Josette Baer

This book deals with the Slovak National Uprising (SNP) that was launched on 29 August 1944 in Banská Bystrica, Slovakia. In the West, the uprising is an under-researched topic in the history of WWII. The Slovak state was an ally of Nazi Germany, but the uprising proved that the population did not share the regime’s ideology.

Josette Baer is adjunct professor of political theory with a focus on Central and Eastern European political thought at the Department of Philosophy of the University of Zurich (UZH), Switzerland. She has published several books and peer-reviewed studies about Czechoslovak, Czech, Slovak, Bulgarian, Russian, and Macedonian political thought and politics.

"Josette Baer’s book about my great-uncles, the twins Mirko and Milan Vesel, is the first publication in English about their activities in the Slovak National Uprising in 1944. Baer’s study also presents an analysis of the Vesel family’s attitude towards the social and political changes that took place in Slovakia after 1938. The Vesels were Slovak and Czechoslovak patriots in mind and spirit. As adherents of the democratic legacy of Masaryk and Štefánik and with the support of the members of their large family, the Vesel brothers took arms against the German occupying forces. Mirko, Milan, and their youngest brother Miloš are the only three brothers known to history who all became generals. As pars pro toto of the Slovak anti-Nazi resistance, they should not be forgotten, along with all those dedicated soldiers and partisans and their supporters amongst the civilian population who fought for freedom and justice in the Slovak mountains."—Ludvík Nábělek MD, Banská Bystrica, Slovak Republic