particular area suffers from a one-dimensional, largely positivist approach focused on military institutions and organizations, with a sprinkling of technological determinism. As a result, most topics that may shed light on the inner workings or structures of the Czechoslovak military, the wider societal and cultural context of its existence notwithstanding, remain untouched, and important questions unanswered, as they are often not even asked. For example, the all-important issue of nationalism and minority policies in the army, while covered in an excellent book by Martin Zückert, is mostly ignored by Czech historians, and when it is not, they rarely offer a glimpse of any perspective that would aspire to transnationality.⁵⁸ Similarly, we lack even basic operational history and strategic analyses, as well as a look at how the population in a self-described democratic and peaceful state reflected upon the ongoing burden of military service in the name of a more or less Czech national project.⁵⁹

The only recent effort to synthesize the state of knowledge of the period consists mostly of brief biographies and a disjointed mosaic of descriptive texts focusing on specific military institutions and their bureaucratic activities.⁶⁰ Despite its title, there is little to no social or even political context, as if the army has existed in a bubble, separated from the rest of the society whose history is reduced to a singularly Czech perspective.

Similarly, the rest of the production can be summed up through a list of partial, disjointed themes, each studied in extreme detail but with minimal contextualization or even without meaning beyond the “facts” mined from the archives. Not surprisingly, biographies and studies of military hardware, sometimes contextualized into economic history, dominate. In the early 1920s, this approach offered some insight into the forming of the Czechoslovak military and its doctrine under the auspices of French staff officers.⁶¹ For the subsequent period, there is a long list of biographies, often offering a positive or negative picture depending on the subject’s attitude during the Nazi occupation. As many texts are ideologically rooted in the Czech national narrative, they often subconsciously reflect the discourse of heroism in national history.⁶² There is also a long list of histories of weapons systems⁶³ and even a longer list of works focusing on economic policies and the armaments industry.⁶⁴ Many of these texts further build upon the theme of Czechoslovak exceptionalism, seen here through a specific lens of technological superiority, i.e., applying a reverse variation of technological determinism to its subject.

National, often heroic narratives, are strongly represented in the works on the crises and mobilizations of 1938, as well as the Wehrmacht build-up leading up to the Munich Agreement of that year. Even though most authors operate under the guise of self-proclaimed radical positivism, offering what they believe are “objectivized facts”, they remain firmly stuck in the never-ending “debate on Munich”, i.e., whether or not Czechoslovakia should have defended itself.⁶⁵ This debate practically dominates both the popular and scholarly literature on Czechoslovak border fortifications, otherwise firmly rooted in technological determinism.⁶⁶ In the end, the only overlap with questions and issues of mainstream historiography, such as ethnic policies, national identities, or class conflict, is to be found in the few articles on the International Brigades during the Spanish Civil War.⁶⁷

Overall, the Czech military historiography of the interwar period, with the exception of the immediate post-WWI era, is mostly devoid of contextualization into larger themes. Methodological outreach into international scholarship is almost completely missing. The current situation in the field does not offer any complex pictures of historical realities, with many areas and themes left out and the research field remaining mostly disjointed. The lack of focus on important problems, or even of clear statement of what these problems are, further exacerbates the issue and research therefore gravitates towards extreme positivism. The fragmented nature of research makes some areas better researched than others, with national narratives of the First Republic’s exceptionalism, as well as heroic discourses strongly influencing output.

The Second World War

With the Second World War always being the pivot of popular histories, both Czech-written and translations, Czech scholarly interest has a field wide open when it comes to potential readership. In the end, however, it is not so strong in terms of quantity, mostly split between two major foci, both of them firmly rooted in the Czech national narrative of twentieth-century history. First, there are the military operations conducted in the region of the former Bohemian Lands; second, there is the military resistance and its operations both at home and abroad.⁶⁸

If we look at ground operations, straightforward, detail-heavy operational histories of the liberation campaigns dominate, with emphasis on the Czechoslovak troops under Red Army command fighting their way through the Carpathians in 1944⁶⁹ and the minutiae of the April–May offensive of 1945 leading to the destruction of German forces in Bohemia and Moravia .⁷⁰ Some of these texts are trying to address an ongoing debate on the politics of the Prague Uprising of May 1945, the German flight westward, and the final Soviet offensive, mostly in a critical turn against the narrative pushed by the official historiography pre-1989, which had showed the Red Army as the sole key actor in the process of liberation.⁷¹ The Prague Uprising itself remains one of the single most covered operations in Czech historiography, the existing literature ranging from detailed analysis of individual engagements⁷² to a complex “big picture” narrative.⁷³

In terms of sheer quantity, the section of historiography focusing on the air war stands out, and while most of it is methodologically conservative, it is often well contextualized into international scholarship. Thus, Martin Veselý has covered both the subject of air defense measures in the Sudetenland⁷⁴, as well as the Allied air and bombing campaigns,⁷⁵ while several other authors focused their attention on selected air raids.⁷⁶ A very specific – and admirably extensive – segment of Czech historiography of the air war is represented by the work of Jiří Rajlich. His books combine detailed, almost diary-like stories of individuals and groups with the viewpoints of the higher command. While these texts can easily be criticized for their conservative methodology and unproblematic approach to history, they are indispensable to any future research into the Czechoslovak exile air forces⁷⁷ or the Slovak Air Force fighting alongside the Luftwaffe on the Eastern Front.⁷⁸

The past twenty years also brought a mostly descriptive insight into the history of the occupation and its military context, both in terms of the history of the German occupation forces,⁷⁹ the military collaboration with Nazi rule,⁸⁰ or case studies of abrupt changes at the home front due to the wartime industrial build-up.⁸¹ A specific section of historiography is dedicated to the “military resistance” at home. While often contextualized into the military operations directed by the exile government – the most famous being the assassination of Reinhard Heydrich in May 1942 – many of these texts suffer from the tendency to describe the most minute details possible at the expense of analysis.⁸²

In terms of conceptualization and analysis, the situation is better in the area dedicated to the military resistance abroad, i.e., the exile armies both East and West. While this segment still gets its fair share of detailed collective and individual biographies,⁸³ but several important issues are being addressed as well, from the assimilation and identity of Czechoslovak immigrants serving in the U.S. military⁸⁴, to the social, national, and political composition of the Czechoslovak army in exile. The latter reveals a picture that is more complicated than a simple story of a “national resistance army” would paint.⁸⁵ Zdenko Maršálek and Jiří Neminář also did some important work on the Czechoslovak citizens forcibly mobilized into the Wehrmacht during the war.⁸⁶

Less analytically successful is the effort by Alena Flimelová and Roman Štér to offer a gender perspective on the issue by focusing on women serving with the Czechoslovak units on the Eastern Front,⁸⁷ while Ladislav Kudrna tried, in a more intuitive than studied way, to draw methodological inspiration from micro-history, psychohistory and the history of mentalities, delivering insightful, but ultimately descriptive narratives of everyday experience and motivational structures of Czechoslovak airmen in the RAF.⁸⁸ His works are rather typical of the issues that plague the large majority of Czech military historiography, which hardly ever communicates with existing international scholarship. While this is less of an issue in positivist works, the problem becomes blatantly obvious when authors actually go for at least some level of analysis.

