Julius Fučik ("Fuchik") (1903 - 1943) wrote this book under the shadow of the Nazi hangman's noose. The very form of the manuscript testifies to the invincible courage and resourcefulness of the author. It consists of penciled slips of paper smuggled one by one, with the aid of a sympathetic Czech guard, from the Gestapo prison at Pankrác, Prague. Fuchik, a man scornful of self-deception, knew he would not live to complete this precarious serial. But he was unyielding in his faith that its "happy ending," as he put it, would soon be written by millions of his own countrymen and by anti-fascists in other lands.