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Karel Kutlvašr

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General of the Army
Karel Kutlvašr
2nd Minister of War of Czechoslovakia
In office
4 May 1919 – Unknown
PresidentTomáš Garrigue Masaryk
Prime MinisterKarel Kramář
Preceded byMilan Rastislav Štefánik
Succeeded byUnknown
Personal details
Born(1895-01-27)27 January 1895
Michalovice, Bohemia, Austria-Hungary
Died2 October 1961(1961-10-02) (aged 66)
Prague, Czechoslovakia
Military service
Allegiance Russian Empire
 Czechoslovakia
Branch Czechoslovak Legion
Czechoslovak Army
Years of service1914–1948
RankGeneral of the Army
Battles/wars

Karel Kutlvašr (27 January 1895 – 2 October 1961) was a Czechoslovak legionary officer and general who commanded the Prague Uprising. After February 1948 became a victim of political persecution by the communist regime of Czechoslovakia.

Biography

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Karel Kutlvašr was born on 27 January 1895 in Michalovice near Havlíčkův Brod as the sixth child in the family of farmer Josef Kutlvašr. He graduated from the school Německý Brod in 1911 with a two-year business degree. He was first employed by Jenč in Humpolec. He later worked in Kyiv as a clerk for Vielwart and Dědina, which exported agricultural machinery to Tsarist Russia.

In August 1914, he was among the first to enlist in the Czech companies[a] Kutlvašr founded units of the future Czechoslovak legions on the Battle of Galicia.[1] As a scout, he participated in a number of important battles. He was honored many times for his heroism in battle. After the Battle of Zborov, in which he was wounded, he became battalion commander and assistant commander of the 1st MS. Rifle Regiment which was primarily commanded by Colonel Švec. With him, he also participated in the Kazan Operation on 6–7 August 1918.[2] After the foundation of the First Czechoslovak Republic, he became the interim commander of the regiment, and on 25 February 1919 he was promoted to Minister of War, replacing Milan Rastislav Štefánik. Kutlvašr was promoted to lieutenant colonel and subsequently appointed the final commander of the 1st Regiment. In Russia, he met Elizabeth Yakovlev, whom he later married.

He returned to his homeland in 1920, and here he was promoted to colonel in 1923, when he served as commander of the 1st Infantry Regiment in České Budějovice. Between 1923 and 1931 he commanded the 2nd Infantry Brigade in Chomutov. In 1928 he was promoted to brigadier general. At the age of 33, he became one of the youngest generals of the Czechoslovak Army and gradually held a number of command and pedagogical positions. From 1934 to 1939 he commanded the 4th Infantry Division in Hradec Králové and at the time of the mobilization in September 1938 he took command of Border Area 35 with the headquarters in Vamberk.

During the occupation, he was a member of the resistance organization Defense of the Nation. Under the Prague Uprising general František Slunečko ("Alex") was, on 5 May 1945, appointed commander of rebel troops in Prague,[1] and, together with representatives of the Czech National Council later in the afternoon on 8 May, negotiated the conditions for implementing the surrender of German troops in Prague[b] exchange for their free passage through the city into captivity by the armed forces of the Western Allies. This took place after February 1948 and it probably became one of the reasons for his persecution by the communist regime, carried out at the request of the Soviet Union, which already in the summer of 1945 began to put pressure on his retirement.[1]

He served as the military commander of Prague until 28 May 1945, when he became the interim commander of the 5th Corps in Brno, but on 1 August 1945, after complaints from Soviet envoy Valerian Zorin, he was sent on vacation, during which his fate was decided.

He returned into service, after the intervention of President Edvard Beneš,[4] and returned in February 1946 when he joined as commander of III. Corps in Plzeň, and after being promoted to the rank of divisional general later served from 1947 as deputy commander of Military Area 3 again in Brno.

