Victory and Liberation 1945

The aim of this monograph is to bring together a team of domestic experts on the given theme in order to provide (along with selected foreign authors) a more comprehensive overview and consideration of the liberation of Czechoslovakia, placed in the broader international context. The book is divided up into several areas. Following the opening synthetic framing of the Czechoslovak matter in the context of international developments, the first part focuses attention on the trends and changes in the research themes indicating which questions have received increased attention in certain phases of research. Coverage is also given to the question of how the victors and vanquished viewed the end of the war. In other parts the accent is initially on placing the course of Czechoslovakia’s liberation in an international context. This also includes complex ways of dealing with the past. There is also a focus on the results of domestic historiographic research. In view of the scope of the theme and potential areas, the authors focussed on the responses of the two most significant victors of the Second World War – the Soviet Union and the United States of America – through the lens of current Russian and American historiography. But it also includes the German view, with post-war consideration of the conflict on the side of the vanquished. This broader picture, offering views of the results of the Second World War, the liberation, the victory of the Allies and defeat of Nazi Germany and its satellites, is followed by an analysis and interpretation of the specifically Czechoslovak matter, primarily the resistance and liberation. The Slovak National Uprising and the May Uprising of the Czech people at the end of the war, and the role and, in particular, contribution of the individual participants are amongst the extensively discussed themes, specified and deepened by research. We hope that this publication, intended both for specialists and the general public, will help explain the significance of the victory over Nazism and the problems associated therewith. And also that it will result in the discussion of other questions about this fundamental period of Czechoslovak and European history of the 20th century and also point to new possibilities and trends of further research into the causes, course and consequences of the Second World War.