Abstrakt
The new book by Zdenko Maršálek, a historian at the Institute of Contemporary History of the Czech Academy of Sciences, examines the ethnic composition of Czechoslovak armed forces stationed abroad during the Second World War. As the author of the book emphasises in the introduction, a notion was accepted in the Czech milieu, after the war, that the troops stationed abroad were largely composed of Czechs and Slovaks, with a tiny minority of other nationalities.
Maršálek, shows however, that this composition was much more varied. To answer his questions, he employs a method that is all but forgotten now.
He relies on so-called "history in figures", referring primarily to its French and Anglo-Saxon tradition. He aims not only to reconstruct the national composition of the exile troops but also to show the informative value of this approach.
It is not just a simple addition of historical data and statistics. Examining the lower echelons of the army organisation, the author tries to show how the national composition differed on the level of the companies.