Reincarnated: Vive La France

The morning edition of Prager Abendblatt hit the streets before the church bells rang.

The headline screamed in bold Gothic font.

"Ten Dead in Sudeten March. Czech Police Open Fire on Unarmed Protesters"

A grainy photograph showed what looked like bodies beneath black cloth.

In the corner of the image, a Czech uniform. Half-visible.

Unconfirmed.

By noon, the photo was in cafés across Vienna, Zurich, Amsterdam.

By dusk, it had reached London.

And none of it had happened.

Beneš stood in the map room with a copy in hand

He held it as if it might stain his gloves.

"This never occurred," Krofta said. "Our agents were stationed in Krásná Lípa all night. There was a protest. No gunfire. No casualties. No crowd over twenty people."

"Then where are the names?" Beneš asked.

"There aren't any," Krejčí answered. "No lists. No relatives interviewed. Just cloth and distance. It's all suggestion."

"Effective suggestion," Černý muttered bitterly. "The world doesn't wait for footnotes. They believe the first thing they see."

Beneš let the paper fall to the table.

Outside the castle, church bells rang late.

Too many cities had mourned real deaths to notice a staged one.

In Berlin, Goebbels stood at a podium beneath the glinting dome of the Propaganda Ministry.

"I ask you what kind of state kills children to preserve bureaucracy?" he demanded, voice rising with each syllable.

He held up a copy of the same photograph.

"Let this image travel farther than any treaty. Let it reach Paris, reach London, reach every coward who says peace is worth more than justice."

The crowd roared.

Henlein, standing just out of frame, said nothing.

His hands were folded so tightly his knuckles blanched white.

Later that night, in a private room with low ceilings and shuttered windows, he met with a courier.

"You were told to organize protests. Not funerals."

The courier didn't blink. "There were no funerals."

Henlein stared at him.

Then quietly asked, "Who staged the bodies?"

The man didn't answer.

Henlein poured a shot of schnapps and downed it.

When the courier was gone, he sent a message to Berlin.

"Local command bypassed. Operations no longer coordinated. Confirm whether control is still expected of me."

No reply came.

Not that night.

Not the next.

In Prague, Beneš prepared his address.

He refused speechwriters.

He wrote by hand.

Each sentence was scratched, rewritten.

He did not rehearse.

He did not smile.

He stood before the radio set up at 8:03 p.m.

The broadcast went to the republic first.

Then outwards, to embassies, newsrooms, and those still willing to receive Czech signals.

"My fellow citizens," he began, "you have heard what they say. That we are murderers. That we crush voices with rifles. That we silence children in the name of law."

He paused.

"I come before you to tell you that these are not just lies. They are bricks laid carefully into a road that leads to occupation."

"Some will ask why we do not shout louder, strike back, silence our accusers. But I say to them our strength has never been in the volume of our voice. It is in our memory. In our soil. In the stubborn truth that we belong to no empire's fantasy."

He leaned slightly forward.

"I ask you now not to be calm, but to be clear. Not to despair, but to decide. Decide what it means to be Czech in this moment. Is it comfort? Or is it courage?"

He closed with a single line.

"We have been called quiet before. But I promise you when we are forced to speak, the world will hear it for a hundred years."

The broadcast ended.

No applause.

No commentary.

Pens scratching in newspapers.

And one child in Pilsen saying to her father, "Why did his voice shake like that?"

"Because he was tired," the father said softly. "But not weak."

Across the Sudetenland, there was movement.

Paramilitary groups no longer wore civilian coats.

They drilled openly now.

In Frýdlant, a Czech train station was set ablaze at dawn.

At noon, a post office.

At sunset, a classroom.

Leaflets were left in each place.

"German land. Czech law no longer valid."

In the war ministry, Černý slammed the latest reports onto the desk.

"This is not agitation. This is coordinated sabotage."

Beneš said nothing.

Krejčí added, "There's an underground logistics network. We believe caches have been pre-positioned. Weapons. Fuel. Radios."

"And we still do nothing?" Černý demanded.

Beneš looked up.

"We do not act to prove anything to Berlin," he said. "If we strike, we do it for ourselves. And for history."

He turned to Krejčí.

"Begin covert mobilization of four reserve divisions. Keep them out of cities. Position them near Pardubice and Hradec Králové."

"You want them central?"

"I want them ready."

In Berlin, Ribbentrop arrived late to a meeting with Hitler.

He was pale.

He handed over a folder.

"The British have dispatched an envoy."

Hitler opened the document.

"Llewellyn Charles Lothian?" he read. "Never heard of him."

"They're sending him to Prague. To mediate. Or rather, to instruct."

"Instruct who?"

"Beneš. To concede."

Hitler tossed the folder onto the table.

"Excellent. They still believe paper moves the world."

Lothian arrived in Prague three days later.

His boots were polished

He met with Krofta first.

"I'm here as a friend," he said.

Krofta stared. "We need friends who arrive with more than adjectives."

Later, in the Cabinet chamber, Lothian addressed the ministers.

"What Germany asks is not so large," he said. "Some autonomy. A cultural zone. Perhaps even a language statute."

"And in return?" Beneš asked.

"Stability."

"Until the next request."

Lothian smiled thinly. "Perhaps you're too proud."

Beneš stood. "No. We've just had enough of adjusting ourselves into absence."

The meeting ended in frost.

Outside, Czech journalists waited.

Lothian said nothing.

But that night, he sent a telegram to London.

"Czechs will not yield. If you wish peace, pressure must come swiftly and with consequence."

In a corner of the Foreign Office, a junior clerk read it and muttered to himself, "So this is how maps change."

In Sudetenland, three Czech gendarmes were ambushed.

Two died.

One was taken.

His body was found the next morning stripped of uniform, draped in a German flag.

Photos were distributed across Sudeten villages.

German media called it "an unfortunate overreaction by radicals."

Goebbels made no statement.

But he clipped the image and pasted it in his personal scrapbook.

Underneath, he wrote.

"Theirs must look crueler than ours."

At Hradčany Castle, a courier delivered a sealed envelope to Beneš's desk.

He opened it carefully.

Inside was a handwritten note.

From Henlein.

Polite.

Diplomatic.

And absolutely final.

"We hereby declare our right to full administrative and territorial autonomy within the Sudeten regions. Failure to acknowledge this within fourteen days will be considered a violation of international self-determination."

There was no signature.

Only a stamped emblem.

The same emblem used in Austrian surrender negotiations months before.

Beneš closed the letter slowly.

Marta stood nearby.

"What will you do?" she asked.

He looked out the window.

The city was dark.

But not asleep.

And in that darkness, he said quietly, "I will speak again. But next time, I won't be the only one."

Somewhere near Ostrava, in the attic of a bookshop, a group of students gathered.

They wrote leaflets in three languages.

Czech. German. French.

One read.

"If they take our words, we give them ink. If they take our ink, we give them breath. If they take our breath, then only silence remains. And that, too, will echo."

They signed it with a name no one had used before.

Children of the Republic

They began printing at midnight.

By morning, the city walls bore their message.

And not even the rain could wash it away.