title: Prague Winter
author: Nikolaus Martin
description: Nikolaus (Claude) Martin was born in Bohemia in 1919 of a German father and Czech mother. He grew up in Prague, becoming life long friends with several of his early schoolmates. They indulged in all the distractions available to young men in Prague, neglecting their studies as much as possible, exemplifying what the world has come to know as "Bohemian." It was a good life until the Czech universities were closed by Nazi occupation at the beginning of the Second World War. Martin spent the last year of that war in a concentration camp. He was both witness and involuntary participant of that demented time.
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  ![Cover](images/cover.jpg)
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ## The Big Switch
  
  
    
  
  
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  _( The war that came early - 3 )_
  
  
  
  
  
  ### Harry Turtledove
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ## The Big Switch
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ## Harry Turtledove
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Vaclav Jezek slogged up a dirt track in eastern France. Crusted snow crunched
  under the Czech corporal’s boots. Like anyone from central Europe thinking of
  France, he’d always imagined Paris blazing with lights and beaches on the
  Riviera packed with girls in skimpy bathing suits. Freezing his ass off in the
  middle of a war had never been in the cards.
  
  
  But here he was, freezing his ass off. This would have been a nasty winter by
  Czech standards. From everything he could pick up-he spoke only foul fragments
  of French-it was a bloody godawful winter by French standards. Which didn’t do
  anybody stuck in it one damn bit of good.
  
  
  And here he was, in the middle of a war. And it was his own fault, too. When
  the Nazis jumped on Czechoslovakia in October 1938, he’d 