Dark Corners of the 20th Century

History parades before us like a compelling drama when it is written by a non-fiction author who has proven his narrative mastery many times before.
Such is the case with this book, in which Roman Cílek depicts, with many remarkable details, several key moments of the last century: the rise of Hitler and his followers to power, the struggle for our borderlands, and the events of March 1939. And, as is usual for him, his creative approach is reflected here in a very readable form, where he intertwines the “grand” history with the microcosm of dramatic, sometimes almost unbelievable human fates and conflicts into a final, vividly rendered form which he has called a “historical mosaic”.
Thus, we can follow the rise of Adolf Hitler, in his youth “the last of the last”—Roman Cílek gave the chapter devoted to his rise to power the fitting title “Satan Ascends the Throne”. Through the story of one of thousands of brutally and permanently silenced opponents, the Lübeck journalist Fritz A. Solmitz, he then portrayed the monstrosity of the Nazi regime, before subsequently turning his attention to our country.
The First Republic certainly had a number of imperfections or vices, but it was a democracy—and for that reason alone Hitler had to destroy it, even if the Henlein fifth column had perhaps not existed. He depicted the crippling and finishing off of Czechoslovakia not only with regard to the broadly known events (the Munich Agreement and what preceded it—and subsequently the agony and demise of the Second Republic), but also through the fates of those who did not bow to terror and evil.