The Czechoslovak WWII border fortifications
In February 1932, Czechoslovak Foreign Minister, Eduard Beneš, attended the start of the Geneva Conference on Disarmament, along with 61 other nations, including Germany, the United States and the Soviet Union. Beneš returned to Prague with the prediction that, if the conference failed, the Czechs should be prepared for a military and political crisis within five years. In October 1933, Adolf Hitler withdrew Germany from the Geneva negotiations. The clock had started ticking.
The Czechoslovak government did not wait long to begin preparations to defend the country from the Nazi threat. Two options were considered; a) invest in a modernized and motorized army capable of responding at speed to incursions wherever they might come, or b) create a state-of-the-art fixed border defense, with a linked series of fortifications along the threatened border. Czechoslovakia’s principal military ally, France, advocated for the fixed border defense, pointing to their own formidable border defenses – the Maginot Line.
The order to build the Czech border fortifications was issued on July 21, 1934. Seventeen large scale artillery fortresses were envisaged, each with multiple heavy fortifications linked by an underground tunnel system. In total, over 1200 individual heavy blockhouses were planned, together with more than 15000 machine gun bunkers. The first infantry blockhouse was concreted in December 1935 in the industrial heartland north of Ostrava. Due to the extraordinary scale and cost of the program, however, construction was not expected to be fully complete until 1946.
The fortifications were not expected to hold off an invading army permanently, but rather to buy sufficient time for the whole Czech army to move to a defensible position in Moravia. The main purpose of the heaviest defenses, along the northeastern border with Silesia, was to reduce the chance the army would be split and surrounded by German forces arriving from different directions. Lines of lighter fortifications were constructed in inland areas to protect the lines of retreat towards Moravia. Delaying the German advance, it was thought, would also allow time for the Czechoslovakia’s allies – principally France – to mobilize and invade Western Germany, creating a dual front. Churchill, in his subsequent account of the war, believed the Czech border defenses could have held for up to three months.
In the end, the Czechs had less than half the needed 12-year window to build their defenses. As Beneš had accurately predicted, within 5 years of the Germans withdrawing from the Geneva disarmament conference, Czechoslovakia would face a major crisis. The first major blow came on 12 March 1938, when Hitler announced the Anshcluss – the annexation of Austria. This created a huge problem for the Czech fortification system. No significant fortifications had been planned for the long southern border with the Austrians. Rapid – but ultimately futile – construction of a series of bunkers along the southern border began immediately.
And then came Munich. On 30 September 1938, an agreement was signed between Germany, France, Great Britain and Italy, effectively forcing Czechoslovakia to give up those border lands which had a majority of ethnic German residents – the so-called Sudetenland. Overnight, the Czechs lost virtually the whole of its partly constructed border fortification system.
By September 1938, nearly 10,000 light bunkers were ready, but only around 260 heavy blockhouses had been completed – less than a quarter of the number planned. Of the seventeen planned artillery complexes, five were partly functional. The rest had little more than foundations. Most of the fortifications still lacked the full complement of weaponry.
Historians have speculated how long the partly complete system could have delayed a Nazi invasion, had the Czechs decided to resist the Munich decision. Estimates range from a matter of days to a number of weeks.
Nearly a hundred years on, the question whether the Czechs should have capitulated to the demands of the ‘Big Powers’ continues to be debated. Did Beneš make the correct decision when agreeing to abide by the Munich terms? At the time, the mobilized Czech army numbered over one million soldiers. They were highly motivated and well-equipped. Would France have reversed its position and invaded west Germany if the Czechs had been attacked in the autumn of 1938? Would the Soviet Union have honored its commitment to provide assistance to the Czechs, once France had mobilized?
Commentators point to the fact that, a year later, when Poland was invaded by the Nazis in September 1939, the French attempt to attack Germany from the west completely failed, while the Soviets actually participated in the annexation of Poland (in support of the Nazis). The likelihood of Czech resistance in 1938 dramatically changing the course of the war seems (at least to this author) highly unlikely.
What is clear, however, is that Hitler’s generals were relieved they did not have not capture the Czech fortifications or face the Czech divisions on the battlefield. In March 1939, the remaining part of Czechoslovakia was occupied by German forces. It was an unopposed invasion. The entire Czech arsenal of weapons and ammunition was inherited by the Wehrmacht. This were then used by the Nazis in the subsequent invasions of Poland and – ironically – Czechoslovakia’s long-time ally, France.
Hitler visited the border fortifications in October 1938 and was apparently impressed. The Czech fortifications were tested in training exercises by the German occupiers, and found to be highly effective in resisting shelling. The lessons learned were useful when parts of France’s Maginot Line were attacked – and overcome – in 1940.
The vast majority of the Czech border fortifications therefore never saw action, at least not by the Czech army. The only partly completed artillery fortress which fell outside the annexed Sudetenland, was at Dobrošov, in the hills above Náchod. The one useable blockhouse was garrisoned until the occupation, but was not attacked.
Part of the system on the northeastern Silesian border did, however, see some action. The Nazis manned a partly completed fortress in April 1945, when attempting to resist the advance of the Red Army near Ostrava. The Soviet forces were supplemented by the First Czechoslovak Army Corps. It seems ironic that the only time Czech soldiers got to experience their country’s formidable defensive system in a combat situation, they were on the attacking side.
During the Communist era, many of the fortifications were also used for artillery practice, while others were blown up in training exercises. Shell holes are still visible today in the battered concrete at many sites. Yet, despite the best efforts of Soviet and German commanders, a significant number of the fortifications have survived to this day. It is rare to go on a walk in the border areas (and even in some inland areas, particularly along the major rivers) and not come across a concrete bunker built in this remarkable prewar period.
In recent years, some of the best preserved heavy fortifications have been re-equipped and opened as museums, often run by enthusiastic volunteers. Various walks on this site feature visits to the most impressive of the border fortification areas. These include the Králiky, Stachelberg, Bouda and Dobrošov fortress systems. They are well worth your time.