Comments on: Correcting History

By: Ricky

Ricky — Mon, 17 May 2010 10:16:01 +0000

Mike – With all those interesting associations, you certainly should travel and visit Western Bohemia. It is scenically beautiful and anyone with family connections or General Patton’s Third Army connections is made very welcome.

By: Mike Feit

Mike Feit — Mon, 17 May 2010 09:53:19 +0000

Thanks very much for your description of your stop in Klatovy and the correcting of historical distortions promoted by the Communist government of Czechoslovakia. My wife’s ancestors emigrated from Klatovy to America in the mid 19th century. Both of us had relatives in Gen. Patton’s Third Army who might have been involved in the liberation of Western Bohemia. We hope to travel to this region in the future.

By: Ricky

Ricky — Fri, 07 May 2010 22:23:23 +0000

Hi Adrian – Many thanks for visiting my blog once more and leaving your comment. You did get a personal plug in this post as you have in one or two previous ones!

An American member of my congregation missed Church last Sunday in order to be at one of the parades in Plzen to commemorate the 65th anniversary of the liberation of West Bohemia by the American forces in early May 1945. And the British Ambassador told me a few weeks ago that she has been invited to umteen wreath laying ceremonies in your part of the Czech Republic, to mark the 65th anniversary of liberation from the Nazis.

By: Adrian

Adrian — Fri, 07 May 2010 10:24:20 +0000

Yep, my wifes grandfather was proud to have met the Americans. No-one was fooled by the change of history – they even tried to teach it in schools:-)
Last weekend in Plzen and through the week there were all the old jeeps about – fun following halftracks through the little roads!

Think in Zinkovy Castle they set up camp for some time at the end of WW2 – so around here in Nepomuk we know about them.

By: Ricky

Ricky — Fri, 05 Feb 2010 17:51:36 +0000

Tim – Thank you for your most thoughtful comment.

Of course the people of Western Bohemia knew all through the communist era, that it was the US Army, not the Soviet Red Army, that had liberated them from Nazi occupation. The Americans left behind much physical evidence such as military hardware, which was either damaged or not deemed worthwhile transporting back across the Atlantic. Thus US Army jeeps and the like were hidden away in farm buildings and garages and lovingly repaired and preserved, out of sight of the communist authorities.

Since 1990, each year during the early part of May, the Czech owners of these WW2 US Army vehicles bring them out and drive them in parades through different Western Bohemian towns, celebrating the anniversary of their liberation from Nazi occupation. Some owners drive around quite regularly in them. I actually saw a US Army WW2 Jeep parked in the centre of Prague today!

Your comments about how Hollywood has so easily skewed the way many people perceive history are extremely inciteful and accurate. The former communist authorities in Central & Eastern Europe were not the only ones doing it during the last century!

I’m glad you enjoy the blog. Please keep visiting and commenting!

By: Tim Taylor

Tim Taylor — Fri, 05 Feb 2010 00:04:16 +0000

I agree with you that it is important that the council have preserved the original plaque, for although it is untrue in its statement of the facts about the liberation it reveals much about the nature of the Communist state. The ‘legitimacy’ of the Soviet puppet states of Eastern Europe was based on the idea that the Red Army had ‘liberated’ them from the Nazis – only, of course, to replace them with equally loathsome regimes.

I wonder what the people of Klatovy made of the statement that they had been liberated by the Red Army, when, presumably, many of them would have remembered the Americans arriving. And of course the fact that Czechoslovakia was again ‘liberated’ from counter-revolutionary elements by the arrival of tanks in 1968.

One is reminded of Orwell’s phrase that ‘He who controls the present, controls the past. He who controls the past, controls the future.’But it is not just in totalitarian states that this rewriting of history takes place. Hollywood has skewed the way many people have perceived history.

The Western is perhaps the most obvious example, which until recently, suggested a history of the interaction between the indigenous peoples and the white colonialists which bore only the most fleeting of relationship to the facts. And don’t get British war veterans started on Hollywood movies about the Second World War in which you would be hard put to know that Britain had even been involved.This is not a state controlled attempt to alter history but in many ways its effect is just as invidious.

Many thanks for the blog and congratulations on your first year.