Ostrava, North Moravia, Sept 20 (CTK) – Military history fans will mark the anniversary of the Czechoslovak mobilisation from 1938 by illuminating hundreds of concrete bunkers in the border regions in the Czech Republic and Slovakia on September 24, Pavla Dluhoschova has told CTK on behalf of the organisers.
The bunkers have been unused by the military. Many of them have been maintained by various institutions or fan groups and are accessible to tourists.
About 300 bunkers and fortresses have “reported” their participation in the forthcoming event and their number might still increase, Dluhoschova said.
For the first time, a similar event took place this May on the anniversary of the liberation of Czechoslovakia in 1945. About 200 bunkers were lit then.
The upcoming event will be newly joined by volunteers in the neighbouring Slovakia.
“The first event [in May] met with a great acclaim. Hundreds of people joined it spontaneously, illuminating about 200 objects across the country,” Dluhoschova said.
The organisers therefore decided to repeat it on the anniversary of the mobilisation that was declared on September 23, 1938 at 22:00.
Three quarters of the mobilised reserve troops then reported at their respective military units within 24 hours.
The mobilisation, nevertheless, was cancelled after the September 29 signing of the Munich Agreement by Germany, Italy, Britain and France, which bound Czechoslovakia to cede its border regions to Hitler’s Germany.
“As the bunkers along the border are each within the sight of the next one, we may create an illuminated chain of them one day,” another organiser, Veronika Honcova, said.
In the 1930s, Czechoslovakia built the most perfect fortification system in the world, she said.
The military wanted to build almost 17,000 fortresses and light bunkers for defending the Czechoslovak Republic. It managed to complete some 10,000 of them before the Munich Agreement was signed.