Not all is lost on the front of theoretical inspiration, though. Thus, Pavel Mücke’s work brought us a conceptualization of the Czech servicemen’s war experience into memory studies, focusing on “places of memory” as reflected in memoirs of former Czechoslovak soldiers in exile.⁸⁹ While arguably falling a bit short of target in terms of analysis, it is difficult to argue against his point that methodological frameworks borrowed from broader historiography are the only way to overcome the limits of historiography that is stuck in a loop of themes viewed through a prism of “objective facts” or judged against a national perspective on history.⁹⁰

It is precisely the latter tendency that defines Czech military history of the Second World War the most. Along with the strong drive to conceptualize history as a collection of individual biographies, it often results in a heroic discourse of liberal nationalism.⁹¹ Here, history is Czech and democratic/anti-totalitarian, and its actors are often subconsciously divided into “ours” and “the other”. Therefore, history stops being just “facts” and becomes a didactic tool “dedicated to the memory of all Czechoslovak soldiers”,⁹² telling stories of “legendary resistance groups”⁹³, and analyzing “patriotism” of individual actors⁹⁴ who “were a true inspiration to us all in … their patriotic, noble humanity”.⁹⁵ Many authors seem to have lost their ability to keep an epistemological distance from their subject matter, with many texts becoming emotionally charged towards the support of the Czech national “cause”.

In fact, it almost seems as if this liberal-national discourse has replaced methodology, helping some authors to give meaning to their otherwise positivist reading of history. As written by one of these scholars, the “twentieth century history of our army still shows tens, perhaps hundreds of blank spots. Included among them are yet unwritten personal histories of the people who contributed immensely and admirably to the restoration of our liberty and the return of democracy. The names of hundreds of these patriots remain forgotten” and it is the task of historians to bring them to light.⁹⁶ As a result of this thinking, perhaps still in a belated effort to remedy the topical lopsidedness of the pre-1989 era, Czech military historiography of the Second World War reflects national narratives and heroic discourses more than scholarship on any other period.

The post-1945 world

Based on what has been said so far, we may well argue that the bleak picture painted by many regarding the state of affairs in Czech military historiography is not so far off the mark. Little methodological connection to mainstream historical profession, a patchy reflection of international trends, and a Czech national perspective define a field that only rarely leaves its own bubble. The period beginning with 1945 brings light into the picture to a certain extent, as it has experienced the biggest leap forward over the past twenty years in terms of quantity and often analytical quality as well. While it may have helped that, thanks to pre-1989 scholarly politics, this sub-field was barely touched even throughout the 1990s, the developments here are still impressive and offer a certain optimism even in terms of the methodology applied.

As usual, topics on the history of Czechoslovakia dominate the field, with a large majority of the texts dedicated to the study of military institutions. Research is again often disjointed and split along the lines of individual authors and their interests. The early years of the immediate post-war period are covered quite extensively, although most of the work is highly descriptive and can be easily defined by paraphrasing Clausewitz´s famous dictum, as if “the army was a continuation of politics by other means”. This logic is palpable — somewhat understandably, given the subject matter — in large syntheses on the history of the Czechoslovak military,⁹⁷ collections of essays,⁹⁸ as well as in often extremely descriptive histories — actually bordering on mere documenting – of the political conflict in the army⁹⁹ or studies on “military exile” after 1948.¹⁰⁰

These largely positivist efforts to “fill the blank spaces” carry over into institutional histories of the Czechoslovak People´s Army (1948-1989) as well. Still, there is a lack of studies offering a larger picture (with one exception focused on the 1950s period),¹⁰¹ with emphasis being put instead on the minutiae of institutional structures and attendant policies interpreted as projections of the Eastern Bloc position in the Cold War.¹⁰² One of the key themes that reverberate in the literature is the question of whether and how the Czechoslovak army planned its role in the potential open (nuclear) conflict with the West, i.e., what were the plans, actor agencies, and various political pressures.¹⁰³ The process of “normalizing” the military, especially in terms of personnel purges and structural changes in the post-Soviet invasion period past 1968 has also been covered, ¹⁰⁴ as were the developments of military education across the whole period, with particular emphasis on political and ideological pressures.¹⁰⁵ Economic policies supporting the communist government’s military-industrial complex were described in detail by Jaroslav Láník in the 1950s and by Prokop Tomek in the 1980s.¹⁰⁶ The latter had also shed light on the largely passive role of the army in the 1989 Velvet Revolution,¹⁰⁷ while Jiří Bílek did some valuable work on the history of the penal “auxiliary technical battalions”.¹⁰⁸ What amounted to “military diplomacy” of socialist Czechoslovakia, i.e., the communist government’s use of military exports and expertise to further its own and Eastern Bloc’s interests, was also subject of detailed research covering regions such as the Middle East and countries such as Nigeria, Congo, or Cuba.¹⁰⁹

While the institutional history of the period is undoubtedly necessary to find our bearings on the very framework of the military under a series of regimes, its outlook on history is necessarily limited, especially if we consider the lack of contextualization into the wider scholarship of either the Cold War or Czechoslovak politics and society in most of these texts. However, this unfortunate trend is disrupted on several counts, which makes the study of the post-1945 highly interesting even from the analytical point of view. Besides minor ventures into Cold War political and cultural propaganda, such as the official discourse of the Ukrainian nationalist movement and its military operations post-1945,¹¹⁰ or propaganda campaigns in the army in the 1960s in relation to the “allied” Polish and East German militaries,¹¹¹ the most promising approach is what one may call an “army and society” approach to the history of the Czechoslovak People’s Army. As already hinted at by the works by Jiří Bílek or Prokop Tomek mentioned above, it offers us a glimpse of what can be done if Czech military history opened itself at least a bit to inspiration coming from outside of its bubble and stopped looking at military institutions as more or less separate from anything but politics and perhaps the economy.

Thus, Jiří Hlaváček has offered insight into the history of the People’s Army through the eyes of its officer corps, using oral history methods as a way to write a socio-cultural analysis of the profession.¹¹² The same author edited an important collection of essays focusing on the complex phenomena of conscription and compulsory military service from a normative perspective, as an everyday experience, or viewed through the lens of gender, mentalities, as well as historical anthropology.¹¹³ The social context of military service, emphasizing its oppressive and increasingly demoralizing nature, was also given extensive treatment by authors focusing on conscientious objectors and their persecution,¹¹⁴ as well as on such “socially undesirable” phenomena as violence, corruption, and bullying in the army that led to a decline in morale throughout the 1970s and 1980s.¹¹⁵

The social context, albeit in a less analytical, more descriptive way, is emphasized in the works that focus on the Warsaw Pact invasion of 1968 and subsequent occupation by the Soviet army.¹¹⁶ Besides detailed studies of how individual units experienced the invasion itself,¹¹⁷ the “army and society” approach is apparent in the works that focus on the pre-invasion politics of the officer corps¹¹⁸, as well as on how Czechoslovak society lived through the everyday experience of the twenty-year military occupation, ranging from the government collaboration to co-existence with the Soviet garrisons on a local level up to the evacuation of Soviet troops in 1991.¹¹⁹ There are also several books cataloguing Czechoslovak civilian casualties of both the hot August days of 1968 and the subsequent two decades.¹²⁰ While valuable and insightful, these texts rarely go beyond a description of events based on thorough research, which limits their potential impact to collections of “facts”.

Similar treatment has been so far given to the activities of the Czechoslovak and Czech military during the 1990s. The First Gulf War and various peacekeeping missions are mostly presented without any conceptual framework, as simple narratives built on the individual actors’ personal accounts supplemented by official records,¹²¹ which often leaves us with texts authored by current or former military officers trying to analyze the period from their perspective. While of potential interest as a source, these works do not qualify as scholarly works in contemporary history.¹²² On the other hand, texts covering the era between 1990 and today are rich in post-Cold War and security studies successfully contextualized into global research, but these are at best peripheral to any (non-existent) historical research.¹²³

Overall, the Czech historiography of war and warfare covering the latter part of the twentieth century shows many traits already stated. It largely ignores any other scholarship beyond the history of politics; it rarely reaches out to search international context or inspiration; and it lacks unifying narratives or conceptualizations that would go beyond implicit criticism of communist rule and its consequences. On the other hand, especially compared to scholarship on the Second World War, the majority of the research is almost de-individualized and the tendency to produce heroic images through biographies is suppressed. There are still some group biographies of authors such as Jiří Plachý¹²⁴ or Ladislav Kudrna¹²⁵ that carry this torch over, but they are mostly exceptions to the rule. In particular, the social history of military institutions is where Czech military historiography of this period is strongest and has shown rapid progress over the past decade or so. While its “army and society” approach is still mostly descriptive, based on official, normative, or personal accounts, it offers a strong promise into the future that Czech scholars will finally stop seeing war and the military as categories separate from the rest of historical experience by an invisible wall of barbed wire.

