End of the Prague uprising, celebrated now as a national holiday in the Czech Republic.
The Prague uprising (Czech: Pražské povstání) was a partially successful attempt by the Czech resistance to liberate the city of Prague from German occupation in May 1945, at the end of World War II. The preceding six years of occupation had fuelled anti-German sentiment and the approach of the Soviet Red Army and the US Third Army offered a chance of success.
On 5 May 1945, in the last moments of the war in Europe, Czech citizens spontaneously attacked the German occupiers and Czech resistance leaders emerged from hiding to join the uprising. The Russian Liberation Army, which had been fighting for the Germans, defected and supported the Czechs. German troops counter-attacked, but their progress was slowed by barricades constructed by the Czech citizenry. On 8 May, the Czech and German leaders signed a ceasefire allowing the German forces to withdraw from the city, but not all Waffen-SS units obeyed. Fighting continued until 9 May, when the Red Army entered the nearly liberated city.
The uprising was brutal, with both sides committing war crimes. The German side used Czech civilians as human shields and committed massacres. Violence against German civilians, sanctioned by the Czechoslovak government, continued after the liberation, and was justified as revenge for the occupation or as a means to encourage Germans to flee. George Patton’s US Third Army was ordered by General Dwight Eisenhower not to come to the aid of the Czech insurgents, which undermined the credibility of the Western powers in postwar Czechoslovakia. Instead, the uprising was presented as a symbol of Czech resistance to Nazi rule, and the liberation by the Red Army was used by the Czechoslovak Communist Party to increase popular support for the party.