Edvard Beneš VINTAGE ORIGINAL PHOTOGRAPH President of Czechoslovakia from 1935 to 1938 and again from 1945 to 1948 FROM THE SAN FRANCISCO EXAMINER
Edvard Benes was born as the youngest son into a peasant family living in the district of Rakovnik. After his studies at Prague Vinohrady Gymnasium in the years 1896-1904 he enrolled to the Faculty of Philosophy in Prague. After studying briefly he left for Paris, where he studied at the Sorbonne and at the Independent School of Political and Social Studies. Except for his short stay in London he stayed in France until 1907 when he moved to Berlin. By receiving his Doctorate of Laws he completed his university studies firstly in Dijon (1908) by receiving Doctorate of Laws, and one year later by passing rigorous exams in Prague. He taught for three years at the Prague Academy of Commerce, and later on he came to lecture sociology at Charles University as private associate professor.
The outbreak of the World War I provoked Benes into organising an internal resistance movement called "Maffia". In particular he was responsible for channels of communication between Prague and future President Masaryk, who was exiled in Switzerland at the time. In September 1915 Benes left for abroad and from that time on his destiny was closely tied to personalities of T.G. Masaryk a M.R. Stefanik. Benes then lived in Paris where he also organized and managed individual sections of foreign emigration as well as contributed to promotion of Czechoslovak political programme. He reorganised the courier service, which maintained the covert links between him and "Maffia" in Czech lands. Aside from diplomatic efforts to gain political prestige in the eyes of foreign resistance movements he was giving a cycle of lectures at the Sorbonne in Paris on the subject of Slavicism, and wrote a series of articles for French and Czech foreign newspapers. He was instrumental in establishing the Czechoslovak National Council (1916), where he was bestowed with the function of the General Secretary. Together with M.R. Stefanik, he negotiated with the representatives of consensual powers in order to establish independent Czechoslovak military units. Subsequently, after obtaining consent as well as support the first legions were created in France (December 1917), Russia (summer 1918) and in Italy (April 1918). The outstanding result of Benes' diplomatic efforts led to the recognition of the Czechoslovak National Council as the representative of the new Czechoslovak State by France (June 1918), England (August 1918) and Italy (October 1918). This also enabled representatives of the Czechoslovak National Council to be admitted to the collective talks of the states of the Treaty of Versailles.
On October 28, 1918 Benes acting as the representative of the foreign resistance negotiated with domestic politicians in Geneva on the future of the newly independent Czechoslovak state, and upon reaching an agreement Benes became the first Minister of Foreign Affairs of the newly formed Czechoslovakia. However, he did not return home until September 1919, for already in November 1918 he had to go to Paris in order to secure the previously non-existent southern Slovak border, and to extricate Slovakia from Hungary, as well as to procure the recognition of the historical borders of the Czech State. At that time, Czechoslovakia emerged in a new state form never existing before, on the basis of Woodrow Wilson's principle of nations' rights for self-determination, which was, however, acknowledged only to the purposefully defined Czechoslovak nation in the new state. This concept, accepted to this date by most of the Czech nationals as natural and just, Benes vindicated in Peace Convents of 1919 and 1920, and as a creator of the Czechoslovak foreign politics he endeavoured to secure it by international pacts.
Edvard Benes was present at the inception of the League of Nations, and as its deputy chairman (1920), member of the Board (in 1923-27) and member of the Security Council, and its chairman (1935) he supported the principle of collective security. In 1920-22, Benes founded the Little Alliance with Yugoslavia and Romania, and in 1924, he negotiated an alliance treaty with the post-war European power, the France. He was a renowned person at important international conferences (e.g. in Genoa 1922, Locarno 1925, the Hague 1930, and Lausanne 1932) and had profound knowledge and understanding of international politics and relations. Although his primary domain was foreign affairs, he also played an important role in internal matters.