Conclusion

What is then the current state of the field in Czech military historiography of the modern era? While I do not share the pessimism of some of the harsher critics mentioned above, my conclusions cannot be too optimistic. It seems as if nothing much has changed over the past two decades and the modest hopes expressed by Ivan Šedivý remain mostly unfulfilled. Academic military history is still much dependent on a few individual authors, which results in a patchy and non-systematic coverage of history. Some periods and sub-periods are given more attention than others, with methodology and approach massively differing across periods. Thus, while the study of the First World War and the post-1945 era offers interesting methodological frameworks and reaches out to mainstream historiography as well as to international scholarship, research on the interwar period and the Second World War mostly leaves much to be desired.

Here, it remains, somewhat surprisingly, almost as fragmented as the patchy study of nineteenth-century warfare, which is at least able to offer more internationally relevant texts that stand in connection to historiography in general. The situation makes it nigh impossible for Czech historians to synthesize a “Czech view” of military history as a whole. It is obvious if one looks at the last effort to offer a “socio-historical” perspective on “war and army in Czech history” in a synthesis that ends up full of gaps and heavy on speculation because of the sheer lack of primary insight into many topics that are just not being studied. Consequently, the authors’ hypothesis of “low levels of militarization” of “Czech culture” does not and perhaps cannot stand, simply because it lacks essential groundwork in many areas.¹²⁶

In terms of approach to history as a subject and profession, Czech military historiography is built – similarly to military historiography everywhere – on a baseplate of popular histories of war. Certain periods of history such as the Napoleonic era or the Second World War, or topics such as the Czechoslovak fortifications of the late 1930s, are dominated by this production and academic historiography must contend with the fact. This production defines what “military history” means in the eyes of both the general public and other scholars. The resulting disregard or even contempt for military topics in academia only pushes younger scholars out of the field and seems to be breaking any potential connection between military historiography and the wider profession.

It does not help that, as shown above, there is a dire scarcity of traditional operational histories. Instead, scholarship offers mostly descriptive, detailed histories of military institutions or organizations mixed with biographies often structured around political history and a national (Czech) perspective. Sometimes it seems as if the field was still stuck in the mindset of the 1990s mentioned above, piling on “facts” whose subtextual meaning supports the liberal-national point of view. Only in the recent decade, one may identify a slowly increasing willingness of some authors to draw inspiration from the concepts and methods of “new military history”, mostly in the form of “army and society” optics where war and the military are seen as indivisible from larger social structures, both in peacetime and in wartime. Some of these works even connect to international research. However, the field as a whole rarely aspires to this sort of contextualization, focusing on the reproduction of “facts” instead. In this context, it has to be concluded that large segments of research are simply internationally irrelevant.

Over the past few years, the trends of reflecting on the traditions of new military history (itself an old moniker of fifty years) led some authors to cross into even more contemporary methodological waters, specifically into the field of the “cultural study of war” as present in military historiography ever since the early 1990s. While still nascent in Czech scholarship, this trend offers the biggest hope that Czech military historiography is not stagnating but is slowly moving to incorporate recent, up-to-date methodology into its own optics. The unwillingness to reflect it — be it true Alltagsgeschichte, themes such as violence, ideologies (nationalism, religion), categories such as mentality, identity, gender, violence, sexuality or the body, or cultural representations, state propaganda, soldier motivations or general societal context of warfare — remains the Achilles’ heel of most of the scholarship. If and when it will be able to overcome it, it will be possible to finally acknowledge that it has left the dreaded “methodological and conceptual ghetto” for good. So far, it must be said that it is still stuck in the doorway with at least a leg and an arm.

Acknowledgments

This work was supported by the Czech Science Foundation (GAČR) under the Grant “Urban Community at War: Olomouc/Olmütz as a Case Study of the First World War Home Front, 1914-1919“, reg. no. 22-01907S. The author wishes to express gratitude to my friends and colleagues, in particular Vítězslav Prchal, Tomáš Kykal, Josef Šrámek and Michael Viktořík, whose valuable insight and critical eye have substantially contributed to the qualities of this text. My gratitude belongs also to this journal‘s anonymous reviewers for their poignant and inspiring suggestions.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Czech Science Foundation (GAČR) [22-01907S].

Notes on contributors

Jiří Hutečka

Jiří Hutečka, Ph.D., is Associate Professor at the Philosophical Faculty, University of Hradec Králové, Czech Republic. He specializes in the social and cultural history of modern war and warfare, with emphasis on the First World War. His most recent book, Men under Fire (Berghahn 2020), combined military and gender history.

Notes

¹ Vítězslav Prchal, Společenstvo hrdinů. Válka a reprezentační strategie českomoravské aristokracie 1550-1750 (Prague: NLN 2015) p. 67.

² Ivan Šedivý, ‘Česká historiografie vojenství 1989-2002. Témata, metody, osobnosti, problémy, kontexty‘, Český časopis historický 100(4) (2002) pp. 868–901. Quote from p. 868 (also translated into English as Ivan Šedivý, ´Czech Military Historiography 1989-2022. Themes, Methods, People, Problems, Contexts´, Historie a vojenství 51(Special Issue) (2002) pp. 199–246.

³ Šedivý, ibid., p. 900.

⁴ Josef Šrámek, Vojtěch Kessler, Tváře války. Velká válka 1914-1918 očima českých účastníků (Prague: Historický ústav 2020) p. 14; see also Josef Šrámek, ‘Muži proti ohni‘ [book review], Časopis matice moravské 137(1) (2018) p. 220.

⁵ Michael Viktořík, ‘Emanuel Zitta. Pohled na kariéru a dílo důstojníka inženýrského sboru v první polovině 19. století‘, Theatrum historiae 18 (2016) p. 203–204. See also Michael Viktořík, ‘Pevnostní město v habsburské monarchii v 19. století v dějepisné práci‘, Kultúrne dějiny 12(1) (2021) p. 61-83.

⁶ Petr Wohlmuth, Východ proti Západu? Krymská válka (1853-1856) pohledem historické antropologie (Prague: Karolinum 2020) p. 10.

⁷ Jiří Hutečka, ‘Historie a historiografie vojenství v hledáčku historické antropologie: zamyšlení nad knihou Petra Wohlmutha Východ proti Západu?‘, Historie a vojenství 71(1) (2022) p. 85; see also Jiří Hutečka, ‘”New” Military History of the First World War. Achievements and Limits’, Dějiny-teorie-kritika 15(1) (2018) p. 101; or Prchal, Společenstvo hrdinů p. 67..

⁸ Ivan Šedivý, ‘Fenomén moderní války‘, in Základní problémy studia moderních a soudobých dějin, ed. by Jana Čechurová and Jan Randák (Prague: Nakladatelství Lidové noviny 2014) p. 692. For a similarly critical voice from mainstream Czech historiography, see Lucie Storchová, ‘Válka‘, in Koncepty a dějiny. Proměny pojmů v současné historické vědě (Prague: Scriptorium 2014) pp. 317-318. Basically, the only author who sees the state of the field in a positive light is Pavel Mücke, ‘Za paprsky krvavého slunce. Výroční imprese nad čtvrtstoletím bádání české historiografie vojenství o druhé světové válce‘, Historie a vojenství 64(4) (2015) p. 16.

