Unusual 'photo of General Heinz Guderian in "Panzer Black", seen here in consultation with General Walther Wenck.  Best regards, JR.

Guderian and Wenck.

Notwithstanding the disorder into which the late Heydrich's measures had reduced the Czech underground, the Gestapo were getting nowhere, and needed a break.  They got it when a member of another parachutist group - "Operation Out Distance, an operation originally aimed at sabotage of military production in the Skoda works - either surrendered or was captured (accounts are somewhat contradictory) and, motivated perhaps by fear of reprisals against his family; or perhaps by the promised reward of 500,000 Crowns for information (which he was paid), betrayed the identities of a number of Czech resistants with whom he had contact while in Prague.  The informer was Sgt. Major Karol Curda.  On the basis of his information, the Gestapo rounded up and (where possible) "questioned" several Czech underground operatives.  Not surprisingly, this yielded information pointing to the presence of the assasins and their colleagues in the Cathedral of Saints Cyril and Methodius.  JR.

Death in Prague (7)

PzKpfw 39h (French Hotchkiss H-39 light tank in German service) column makes its way across the frozen roads of the Balkans.  While no unit insignia are in evidence, the characteristic "Hotchkiss" nameplate is visible on the tank's glacis plate.  The need for armoured support for anti-partisan operations in the Balkans was mainly met by the assignment of obsolete French machines such as the H-39 - just one example of the Germans' determination to run their extremely testing Balkan war "on the cheap".  Not so cheap, however, for the unfortunate peoples of the region.

The Germans captured substantial number of H-39s, and of its predecessor model, the H-35, in France in 1940.  Apart from their employment in the Balkans and in internal security duties in various occupied countries, many of these tanks were de-turetted and used as tractors.  Best regards, JR.