Verdammt! Where is the broadcasting studio? (1945)
It was the broadcasting of Czech Radio that kicked off the Prague uprising, which took place on May 5, 1945.
As of six o‘clock in the morning, the broadcasters spoke solely in Czech and played songs by Karel Hašler, a singer tortured to death by Nazis at the Mauthausen concentration camp, and many forbidden Czech songs.
At this point, the Nazis were presented with the chance to verify the saying that the pen, or word in this case, is mightier than the sword. Although a solid one hundred army men, all armed to the teeth, and with the infamous Waffen SS soldiers among them, searched the whole building, they were unable to stop the insurrectionary broadcast. The “laughing beasts” (a nickname given to the Czechs by one of the most powerful men of the Third Reich, Reinhard Heydrich) managed to remove all German navigation signs from the building, and the SS therefore couldn’t find the studio from which the broadcast was emitted. The bloody battle for the Radio lasted until May 9, until Prague was definitely freed by the Red Army.
In their onslaught on Czech Radio, the Nazis utilized tanks, cannons from armoured trains, and bombardment from the state of the art turbojet plane Messerschmitt Me 262. Though that may be the case, they failed to conquer or destroy it. The brave Czech patriots – workers from Czech Radio, soldiers, policemen and other rebels – did not hesitate to lay their lives down during the Battle for the Radio. Thanks to their sacrifice and bravery, a free broadcast prevailed through a hailstorm of bullets, a feat unprecedented in any of the cities under Nazi occupation.