⁹ Joanna Bourke, ‘New Military History’, in Palgrave Advances in Modern Military History, ed. By Matthew Hughes, William J. Philpott (London: Palgrave 2006) pp. 271–287; Stig Förster, ‘”Vom Kriege”. Überlegungen zi einer modernen Militärgeschichte’, in Was ist Militärgeschichte?, ed. by Thomas Kühne and Benjamin Ziemann (Paderborn: Ferdinand Schöningh 2000).

¹⁰ For example, see the many works by Jiří Kovařík or Luboš Taraba; or Jakub Samek (ed.), Bitva u Znojma a válka roku 1809 (Třebíč: Akcent 2009).

¹¹ Jitka Balcarová, Eduard Kubů, Jiří Šouša (eds.), Venkov, rolník a válka v českých zemích a na Slovensku v moderní době (Prague: Národní zemědělské muzeum 2017); Jiří Rak, Martin Veselý (eds.), Armáda a společnost v českých zemích v 19. a první polovině 20. století (Ústí nad Labem: Univerzita J. E. Purkyně 2004).

¹² Josef Grulich, Václav Černý, ‘Venkované a služba v armádě na přelomu 18. a 19. století. Panství Protivín a Třeboň, 1775–1830‘, Historická demografie 46(1) (2022) pp. 1–45; Václav Černý, ‘Odvod branců, délka vojenské služby a návrat vysloužilců do venkovské společnosti. Panství Protivín 1780–1830‘, in Venkov, rolník a válka v českých zemích a na Slovensku v moderní době, pp. 23–37.

¹³ Ondřej Král, ‘Rozděl a panuj? Geografický pohled na mírovou dislokaci útvarů rakouské armády 1800-1914: příklad českých zemí’, in Vojenská služba v interdisciplinární perspektivě, ed. by Petr Wohlmuth (Dolní Břežany: Scriptorium 2022) pp. 33–72.

¹⁴ See for example Jiří Hofman (ed.), Lidé a hradby. Bastionové pevnosti a jejich život (České Budějovice: Veduta 2020).

¹⁵ Jiří Hofman, Vlasti k obraně, matce ke cti. Stavba pevnosti Terezín 1780-1790 (České Budějovice: Veduta 2023).

¹⁶ Michael Viktořík, Hinter den Wällen der Festungstadt (České Budějovice: Veduta 2018); also Michael Viktořík, Táborová pevnost Olomouc. Modernizace olomoucké pevnosti v 19. století (České Budějovice: Veduta 2011), for a more traditional study of Lagerfestung Olmütz.

¹⁷ Milan Hlavačka, Zdeněk Munzar, Zdeněk Vašek, S Bohem za císaře a vlasť! Čeští důstojníci ve válkách let 1848-1849 (Praha: Academia 2018); Jan Županič, ‘Možnosti a limity sociálního vzestupu rakousko-uherských důstojníků‘, Historie a vojenství 67(4) (2018) pp. 14–27; Michael Viktořík, ‘Emanuel Zitta, Pohled na kariéru a dílo důstojníka inženýrského sboru v první polovině 19. století‘, in Theatrum Historiae 18 (2016) pp. 203–226.

¹⁸ See for example Petr Havel, Milan Hodík, ‘Stravování jako součást zaopatření vojáků c. (a) k. armády do roku 1918’, Historie a vojenství 51(4) (2002) pp. 860-883; Matouš Holas, ‘Řadový pěšák v polním tažení rakouské Severní armády roku 1866‘, Historie a vojenství 70(4) (2021) pp. 74–91.

¹⁹ For a collection of essays that represents these approaches, see Jiří Rak, Martin Veselý (eds.), Armáda a společnost v českých zemích v 19. a první polovině 20. století.

²⁰ For example Miroslav Svoboda (ed.), Rok 1866 na Moravě (Brno: Moravský zemský archiv 2016).

²¹ Vojtěch Szajkó, Železnice, pošta a telegraf rakouské armády v letech 1848-1814 (Prague: Epocha 2017)

²² Pavel Bělina, Josef Fučík, Válka 1866 (Prague: Paseka 2005).

²³ For example Vojtěch Kessler, Josef Šrámek, Requiem za rytíře. Jezdecká srážka u Střezetic 3. 7. 1866 (Hradec Králové: Komitét pro udržování památek z války roku 1866, 2016).

²⁴ Josef Šrámek, Jiří Hutečka (eds.), Mlhy na Chlumu. Prusko-rakouská válka v optice moderní historiografie (Hradec Králové: Muzeum východních Čech 2018).

²⁵ Vojtěch Kessler, Josef Šrámek, ‘Národ ve zbrani aneb kterak pruský učitel porazil u Hradce Králové rakouského sedláka … ?‘, in Vojenská služba v interdisciplinární perspektivě, pp. 11–31.

²⁶ Vojtěch Kessler, Paměť v kameni. Druhý život válečných pomníků (Prague: Historický ústav 2017); also Vojtěch Kessler, Marie Michlová, Josef Šrámek, ´Hrob známého vojína. De-anonymizace pomníků a hromadných hrobů jako modernizační proces?´ Epigraphica & Sepulcralia 13 (2022) pp. 317–338.

²⁷ Matouš Holas. Archeologie prusko-rakouské války roku 1866 (Červený Kostelec: Pavel Mervart 2017); also Matouš Holas, Svědectví válečné krajiny. Výsledky interdisciplinárního výzkumu východočeských bojišť z prusko-rakouské války roku 1866 (Červený Kostelec: Pavel Mervart 2023).

²⁸ Petr Wohlmuth, Východ proti Západu?.

²⁹ Jiří Hutečka, Země krví zbrocená. Americká občanská válka 1861–1865 (Prague: Nakladatelství Lidové noviny 2008).

³⁰ Ivan Šedivý, Češi, české země a velká válka, 1914–1918 (Prague: Nakladatelství Lidové noviny 2001).

³¹ Etienne Boisserie, Les Tchèques dans l’Autriche-Hongrie en guerre (1914–1918) (Paris: Eur’Orbem 2017).

³² Gabriela Dudeková Kováčová, Človek vo vojne. Stratégie prežitia a sociálne dôsledky svetovej vojny na Slovensku (Bratislava: Veda 2019).

³³ Milena Lenderová, Martina Halířová, Tomáš Jiránek, Vše pro dítě! Válečné dětství 1914–1918 (Prague: Paseka 2015).

³⁴ Rudolf Kučera, Rationed Life. Science, Everyday Life, and Working-class Politics in the Bohemian Lands, 1914–1918 (New York: Berghahn 2016); for even more transnational perspective, see the final chapter in Jakub Beneš, Workers and Nationalism. Czech and German Social Democracy in Habsburg Austria, 1890-1918 (Oxford: Oxford University Press 2016)

³⁵ Ota Konrád, Rudolf Kučera, Paths out of the Apocalypse. Physical Violence in the Fall and Renewal of Central Europe, 1914–1922 (Oxford: OUP 2022).

³⁶ See for example Olga Fejtová, Václav Ledvinka, Martina Maříková, Jiří Pešek (eds.) Nezměrné ztráty a jejich zvládání. Obyvatelstvo evropských velkoměst a I. světová válka. Documenta Pragensia 35 (2016).

³⁷ Andrea Pokludová, ‘Änderung in der Stadtverwaltung nach dem Ersten Weltkrieg in Troppau und Olmütz‘, in Stadt und Krieg im 20. Jahrhundert: Neue Perspektiven auf Deutschland und Ostmitteleuropa, ed. by Christoph Cornelissen, Martin Pekár and Václav Petrbok (Essen: Klartext 2019) pp. 87–112; Blanka Soukupová, ‘Die Transformationen der Identitäten der tschechischen nationalen Metropole (1918-1956)‘, ibid, pp. 113–138.

