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During the wartime occupation, German-language broadcasts from Prague were absorbed into the radio network of Nazi Germany, the so-called “Reichssender”. A number of archive recordings in German survive from the time. Most vivid and chilling among them are the long lists of names broadcast each day of Czechs arrested and executed. But there are also some propaganda curiosities. In June 1941, Prague’s German programme interviewed a nurse. She was living and working in the city, and remembered with great nostalgia one particular patient who had come

In last week’s From the Archives, we heard how German troops marched into Prague on March 15 1939. The next day, Edvard Beneš, who had resigned as Czechoslovakia’s president in the wake of the Munich Agreement, and was in exile in London, told Britain’s Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain that from now on, he would be leading the resistance against the German occupation. Five months later, war broke out and at the end of 1939 the BBC began its broadcasts in Czech.

Last Thursday, Czech Radio lost one of its most esteemed colleagues and the Czech Republic one of the major figures in modern music with the death of Ladislav Simon at the age of 82. His music has been a staple of television, radio and contemporary classical music for more than half a century and he was tirelessly involved in the artistic management of some of the country’s leading cultural institutions, such as the National Theatre, and the founding of Czech Television and the Prague Philharmonia.

Le Monde correspondent Fabrice Martin-Plichta has been living in Prague since before the Velvet Revolution. Indeed, the French journalist was working here at Radio Prague when those momentous changes occurred. Since 2004, Martin-Plichta has also been the head of the Czech Federation of Food Banks, an organisation which every year saves hundreds of tonnes of food from being destroyed and distributes it among the needy.

Czech Radio is marking the 60th anniversary of the launch of Radio Free Europe broadcasts with a series of special events held in cooperation with RFE, Charles University, the Institute for the Study of Totalitarian Regimes and the Czech Senate. The events, which cover the stations 60-year-long history, will be attended by former RFE journalists who were with the station from the outset, broadcasting from its headquarters in Munich. The public has been invited to attend workshops and lectures on freedom of speech and the role of Radio Free Europe in helping to topple the communist regime in central and Eastern Europe. Other events include an exhibition entitled “Freely” on the grounds of the Czech Senate and a concert by Czech Radio’s Symphonic Orchestra. On Wednesday a mass was celebrated in St. Ludmila’s Church in Prague in memory of deceased RFE employees.

A now famous appeal broadcast from the Czech Radio building on May 5, 1945, sparked the Prague Uprising. After hearing it on the air, thousands of people took to the streets to fight the Nazi oppressors. On Thursday, several events were held to mark the 66th anniversary of the start of the Prague Uprising, including a ceremony in front of the Czech Radio building.

In recent weeks, I’ve tried to capture something of the tense atmosphere of the time leading up to the Munich Agreement of September 30 1938, when the British and French Prime Ministers Chamberlain and Daladier allowed Hitler to carve up Czechoslovakia and march unopposed into the Sudetenland. The agreement left the country as a fragment of its former self; not only Germany, but also Hungary and Poland, claimed large chunks of Czechoslovakia’s borderlands. Here is how Radio Prague reported on the final border agreement, reached some weeks after

We quite often hear it said that in the run-up to World War Two, no-one quite realized the scale of the threat that Nazi Germany posed in Europe. When Hitler set his eyes on Czechoslovakia, there were plenty of politicians in Western Europe who really seemed to believe him, when he said that the Czech borderlands, the so-called Sudetenland, were his “last territorial claim”. But Czech Radio’s archives show only too clearly, that here in Prague there were also plenty of people who were only too aware of the worldwide menace that Hitler posed. As

One of the most dramatic - but least known - events in Czechoslovak Radio’s history dates back to September 21 1938. This was the day that the government announced that it was willing to succumb to German pressure, and would give up large areas of the country’s borderlands to Nazi Germany. By this time it was clear that Britain and France would not be willing to fight for Czechoslovakia’s territorial integrity, and that to say no would mean invasion. The announcement sent a shockwave through Czech society, and immediately thousands took to the streets

It was an unforgettable moment in the history of Czech sport. In the 49th minute Petr Svoboda scored the winning goal against Russia in the ice hockey final of the 1998 Winter Olympics in Japan. The game was commentated live by Czech Radio’s Aleš Procházka, and his ecstatic cry of “Goal!” is probably the best known sports recording in our archive. The Czechs had won gold in what some had dubbed the “tournament of the century”, packed as it was with top NHL players.