The Prague Uprising: Who Liberated Prague in 1945?
May 5, 2020 • 1:10 PM
photo: profimedia.cz
It is an irrefutable fact that at the most critical moments, the 1st Division of the Russian Liberation Army (ROA), Lieutenant General Andrei Andreyevich Vlasov, greatly assisted the poorly armed and untrained insurgents. It was commanded by Major General Sergei Kuzmich Bunachenko, a Ukrainian by the way. Before November 1989, for political reasons, the participation of the Vlasovs in the Prague Uprising was silent, then the opposite extreme reappeared, downplaying the Red Army’s share and speculating on how our capital could liberate the US military without the damned line. This year’s celebrations, severely limited by measures due to the new coronavirus pandemic, again give the impression that the epicenter of the Prague Uprising has become the Reporyje and the local Vlasov performance, which, however, has a minor flaw. Reporyje were not part of Prague at that time; they did not become so until 1974.
They hit at the right moment
Stanislav A. Auský, who dealt with the history of the Vlasov family, wrote: “The First Division of the Russian Liberation Army did not take part in the Prague fighting unexpectedly. Her participation was the result of talks with the military command, which knew that the intervention of the regular army was absolutely necessary, otherwise the uprising would be drowned in blood. Until May 7, the units of the 1st Division held control of the western part of the city, which still had strong German defenses in the districts of Strahov, Hradčany and Dejvice. On the east bank, the ROA units established control over the central part of the city, from the Jirásek Bridge – Vinohrady – Strašnice line to the south.
The main merit of the ROA division lies in the fact that at a critical moment it divided the city into two parts – northern and southern – thanks to which, in its subsequent activities in the city, it prevented the unification of the non-Prague armed forces. Without the division’s participation in the Prague Uprising, the western part of the city would have been occupied on May 6, and the uprising itself would certainly have been issued the following day.. “
As is well known, the Czech National Council had to refuse, given the circumstances, the help of the Vlasovs, who were also fighting against the Red Army. Their losses in the May Uprising amounted to about 900 people, of this third dead.
May 2, 2020 • 9:27 AM
The Red Army is coming
The Soviet command launched a strategic attack operation in Prague the day after the uprising broke out – on May 6, a day earlier than originally planned. It must be borne in mind that the operation began just four days after the surrender of the Berlin garrison in the gigantic battle for the Reich’s capital, in which the Red Army suffered heavy losses. The Prague strategic offensive operation lasted until May 11, and the Soviet command threw enormous forces into it: at its beginning 1,770,637 Soviet (151 divisions, 14 tank and mechanized corps, 18 brigades and two fortified areas), 139,495 Romanian (12 infantry and three cavalry divisions), 69,522 Polish (five infantry divisions and a tank corps) and 48,400 Czechoslovak soldiers (four infantry and one separate tank brigade). They had 29,496 guns and mortars, 1808 tanks and self-propelled guns and 3,014 fighters. Opposing them, Army Group Ferdinand Schörner’s “Center” had 900,000 troops, 9,700 cannons and mortars, 1,900 tanks and assault cannons, and a thousand combat aircraft.
According to the historical-statistical study Without the “Top Secret” stamp, issued in Moscow in 1993, Soviet troops lost 49,348 (11,265 people were permanent and 38,083 medical losses), the 1st and 4th Romanian armies 1730 (320 people were permanent and 1410 for medical losses), the Polish 2nd Army 887 (300 people represented the Czech permanent and 587 medical losses) and the 1st Slovak Army Corps 533 soldiers (112 were permanent and 421 medical losses).
Material losses amounted to 59,800 infantry weapons, 1,006 cannons and mortars, 373 tanks and self-propelled guns and 80 fighters. Instead, she seized rich booty. According to a record in the combat activities of the 1st Ukrainian Front of Marshal Ivan Stepanovich Konev, who liberated Prague, on May 15, 1945, this operational union captured 256,659 officers and soldiers, seized 620 tanks and assault guns, 2,889 guns, 13467 bullets, 64 mortars, 118,696 rifles and submachine guns, 41,020 cars, 781 aircraft, of which 365 burned, 510 locomotives, 12,759 wagons and 445 different warehouses. Perhaps it will be interesting to share with our esteemed readers what feelings Marshal Koněv “the bitch” shared in connection with the Prague operation.
March 21, 2017 • 10:37 am
“We were very afraid of Prague and we desperately wanted to come to our brothers’ aid as soon as possible, before the fascists could deal with them. We all shared that feeling. He seized me, the commander of the front, and ordinary tankers from Rybalkov and Lelyushenko’s army, who had to make an incredibly fast eighty-kilometer jump on the night of May 9, when they wanted to invade Prague in the morning. They were heading for Prague and each of us did everything in our power. However, in the interest of historical truth, I want to state which units and in what order reached Prague first. The first troops of the 10th Ural Guard Volunteer Corps (Commander-General Lieutenant Bělov) of Lelyushenko’s army invaded the city from the northwest. died right behind them entered the Prague from the north tankers of the 9th Mechanized Corps (Commander Lieutenant General Suchov) Rybalka Army. And in a few hours, advanced units of the 13th and 3rd All-Army Guards appeared on the outskirts of Prague. The troops of the 5th Guards Army destroyed the enemy group in the Mělník area with their main forces, and its advanced division also penetrated to the northern edge of Prague. The troops of the 1st Ukrainian Front occupied the whole of Prague by ten o’clock in the morning and cleared it of the enemySo much memory of Marshal Konev’s Forty-fifth.
However, it cannot be overlooked that the operation took place over a large area. The fighting immediately in Prague, which the Red Army entered on May 9 with an enthusiastic welcome from the population, which covered the armored vehicles with soldiers blooming lilacs, resembled a large-scale clean-up operation aimed at getting rid of our capital of the last German outbreaks of resistance, snipers, etc. 662 Soviet soldiers were killed in the fighting on the approaches to Prague, and thirty in the street clashes right in the city. The Germans lost about a thousand dead. Approximately four thousand civilians died.
Until recently, the losses of the Czech insurgents were reported to be 1,694 dead, but the Military History Institute issued a publication covering 2,898 fallen participants in the Prague Uprising on the 70th anniversary of the Prague Uprising, almost double that. That’s more than the French died during the uprising in Paris in August 1944! So we didn’t get freedom for free on a silver platter.
April 20, 2020 • 2:01 PM
April 14, 2020 • 4:20 PM