³⁸ Claire Morelon, Street Fronts: War, State Legitimacy and Urban Space, Prague 1914-1920 [dissertation thesis] (University of Birmingham and Ècole Doctorale des Sciences Po, 2015); the text is currently in print with the Cambridge University Press as Streetscapes of War and Revolution. Prague, 1914–1920.

³⁹ Jakub Beneš, ‘The Green Cadres and the Collapse of Austria-Hungary in 1918‘, Past & Present 23(1) (2017) pp. 207–241.

⁴⁰ Vítězslav Prchal et al., Mezi Martem a Memorií. Prameny osobní povahy k dějinám vojenství (Pardubice: Univerzita Pardubice 2011).

⁴¹ Petr Chlebec et al., Z válečných deníků …, Velká válka na Blatensku 1914–1918 (Blatná: Město Blatná 2018).

⁴² Kessler, Šrámek, Tváře války.

⁴³ Jiří Hutečka, Men under Fire. Motivation, Morale and Masculinity among Czech Soldiers of the Great War, 1914–1918 (New York: Berghahn 2020).

⁴⁴ For example Věra Vlčková, Jan Čížek, Nevrátili se – mrtví jsou. Pomníky a pamětní desky obětem první světové války v okrese (Červený Kostelec: Pavel Mervart 2017); Pavel Fenc, Markéta Voříšková, Oběti první světové války v okrese Prachatice a jejich pomníky (Prachatice: Prachatické muzeum 2018).

⁴⁵ See for example Jiří Rajlich, Na křídlech Světové války. Epizody ze života českých aviatiků v rakousko-uherském letectvu (Cheb: Svět křídel 2014); Lukáš Ďulíček, Východočeši pod císařským praporem: c. a k. pěčí pluk č. 18 v 1. světové válce (Prague: ČsOL 2015); or Jan Ciglbauer, Jednadevadesátníci. Skutečný příběh dobrých vojáků 91. regimentu (Pelhřimov: Nová tiskárna Pelhřimov 2018).

⁴⁶ Jindřich Marek, ‘Beránci, lvi a malé děti. Nekonečný spor o českého vojáka v letech 1. světové války’, Historie a vojenství 63(1) (2014) pp. 94–113.

⁴⁷ For the former position, see for example Josef Fučík, Osmadvacátníci (Spor o českého vojáka Velké války 1914-1918) (Prague: Mladá fronta 2006); for the latter, see Jindřich Marek, Pod císařskou šibenicí (Čeští vojáci na křižovatkách roku 1918) (Cheb: Svět křídel 2005).

⁴⁸ Rudolf Kučera, ´Entbehrung und Nationalismus: Die Erfahrung tschechischer Soldaten der österreichisch-ungarischen Armee 1914-1918´, in Jenseits des Schützengraben: Der Erste Weltkrieg im Osten: Erfahrung – Wahrnehmung – Kontext, ed. by Bernard Bachinger and Wolfram Dornik (Innsbruck: StudienVerlag 2013) pp. 121–137; or Ivan Šedivý, ‘C. k. / C. a k. vojáci mezi češstvím a rakušanstvím‘, in Identity v českých zemích 19. a 20. století. Hledání a proměny, ed. by Rudolf Kučera (Prague: Masarykův ústav 2012) pp. 111–131. For a detailed case study of Czech troop loyalty, see also Richard Lein, Pflichterfüllung oder Hochverrat? Die tschechischen Soldaten Österreich-Ungarns im Ersten Weltkrieg (Wien: LIT Verlag 2011).).

⁴⁹ For an example somewhat heading in this direction, see Jiří Hutečka, ‘Politics of Words: Language and Loyalty of Czech-Speaking Soldiers in the Austro-Hungarian Army‘, Julian Walker and Christophe Declercq (eds.), Multilingual Environments in the Great War (London: Bloomsbury 2021) pp. 121-138.

⁵⁰ Dalibor Vácha, Bratrstvo. Všední a dramatické dny československých legií v Rusku (1914-1918) (Prague: Epocha 2015); Dalibor Vácha, Ostrovy v bouři. Každodenní život československých legií v ruské občanské válce (1918-1920) (Prague: Epocha 2016); Dalibor Vácha, Návrat domů. Českoslovenští legionáři na cestě z Ruska do Vlasti 1919-1920 (Prague: Epocha 2020). For an example of the heroic discourse, see Tomáš Jakl, Hrdinové z Londýna. Českoslovenští krajané ve Velké Británii (Prague: Vojenský historický ústav 2016).

⁵¹ Jan Galandauer, 2. 7. 1917. Bitva u Zborova. Česká legenda (Praha: Havran 2002); for a similarly succesful effort, see Dalibor Vácha, ‘”Husité dvacátého století” Odraz fenoménu husitství v československých legiích v Rusku 1914-1920‘, Historie a vojenství 59 (2010), pp. 4–18.

⁵² Jiří Bílek, Kyselá těšínská jablíčka. Československo-polské konflikty o Těšínsko 1919, 1938, 1945 (Prague: Epocha 2011).

⁵³ Lukáš Lexa, ‘Slovácká brigáda a její důstojnický sbor v letech 1918 až 1919‘, Jižní Morava 52(1) (2016) pp. 159–194.

⁵⁴ Jiří Hutečka, ‘”Completely Forgotten and Totally Ignored”: Czechoslovak Veterans of the Austro-Hungarian Army and the Transitions of 1918-1919.’ Nationalities Papers 49(4) (2021) pp. 629–645.

⁵⁵ Václav Šmidrkal, ‘The Defeated in a Victorious State: Veterans of the Austro-Hungarian Army in the Bohemian Lands and Their (Re)mobilization in the 1930s’, Zeitgeschichte 47(1) (2020) 81–105; Jakub Beneš, ‘The Colour of Hope: The Legacy of the “Green Cadres” and the Problem of Rural Unrest in the First Czechoslovak Republic‘, Contemporary European History 28(3) (2019) pp. 285–302; Jiří Hutečka, ‘Kamarádi frontovníci: Maskulinita a paměť první světové války v textech československých c. a k. veteránů‘, Dějiny-Teorie-Kritika 11(2) (2014) pp. 231–265; for comparison, see Kevin J. Hoeper, ‘Nationalizing Habsburg Regimental Tradition in Interwar Czechoslovakia’, Hungarian Historical Review 11(1) (2022) pp. 169–204; or Martin Zückert, ‘Memory of War and National State Integration: Czech and German Veterans in Czechoslovakia after 1918’, Central Europe 4, nr. 2 (2006), pp. 111–121.

⁵⁶ Radka Šustrová, ‘The Struggle for Respect: The State, World War One Veterans, and Social Welfare Policy in Interwar Czechoslovakia‘, Zeitgeschichte 47(1) (2020) pp. 107–134; see also Natali Stegmann, Kriegsdeutungen–Staatsgründungen–Sozialpolitik. Der Helden- und Opferdiskurs in der Tschechoslowakei, 1918–1948 (München: Oldenbourg 2010); or Adam Luptak, John Paul Newman, ‘Victory, Defeat, Gender, and Disability: Blind War Veterans in Interwar Czechoslovakia’, Journal of Social History 53(3) (2020) pp. 604–619.

⁵⁷ Ivan Šedivý, ‘Legionářská republika. K systému legionářského zákonodárství a sociální péče v meziválečné ČSR‘, Historie a vojenství 51(1) (2002) pp. 158–184; Jan Michl, Legionáři a Československo (Prague: Naše vojsko 2009); Ivo Pejčoch, ‘Český svaz válečníků‘, Historie a vojenství 56(1) (2007) pp. 16–28; or Prokop Tomek, ‘Tradice legií po únoru 1948‘, Historie a vojenství 68(1) (2019) pp. 42–59. See also Katya Kocourek, ‘“In the Spirit of Brotherhood, United We Remain!” Czechoslovak Legionaries and the Militarist State’, in Sacrifice and Rebirth: The Legacy of the Last Habsburg War, edited by Mark Cornwall and John Paul Newman (New York: Berghahn 2016) pp. 151–173.