Shortly after the 1948 Czechoslovak coup d'état, on 8 March 1948, he was sent on vacation and transferred to retirement on 1 June 1948. He was subsequently arrested on 18 December 1948 and, as a representative of the alleged resistance group "Truth Prevails", which was staged provocations 5th Department,[c] in a show trial[4] on 16 May 1949 the State Court in Prague sentenced for high treason and sentenced to prison freedom for life and at the same time degradation to a soldier in reserve.[1] He was imprisoned in Mírov and Leopoldov.[d] In 1960, after the amnesty of the President of the Republic Antonín Novotný, announced on the occasion of the adoption of the Socialist Constitution, more precisely, the "completion of socialism" and the change of the name of the republic from Czechoslovakia to Czechoslovakia, he was released from serving his sentence. He returned from prison in very poor health.

After his release from prison, he lived with his wife until his death in Prague-Vršovice, Rybalkova 69. As he was awarded a retirement pension of only CSK 230 per month, he made a living first as a security guard in the Prague Castle Riding School and after having to leave, he worked as a night porter in the Nusle Brewery.[4] He died suddenly during a medical examination on 2 October 1961 in the Motol University Hospital in the office of doctor MUDr. Endta, whose father fought by his side in the Czechoslovak legions.

In 1968, the Municipal Court in Prague overturned all charges from 1948 and 1949. However, it was not fully rehabilitated until after November 1989. In memoriam he was promoted to General of the Army and was awarded the Milan Rastislav Stefanik Order.

On 28 October 2017 the President of the Republic, Miloš Zeman, awarded him in memoriam the Order of the White Lion[5] of the 1st Class Military Group for extraordinary merits for the defense and security of the state.

Awards

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Foreign Awards

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Notes

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  1. ^ He participated together with his older brother František, who later fell near Zborov.
  2. ^ With the German Instrument of Surrender on all fronts was, with the participation of the Soviet deputy General Susloparov , signed in Reims on 7 May at 02:41 (with final effect at 23:01 on 8 May 1945), but the Soviet Union did not do so until late. on the evening of 8 May, due to formal shortcomings, he refused to recognize, and Wehrmacht units on the Eastern Front led by Marshal Schörner also refused to submit to it. The "Protocol on the Form of Surrender of the German Armed Forces"[3] thus negotiated the cessation of fighting by German troops against the Czechoslovak insurgent forces and specified the conditions for their departure into captivity to the west.
  3. ^ In some sources it is possible to find information that it was Defense Intelligence, but its name was changed to the 5th Department of the General Staff on 1 April 1946.
  4. ^ Here was one of his fellow prisoners Rudolf Toussaint, in 1945 the German commanding general in Prague and his opponent from the fighting during the Prague Uprising.

References

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  1. ^ a b c d Stehlík, Eduard; Láník, Jaroslav (2005). Military personalities of the Czechoslovak resistance 1939-1945 (PDF). Prague: Ministry of Defense of the Czech Republic-Military Information and Services Agency (AVIS). p. 168. ISBN 80-7278-233-9. Archived from the original (PDF) on January 1, 2014. Retrieved 2016-02-13.
  2. ^ Preclík, Vratislav (2019). Masaryk a legie (in Czech). Paris Karviná in association with the Masaryk Democratic Movement, Prague. ISBN 978-80-87173-47-3.
  3. ^ Glynwed. Protocol on the implementation of the form of surrender of the German Armed Forces. Vojtěch Šír - Fronta.cz. Retrieved 2013-06-17.
  4. ^ a b c Marek, Jindřich. "In memoriam Karel Kutlvašr". Prague: Military History Institute Prague. Retrieved 2016-02-18.
  5. ^ "President Zeman awarded state decoration to Schröder, Trošek and Vondráčková". Novinky.cz (in Czech). 2017-10-28. Retrieved 2017-10-29.

Further reading

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  • Jindřich Černý: Osudy českého divadla po druhé světové válce – Divadlo a společnost 1945–1955, Academia, Prague, 2007, pp. 19, 61, 192, ISBN 978-80-200-1502-0 (in Czech)
  • Vratislav Preclík: T.G. Masaryk a jeho legionáři. In ČAS, magazine of the Masaryk Democratic Movement, number 97, pp. 4–8, volume XX., January–March 2012, ISSN 1210-1648. (in Czech)
  • Pavel Švec (ed.): enerál Karel Kutlvašr. Vzpomínky na Pražské povstání. Epocha publishing house. Prague 2020. ISBN 978-80-7557-981-2 (in Czech)
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