Prague in Danger

The acclaimed historian and author of Prague in Black and Gold shares a dramatic account of life in Czechoslovakia’s capital under Nazi occupation.

From 1939 to 1945, Czechoslovakia endured as a Nazi Protectorate. Peter Demetz lived in Prague at that time, designated a “first-degree half-Jew,” according to the Nazis’ terrible categories. In Prague in Danger, he joins his objective chronicle of the city under German occupation with his personal memories of that period: from the bitter morning of March 15, 1939, when Hitler arrived to set his seal on the Nazi takeover of the Czechoslovak government, until the liberation of Bohemia in April 1945, after long seasons of unimaginable suffering and pain.

Demetz expertly interweaves a superb account of the German authorities’ diplomatic, financial, and military machinations with a brilliant description of Prague’s evolving resistance and underground opposition. Along with his private experiences, he offers the heretofore untold history of an effervescent, unstoppable Prague whose urbane heart went on beating despite the deportations, murders, cruelties, and violence: a Prague that kept its German- and Czech-language theaters open, its fabled film studios functioning, its young people in school and at work, and its newspapers on press. 

This complex and surprising book is filled with rare human detail and warmth, the gripping story of a great city meeting the dual challenge of occupation and of war.