From the inception of the State, Edvard Benes was Minister of Foreign Affairs, and in the years 1919 to 1926 and 1929 to 1935, he was en elected member of the National Assembly, including Prime Minister in the years 1921 to 1922. Following president T.G. Masaryk's abdication, Benes became President of the Czechoslovak Republic on December 18, 1935. As the vice chairman of the Czechoslovak National Socialist Party (Benes was its member in 1923 to 1935), he had a profound influence over its policies. He rejected Marxism, but adhered to socialist ideas, the "overall development towards agricultural and workers democratism as well as natural and unavoidable weakening of the municipal bourgeoisie influence" he considered as one of the important results of the World War I. His opinions disallowed him to fully understand totalitarian principle of the Bolshevism, although he disagreed with it. In his endeavour to firmly anchor the security of the State, he tried to abolish the international isolation of the U.S.S.R. and to bring it into the League of Nations. When this was successfully accomplished, he closed an Alliance Treaty with the U.S.S.R. (in 1935). Shortly after that Munich treaty took place in 1938.
It will remain the eternal theme of the Czech history, whether it would be back then better to fight in international isolation than the moral marasmus after capitulation. It is certain that Slovaks longed for autonomy, Hungarians and Germans for alliance with their nations, and Czechs did not compel war from their political representatives including Benes. He abdicated on October 5, 1938, and went to exile. After war occupation of the Czech Lands and establishment of the Slovak State in March 1939 Benes proclaimed Munich treaty as invalid and held the theory of legal continuity of the Czechoslovakia. During the World War II Benes reached acknowledgement of the Czechoslovak exile government by all allied countries.
The Munich treaty meant trauma to Benes the same as to his Czech fellow citizens, and he was literally possessed to rectify it. Already after the events in Munich Benes occupied his mind with the problem of Germans in Czech Lands, and with future foreign-politics orientation, and for his conclusions he was able to win not only politicians of his generation - for example J. Sramek or J. Stransky - but also younger politics: H. Ripka, P. Drtina and others. Benes came to a conclusion, supported from his homeland, that a war is an apt historical moment to solve problems of the State by expulsion of Germans. Far before the Postdam Conference he communicated that end of the war"in our country must mean a great people's vengeance and a really bloody and unmerciful end for Germans" (February 1944).
During the war Benes came to understanding of how the powers will be distributed in post-war Central Europe, which led him to sign treaty with the Soviet Union in December 1943, in despite of initial disagreement of the Brits. He appealed to his countrymen to view his trip to Moscow "in the spirit of our entire national history of the past centuries". He did not event oppose to the significant changes in domestic policy. Besides the Czechoslovak Communist Party he was willing to allow socialist parties and the leftist bourgeoisie parties into the political system, and intended to implement very radical social and economic changes in the country. This was on the agenda of his visit to Moscow in December 1943, and was discussed with the foreign leadership of the Czechoslovak Communist Party. It was also from Moscow that he would return to a liberated homeland.
After his triumphant arrival in Prague on May 16, 1945, Benes began taking steps to realising his intention to "unite the national revolution with the economic revolution" by his Decree. He was reinstated to his political office on October 28, 1945 and re-elected president on June 19, 1946. To much he stemmed from the thought that the Czechoslovakia may become "a bridge" between the Soviet Union and Western democratic countries, and thus help maintain stability in Europe. As a sociologist, he was convinced that politics are "practical sociology" and that his policies were based in science. However, further development has shown that the ideas behind his policies stemmed from wishes, not from science. Benes' faith in democratisation of the Soviet Union and the Communist Party was defeated by dramatic events in February 1948. Shortly thereafter, on June 7, 1948, Benes abdicated and died soon. (mch, ss)
Edvard Beneš, (born May 28, 1884, Kozlany, Bohemia, Austria-Hungary [now in Czech Republic]—died September 3, 1948, Sezimovo Ústí, Czechoslovakia [now in Czech Republic]), statesman, foreign minister, and president, a founder of modern Czechoslovakia who forged its Western-oriented foreign policy between World Wars I and II but capitulated to Adolf Hitler’s demands during the Czech crisis of 1938.
