by Jason Hewitt
Underground resistance groups quickly formed, leading ultimately to the assassination of the acting Protector, Reinhard Heydrich, in May 1942, and the resulting reprisals, including the terrible destruction of the village of Lidice. After that the resistance groups fell quiet but the spirit was never lost. Acts of sabotage and revolt still occurred, while the Czech government-in-exile continued to do what it could from London and Czech pilots joined the British RAF. If you are interested in reading more about the plight of the Czech people, I highly recommend Prague Winter: A Personal Story of Remembrance and War, 1937–1948 by Madeleine Albright, or Border Crossing: Coming of Age in the Czech Resistance by Charles Novacek.
Unbeknown to Janek, the day after he meets Owen an uprising occurred in Prague, while elsewhere in Bohemia, US forces moved in. The Soviet Union told the US that they would begin their Prague operations the following day and asked the US to halt their advance, which Eisenhower agreed to. On 9 May, as Owen, Irena and Janek join the hordes of refugees on the road to Leipzig, the first Soviet tanks entered Prague. Three years later, in 1948, the Communist party took control of the country in a coup supported by the Soviet government. Czechoslovakia would remain under Communist control for forty years, until the Communist government was finally overthrown in the Velvet Revolution of 1989.
There are many excellent books available about the immediate aftermath of the war. Two that I found invaluable are Endgame 1945: Victory, Retribution, Liberation by David Stafford and The Long Road Home: The Aftermath of the Second World War by Ben Shephard.
By 1944, there were reportedly 11.5 million people displaced in Europe, 7.7 million of those in Germany. Devastation Road is about just a handful of them.
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank Jessica Leeke for her early encouragement and invaluable feedback on the first draft of this book. I am also hugely indebted to my subsequent editor Rowan Cope for her hours of work, advice, support and scrutiny, and, most of all, for her patience. Huge thanks to the rest of the team at Scribner, including Jo Dickinson, Dawn Burnett, Elizabeth Preston, Jamie Groves, the production and sales teams, and everyone else who has been involved, including Natalie Braine and Nancy Webber, my eagle-eyed copyeditor and proofreader, and Matthew Johnson for the wonderful jacket design. Thanks also to Will Francis for his endless enthusiasm and tireless work on my behalf, as well as everyone else at Janklow & Nesbit.
If you’ve come this far you will no doubt have noticed that not all of the novel is written in English, so I would like to thank Sophie Hardach, Justina Hernik and Jeanne Corcos-Conisbee for assisting with the German, Polish and French; as well as special thanks to Terezie Holmerova for not only translating the Czech but also teaching me the basics of a language that I have grown to love.
I am greatly indebted to Bill Downey, who provided a wealth of information on Hawker Aircraft and showed me around the site on Canbury Park Road in Kingston. Thanks to David Hassard for providing some of the finer detail on the history of Hawkers and putting me in touch with the right people; and to Dave Betteridge, who welcomed me into his home and gave me a fascinating insight into what life was like as a draughtsman in the Experimental Drawing Office under Sir Sydney Camm.
Thanks to Jeremy Bright for providing hours of documentary footage on the RAF Avro Lancaster, and to the staff at the British Library, the Imperial War Museum, the London Transport Museum, the Museum of Allied Prisoners of War in Żagań and the Bergen-Belsen Memorial; as well as Ewan Eason, and his family, who allowed me to read the diary of his grandfather – a real-life survivor of Stalag-Luft III who made the infamous Death March. Also to my early readers: Sam, Karen, Jenny, Becky, Anthea and Pam, and to Kathryn Race, who has lived every bump and jolt of this journey with me, and has been the endless provider of cups of tea and moral encouragement.
Finally, and most importantly, my most heartfelt thanks go to my family and friends, who have supported me more than I could ever have hoped for; in particular, my parents, whose belief in me seems to show no end, my adorable nephews William and Henry, sister-in-law Helen, and brother Jonathan – this one is for you.
Jason Hewitt is a novelist, playwright and actor. He was born in Oxford, and lives in London. His debut novel The Dynamite Room was longlisted for the Desmond Elliott Prize and the Authors’ Club First Novel Award.
