The Germans were yelling before hockey and they shouldn’t have done that. The Czechs won bronze

The second World Cup in Prague in history took place in 1938, and the Czechoslovak national team won one of the most memorable matches in its history at the tournament. It is not remembered as often as others, but at the beginning of the expansion of the Nazi regime in Europe, the victory at the home world championship over Germany and the winning of bronze world medals meant a huge boost for the whole country.

At the 1938 World Championship in Prague, the Czechoslovaks successively defeated Austria (1:0), drew with the Swedes (0:0), lost to Canada (0:3), but then for the first time in history they defeated an overseas representative team, namely the one from the USA, as a result 2:0. This was followed by a win over the Swiss (3:2) and then it was all about medals. In the unfortunate semi-final match against Great Britain, which was represented by Canadians and the British raised in hockey in Canada, they lost unluckily 0:1, driven home by frenetic fans. If the Czechoslovaks wanted at least bronze, they had to defeat the strong Germans.

The day after Hitler’s threatening anti-Czech speech, when he explicitly demanded the creation of colonies in neighboring countries, the German representative greeted the audience with a raised right hand. But that only excited the Czechoslovaks, it wasn’t just about hockey anymore!

In the fourth minute, Císař passed to Cetkovský, whose spot-kick ended up in the net of goalkeeper Egginger and the audience exploded for the first time. In the second period, the Germans were close to equalizing, but Ball’s shot luckily ended up just on the post of the Blue goal. And so the Czechoslovak penalty came, Kučer went through, found Cetkovský, who tapped the biggest star – Josef Maleček – and it was 2:0! And three minutes later it was practically over, this time Maleček recorded and the only Slovak player in the national team at the time, Ladislav Troják, scored. No more goals were scored in the third period.

After a great 3-0 win and bronze world medals, the players were carried on their shoulders and the whole country celebrated a great victory. But all joy was the last for a long time. The most terrible war conflict of the 20th century – World War II – was just around the corner. But the famous victory over the future occupiers was still remembered for a long time…

The Second World War was a disaster for the whole world and, of course, for hockey as well. However, despite the frequent and increasing difficulties, the game was played internationally even at the edge of the war. The German occupiers wanted to maintain the appearance of normality for as long as possible and invited players from the protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia to an event called “Winter Sports Week” in 1940, which was a kind of partial substitute for the canceled Olympic Games. At the tournament in Garmisch-Partenkirchen, home Germany (reinforced by Austrians from the occupied territory) should ideally have faced fascist Italy in the final. However, the Czechs (5:0) easily handled this in the group, who destroyed the Slovaks even more significantly in the first Czech-Slovak derby (12:0).

And in the end, the second part of the plan didn’t work either, because Germany wasn’t enough for the Hungarians in the group. Even in the final, the Czechs were completely sovereign, they won clearly 6:0 and it was a great glory in the truncated and occupied protectorate, the Czechs didn’t even score a goal in the Empire! I wish the joy was the last for a long time, more chances on the international forum did not come for the next seven years.

In 1939, after the secession of Sudetenland, Slovakia and Subcarpathian Rus, the Czech Hockey Association had 251 clubs and 5133 players. During the war, equipment was not received, it gradually became more and more difficult to travel, and many people were forcibly deployed in the Empire during the war, pushed aside, arrested, or even killed. Even so, the Czech hockey miracle continued. In the year 1944-1945, there were already 850 clubs and 21,884 registered hockey players united in the union. Incredibly!

Even so, hockey after the war mainly added up losses. Czech hockey players were also affected by irreversible changes in their lives. Karel Hartmann was murdered in Auschwitz in October 1944, the pre-war holder of a complete collection of medals from the European Championships as well as bronze from the 1920 Olympic Games. Karel Robětín, a hockey player of the 1st ČLTK Prague, champion of the Protectorate in 1941, had already perished in the same death camp two years earlier. Both were taken away by the Nazis because of their Jewish roots. During the Prague Uprising in May 1945, three outstanding league players of the time died defending their homeland – Libna defender Zdeněk Pokorný and a couple from the Podolí league team: defender Štěpánek and goalkeeper Vladimír Brabec. Among the victims of the war were hockey players from Troppauer EV, the best German club in the former Czechoslovakia. Heinz, Wolf or Weisshuhn did not return from compulsory service in the Wehrmacht. Surely they would all rather hold hockey sticks in their hands than guns in a futile war from which they never returned to their beloved game.

In the end, the Dutch did not come to Prague in 1938, even though they considered it for a long time. But after the experience of the 1935 World Cup, when they didn’t score a single goal in six matches and conceded 34, they simply didn’t have the courage. However, their captain from 1935 certainly did not lack it. That was a certain Bram van der Stok at the time, which is a name that probably doesn’t mean anything to you. At the same time, his story is absolutely captivating and was even filmed.

He was born in 1915 to Dutch parents on the Indonesian island of Sumatra, where his father worked for Shell. He received his education at the Alpine Lyceum in the Swiss city of Zuoz, where he also fell in love with hockey. After returning to the Netherlands, he continued his medical studies and played hockey for the best Dutch teams. Even before the war, he decided to join the Dutch Air Force. He soon became a fighter pilot in the war, which of course ended after the surrender of the Netherlands. Van der Stok formed the resistance and tried unsuccessfully to escape the country three times, on the fourth attempt in 1941 he reached Scotland on a Swiss ship as a black passenger.

He became an air captain in Britain and gradually became the most famous Dutch aviator. During one of the actions over France in 1942, however, his Spitfire was shot down, van der Stok was captured and taken to the Polish POW camp Stalag Luft III. It is about him and the famous escape from him that the movie “The Great Escape” with Steve McQueen discusses, parts of van der Stok’s personal story are embodied in the film by James Coburn in the role of Sedgwick.

Van der Stok had already helped build three different tunnels from the camp a year before his escape. One of them finally managed to escape, but it was only the third such attempt. On the night of March 24-25, 1944, 76 camp prisoners undertook an action that became famous. However, the Germans captured most of the escapees and immediately executed fifty of them. Only three actually escaped! The two Norwegians managed to reach neutral Sweden, and it was van der Stok who incredibly traveled through the whole of Western Europe – Poland, Germany, the Netherlands, France, until he arrived in Spain after three months! From there, he returned as the only escapee from the camp back to the fight and took part in the Normandy landings. In 1945, after five years, he was able to reunite with his family to find that two of his brothers had been killed in concentration camps and his father had been blinded by the Gestapo.

After the war, he received all kinds of war decorations, including the Order of the British Empire, and was offered the position of commander of the Dutch Air Force. But he refused that and preferred to study medicine and return to his beloved hockey. In 1947, he went to the World Student Games in Davos with the Dutch student team, where he also competed against the ultimately victorious Czechoslovak student team, in which world champions Jarkovský and Bouzek also played. The Czechoslovaks destroyed the Oranjes 12:0 and probably had no idea what kind of hero they were playing against.

Later, van der Stok moved to the USA with his wife Petia and three children, where he ran his medical practice. He also became one of NASA’s researchers during that time. In 1970, he moved to Hawaii, where as a lifeguard he helped 162 people from drowning! He died at the age of 77 in 1993 in Honolulu. Only then did the great story of a hero, an athlete to watch, a hockey player…