After studying in Prague, Paris, and Dijon, France, Beneš received a doctorate of laws in 1908 and taught at the Prague Commercial Academy and the Czech University of Prague (now Charles University) before World War I. Influenced by the nationalist ideas of Tomáš Masaryk, who wished to liberate the Czechs and Slovaks from Austrian rule, Beneš followed his mentor to Switzerland during World War I and then established himself in Paris. With Masaryk and the Slovak leader Milan Štefánik, Beneš formed a propaganda organization that eventually became a Czechoslovak provisional government on October 14, 1918. With the collapse of Austria-Hungary in November 1918, a new Czechoslovak state was quickly formed. As foreign minister, a post he was to retain until 1935, Beneš headed his country’s delegation to the Paris Peace Conference in 1919 and championed the League of Nations throughout the interwar period, serving as its Council chairman six times. Opposed to plans for union between Austria and Germany (after World War I and again in 1931), which he deemed a threat to Czechoslovakia’s continued existence, he attempted to reestablish a balance of power in eastern Europe. To fill the partial power vacuum created by the collapse of the Austro-Hungarian monarchy, Beneš negotiated the treaties with Romania and Yugoslavia (1921) that formed the Little Entente, originally aimed at revisionist Hungary. France joined in 1924, and thereafter the alliance became a bloc against Germany and, to a lesser extent, the Soviet Union. In 1935, however, he signed a mutual assistance pact between his country and the Soviet Union.
With the resignation of Masaryk as president in 1935, Beneš was elected to that office. Relations with Poland and Germany, never amicable, steadily worsened. Though he granted substantially the first Sudetenland German autonomy demands in 1938, he was nevertheless unable to avert the crisis that led to the destruction of the Czechoslovak state. Abandoned by his allies, Beneš capitulated before the German ultimatum, and his country lost the Sudetenland in September 1938. Poland soon occupied the disputed Teschen area. Resigning on October 5, 1938, Beneš went into exile. After the outbreak of World War II he established in France a Czechoslovak national committee, which moved to London in 1940. Reestablishing a government on his native soil on April 3, 1945, Beneš entered Prague on May 16 to the enthusiastic welcome of the population. His was the only eastern European exile government to be allowed to return after the war.
Backlash against the ethnic German and Hungarian populations in postwar Czechoslovakia was swift and brutal. Beginning in 1945, the so-called “Beneš decrees” (officially the Decrees of the President of the Republic) were enacted, stripping the citizenship of millions of Sudeten Germans and tens of thousands of Hungarians unless they could prove their wartime loyalty to the Czechoslovak state. Their property was confiscated without compensation, and as many as 19,000 “expellees” were killed during their forced expulsion from Czechoslovakia. The Beneš decrees continued to be a contentious point into the 21st century, but they remained in force, precluding any claim to reparations by those dispossessed in the 1940s.
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Beneš realized that Czechoslovakia had to cooperate closely with the Soviet Union. Increasingly ill, he suffered two strokes in 1947. When his communist prime minister, Klement Gottwald, demanded on February 25, 1948, that Beneš accept a communist-dominated cabinet, Beneš again had no choice but to capitulate. Refusing to sign the new constitution, he resigned on June 7, 1948. Having witnessed the apparent suicide of his lifelong friend Jan Masaryk (son of Tomáš Masaryk) a few months earlier, Beneš died a broken man in 1948. His unfinished Memoirs: From Munich to New War and New Victory appeared in English in 1954.
The youngest son of 10 children, Eduard (he would change the spelling of his first name when he was attending university) was born May 28, 1884 in Kožlany, Bohemia, about 60 kilometers from Prague. His brother Vojta also took up politics. The future statesman spent his childhood years in Prague’s Vinohrady district. After graduating from the Philosophical Faculty of Charles University, he went abroad with a two-year tenure in Paris and another year in Berlin. In Paris Beneš studied at the Sorbonne and the Independent School of Political and Social Studies. He earned his doctorate in Dijon, France, where he focused on the political struggles of Slavonic nations in Austria. Back in Prague, Beneš received another doctorate. After completing his studies, he taught at a business school and at university.
Beneš and the struggle for Czechoslovak independence
Convinced that Czechs and Slovaks shared the same ethnic identity, Beneš was very active in the struggle for Czechoslovak independence during World War I. He coordinated the anti-Austrian resistance group Maffia and set up a home base in Paris during September of 1915, where along with future president Tomáš G. Masaryk and one of the major players in the resistance government, Slovak Milan Rastislav Štefánik, he tried to gain support for an independent Czechoslovakia. The Czech resistance leader was also responsible for coordinating legions that fought for the West in France, Russia and Italy.