⁵⁸ Martin Zückert, Zwischen Nationsidee und Staatlicher Realität. Die tschechoslowakische Armee und ihre Natinalitätenpolitik 1918-1939 (München: Oldenbourg 2008). For an exception to the rule, see Zdenko Maršálek, ‘Neúspěch státně-občanského konceptu čechoslovakismu: menšiny v armádě 1918–1945‘, in: Čecho/slovakismus, ed. by Adam Hudek, Michal Kopeček, Jan Mervart (Prague: Nakladatelství Lidové noviny 2019) pp. 202–222.

⁵⁹ For an exception, see Václav Šmidrkal, ‘Abolish the army? The ideal of democracy and the

transformation of the Czechoslovak military after 1918 and 1989‘, European Review of History/Revue européenne d’histoire 23(4) (2016) pp. 623–642.

⁶⁰ Aleš Binar et al., Ozbrojené síly a československý stát (Brno: Univerzita obrany 2020).

⁶¹ Radko Břach, Generál Maurice Pellé (Prague: Ministerstvo obrany ČR 2007); or Radko Břach, Jaroslav Láník, Dva roky bojů a organizační práce. Československá armáda v letech 1918–1920 (Praha: Ministerstvo obrany ČR 2013).

⁶² Jiří Plachý, Filozofové v battledressech (Prague: Univerzita Karlova 2010); Jiří Friedl, Generál Karel Lukas. Životní příběh severomoravského rodáka (Štíty: Pavel Ševčík 2016); Pavel Kreisinger, Brigádní generál Josef Bartík. Zpravodajský důstojník a účastník prvního i druhého československého odboje (Prague: ÚSTR 2011).

⁶³ For example Ivo Pejčoch, ‘Střední tank Praga V-8-H a pokusy o jeho export‘, Historie a vojenství 57(1) (2008) pp. 35–52.

⁶⁴ Karel Straka, Československá armáda, pilíř obrany státu z let 1932-1939 (Prague: Ministerstvo obrany ČR 2007); Radomír Zavadil, Na obranu republiky. Přemístění československého zbrojního průmyslu na Moravu a Slovensko v letech 1936–1938 (Praha: Universum 2021); Jan Pavel, Miroslav Srb, ‘Financování československé armády v letech 1934–1939‘, Historie a vojenství 53(3) (2004) pp. 4–22.

⁶⁵ Karel Straka, ‘Sabotážní a teroristická síť Úřadovny Abwehru IV Drážďany v klontextu příprav na napadení ČSR z let 1938-1939’, Historie a vojenství 68(1) (2019) p. 34; see also Karel Straka, Vojáci, politici a diplomaté. Československá vojenská delegace na jednáních mezinárodního výboru v Berlíně a odstoupení českého pohraničí (Prague: Ministerstvo obrany 2008); Jindřich Marek, Hraničářská kalvárie. Příběhy posledních obránců Masarykovy republiky na severu Čech a Podkarpatské Rusi v letech 1938-1939 (Cheb: Svět křídel 2004). For classic contributions to this debate, see for example Igor Lukeš, Czechoslovakia between Stalin and Hitler. The Diplomacy of Edvard Beneš in the 1930s (New York: Oxford University Press 1996); or, even more influential, Jan Tesař, Mnichovský komplex. Jeho příčiny a důsledky (Praha: Prostor 2000).

⁶⁶ Vladimír Čtverák, Tomáš Durdík, Michal Lutovský, Eduard Stehlík, Pevnosti a opevnění v Čechách, na Moravě a ve Slezsku (Prague: Libri 2002); Oldřich Gregar et al., Řopík: výstavba legendy československého opevnění (Červený Kostelec: Pavel Mervart 2022); or Karel Straka, ‘Zrození monumentu. Počátky moderního opevňování v meziválečném Československu‘, Historie a vojenství 64(1) (2015) pp. 4–19, (2) pp. 4–13.

⁶⁷ Zdenko Maršálek a kol., Interbrigadisté, Československo a španělská občanská válka (Prague: Historický ústav 2017); Jiří Nedvěd, ‘Verbování československých dobrovolníků do mezinárodních brigád a jejich cesty do Španělska‘, Historie a vojenství 65(3) (2016) pp. 4–18.

⁶⁸ For a popularizing overview in the spirit of the former, albeit covering all military operations since 1044 in a given region, see Martin Veselý, Vojenské dějiny Ústecka (Ústí nad Labem: Město Ústí nad Labem 2003).

⁶⁹ Milan Kopecký,‘1. československá samostatná tanková brigáda v Karpatsko-dukelské operaci‘, Historie a vojenství 53(3) (2004) pp. 53-73.

⁷⁰ Tomáš Jakl, Květen 1945 v českých zemích: pozemní operace vojsk Osy a Spojenců (Praha: M. Bílý 2004); Jaroslav Hrbek, Vít Smetana, Stanislav Kokoška, Vladimír Pilát, Petr Hofman, Draze zaplacená svoboda. Osvobození Československa 1944-1945, 2 vols. (Prague: Paseka 2009).

⁷¹ Tomáš Jakl, ‘Boje Rudé armády 9. května 1945 v Praze‘, Historie a vojenství 65(2) (2016) pp. 73-86.

⁷² Tomáš Jakl, Barikády a bojiště Pražského povstání (Prague: Paseka 2014).

⁷³ Stanislav Kokoška, Praha v květnu 1945. Historie jednoho povstání (Praha: Nakladatelství Lidové noviny 2005).

⁷⁴ Martin Veselý, Do krytu! Protiletecká ochrana v severozápadní části sudetské župy (1939-1945) (Ústí nad Labem: Univerzita J. E. Purkyně 2008).

⁷⁵ Martin Veselý, Hvězdy nad Krušnohořím. Letecká válka nad severozápadními Čechami (1944-1945) (Prague: Naše vojsko 2005); Martin Veselý, ‘Postoj obyvatel Protektorátu Čechy a Morava ke spojeneckým náletům v roce 1944 ve světle denních zpráv SD‘, Historie a vojenství 59(2) (2010) pp. 52-66; Martin Veselý, ‘Čekání na Godota. Souvislosti náletů britského letectva na území Protektorátu Čechy a Morava v roce 1940‘, Historie a vojenství 70(1) (2021) pp. 56-67.

⁷⁶ Michal Plavec, Filip Vojtášek, Peter Kašák, Praha v plamenech. Nálety na hlavní město za druhé světové války (Cheb: Svět křídel 2008); Michal Plavec, ‘Květen plný emocí. Letecké operace Rudé armády v Čechách, na Moravě a ve Slezsku v roce 1945‘, Historie a vojenství 64(1) (2015) pp. 41-56.

⁷⁷ Jiří Rajlich, Na nebi hrdého Albionu, 6 vols. (Cheb: Svět křídel, 2000-2005); Rajlich, Na nebi sladké Francie. Válečný deník československých letců ve službách francouzského letectva 1939-1945 (Cheb: Svět křídel 2008).

⁷⁸ Jiří Rajlich, Za Boha a národ. Stíhací esa slovenských Vzdušných zbraní ve 2. světové válce (Cheb: Svět křídel 2006).

⁷⁹ Jan Vasjkebr, Petr Kaňák, ‘Waffen SS v Protektorátu Čechy a Morava‘, Historie a vojenství 54(3) (2005) pp. 72–82.

⁸⁰ Miroslav Kalousek, Vládní vojsko 1939-1945. Vlastenci či zrádci? (Prague: Libri 2002); Jindřich Marek, Háchovi Melody Boys. Kronika českého vládního vojska v Itálii 1944-1945 (Cheb: Svět křídel 2003); on the outright collaboration with the Nazis, see Jiří Plachý, ‘Poslední obránci protektorátu. Historie Dobrovolnické svatováclavské roty (březen – květen 1945)‘, Historie a vojenství 70(2) (2021) pp. 4–29.

