Abstract
The Czech society reached no later than in May 1945 radical means to stabilize the post-war republic. This usually took the form of elimination of all elements that are considered hostile and potentially dangerous, creating a nearly ten-year period of ethnic, political and social cleansing.
It is assumed that this development as a result of long-term social change processes whereas the experience of people on one side, and the public policies on the other, played a central role. The experience of extreme violence during the Second World War served as a catalyst for the "radicalization" of the society, for the Great Depression of the interwar period and the feeling of social disintegration already might have been triggering moments in the second half of the thirties.
The aim of this study is to reconstruct the relationship between the extreme but still interpreted as legitimate forms of social activity on one side and - on the other side - the exploration of the Czech experience in the "age of extremes".