Important to remember that this book was written and published in the 1960s when Czechoslovakia was stil under Soviet domination. The story it tells of heroic local resistance to German occupation by the first country to be invaded by the Nazis in spring 1939 (through to June 1942 when the resistance was smashed by the Germans in retaliation for the assassination) reflects this fact. Although the author was no longer living in Czechoslovakia at the time of writing, he was a strongly patriotic nationalist. The vivid depiction of Nazi atrocities, often with lengthy passages from the archival documents themselves, will appall but not surprise readers in 2025. The author’s own amazing story is interspersed with these events, but only up to 1943. From the Afterword we hear of his military role later in the war; I would have liked to know more about that and about the military contribution of other exiled Czechs to the war effort. An ironic reference to Yalta (the meeting of Stalin, Churchill and Roosevelt inYalta in Feb. 1945 that ceded Eastern Europe to the Russians) insufficiently explains the tragedy of those Czech patriots who were able to support the Allies but received only 40 more years of foreign oppression in exchange.