⁸¹ Martin Veselý, Sudetská župa do kapsy. Holýšov v zajetí velkých dějin 1938-1945 (Ústí nad Labem: ÚJEP 2018).

⁸² Milan Vyhlídal, Vojenští zpravodajci proti nacistické okupaci. Odbojová skupina Tři konšelé (Prague: Academia 2022); Ivo Pejčoch, Jiří Plachý (eds.), Okupace, kolaborace, retribuce (Praha: Ministerstvo obrany 2010). The Heydrich assassination received plenty of attention, see for example Pavel Šmejkal – Jiří Padevět, Anthropoid (Prague: Academia 2017).

⁸³ Zlatica Zudová-Lešková, Zapomenutá elita. Českoslovenští vojenští diplomaté v letech 1938-1945 (Praha: Mladá fronta 2011); Jiří Šolc, Po boku prezidenta. Generál František Moravec a jeho zpravodajská služba ve světle archivních dokumentů (Praha: Naše vojsko 2007); Tomáš Jiránek, Šéf štábu Obrany národa. Neklidný život divizního generála Čeňka Kudláčka (Praha: Academia 2015).

⁸⁴ Vladimír P. Polách, Krajané v USA a druhá světová válka (Olomouc: UPOL 2017).

⁸⁵ Zdenko Maršálek, “Česká“, nebo „československá“armáda? Národnostní složení československých vojenských jednotek v zahraničí v letech 1939-1945 (Prague: Academia 2017); Jiří Plachý, ‘Vzbouřenci z Cholmondeley‘, Historie a vojenství 65(3) (2016) pp. 19-38, and (4) pp. 20-57.

⁸⁶ Zdenko Maršálek, Jiří Neminář (eds.), Ve dvou uniformách. Nuceně mobilizovaní a jejich účast v odboji: Okolnosti, souvislosti, marginalizace (Hlučín: Muzeum Hlučínska 2020); Zdenko Maršálek, Jiří Neminář, Milan Sovilj (eds.), V uniformě nepřítele. Čechoslováci a služba ve Wehmachtu (Prague: Nakladatelství Lidové noviny 2023); see also František Emmert, Češi ve wehrmachtu. Zamlčované osudy (Prague: Mladá fronta 2005).

⁸⁷ Alena Flimelová, Roma Štér, Ve stínu mužů. Ženy v československých vojenských jednotkách na východní frontě v letech 1942-1945 (Prague: Academia 2021).

⁸⁸ Ladislav Kudrna, Českoslovenští letci ve Velké Británii a válečné fenomény. Prostředí společenských struktur, válečného času, morálky, věkové hranice a zabíjení (Prague: Naše vojsko 2006); Ladislav Kudrna, Odhodláni bojovat. Vlastenectví československých letců v průběhu druhé světové války na pozadí válečných a politických událostí (Prague: Naše vojsko 2010).

⁸⁹ Pavel Mücke, Rámce paměti druhé světové války v českých zemích. Vzpomínkové práce vojáků druhého čs. zahraničního odboje (Prague: ÚSD 2013).

⁹⁰ Pavel Mücke, Místa paměti druhé světové války. Svět vojáků československého zahraničního odboje (Praha: Karolinum 2014) p. 19.

⁹¹ Jiří Rajlich, S Indiánem na letounu. Stíhací pilot Otto Hanzlíček (1911-1940) (Cheb: Svět křídel 2016); Jiří Rajlich, Hurricane Ace. Josef František, The True Story (Petersfield 2010); Pavel Kreisinger, Brigádní generál Josef Bartík. Zpravodajský důstojník a účastník prvního i druhého československého odboje (Prague: ÚSTR 2011); Milan Vyhlídal, Generál Jan Reindl (1902-1981). Letec, zpravodajec, účastník protinacistického odboje a velitel leteckých instruktorů v Egyptě (Cheb: Svět křídel 2018).

⁹² Milan Kopecký, ‘Tragédie u Rymic 6. května 1945‘, Historie a vojenství 62(2) (2013) p. 75.

⁹³ Petr Koura, Podplukovník Josef Balabán. Život a smrt velitele legendární odbojové skupiny “Tři králové“ (Prague: Rybka Publishers 2003).

⁹⁴ See Kudrna, Odhodláni bojovat.

⁹⁵ Eduard Stehlík, ‘Pro vlast i církev žil a zemřel. Generál duchovní služby Msgre Methoděj Kubáň‘, Historie a vojenství 56(1) (2007) p. 95; see also Stehlík, Jan Kubiš: nezastaví mne ani to nejhorší … (Žďár nad Sázavou, Tváře 2017), for a prime example of the heroic discourse.

⁹⁶ Eduard Stehlík, ‘Plukovník pěchoty Karel Černý‘, Historie a vojenství 53(1) (2004) p. 76.

⁹⁷ Jiří Bílek, Jaroslav Láník, Jan Šach, Československá armáda v prvním poválečném desetiletí (Prague: Ministerstvo obrany ČR 2006).

⁹⁸ Ivo Pejčoch, Prokop Tomek et al., Od svobody k nesvobodě, 1945-1956 (Prague: Ministerstvo obrany ČR 2011).

⁹⁹ See for example František Hanzlík, Václav Vondrášek, Armáda v zápase o politickou moc v Československu v letech 1945-1948 (Brno: Univerzita obrany 2004); František Hanzlík, Diskriminace a perzekuce vojáků v Československu v letech 1945-1955 (Praha: Powerprint 2015); or František Hanzlík, Bez milosti a slitování. B. Reicin – fanatik rudého teroru (Praha: Ostrov 2011). For a more analytical description, see Jiří Bílek, ‘”Armáda jde s lidem“. K úloze československé armády ve dnech února 1948’, Historie a vojenství 57(1) (2008) pp. 59-74.

¹⁰⁰ František Hanzlík, Karel Konečný, Čs. vojenský exil pro obnovu demokracie v Československu (Brno: Univerzita obrany 2009); František Hanzlík, Military Exile and Compatriots in the USA for the Restoration of Democracy in Czechoslovakia after February 1948 (Prague: Ministry of Defence 2012).

¹⁰¹ Jiří Bílek, Jaroslav Láník, Pavel Minařík, Daniel Povolný, Jan Šach, Československá lidová armáda v koaličních vazbách Varšavské smlouvy (Praha: Ministerstvo obrany ČR 2008).

¹⁰² Matěj Bílý, Varšavská smlouva 1969-1985. Vrchol a cesta k zániku (Prague: Ministerstvo obrany ČR 2016); Jan Šach, ‘Výstavba ČSLA ve druhé polovině padesátých let‘, Historie a vojenství 69(3) (2020) pp. 3–29, and (4) pp. 30-59; Prokop Tomek, ‘Akce Krkonoše: československé vojenské souvislosti polské krize‘, Historie a vojenství 66(3) (2017) pp. 4–19.

¹⁰³ Petr Luňák (ed.), Plánování nemyslitelného. Československé válečné plány 1950-1990 (Praha: ÚSD 2007); Karel Štěpánek, Pavel Minařík, Československá lidová armáda na Rýnu (Praha: Naše vojsko 2007); Josef Fučík, Stín jaderné války nad Evropou (Praha: Mladá fronta 2010). For a discussion of potential Soviet deployment of MRBMs and IRBMs in Czechoslovakia, see Prokop Tomek, ‘Raketové nosiče jaderných zbraní na území Československa‘, Historie a vojenství 61(3) (2012) pp. 73–91; and Prokop Tomek, ‘Bezpečnostní aspekty rozmístění jaderných raket v Československu na podzim 1983 a reakce veřejnosti‘, Historie a vojenství (2) (2019) pp. 4–19.

