“We Don’t Wear Uniforms for Fun, We Are Soldiers!”: How a Czech TV Series on Contemporary Military Historical Reenactment Aims to Alter the Official Discourse on War and Warfare

Abstract Czech Television, the leading public news broadcaster in the Czech Republic, has partnered with the Ministry of Defence and its expert institution, the Military History Institute Prague (VHÚ Praha), to produce and broadcast an eight-part series about contemporary military reenactment in the Czech Republic. Entitled Present – Arms! , the series, which aired in early 2024, was billed as a documentary and went well beyond the usual features of such programmes. The author argues that the series presents a discourse on war and warfare that differs significantly from the official version publicly professed by the state’s military institutions that co-sponsored the series. The series is based on the so-called revelatory concept of military culture, which emphasises the ultimate nature of direct combat experience and its epistemological benefits, allegedly providing deep insight into human nature and soldier identity. Other underlying concepts characterised in the programme include the Czech nation as a primordial martial race that exists beyond the constraints of time and space and is bound by a Totenkult -style cult of the dead. By contrast, the current official Czech discourse on war and warfare adheres to the so-called honorary concept of military culture, insisting that waging war and engaging in combat are meaningful and praiseworthy only if these acts conform to certain cultural values, such as defending and promoting democracy, human rights, and humanitarian concerns. The following article analyses and interprets the new concept presented in the TV series in question and highlights its potential sociocultural consequences.