Did Russia liberate most of the Czech Republic, compared to U.S. troops, whose credit for liberating the country from the Nazis is minimal? No, that's not true: The troops who liberated most of what is now the Czech Republic were Soviet, not just Russian, and included other nationalities, including Ukrainians, from what was then the Soviet Union. Also, U.S. troops could have reached Prague and supported the uprising against the Nazis earlier than the Soviet troops, but had to halt their advance because of a political agreement.
The claim appeared in a video (archived here) published on TikTok on April 29, 2024. It shows a map of the current Czech Republic with red and blue colors showing a so-called demarcation line, showing the land liberated by different armies. The text in the video reads in Czech, as translated into English by Lead Stories staff:
The land Russia liberated.
The land the US liberated.
This is what the post looked like on TikTok at the time of writing:
(Source: TikTok screenshot taken on Tue Apr 30 08:39:06 2024 UTC)
Russia did not exist as a separate state in 1945, it was part of the Soviet Union (archived here), and the then Soviet troops included other nationalities, including Ukrainians, for instance, so the description on the map is incorrect. The map correctly shows the so-called demarcation line (archived here), a border that delineated how far east the Allied forces and how far west the Soviet forces went when liberating Czechoslovakia from Nazi occupation.
However, the demarcation line was linked to a prior political decision (archived here), taken at the Yalta conference, that let Eastern Europe fall under Soviet influence. That, as well as the current situation on the battlefield, where the Soviet and the Western troops could not mix, prevented the U.S. troops from entering Prague, the capital city of the country, and left for the Soviets to arrive as liberators (archived here) on May 9, 1945, four days after the Prague uprising started on May 5, 1945, and a day after the World War II officially ended in Europe (archived here).
The Soviet Army comprised nationalities other than ethnic Russians, and included Ukrainians, although there was no official distinction, Vojtech Kyncl (archived here), a historian at the Institute of History of the Czech Academy of Sciences, told Lead Stories by phone on April 30, 2024. Other troops, including Poles, also contributed to the defeat of the Germans, Kyncl said. The political situation where the Soviets were pursuing "a clear objective" of dominating Czechoslovakia, as it was known then, after the war, and the actual situation on the battlefield, resulted in the U.S. troops stopping some 70 kilometers outside of Prague in the city of Pilsen, after securing the hilly Western part of the country, according to Kyncl.
Still, the U.S. troops would have arrived in Prague before the Soviets, if they had decided to advance, Kyncl added. "It would have taken them 12 hours with all the precautions, or less, to get from Pilsen to Prague," Kyncl said.
The map in the TikTok video correctly shows where the demarcation line was in 1945, with blue being the U.S. Army positions, and the dates of its arrival. According to the U.S. embassy in Prague website, U.S. troops under the command of U.S. Army general Geoge S. Patton reached Pilsen on May 6, 1945 (archived here), corresponding with the date shown on the map above.
After the war and under the communist regime, the contribution of the American Army to the liberation of Czechoslovakia was, in the best cases, concealed, misinterpreted, or completely excluded by official propaganda that showcased only the Soviets as liberators of the country (archived here).
Nevertheless, thanks to those who witnessed the events, it was never forgotten in the public conscience, and after the fall of communism in 1989 in Czechoslovakia, the city of Pilsen, and other places, began to officially commemorate their liberation by the U.S. Army through annual festivities (archived here) in May.
