Communist Terror in Post-War Europe
3 Episodes
The end of the Second World War did not bring freedom to all of Europe. In the vacuum left by Nazi occupation, a new system of power emerged across Central and Eastern Europe — one built on surveillance, political purges, show trials, and fear.
After 1945, revolutionary justice replaced democratic institutions, and loyalty to the Party became a matter of survival. Officers, politicians, intellectuals, and even devoted Communists were accused of fabricated conspiracies, forced into confessions, imprisoned, or eliminated in the name of state security.
This series explores how wartime methods of control evolved into domestic dictatorship — and how a system built on fear ultimately turned inward, consuming many of its own.
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The General of Fear: Bedřich Reicin and the Communist Purges
Episode 1
15 March 1939. German troops enter Prague and Czechoslovakia disappears as a sovereign state. Under Nazi occupation, repression, surveillance, and the erosion of democratic norms become everyday reality. Yet liberation in 1945 does not end the culture of control — it transforms it.
Bedřich Reici...
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The Voice Against Nazi and Communist Tyranny: Milada Horáková
Episode 2
15 March 1939. German troops march into Prague and the Gestapo establishes control over the occupied Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia. Milada Horáková — lawyer, women’s rights advocate, and committed democrat — refuses to submit. She joins the underground resistance, helping families of the pe...
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Executed by the Communist Revolution He Built: Rudolf Slánský
Episode 3
Prague, early 1950s. The Communist revolution begins to consume its own architects.
Rudolf Slánský, General Secretary of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia, helped build the regime that seized full power after the coup of 1948. Loyal to Stalin and feared within the party, he directed purges a...
