The Cost of Submission

...An important feature of this study is an overdue revaluation of Rein-hold Heydrich, a master technician of measured terror with "few parallels indeed in modern history " His policy of favoring the acquiescent workers and peasants and coexisting with the Czech bureaucracy, while ruthlessly suppressing the intelligentsia and resistance, was amazingly successful...

...Misty avoids the pitfalls of over-theorizing, for he is a first-rate historian who knows that history is, as Edward Gibbon remarked, "the record of the crimes, follies, and misfortunes of marked " What is moir?¦ remarkable, he neither echoes the myths of the "brave, massive Czechoslovak resistance' nor lacks compassion for those Czechs who so vainly tried to fight Hitler Since the field of Central and Eastern European history and politics is so full of special pleading, it is all the more a pleasure to attest that this book does not suffer, and in my view gains greatly, from Misty??s having grown up m the land he wants about...

...Pour eviler le pen, to avoid the worst as probably voiced by the Czechs who cooperated with the Nazis, and must also have prompted the submission of Aleksandra Dubcek and his associates to the Soviets...

...The Cost of Submission The Czechs Under Nazi Rule: The Failure of National Resistance, 1939-1942 By Rotech Misty Columbia 274 pp $10 00 Reviewed by William E. Griffith Professor of Political Science, MIT, Decoy, Protect on Communism, Revisionism and Revolution Rotech Misty has written an excellent, important and disturbing book His is the first serious study of Czechoslovakia between 1939, when the Nazis forced its surrender, and 1942, when Reichprotektor Rein-hold Heydnch was assassinated Based on exhaustive research in all the relevant archives Zech, German and many others??it is informed by a remarkable degree of detachment and objectivity, the more so because Misty, who left Prague in the early 1960s, lived through the period he examines The Czechs Under Nazi Rule is, in short, the standard work on the subject, one to which not only scholars but also those interested in the whole phenomenon of resistance to foreign, oppressive rule must from now on turn...

...There is a story one often heard in the Czech capital after World War II which, true or not, surely fitted the situation President Eduard Be-nest would take visitors to the Prague Castle, show them the beautiful un-destroyed city below, and say, "You see, I saved all this'" What he meant was that his surrender to Nazi and British and French pressure in 1938 spared Prague from the late Warsaw was to suffer in 1944 This classic defense of collaboration...

...Perhaps it ill becomes me, living in a Western democracy, to pass moral judgment on the agonizing choices Czechoslovak leaders were faced with in 1939 or 1968 Yet I am struck by the fact that the last Czechs to resist a foreign invader, excluding the legions in Russia during World War I, fought Austria in the Battle of the White Mountain in the 17th century And I cannot help wondering is Misty clearly, it implicitly, does ??thither the easier course of submission was in the light of subsequent events the wise one...

...But President-in-exile Eduard Be-nest' plan to revivify the moribund Czech resistance by assassinating Heydrich was not in the least successful The Nazi revenge for his death was so thorough that the Czech underground was decimated, not to become a tore again until the Red Army approached the borders (Misty will tell the story of the 1942-45 period in a second volume ). Reading this book, one cannot help but draw parallels to the plight of Czechoslovakia today Professor Misty, with the historian's appropriate caution, does so only indirectly, in his concluding sentences They deserve to be quoted " ultimately the protection is prevention For any nation lucky enough to be enjoying freedom and independence, its self-respect, faith in its institutions, and readiness to defend them, with the force of arms it necessary, are the best guarantee that its citizens would never have to resist an enemy under conditions of subjection ". Many in Eastern Europe and in the West thought that the Czechoslovaks' brave passive resistance to the Soviet occupying troops after August 1968 would provide a model for the rest of the world, some writers even viewed it as a vindication of national pacifism Alas, they forgot the old Roman proverb, aroma loquuntur??arms speak For it is now clear, three years later, that the Soviets and their Czechoslovak collaborators were practicing one of the supreme arts of politics, dosage?that is, they were slowly and therefore more effectively eradicating the liberties of the Prague Song...

...The mama theme is set forth in the subtitle "The Failure of National Resistance, 1939-1942' In great and definitive detail, the author elaborates how Hitler managed, by an astute combination of terror and flexibility, to bring Bohemia and Moravia effectively under has heel "At no time did the Czechs challenge the Nazis with a significant resistance movement," Misty concludes, because in 1939 they "meekly submitted" rather than fight True, the "collaborationist" administration of the Protectorate, under Emil Ha-ha and John Savory, was in regular radio communication with the exile government in London But as Misty rightly remarks, their calculation that ' meeting or even anticipating German demands" would further Czech interests proved false...