Fodor's founder during WWII
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Fodor's founder during WWII
The following is from the Wall Street Journal:
In the race to liberate Prague at the end of World War II, Eugene Fodor won. The founder of the eponymous travel-guide series was a U.S. Army lieutenant and officer of the Office of Strategic Services when he bounced into the Czechoslovak capital with two other Americans in a lone jeep on May 8, 1945, V-E Day. Though Berlin had fallen to the Soviets almost two weeks before, Prague was still something of a no-man's land, with Russian forces hundreds of miles east of the city, American troops stalled just to the west and Czech insurgents battling it out against scattered Nazi diehards.
Fodor and the rest of his group—Sgt. Kurt Taub and Pvt. Nathan Shapiro—made it 100 miles through disintegrating German lines armed with only a rifle and a few pistols. Along the way, they managed to depose the pro-Nazi mayor of Karlsbad and pick up a shipment of insulin to deliver to Prague's besieged hospitals.
I guess that would be called "Independent travel".
I am continually humbled by the "greatest generation".
In the race to liberate Prague at the end of World War II, Eugene Fodor won. The founder of the eponymous travel-guide series was a U.S. Army lieutenant and officer of the Office of Strategic Services when he bounced into the Czechoslovak capital with two other Americans in a lone jeep on May 8, 1945, V-E Day. Though Berlin had fallen to the Soviets almost two weeks before, Prague was still something of a no-man's land, with Russian forces hundreds of miles east of the city, American troops stalled just to the west and Czech insurgents battling it out against scattered Nazi diehards.
Fodor and the rest of his group—Sgt. Kurt Taub and Pvt. Nathan Shapiro—made it 100 miles through disintegrating German lines armed with only a rifle and a few pistols. Along the way, they managed to depose the pro-Nazi mayor of Karlsbad and pick up a shipment of insulin to deliver to Prague's besieged hospitals.
I guess that would be called "Independent travel".
I am continually humbled by the "greatest generation".
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I did a bit of Wiki research on Fodor: He was born in Hungary and marryied a Czech. He published his first travel guide in 1936 and after the war set up the firm we now know in Paris, moving it to Connecticut in 1961.
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You can download a free copy of the first guide:
http://www.fodors.com/75-anniversary...ree-ebook.html
http://www.fodors.com/75-anniversary...ree-ebook.html
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