Conflicts of the 20th century

The first world war (1914-1918) affected also our region and, of course, especially its inhabitants, although this region was not touched by any battles. A lot of men had to leave their families and economic problems influenced the life of many people. In this photo, you can see a local military hospital during Christmas time.

After the end of WWI, legionaries came back into newly created Czechoslovakia and of course also to Boskovice. In the Czech context of WWI, we use the term “legionary” as a designation for men who were citizens of the Austro-Hungarian Empire but they left its army and started to fight as soldiers of its enemies. It is interesting that many of them wrote diaries; one of them was Josef Dudek; a native of the small town of Olešnice, that is located 20 km from Boskovice. His diary was published in 2019. You can see there a photo of legionaries that was used during our exhibition Czechoslovak legion 1914-1920 which took place in our museum in 2016.

Memoirs of Czech soldier, who used to work as a teacher and lived in our region.

After 20 years of peace, a new huge conflict appeared in Europe – the second world war. Although this conflict is usually dated from 1939 to 1945, Czech people often believe that 1938 was the start of the war events. During this year, the infamous Munich agreement was written. Due to it, Czechoslovakia was robbed of its border area. In connection with it, a factory Minerva was moved from borderline town to Boskovice. Minerva is still a part of our town.  There is a piece of text of the local chronicle where those events are described. In this room, you can see a sewing machine which was made by Minerva.

Most photos depicting events of WWII are dated back to the last weeks of the war. These materials are preserved not only in Boskovice but also for in a lot of towns and villages in this region. Many of them, for example, a small town called Olešnice, show the photos on their websites.

We know a lot of details of the year 1945 not only thanks to several photographs but also due to several photo albums that are still preserved. One thing is problematic regarding using this type of materials. It is necessary to keep in mind that those albums were created after the war and it is presumable that there can be mistakes, for example, their sequence. Also, captions are very brief and an explorer has to find also other sources of information, for example, chronicles or official records.

Omitting economic restriction, the event which was the most hurting for most of the Czech population was the duty of Czech young people to work for Third Reich, as Nazi Germany was called. Those youth had to work in factories or agriculture either in the Protectorate Bohemia and Moravia or abroad (Germany, Norway…). Below, you can see never-published photos made by Jaroslav Kadlec from Krtenov (a small village 20 km from Boskovice), a young man who had to work in Norway and later he created albums from his amateur photos.  

From a historian´s point of view it is hard to say if the existence of the Communist regime in Czechoslovakia is seen as a conflict or not. Most of historians claim that it is dictatorship or totalitarianism and a conflict is only a period when Czechoslovakia was occupied by the Soviet Union and its allies in 1968.  

Communist party in Boskovice supported a more liberal approach and so the military intervention in 1968 was seen as a very negative event. In this poster, there is written that local people do not see the Soviet Union as a friend any more.

November 1989 was seen as a happy-end of the disturbed 20^th century, as a month when democracy came back to Czechoslovakia / the Czech Republic. Nowadays, people see it more critically especially in connection with corruption and economic problems.