On 5 May 1945, during the end of World War II in Europe, occupying German forces in Bohemia and Moravia were spontaneously attacked by civilians in an uprising, with Czech resistance leaders emerging from hiding to join them.

George S. Patton's Third United States Army was ordered by Supreme Allied Commander Dwight D. Eisenhower not to come to the aid of the Czech insurgents, which undermined the credibility of the Western powers in post-war Czechoslovakia.

In 1938, the Chancellor of Germany, Adolf Hitler, announced his intention to annex the Sudetenland, a region of Czechoslovakia with a high ethnic German population.

[17] Despite losing much of their leadership to a March 1945 purge by the Gestapo, Communist groups in Prague distributed propaganda leaflets calling for an insurrection.

[38] In an attempt to reassert German authority, SS police official Karl Hermann Frank broadcast a message over the radio threatening to destroy Prague and drown any opposition in blood.

[41] Military leaders planning an uprising within Prague counted on the loyalty of ethnically Czech members of the city police, gendarmerie and the Government Army of the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia, as well as employees of key civil services, such as transport workers and the fire brigade.

[42] The 1st Infantry Division of the Russian Liberation Army (ROA), composed of Soviet prisoners of war that had agreed to fight for Germany, was stationed outside of Prague.

In a telegram to General Dwight D. Eisenhower, the Supreme Allied Commander in Europe, Churchill said that "the liberation of Prague...by US troops might make the whole difference to the postwar situation of Czechoslovakia and might well influence that in nearby countries.

"[47] Joseph Stalin, leader of the Soviet Union, also wanted his forces to liberate the city, and asked that the Americans stop at Plzeň, 50 miles (80 km) to the west.

[21] In response to growing popular agitation, Frank threatened to shoot Czechs gathering in the streets,[55] and increased armed German patrols.

[56] Czech noncombatants assisted by setting up makeshift hospitals for the wounded and bringing food, water, and other necessities to the barricades, while German forces often resorted to looting to obtain essential supplies.

The insurgents held many important buildings, including the radio, the telephone exchange, most railway stations, and ten of twelve bridges.

German forces held most of the territory to the west of the river, including an airfield at Ruzyně, northwest of the city, and various surrounded garrisons such as the Gestapo Headquarters.

[65] At the orders of Field Marshal Ferdinand Schörner, in command of Axis forces in Bohemia, Waffen-SS units were pulled from fighting the Red Army and sent into Prague.

[67] Hearing of events in Prague, Patton asked for permission to advance to the Vltava in order to aid the Czech resistance, but Eisenhower refused.

[69][70] Late in the evening on 5 May, the radio broadcast an appeal to the people in the streets of Prague to build barricades in order to slow the anticipated German attack.

[72] SS General Carl Friedrich von Pückler-Burghauss ordered the Luftwaffe to firebomb Prague, but the attack had to be scaled back due to lack of fuel.

[78] Under the terms of the provisional unconditional surrender, signed in the early hours of 7 May, German forces had a forty-eight-hour grace period to cease offensive operations.

[81] Schörner denounced the rumours of a ceasefire in Prague and said that the truce did not apply to German forces fighting the Red Army or Czech insurgents.

[82] Intense fighting was accompanied with the SS use of Czech civilians as human shields[6] and damage to the Old Town Hall and other historic buildings.

[84] The ROA played a decisive role in slowing the progress of the Germans,[81] but withdrew from Prague over the afternoon and evening in order to surrender to the US Army.

[83] By the end of the day, German forces had taken much of the rebel-held territory east of the Vltava, with the resistance only holding a salient in the Vinohrady-Strašnice area.

[89] Faced with military collapse, no arriving Allied help, and threats to destroy the city, the Czech National Council agreed to negotiate with Wehrmacht General Rudolf Toussaint.

The inhabitants were driven from their homes and forced to form a living wall with their bodies to protect German patrols, and constantly threatened with automatic pistols...

[74][100]In addition to the war crimes committed by the Wehrmacht and the SS, Luftwaffe soldiers, along with the SA, participated in the torture and murder of prisoners held at the Na Pražačce school.

[32] President Edvard Beneš believed that vigilante justice would be less divisive than trials, and that encouraging Germans to flee would spare the effort of deporting them later.

[101] Before he arrived in Czechoslovakia, he broadcast that "everyone who deserves death should be totally liquidated... in the popular storm"[102] and urged the resistance to avenge Nazi crimes "a thousand times over.

"[103] Minister of Justice Prokop Drtina [cs] asked resistance leaders to make liberation "bloody" for the Germans and to drive them out with violence.

[21] Not all those killed or affected by anti-German violence were actually German or collaborators, as perpetrators frequently acted on suspicion,[106][110] or exploited the chaos to settle personal grudges.

[50] It was not forgotten that Stalin had opposed the Munich Agreement and Prague's liberation by the Red Army turned public opinion in favour of communism.