page_title: Josef Bílý
section_title: Anti-Nazi resistance
hierarchical_section_title: Josef Bílý / Military career / Anti-Nazi resistance
caption_attribution_description: English: Notice of first public act by Reinhard Heydrich upon becoming Reichsprotektor of Bohemia and Moravia (Böhmen und Mähren / Čechy a Morava), announcing the execution of Gen. Josef Bílý, leader of the resistance movement Obrana Národa (National Defense) and five others.
context_page_description: Josef Bílý was a Czech general and commander of the Czechoslovak national armed forces.
context_section_description: Immediately after the Germans began occupying Czech territory in March 1939, Bily joined the resistance. He became a member of the so-called Council of Elders, among whose other members were generals Alois Eliáš, Hugo Vojta, and Sergej Vojcechovský. The formation of this group led to the establishment of an illegal anti-Nazi military resistance organization, Defense of the Nation (ON), at the end of March 1939. On June 30, 1939, Bílý became its commander, subordinate only to the Provincial Commander in Bohemia, General Hugo Vojta, and the Provincial Commander in Moravia, Bohuslav Všetička. After a series of arrests, the Gestapo managed to partially paralyze ON. Beginning in December 1939, Bily lived in hiding. On 14 November 1940 he was arrested by the Gestapo in a cottage in Harus Hill in the village of Radňovice near Nové Město na Moravě and imprisoned in Prague at Pankrác and Terezín.
  On the first day of his tenure as Reichsprotektor in Bohemia and Moravia, 27 September 1941, Reinhard Heydrich, seeking to break the resistance of Czech patriots, declared a civil emergency. In this he stated that the military court in Prague had found Bílý and Division General Hugo Vojta guilty of treason and sentenced them to death. Bílý was executed on 28 September 1941, at 9 pm by a firing squad. On the scaffold, he refused to wear a blindfold. His last words were: “Long live the Czechoslovak Republic! Dogs, fire!"
caption: Notice by Reinhard Heydrich announcing the execution of Gen. Josef Bílý and other members of the resistance
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