Ppad Chvalkovsk: Elitn diplomat, nestoudn kolaborant Junek Vclav (2025)

This biography presents the life story and later fate of Dr Frantiek Chvalkovsk, a loyal servant of a state in which he himself did not believe. For twenty years, this first-rate representative of the Czechoslovak Republic served successively in Tokyo, Washington, Berlin and Rome. The book asks what might have become of him had he not died prematurely. After May 1945, he could have served the self-appointed national avengers as the face of Czech wartime collaboration, or provided convenient personal alibi for millions of others who remained passively silent during the Protectorate or filled the countrys squares whenever required. Blaming Edvard Bene for the Munich catastrophe was not acceptable, while Emil Hcha and Emanuel Moravec were already dead, so attention turned to a host of other, less prominent Czech collaborators. Frantiek Chvalkovsk is unknown to the overwhelming majority of people today; for others, his role remains controversial or difficult to define. The book is dedicated to him because he was deliberately and expediently erased soon after the war, for motives that were always conspicuously petty. This, the author suggests, is an intolerable extravagance for a nation not exactly overflowing with remarkable personalities throughout its history.