Bedřich Homola

Army General Bedřich Homola (June 2, 1887, Běleč - January 5, 1943, Berlin, Plötzensee Prison) was a Czechoslovak soldier, general, legionnaire, and the Chief of Obrana národa during the Second World War. He was one of the leaders of the anti-Nazi movement in the occupied Czech territory. He used the code name Ataman.

Youth

He was born on June 2, 1887, in Běleč, near Zadní Třebaň, to Václav and Marie Homol, who were peasants. After completing elementary school in Liteň, in 1899 he attended secondary school in Hostomice, transferring in 1901 to a German-language school in Bílina. From 1903 to 1907 he attended the College of Civil Engineering in Prague.

In 1907–08 he was employed by the Prague architect Zuslicht. In 1908–09 he did volunteer work in Prague; in 1909–10 he worked for a construction company in Slavonia and from 1910 to 1914 he had a job at the Prague City Hall.

Military career

World War One

Austrian Army

Homola joined the Austrian army as part of the mobilization of July 27, 1914. As a member of the 88th Infantry Regiment, he went to the Russian front, where he was injured in September and returned home. A year later, now holding the rank of Lieutenant, he returned to the front at Debrecen and Galicia. On September 14, 1915, he was wounded again and captured by the Russians, who took him to Moscow.

Czechoslovak legions in Russia

Homola joined the Czechoslovak legions in Russia on February 15, 1916. He served as a company commander, then as the enlisted school commander. He went on to become commander of the section Čenokovka - Doč at Bachmače and then commander of the Northern Front. Beginning on May 25, he commanded a staff train and participated in the fighting at Marjanovky. On October 27, 1918, having been promoted to the rank of Major, he was appointed deputy commander of the officer school. On July 20, 2019, he became inspector of divisional courses for non-commissioned officers.

On September 29, 1919, he married Galina Faddějev, with whom he had a son, Oleg Homola (1921–2001), who would grow up to become a Communist Party politician and a literary scholar. On April 22, 1920, he set off on a trip to Vladivostok, returning to his homeland via Singapore, Suez, and Trieste.

First and Second Republics

In 1921-22 he attended the war school in Prague. He was promoted to the rank of Lieutenant Colonel on September 20, 1922, and was appointed deputy commander of the military academy in Hranice na Moravě. After the suicides of two academy students, one of them the son of the Artillery Commander of the 1st Division of the Czechoslovak Legions in Russia, drew media attention to the strict regime Homola had established at the academy, he was transferred to the Staff 7 Infantry Division in Olomouc, where he served as commander. On January 10, 1925, he was promoted to Colonel and beginning on October 1, 1925, he was commander of the 27th Regiment in Olomouc.

On January 1, 1927, he was appointed interim commander, and on March 31 commander, of the 14th Infantry Brigade in Kromeriz. On February 21, 1929, he was promoted to the rank of Brigadier General. On March 5 he became commander of the 1st Infantry Division and garrison commander of Prague. On July 1, 1935, he became commander of the VII Army Corps with the rank of Divisional General. He participated in both of the mobilizations in 1938, in May and September. From March 9 to 11, 1939, at the behest of the government, he disarmed the Hlinka Guards and had their leaders interned. This event was later known in Slovakia as “Homol's coup.”

On March 14, 1939, he was called back to Prague without being told any reason. Unable to cross the newly established national border by car, he continued on by foot through the Beskydy Mountains while his wife was being interned by Hlinka Guardsmen in Turzovka. He managed to reach Moravia, where he met the advancing Wehrmacht. On March 19, 1939, a Slovak newspaper incorrectly reported that he had been shot and killed at the border. At the end of March 1939, he appeared in Prague with his wife (who had been released from captivity) and the two of them settled in Prague-Dejvice. He then began to work intensively with other officers of the now-defunct Czechoslovak Army to build a military resistance organization. Once the Defense of the Nation was formed, the Great Command of Prague was placed in his hands.

In August he went into hiding near the town hall in Skřež. In January 1940 he participated in the establishment of the HOME. In February 1940, after the arrest of generals Josef Bílý and Hugo Vojta, he became commander of the Defense of the Nation. From his office he tried to unite the military and political resistance against the occupiers under a single organization, namely Introduction. After the defeat of France, he tried to orient the domestic resistance (as an emergency option in case Britain is not a winner) to the USSR and opposed (together with Josef Balabán) Beneš's fears of the "Sovietization of Czechoslovakia" by saying that there will be no communism in 30-50 years but there will be a nation, but under German rule, the nation would be destroyed in 20 years. In a dispatch to London on February 20, 1941, B. Homola wrote: "The only serious danger comes from the Communists. Although they are at this moment weakened and disrupted by persecutions and the public opinion is against them due to Moscow's behavior, the situation may change cardinally over time, especially if Moscow comes into conflict with Berlin and succeeds. We must constantly reckon with this eventuality, all the more so as there were many voices — even wealthy citizens — who claimed that they would rather be under the Moscow communists and lose all their property than permanently under Berlin. The reason was that Moscow would not take our language or land, while Berlin would take both. They say the form of government will change, there will be no communism in 30-50 years, but there will be a nation, while under the German rule the nation would be destroyed in 20 years. These are definitely very right and factual reasons, and the people advocating them deserve only praise. However, I believe we are not going there, judging from how the situation is evolving at the moment, and the nation will be spared the second suffering."

In October 1940 he escaped arrest by the Gestapo and was forced to move to a new hiding place, where he continued to plan for an anti-German uprising by forces that would retake the parts of Czechoslovakia that had been invaded by the Nazis. Since his plans would require Allied air support and a decline in Nazi power, many of his colleagues opposed them. After the Nazis placed Reinhard Heydrich in charge of the former Czechoslovak state on September 27, 1941, a state of emergency was declared and extensive arrests and executions took place. On October 25, 1941, Homola admitted to his Allied contacts in London that all of his work to establish a resistance had been undone.

Arrest and execution

He was arrested on December 31, 1941, at the corner of King George Square and Vinohradská Street in Prague. He was incarcerated in the Pankrác prison, from which he was transported for questioning in Pecek Palace. In September 1942 he was taken to Dresden and from there to Plötzensee Berlin Prison, where he was sentenced to death for high treason. During his last days in captivity he conducted himself with courage. He was executed on January 5, 1943.

In October 1946 he was promoted posthumously to General of the Army, effective October 1942.

Orders and decorations

• Řád sv. Anny II. class with swords (1919)
• Czechoslovak War Cross 1914-1918
• The Order of M. R. Stefanik "Sokol" for valor (September 17, 1919)
• Czechoslovak Victory medal
• War Cross with Palm Tree (France, November 1928) during the fighting in Siberia
• Officer of the Legion of Honor (France, October 7, 1931)
• Štefánik's commemorative badge of the first degree (Czechoslovakia, September 27, 1945)
• Czechoslovak War Cross 1939