explosion; and two are mentioned in other sources. In Germany, several dozen bodies were recovered from the Elbe river in the following weeks; however, these could have come from elsewhere. The Sudeten Germans organisations give much higher numbers - from 400 up to 8,000. Subsequent effects The next day, 1 August, the government of Czechoslovakia established an investigation commission led by General Ludvík Svoboda. The commission was not able to discover the reason for the explosion but blamed it on the Werewolves (German saboteurs). The explosion and subsequent massacre were used as a pretext by advocates of the expulsion of Germans from Czechoslovakia. During the Communist regime in Czechoslovakia (1948–1989) details of the event were suppressed, to the point of it being almost unknown to most Czechs. Suspected communist involvement After the 1989 Velvet Revolution, city archivist Vladimír Kaiser started to investigate the event, most recently publishing the results together with Jan Havel, another Ústí citizen, and German historian Otfrid Pustejovsky as Stalo se v Ústí nad Labem 31. července 1945 (Ústí nad Labem 2005, ; German translation Ein Nachkriegs-Verbrechen: Aussig 31. Juli 1945; ). While only indirect evidence survived, they conclude that the explosion and massacre were prepared by Communists within the Czechoslovak secret services, specifically Bedřich Pokorný, leader of Ministry of Interior's Defensive Intelligence (Obranné zpravodajství) department who earlier organised the Brno death march, in order to support the transfer of Germans from Czechoslovakia by presenting to the Potsdam Conference an argument that further cohabitation of Germans with Czechs was impossible. (Kaiser's 2000 hypothesis that the motive was the Western powers' interest in destroying the new Daimler-Benz DB 605 airplane engines also stored in the dump was found far-fetched and untenable.) See also List of massacres in the Czech Republic Sudetenland References External links Massacre description by Vladimír Kaiser in 1995 city history Interview with Jan Havel Conflicts in 1945 1945 in Czechoslovakia Massacres in 1945 Ethnic cleansing of Germans Aftermath of World War II in Germany Massacres in the Czech Republic World War II massacres German diaspora in Europe World War II crimes Mass murder in 1945 July 1945 events in Europe Ústí nad Labem