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Beneš as Minister of Foreign Affairs
When Czechoslovakia was born in 1918, Beneš became Minister of Foreign Affairs. The experienced diplomat served as Prime Minister from 1921-22, when he built up a defensive system against Austro-Hungary, called the Little Entente, with Romania and Yugoslavia, and he also paved the way for the Czechoslovak French Treaty of 1924. A representative in Parliament from 1919-26 and 1929-35, Beneš was a member of the Czechoslovak Socialist Party, as of 1926 the Czechoslovak National Socialist Party, which was not affiliated with the Nazi German National Socialist Workers’ Party. Established in 1898, the Czechoslovak Socialist Party aspired to gain independence from Austro-Hungary and asserted that democracy and morality were conditions of socialism. In 1935 the treaty he signed with the Soviet Union stated that the USSR would aid Czechoslovakia in war time if France also came to the country’s assistance.
Slovak unrest
The second half of the 1930s was a period fraught with complaints from the German and Slovak minorities who demanded more rights and freedom. For example, during May of 1935 the fascist and nationalistic Hlinka’s Slovak People’s Party tried to pressure the dedicated diplomat to make Slovak the official language of Slovakia and to provide them with a legislative diet in Bratislava, among other demands. Beneš stood firm, asserting that only a united Czechoslovak nation could survive the threats caused by the Nazi and fascist regimes in neighboring countries.
Czechoslovak President Edvard Beneš
Beneš succeeded Masaryk as president in December of 1935. The Sudeten Germans – ethnic Germans living in the Czech lands – and Slovaks continued to assert more and more pressure. In 1938 Beneš recognized Slovakia as an independent nation. During April of that same year, the Sudeten German question came to a head when the German minority issued the Carlsbad demands, which included rights such as full equality with the Czechs, complete self-government and freedom to express Nazi ideology. At first Beneš stood his ground, but he finally did agree to the demands that September. Beneš also engineered a „Third Plan,“ which involved setting up 20 or more small districts where Germans would have much autonomy if they proved to be the majority in those areas. Surrendering to the demands of the Germans and Slovaks triggered much disapproval in the government. Convinced the Munich Agreement that ceded the Sudetenland to the Third Reich was unjust, Beneš resigned October 5, 1938.
Resistance activities during the Nazi Occupation
During 1938 he found himself abroad once more. When Britain and France joined the war against Germany in October of 1939, he established a government-in-exile in London, and Britain acknowledged it during 1940. The Soviet Union followed in 1941. Beneš and Czechoslovak military intelligence officer and resistance leader František Moravec contributed to the plan formed in England by the Czechoslovak army-in-exile that aspired to assassinate high-ranking Nazi official Reinhard Heydrich with Operation Anthropoid. The successful plan brought about brutal reprisals, though. More than 13,000 people were arrested, and about 5,000 were killed in reprisals. The villages of Lidice and Ležáky were razed. In Lidice 199 men were murdered, 95 children (most of whom would be gassed) were taken away from their parents, eight children were given to German families and 195 women were sent to a concentration camp. All the men in Ležáky were executed.
Leanings toward Russia
During the first three years of the war, Beneš sought to set up a federation between the Czechoslovaks and Poles, but due to pressure from Moscow, it did not become a reality. He did, though, sign treaties with Great Britain and France. The Czechoslovak statesman with leanings toward Russia went to Moscow to meet with Stalin and signed a new treaty with the USSR during 1943, feeling assured that the West would become more socialist after the war and the USSR would have a more western orientation.
Beneš’ second term as president and the Beneš decrees
Beneš returned to Czechoslovakia in 1945 and was elected President of the second republic in June of 1946. Arguing that the Sudeten Germans were collectively responsible for the destruction of independent Czechoslovakia, he put into effect the Beneš decrees, confiscating the property of Germans, traitors and collaborators in the country, stripping them of their citizenship and even expelling them from the nation. The controversial decrees are still in effect.
Communism and February 25, 1948
Communists became major players in the new government as they controlled the most important ministries. Communist Klement Gottwald became Prime Minister during 1947. On February 20, 1948 the Communists asserted much pressure by forming a people’s militia of 15,000 members. That day the 12 noncommunist ministers resigned, convinced that Beneš would establish a new government without the Communist Party. However, Beneš made no attempt to mobilize the fierce opposition against the Communists because he thought the USSR should play a major role in central Europe and was afraid that Germany would become powerful again. Beneš was convinced that Soviet socialism would be moderate and European while he predicted that European capitalism would lean more toward socialism.
