Czech Lands during the First World War

The Great War, i.e. the first global conflict of the 20th century between two coalitions of the Entente and the Central Powers took place between 1914 and 1918 mostly in Europe, Africa and Asia. Over 68 million soldiers were mobilised in the armies and fought on several fronts. The progress, outcomes and consequences caused a fundamental historical breakthrough also in the Czech Lands, which became the parts of Czechoslovakia due to the defeat of Austria-Hungary and the political and military activities of Bohemia and Slovakia.

In 1917, the Czech Heart association was established in Prague (and Vienna) as a voluntary social organisation to support starving children, orphans and widows. Anna Podlipná (sitting in the middle) when distributing coupons for goods. Military Historical Archive Prague.

References

Prokš, P.: Habsburkové a Velká válka (1914–1918). Praha 2011;
Semotanová, E. ‒ Cajthaml, J. a kol.: Akademický atlas českých dějin. Praha 2014, 2. akt. vydání 2016;
Kárník, Z.: České země v éře první republiky. Vznik, budování a zlatá léta republiky (1918 - 1929) . Praha 2017.

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War conflicts and their consequences

The military and the maps make a significant “alliance” in particular during the wars – in preparations to their strategically long-term objectives and the overall idea of the planned military operations and in the use of tactical methods in each war. This is because the simplified map illustrations of the attacked (but also defended) ground represent navigation aids, which point at the relations between its objects. This situation often heavily affected the war logistics and thus the final outcome. From the 15th century to the 20th century, this “alliance” experienced a huge development as regards the form and contents. The outcome is the understanding that for the military “clash of the wills” presented as interaction between two or more military forces, maps of various types (i.e. military topographic maps of various types and special focus, specific maps, the so-called atypical maps such as planimetric maps, aerial maps, photo mosaics or map graphics of joint air-ground operations) are extremely important. Cooperation between historians, geographers and cartographers (and thus the history, historical geography, interdisciplinary historiography exploring transformations of geographic space in the time, historical cartography, interdisciplinary disciplines dealing with the processing of historical events and processes on the maps) has always been important for the development of military maps per se, but also for the understanding of the facts and contexts of the wars and their consequences as the permanent components of the human history, mainly in the form of reconstruction maps such as the Wars and their Consequences, which are the results collective sets of findings on wars against the Hussites, battles of the Thirty Year War and wars for the Austrian and Bavarian heritage on the Czech territory. Similarly, a complex view of the complicated 20th century burdened with the wars is presented, based on detailed analytic probes into complicated and hitherto unprocessed themes of the First World War and Second World War (e.g. the POW camps).

Zlatica Zudová-Lešková

Subchapters:

• Hussite Wars
• Thirty Years' War
• 18th c.
• 19th c.
• First World War
• First World War – POW camps
• Second World War

Contemporary plan of the Battle of Čáslav on May 17, 1742. Map collection of the Institute of History, CAS. Map display