Hitler’s words) “sub-human Slavs”.
The Czechs could muster only a few cavalry officers riding no-hopers – and one middle-aged woman: 42-
year-old Lata Brandisova
Year after year, through the 1930s, German horses with German riders kept winning the Czechoslovaks’
celebrated steeplechase. More precisely: Nazis kept winning. The leading German jockeys were all officers
in the Equestrian SS or, in a few cases, the Equestrian SA (the “Brownshirts”). Far from being reluctant
representatives of Hitler who obeyed orders only out of fear, several were enthusiastic early adopters of the
Nazi ideology. They actually wanted their victories to advance the Nazi cause.
The string of Nazi victories caused agonies to Czechoslovak patriots, and to anyone who didn’t enjoy seeing
a liberal, progressive democracy being crushed by the poster-boys of fascism; but Himmler, Goebbels and
the rest were delighted at triumphs which Das Schwarze Korps, the SS newspaper, hailed as evidence of
“the new spirit of our nation”.
In the second half of the decade, the Third Reich began to seem unstoppable, in and out of the saddle. Calls
for Czechoslovakia to be taken under German control grew louder and more aggressive. Then came 1937.
That September, Tomas Masaryk died, provoking a vast national outpouring of grief and unity. It was one of
those tidal waves of mourning that happen once or twice in a century; the kind we associate with figures
like Churchill or Mandela. Two million people brought Prague to a standstill for the funeral of the “founder-
liberator” who had embodied their Republic’s ideals. “That was not a crowd,” wrote one observer. “That
was a nation.”
Lata jumps Taxis on Otello in the 1947 Grand
Pardubice (Vychodoceske Muzeum)Less than three weeks later, it was time for the Grand Pardubice. Patriots and democrats flocked to
Pardubice race-course in unprecedented numbers (the organisers stopped counting after 40,000) to see
what the official programme dubbed “The battle of Pardubice”. The Germans had sent their strongest ever
party of Nazi paramilitaries, including two Brownshirt officers and three from the SS. The Czechoslovaks
could muster only a few cavalry officers riding no-hopers – and one middle-aged woman: 42-year-old Lata
Brandisova, back from assumed retirement, a silver-haired countess riding a little golden mare called
Norma.
To find out what happened next, you should probably read my book. (Or you can get a preview by reading
the extract that The Independent will publish this Sunday.) But you’ve probably guessed that, one way or