That mass consumerism and standardisation could somehow be reconciled with rampant individualism was one of the smartest tricks pulled ever pulled by Western civilisation. Niall Ferguson, Civilisation: Is the West History? V Consumerism, Channel 4 2011
The Denim Curtain ... Why was it that Russians couldn’t make jeans? ibid.
The West’s ugly sister. Ugly and dumb. Because somehow the communist block failed to grasp the appeal of an item of clothing that could easily have come to symbolise the virtues of the hard-working proletariat. ibid.
The Czechs called jeans Texas-skis – Texan trousers. ibid.
The demands for Levis soared. ibid.
Their resistance to the West’s consumer society was weaker. ibid.
The collapse of communism: maybe it really was blue jeans and rock-n-roll. ibid.
‘Anyway, history wasn’t being written in Avignon that summer; it was being written in Prague.’ Grin Without a Cat aka The Base of the Air is Red, striker, 1977
‘In Prague, the archives of the Gestapo were thrown into the streets.’ ibid. French newsreel
‘The first Soviet tank that entered Free Prague carried the number 23. It was the same tank, now a monument, that was surrounded by other Russian tanks in August 1968.’ ibid. commentator
Dubcek goes to Moscow and finds another Brezhnev who threatens with military invasion and ‘normalization’. ibid.
‘What are you doing in Prague? And you call yourself a communist.’ ibid. demonstrator to man in tank
Prague: Opium-producing poppies can be grown almost anywhere in the world: the Czech Republic, one of the least evil places on Earth … Heroin Holiday in the Czech Republic, Vice TV 2013
While the Czech police and poppy growers’ union try to keep up the front you can’t turn Czech poppies into smack, Prague’s junkies know better. ibid.
To join them at their heroin summer camp. ibid.
‘What we cook here is 50% pure.’ ibid.
I’m in a nightclub on the edge of town. It’s a bad situation and I don’t know how to get out. Scam City s1e2: Prague, National Geographic 2012
Not all taxicabs in Prague are playing by the same rules. ibid.
Lady pickpockets followed by fake drugs. ibid.
The clip joint scam: the victim is sucked in with the promise of a good time. ibid.
Czechoslovakia: But for the time being the dreams were not fulfilled. After three months of dizzy optimism the Russian tanks rolled across to the border to suppress what had been a defiant challenge to the Soviet grip on eastern Europe. Vive le Revolution! Joan Bakewell on May 1968, BBC 2018
The humiliation makes Hitler even more determined to invade Czechoslovakia, and take the Sudetenland and beyond. He will show them who’s in charge. Tyrant: The Rise of Adolf Hitler aka Hitler: Countdown to War, Channel 5 2023
27 September 1938: Hitler has successfully taken control of Austria and is now threatening to invade Czechoslovakia. Tyrant: The Rise of Adolf Hitler II
‘The Munich agreement is Hitler’s idea of Hell … Hitler didn’t want to take things slowly.’ ibid. Frank McDonough
19 March 1939: Hitler has invaded Czechoslovakia … While at home, the Nazis have launched vicious attacks on Germany’s Jews. Tyrant: The Rise of Adolf Hitler III
Most Germany people aren’t happy about the occupation of Czechoslovakia. ibid.
Prague: Jan Massaryk was my great-great-uncle. He was found dead in the courtyard of the Czernin palace on 10th March 1948. Secret History: Death of a Democrat, Channel 4 1992
Thousands turned out to mourn a favourite son … [He] had been Czechoslovakia’s foreign minister for nearly six years. Rumours that he had been murdered spread throughout Prague. Only two weeks before the Communists had seized power: their official verdict was suicide. ibid.
Nothing was done when Hitler invaded the Rhineland … Czechoslovakia was betrayed at Munich. Hitler: Could He Have Been Stopped? I, 5 Select 2023