Frantisek Moravec spent his early years in Caslav, a town located in the Austro-Hungarian Empire, ruled by Emperor Franz Josef at that time. He had ambitions of becoming a Philosophy professor and was studying at the University of Prague under Thomas Masaryk, who later became the first President of Czechoslovakia. However, with the outbreak of World War I, Moravec was drafted into the Austro-Hungarian army despite his attempts to avoid it. In 1916, he surrendered with his Battalion to the Russians as he preferred fighting for them rather than against them for the Austrians. From the camp in Kiev, Moravec and many other Czechs were transferred to Kazan and then permitted to join the Serbian legion being organized in Odessa to fight against the Empire. In 1917, Moravec was transferred to the Western Front with the Czechoslovak Legion and fought in several battles before the war ended on November 11, 1918. Moravec was present when Thomas Masaryk entered Prague in the days before Christmas, marking the start of the newly independent Czechoslovakia. He later graduated from the military college in Prague and was promoted to Major. In 1939, with the help of British SOE, he fled Czechoslovakia with 10 of his best men just before the Nazi invasion. When the Communists took over Czechoslovakia in 1948, Moravec planned and successfully executed an escape with his wife to Austria and then to America, where they lived for the rest of their lives. Moravec passed away in 1966 while traveling to a regular job at the Pentagon. His daughter, Hanyi Moravec Disher, later published his memoirs, ‚Master of Spies‘.
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