Ke stavu českého výzkumu nacistické okupační vlády v Čechách a na Moravě. Několik úvah u příležitosti vydání jedné standardní publikace
The State of Czech Research on Nazi Occupation Policy in Bohemia

Summary/Abstract: Translation from German by Helena Peřinová. This is a critical commentary on Jan Gebhart and Jan Kuklik’s two-volume work about the Second Czechoslovak Republic (1 October 1938 to 14 March 1939) and the German Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia (15 March 1939 to 8 May 1945). The work was published by Paseka in Prague and Litomyšl, in 2006 and 2007, as part of Velke dějiny zemi Koruny česke, a multivolume popular history of the Lands of the Bohemian Crown. They ask what picture of the German occupation have contemporary Czech historians provided, and – with respect to the indisputable contribution of this work – they focus on problematic aspects, which, they argue, reflect characteristic shortcomings of research by Czech historians. That is particularly true of the insufficient consideration given to Nazi rule in the context of the Reich itself, which substantially influenced occupation policy, as well as the absence of a comparative perspective, which would have enabled pinpointing what was specific to the Protectorate compared to other regimes in occupied Europe. Another fault, according to the reviewers, is that both volumes are not so much a history of the Bohemian Lands in this period as they are histories of the Czech nation in the ethnic sense. Apart from the Protectorate itself, the volumes deal thoroughly with the Czechoslovak political exiles and Czechoslovak armies abroad, whereas with few expectations they omit events in the Sudetenland (Reichsgau) and other annexed territories. The third conceptual problem, according to the reviewers, is that Gebhart and Kuklik, in keeping with the trend in Czech historical literature, automatically treat the Second Republic as the prologue to the Protectorate, whereas it can also legitimately be seen as the epilogue to the First Republic. Consequently, questions about the causes of the quick disintegration of the democracy of the First Republic and its transformation into a system of another kind vanish from view. The fact that economic history and social developments in the Protectorate remain totally eclipsed by political history, as does, in part, the depiction of society and everyday life in the Protectorate, also corresponds to the current state of research. The reviewers, moreover, see a marked imbalance in the fact that so many places in both volumes are devoted to various kinds of resistance compared to forms of collaboration with the Germans. They also point out the absence of a typology of these phenomena, as well as persistent problems of terminology. In conclusion they state that although this work is extraordinarily rich in facts, it is historical description, unfortunately, that strikingly outweighs interpretation.

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