Not by Prayer

A nation cannot be freed by prayer. . . . Nations are not freed by doing nothing, but by sacrifices. . . . Passive resistance has real significance only if backed by a determination . . . to continue resistance by open struggle or by means of clandestine guerrilla warfare.--Mein Kampf.

Last week occupied Europe took Hitler's words to heart. The conquered wanted freedom and revenge. Not by prayer, but by civil war, they sought it. The Slav peoples of central and southeastern Europe, as if they heard some far-off blood call of their cousins on the plains of Russia, sprang into bloody action.

Yugoslavia. Even while Adolf Hitler's armies were passing from conquered Yugoslavia to other fields of battle, Serb guerrillas collected in the dark mountains and tangled forests of their back country. Officers and men of Yugoslavia's shattered, scattered army joined them. They organized the guerrillas, who began to raid German garrisons, occupy villages, cut rail lines to vital Black Sea ports. Last week they struck hard. Enraged by the execution of 50 hostages as "intellectual instigators" of the Zagreb telephone ex change explosion that killed five Germans (TIME, Sept. 22), revolutionary Chetniks seized the town of Srpska Mitrovitza, disarmed and kidnapped its German garrison. Twelve thousand Chetniks attacked another German-held town. The Germans had to send dive-bombers to disperse them.

Serbia's stooge, General Milan Neditch, issued an ultimatum to the Chetniks, demanding that they come out of the woods and surrender. In reply the Chetniks killed 104 Croats they had captured.

Even supporters of Croatia's quisling Premier, Ante Pavelitch, were deserting to the Chetniks. On the rocks by Croatia's roadsides, on the bricks of Croatian walls, white paint smeared out the Pavelitch slogan: "Jivilo Hrvatska Ustashi!" (Hail Croatia's Revolutionists!). To Nazi-inspired rumors that Dr. Vladimir Matchek, imprisoned leader of Croatia's once-powerful Peasant Party, had been offered the job of Premier to replace Pavelitch, Croats in Ankara cried:

"Matchek a traitor? ... He would die first! Jivilo Yugoslavia!"

By week's end revolutionaries and German troops were fighting pitched battles for possession of three Yugoslav towns. Both Germany and Italy rushed fresh troops for the conquest of a country which, theoretically, was already conquered.

Czecrio-Slovalda, tucked away in the core of Hitler's Empire, is probably the tightest-sealed source of continental news. For months fires, slowdowns, mismanagement and active destruction have cost the Nazis precious marks, materials and time. Railway sabotage has cost them lives.

Last week the Moscow radio reported that hundreds of Germans had been killed in an explosion in a Czech munitions plant. The next day British Broadcasting Corp. elaborated, said that the explosion was in the great Skoda munitions works at Pilsen, that afterwards hundreds of German troops had been rushed to the plant. Despite the troops, said BBC, another explosion ruined the power plant at the works.

These reports might have been dismissed as propaganda if, three days later, the Germans had not announced the removal of diplomat Konstantin von Neurath as Reich Protector of Bohemia and Moravia. He was replaced by lean, mean Reinhard Heydrich, Gestapo man whom Germans call Henker (executioner).

Cold-eyed, thin-lipped Reinhard Heydrich, right arm of Heinrich Himmler, is master of the art of terror. He headed the Berlin office of the Gestapo in 1934, later became Chief of the Security Police. Last month he was sent to Norway to crush the strike wave there. Broadcasting from its secret headquarters, the Czech Station of National Liberation called the new protector "the bloodiest man of all the bloody Nazis," warned Czechs not to be provoked into premature uprisings.

Czechs did not have long to wait for provocation: Gestapoman Heydrich established himself in the Chernin Palace and went to work. Before noon on the day after his appointment he proclaimed a state of civil emergency in six key districts of Bohemia and Moravia. Next he proceeded to arrest double-chinned Puppet Premier Alois Elias on charges of "preparation to commit treason and high treason." He rounded out his day by executing six men. Twenty-four more, including two generals, were sentenced to death for plotting the overthrow of the protectorate.

As the third anniversary of Munich rolled by, Czechs reflected on how incredibly long three years could seem.

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