¹⁰⁴ Sylvestr Chrastil, Normalizace československé armády na počátku 70. let (Brno: Vojenská akademie v Brně 2002).

¹⁰⁵ For example Václav Vondrášek, Sylvestr Chrastil, Martin Markel, Vojenská akademie v Brně (Praha: Ministerstvo obrany ČR 2005).

¹⁰⁶ Jaroslav Láník, ‘Financování čs. armády v prvních letech pětiletky‘, Historie a vojenství 52(3-4) (2003) pp. 744–770; Jaroslav Láník, ‘Vývoj čs. zbrojního průmyslu v druhé polovině 50. let minulého století‘, Historie a vojenství 58(2) (2009) pp. 85-100, and (3) pp. 88–101; Prokop Tomek, ‘Snahy o snížení vojenských výdajů v Československu koncem osmdesátých let‘, Historie a vojenství 69(4) (2020) pp. 4–29.

¹⁰⁷ Prokop Tomek, ‘Akce ZÁSAH. Československá lidová armáda v listopadu 1989‘, Historie a vojenství 64(4) (2015) pp. 77-91.

¹⁰⁸ Jiří Bílek, ‘Vojáci s lopatou, krumpáčem a sbíječkou‘, Historie a vojenství 63(3) (2014) pp. 17–27, and (4) pp. 4–13. Jiří Bílek, ‘Vyhledat, izolovat, potrestat dřinou a převychovat‘, Historie a vojenství 69(4) (2020) pp. 60–77.

¹⁰⁹ For a summary of the topic, see Vladimír Francev, Československé zbraně ve světě. V míru i za války (Prague: Grada 2015); Vladimír Francev, ‘Akce 122 – Československý zbrojní vývoz na Kubu v letech 1960-1966‘, Historie a vojenství 65(1) (2016) pp. 68–79.

¹¹⁰ Tomáš Řepa, Banderovci. Politické souvislosti, následky zneužití tématu komunistickou propagandou, návaznost na hybridní konflikt v současnosti (Praha: Academia 2019); on the UPA (Ukrainian Insurgent Army), see also Vlastimil Ondrák, ‘Osudy příslušníků Ukrajinské povstalecké armády a Organizace ukrajinských nacionalistů, intenovaných v Československu v průběhu akce B‘, Historie a vojenství 71(1) (2022) pp. 6-27.

¹¹¹ Václav Šmidrkal, ‘ČSLA jako subjekt a objekt speciální propagandy v 60. letech 20. století‘, Historie a vojenství 60(4) (2011) pp. 85–96; Václav Šmidrkal, ‘”Bratři ve zbrani“: představy o spojenectví Národní lidové armády NDR a ČSLA ve světle krize roku 1968‘, Historie a vojenství 63(1) (2014) pp. 4–19.

¹¹² Jiří Hlaváček, Vzestup a pád ČSLA? Vojenská profese v kolektivní paměti důstojnického sboru (1960-1970) (Prague: Karolinum 2019).

¹¹³ Jiří Hlaváček (ed.), Mezi pakárnou a službou vlasti. Základní vojenská služba (1968-2004) v aktérské perspektivě (Prague: Academia 2022); for similar approach influenced by cultural history or social analysis, see Tomáš Kykal, Marek Fišer, ‘Památníky z vojny. Dokumentace, digitalizace a perspektivy jejich využití jako historického pramene‘, in Vojenská služba v interdisciplinární perspektivě, pp. 73-102; or Petr Wohlmuth, ‘“Byly to strašný dva roky … cítil jsem se jako vězeň … ” Aktérské úniky z paměti a zkušenosti povinné základní vojenské služby’, ibid. pp. 123-152.

¹¹⁴ Petr Blažek (ed.), A nepozdvihneme meč … Odpírání vojenské služby v Československu 1948-1989 (Prague: Academia 2007); Prokop Tomek, ‘Možnosti odpírání, vyhýbání se základní vojenské službě a vojenská práce v letech 1969-1992’, Historie a vojenství 62(2) (2015) pp. 4–19.

¹¹⁵ Prokop Tomek, ‘Šikana, skrytý problém Československé lidové armády po roce 1969‘, Historie a vojenství 61(2) (2012) pp. 30–41; Prokop Tomek, ‘Mimořádné události v ČSLA‘, Historie a vojenství 68(4) (2019) pp. 24–41; Prokop Tomek, ‘Morálně-politický stav ČSLA na počátku normalizace‘, Historie a vojenství 69(3) (2020) pp. 30–43.

¹¹⁶ For methodologically conservative narratives of the invasion from different perspectives, see Jiří Fidler, Okupace 1968 (Praha: Knižní klub 2018); or Daniel Povolný, Vojenské řešení pražského jara, 2 vols. (Praha: Ministerstvo obrany ČR 2008-2010).

¹¹⁷ Daniel Povolný, ‘33. protitanková brigáda v Lešanech v srpnu 1968‘, Historie a vojenství 57(3) (2008) pp. 35–39.

¹¹⁸ Jiří Bílek, ‘Svaz československých důstojníků a praporčíků a Svaz letců ČSSR v letech 1968-1971’, Historie a vojenství 52(3) (2003) pp. 538–556.

¹¹⁹ Marie Černá, Sovětská armáda a česká společnost (Prague: Karolinum 2021); also Prokop Tomek, ‘Úřad zmocněnce vlády ČSSR pro záležitosti dočasného pobytu sovětských vojsk v ČSSR 1968-1990‘, Historie a vojenství 67(3) (2018) pp. 4–31; Prokop Tomek, ’Státní bezpečnost a Střední skupina sovětských vojsk v ČSSR‘, Historie a vojenství 66(1) (2017) pp. 24–37; Pavel Minařík, ‘Odsun sovětských vojsk z Československa 1989-1991‘, Historie a vojenství 70(3) (2021) pp. 4–35, and (4) pp. 24–47.

¹²⁰ Ivo Pejčoch, Prokop Tomek, Okupace 1968 a její oběti. Nové pohledy na invazi armád Varšavské smlouvy do Československa roku 1968, počátek okupace a její oběti (Prague: Vojenský historický ústav 2017); Prokop Tomek, Ivo Pejčoch, Černá kniha sovětské okupace. Sovětská armáda v Československu a její oběti 1968-1991 (Cheb: Svět křídel 2015).

¹²¹ Zdeněk Matějka, ‘Jednání o rozpuštění Varšavské smlouvy‘, Historie a vojenství 54(3) (2005) pp. 4–19; Petr Janoušek, ‘Chemici s Havlem proti agresorovi‘, Historie a vojenství 67(2) (2018) pp. 4–21; or Jindřich Marek, ‘Účast českých vojáků v mírových misích OSN v Africe‘, Historie a vojenství 58(4) (2009) pp. 27–46.

¹²² Bohuslav Pernica, Profesionalizace ozbrojených sil: trendy, teorie a zkušenosti (Praha: Ministerstvo obrany ČR 2007).

¹²³ Jan Eichler, War, Peace and International Security: From Sarajevo to Crimea (London: Palgrave 2017); or Oldřich Bureš, EU Counterterrorism Policy: A Paper Tiger? (London: Ashgate 2011).

¹²⁴ Jiří Plachý, Horší než doba války … Osudy parašutistů z velké Británie v poúnorovém Československu (Cheb: Svět křídel 2014).

¹²⁵ Ladislav Kudrna, Bojovali a umírali v Indočíně. První vietnamská válka a Čechoslováci v cizinecké legii (Prague: ÚSTR 2010).

¹²⁶ Marie Koldinská, Ivan Šedivý, Válka a armáda v českých dějinách: sociohistorické črty (Prague: Nakladatelství Lidové noviny 2008).