WW2: Czech Resistance

Warfare

History Hit

History

4.5 • 943 Ratings

🗓️ 1 October 2021

⏱️ 43 minutes

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Summary

Though excluded from decisions on their occupation in the Munich Agreement in 1938, the citizens of the new country of Czechoslovakia were by no means passive for the rest of the war. The story of Czechoslovakian espionage and resistance is one which spans Europe and the length of the war, including assassinations of Nazi leaders and brave battles to the death. George Bearfield is the grandson of Jaroslav Bublík, a key figure in intelligence and the leader of possibly the last parachute drop of the Second World War. He has been studying his grandfather’s experiences during the war for his book ‘Foursquare: The Last Parachutist’. In this episode he sheds light on this story and whether an operation which was thought to have been cancelled really went ahead.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello everyone I'm your host James Rogers and this is the history hit warfare podcast. We got a bit of a hidden history this week. We love these.
0:07.0	Operation Anthropoid, we know has gone down in history as one of the most famous acts of resistance during the Second World War and culminated in the assassination of the Nazi protector, He was one of the most fearsome and of course brutal rulers during the Nazi regime.
0:24.0	It was carried out by British train Czechoslovakian intelligence and forces in exile
0:28.0	and led to some of the most shocking reprisals of the Second World War.
0:31.0	But there's a gap in our knowledge here, this hidden history that I want to talk about.
0:35.2	How did this relationship between the British and Czech-Slovac forces come about?
0:39.5	Who was involved? What was their fate? And what other missions were carried out that we just don't know about?
0:45.0	Well, it's here that we have George Bearfield on the podcast to talk about his remarkable family history.
0:51.0	George describes his grandfather, Yaroslav Bublic and his grandfather's cousin,
0:54.7	Yosef Bublic, their central role in Czechoslovak intelligence during the Second World War,
1:00.3	and he's got all the family documents and all the family history needed to answer these questions that we just don't know the answers to.
1:07.0	Well, until now, he also reveals a secret mission called Operation Four Square and its critical importance to Czechoslovakia
1:15.2	at the birth of the Cold War. These are amazing new histories. I know you're going to love it.
1:20.1	Enjoy. Hi George welcome to the history hit Warfare
1:37.5	podcast how you doing how's your summer going yeah very well thanks James
1:41.7	it's good to be here have you been able to get away much this summer? I mean a lot of us haven't been traveling too far. Have you had a staycation or what have you been up to?
1:49.6	Yeah, succession has staycations. Just been away to a few places.
1:53.1	Just been up to see my mom in Skegness, actually.
1:54.8	So you can't get much more staycation than that.
1:57.2	Skegness.
1:58.6	Ah, Skeg Vegas, as we used to call it as kids.
2:01.4	I haven't been to Skegness in years and it was Clethorpe or
	...

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