Josef Mašín

Josef Mašín was born in Prague on 8 March 1932 to Josef Mašín, an army officer and former Czechoslovak legionnaire, and his wife Zdena. His father became one of the Three Kings, the best known military resistance cell of the Protectorate era, and was executed by the Nazis at Kobylisy on 30 June 1942. As schoolboys Josef and his brother Ctirad sabotaged German transports at Poděbrady station in 1944, damaging aircraft and equipment loaded on trains. In 1945 President Edvard Beneš awarded both boys the Medal for Bravery.

He studied at the King George of Poděbrady college (Kolej krále Jiřího z Poděbrad) in Poděbrady, an elite boarding school founded after the war and modelled on English public schools. After leaving the US Army in 1959 he enrolled at a university but, by his own account, lasted only about three weeks, saying he was not the student type.

After the February 1948 communist coup the Mašín brothers, with friends including Milan Paumer, Václav Švéda and Zbyněk Janata, formed an armed group. On 13 September 1951 they attacked the police station in Chlumec nad Cidlinou, where Josef shot officer Oldřich Kašík; in a raid on the station in Čelákovice Ctirad killed officer Jaroslav Honzátko. On 2 August 1952 Josef shot cashier Josef Rošický during the robbery of a payroll car near Čáslav. The group also carried out arson, including the so called Night of Great Fires, in which straw stacks were set alight. Unlike many resistance groups, it was not infiltrated by informers, and its activity was uncovered only after its members had left the country.

On the night of 3 to 4 October 1953 five members of the group crossed into East Germany near Hora Svaté Kateřiny. After a firefight at Uckro railway station, East German police and Soviet forces launched a massive search. Encircled near Waldow, the men broke out; Švéda and Janata were later captured, returned to Czechoslovakia and executed. Ctirad reached West Berlin first, and in November 1953 Josef arrived with the badly wounded Paumer. Josef later said he divided his life into before Waldow and after Waldow.

Arriving in the United States in 1954, Mašín enlisted in the US Army and served in Special Forces units, the forerunners of the Green Berets, until 1959, partly stationed in West Germany. After an unsuccessful blinds business in Florida with his brother and Paumer, he returned to West Germany, traded army surplus, founded a commercial flight school in Cologne and spent around eighteen years selling military and civil aircraft worldwide, especially in Africa and Asia. At the end of the 1970s he moved to Santa Barbara, California. From 1988 he worked in applied electronics with Trovan, a pioneer of RFID identification microchips, notably for animal identification, and he remained active in business into his nineties.

Mašín married Eva, a German woman he met while serving with the US Army in Germany. They had two daughters, Barbara and Sandy; Barbara Masin became the family's historian and author of Gauntlet. He collected classic cars, including Mercedes, Bugatti and Ferrari models, before selling the collection, and flew helicopters and historic military aircraft for pleasure. He lived for decades in Santa Barbara and never returned to the Czech Republic.

A lifelong anti-communist, Mašín argued that the communist regime was criminal and that armed resistance against it was legitimate. He refused to return to the Czech Republic because, in his view, communists had never been punished after 1989. In the United States he supported Ronald Reagan and the Republican Party. His remarks sometimes caused controversy in Czechia, as in 2012 when he spoke disparagingly of Jan Palach.

Whether the Mašín brothers were heroes or murderers has been one of the most persistent debates in post-1989 Czech society. Supporters, including many conservative politicians and historians, emphasise the totalitarian context and the family's sacrifices; critics point to the killing of a cashier and policemen. A 2003 STEM poll found 55 percent of respondents regarded them as murderers and 30 percent as heroes. Successive Czech presidents did not award them a state decoration, and in 2022 Pavel called the killing of Honzátko murder.

Medal for Bravery from President Edvard Beneš (1945). Thomas Masaryk Award of the Czech and Slovak Association of Canada (2005). Commemorative plaque of the Prime Minister, presented on behalf of Mirek Topolánek (2008). Commemorative certificate of the Czech Senate (2010). Golden Linden from Defence Minister Alexandr Vondra (2011).

Cesta na severozápad, the memoir of Josef and Ctirad Mašín and Milan Paumer (Academia, 2010). Barbara Masin, Odkaz (2005) and Gauntlet (Naval Institute Press, 2006). Jan Novák, Zatím dobrý (2004), winner of the Magnesia Litera book of the year. Filip Saiver, Dokud není konec (Forbes, 2023), based on long interviews with Mašín in Santa Barbara. The feature film Bratři (Brothers, 2023), directed by Tomáš Mašín.

Josef Mašín died in Santa Barbara, California, at the age of 94. His death was announced on 2 November 2026 by Paměť národa on Facebook, citing a source close to the family; the exact date of death was not stated in the initial reports. He had been seriously ill, and about ten days earlier he had told historian Petr Blažek that he expected to die soon. The cause of death was not made public. His brother Ctirad is buried at Riverside National Cemetery in California.