Happy 1938

When you start collecting Czech ex libris, you will also be offered PFs. These are New Year cards and usually feature the letters PF (which stands for the French greeting pour feliciter) and the year and perhaps the name of the family sending the card. The Czechs refer to these cards as peefko. Sometimes families will make their own cards and sometimes they will commission artists to produce cards for them.

Some cards are humourous and many reveal the interests of the family sending the card, which is another reason (other than their artistic value) why they are fascinating to collect. This signed card in our collection is by the well-known artist Alois Moravec. As you can see it is a happy new year card for 1938, which was to be a far from a happy year for the Czechs. The choice of subject matter for this card would seem to be indicative of the impending Nazi invasion and Czech determination to resist.

This is a picture of Jan Zizka, the one-eyed military genius who successfully resisted a series of anti-Hussite crusader armies. These invading armies were for a large part made up of the Teutonic knights - the panzer divisions of their day - and on the face of it the Czech Hussites didn't stand a chance in the face of such military superiority. But the undefeated Zizka shattered the knights' reputation and in so doing entered into the Czech nationalist pantheon. No wonder he features on this 1938 PF.

Bunkers in the woods

Czechs view the events of 1938 very differently from us Brits. For them British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain's betrayal at Munich (where he agreed to Hitler's annexation of the Sudetenland) still galls and is one of the most important "what ifs" in modern history. We Brits have been led to believe that there was no point in supporting the Czechs in resisting Hitler, they lived "in a far-away country" with "people of whom we know nothing" (Chamberlain 1938) and needed British help to fight - help we could not provide. But if you explore the forests and mountains that ring the Czech Republic you will find evidence to the contrary.

Near Slavonice in South Bohemia my husband and I visited some of the bunkers, which Czechoslovakia had been building for Nazi invasion for several years upto 1938. The bunkers were approximately every 100 yards apart, giving a continuous field of fire. In front of the bunkers were barbwire and anti-tank defences. These fortifications went all the way along the border. The little Czechoslovak nation was mobilised in 1938 - the army that would have faced Hitler's troops was nearly as large as the Nazi's. And as the Czechs will tell you they were prepared to fight for the country that they had so long been denied and they will also tell you that they could have won. What would the history of the twentieth century have been like if they had?