Place of employment: : Institute of Contemporary History of the Czech Academy of Sciences

Address : Vlašská 9, 118 00 Prague 1, Czech Republic

E-mail: plys.zmar@seznam.cz

Zdenko Maršálek graduated from the Faculty of Education of the Charles University in Prague in 1989 and worked briefly as a teacher thereafter. In 2001, he finished his MA in history at the Faculty of Arts of the Charles University in Prague. In 2014, he defended his dissertation thesis there (“Czech”, or “Czechoslovak” Army? The ethnic and nationality composition of the Czechoslovak military units-in-exile in 1939–1945), published thereafter in 2017. He is a military historian. Besides a number of topics related to the military history of Central Europe in the Second World War and in the interwar period, he has long been dealing with the issue of nationality and personnel composition of Czechoslovak units-in-exile 1939–1945. He initiated the creation of a relevant electronic database. Inter alia, he is an author of Dunkerque 1944–1945. Loses of the Czechoslovak Independent Armoured Brigade Group during its operational deployment in France, Prague 2011 (in Czech, with Petr Hofman), and an editor of Members of the International Brigades, Czechoslovakia and the Spanish Civil War: The unknown chapters from the history of Czechoslovak participation in the civil war in Spain 1936–1939, Prague 2017 (in Czech, with Emil Voráček).

Work and research experience

• 2000– 2003: Historical Institute of the Army of the Czech Republic, research assistan
• 2004 – present:Military Historical Archives in Prague, research fellow
• 2006 – 2007: Masaryk Institute and the Archives of the Czech Academy of Sciences, research assistant
• 2006 – present: Institute of Contemporary History of the Czech Academy of Sciences, senior researcher

Previous outcomes related to the project

• Database of the soldiers of the Czechoslovak army-in-exile during the Second World War. Military Historical Archives in Prague 2005–2013 (with V. Pilát, M. Brož, P. Hofman and others).
• Československá zahraniční armáda 1939–1945 a marginalizace v procesu utváření kolektivní paměti [Czechoslovak army-in-exile 1939–1945 and a marginalization during the process of creating of collective memory]. In: B. Soukupová – H. Nosková – P. Bednařík (edd.): Paměť – národ – menšiny – marginalizace – identity I [Memory – Nation – Minorities – Marginalization – Identities I]. Prague, Charles University, Faculty of Humanities 2013, pp. 41–48 [in Czech].
• Marginalization as a means of the artificial shaping of collective memory: Case study of “inconvenient” groups of soldiers of the Czechoslovak units-in-exile. In: P. Bednařík – H. Nosková – B. Soukupová (edd.): Paměť – národ – menšiny – marginalizace – identity II / Memory – Nation – Minorities – Marginalization – Identities II /Память – нация – меньшинства – маргинализация – идентичности II. Prague, Charles University, Faculty of Humanities 2015, pp. 111–118 [in English].
• Rodáci z okresu Slaný v zahraničním vojenském odboji a otázka zkoumání regionality původu příslušníků zahraničních vojenských jednotek [Natives from the Slaný District and a research question of regionality of origin of the members of Czechoslovak military units-in-exile during the Second World War]. In: P. Bartoníček – J. Čečrdle – B. Hrabánková (edd.): Slaný a Slánsko v letech 1939–1945 [The town and District of Slanýin the years 1939–1945]. Historical conference proceeding. Slaný, Regional museum in Slaný 2011, pp. 66–76 [in Czech].
• “On the right side again”: Wehrmacht POWs in exile military units of the occupied countries – the case of Czechoslovakia and Poland. The paper on the international conference Mobilisation into the Wehrmacht in the occupied lands of the Third Reich. Museum of Contemporary History in Ljubljana, October 17–20, 2012 [in English].
• corresponding chapters of: „Česká“, nebo „československá“ armáda? Národnostní složení československých vojenských jednotek v zahraničí v letech 1939–1945 [“Czech”, or “Czechoslovak” Army? The ethnic and nationality composition of the Czechoslovak military units-in-exile in 1939–1945]. Prague, Academia 2017 [in Czech].
• corresponding chapters of: Dunkerque 1944–1945. Ztráty Čs. samostatné obrněné brigády během operačního nasazení ve Francii [Dunkerque 1944–1945. Loses of the Czechoslovak Independent Armoured Brigade Group during its operational deployment in France]. Prague, Nakladatelství Lidové noviny 2011[with Petr Hofman, in Czech].