Construction of the Czechoslovak Fortifications from the Perspective of Parliamentary Interpellations

Abstract

The construction of the Czechoslovak fortifications created and built during the second half of the 1930s as one of several defence measures against Nazi Germany has been explained and understood from a traditional point of view. Expert publications and articles in the Czech historical environment derive essential knowledge mostly from military sources located in the Military Historical Archive in Prague. Astonishingly, there has still been no effort to investigate these fortifications from unusual historical sources that would lead to better cognition and comprehension of their background and the everyday challenges involved in the construction of ferro-concrete fortifications, the private land appropriation process, the category of state reliability, the relative national backgrounds of the workers who were employed, or complaints and interventions by the Czechoslovak and German members of Parliament. This article aims to focus on the Czechoslovak fortification system as explored and understood through the eyes of Parliamentary interpellations between 1935 and 1938, one of the possible sources that still remains untapped. It will be possible, for example, to find out to what extent opposition members of Parliament used interpellations to defend the rights of their constituents and to what extent they abused the polarisation of the Czech and German populations.