It was Benes’ hesitation in February of 1948 that allowed the Communists to take over the government and make Czechoslovakia into a totalitarian state. Surrendering to the Communist threat, he appointed a Communist majority government February 25, 1948. Refusing to sign the new pro-Communist constitution, Beneš abdicated June 7 of that year, and Klement Gottwald became the new president.
The death of a prominent statesman
Three months later Beneš died. Stricken by spinal tuberculosis and other illnesses, the prominent Czechoslovak statesman passed away September 3, 1948 at his villa in Sezimovo Ústí, where he is buried alongside his wife.
Beneš’ writing legacy
Beneš was an avid writer advocating democracy as well as a politician. His memoirs and speeches make up a few of the many books he published. His works printed in English translation are Bohemia’s Case for Independence from 1917, his My War Memoirs from 1928 and Democracy Today and Tomorrow from 1939.
The controversial Edvard Beneš
Edvard Beneš is a name that triggers much controversy: some people consider him a phenomenal politician dedicated to democracy while others sneer at him, pinpointing the tragedies of his political career. Beneš did make great achievements in his resistance work during both wars and was responsible for some ground-breaking events as foreign minister and president. Along with Masaryk he put Czech politics on the European and world map. Yet he was trapped in a tragic drama of international relations. He made mistakes. He put too much faith in the USSR and Russian socialism, for example. He hesitated when he should have taken action during February of 1948. Both his achievements and tragedies have to be considered within the historical context of the times as he was not once but twice defeated by ideological parties that destroyed democracy in Czechoslovakia.
(b. 28 May 1884, d. 3 Sept. 1948).
President of Czechoslovakia 1935–8, 1945–8. Born in Kozlány (Bohemia), he was educated in Prague and at the Sorbonne (Paris), and became a lecturer in economics at Prague University before World War I. In 1914 he fled from Prague to Paris, where he helped Masaryk to form the Czechoslovak National Council. He became the leader of the Czech National Socialist Party, and was Czech delegate at the Paris Peace Conference. As Foreign Minister (1918–35) he sought to stabilize the young state through international treaties. The Little Entente was created in 1921 to prevent the restoration of the Habsburg King Charles in Hungary. The Czechoslovak–French treaty of 1924 was designed to guarantee the country's independence. As one‐time Prime Minister (1921–2), and one of Masaryk's closest allies, he was the natural successor to the presidency following Masaryk's resignation. A pragmatist as well as a nationalist, he grudgingly accepted Slovak demands for recognition of their distinctiveness, and was even prepared to surrender the Sudetenland in return for peace with Germany. Ultimately, however, he resigned in solidarity with the entire Cabinet over the Munich Agreement.
Beneš went into exile and taught in the USA until the outbreak of war, when he became head of the Czechoslovak government‐in‐exile in 1939, first in Paris, and then in London. He had no ideological prejudices against Stalin, and believed that after the war there would be a ‘convergence’, whereby the USSR would become more capitalist, and Western Europe more socialist. This explains his willingness to accept the growing power of the Czechoslovak Communist Party under Gottwald in his postwar government, and his failure to mobilize opposition against the Communist takeover of the state in February 1948. Indeed, he agreed to stay on as President, resigning only on 6 May 1948.
ww2dbaseEdvard Beneš was born in Kožlany, Bohemia, at the time a province of Austria-Hungary. In 1912, he taught at the Charles University of Prague, and from 1916 to 1918 he was a Secretary of the Czechoslovak National Council in Paris and Minister of the Interior and of Foreign Affairs of the province. His political ideal saw the Czechs and Slovaks working together for a common Czechoslovakia, and with this vision he was a strong organizer of Czechoslovakians abroad. Between 1918 and 1935, he was the Foreign Minister of Czechoslovakia, and from 1920 to 1925 and again from 1929 to 1935 he was a member of the Parliament. Between 1935 and 1938, he was the President of Czechoslovakia, but resigned from office on 5 Oct 1938 as his personal protest against German aggression and western appeasement. Emigrating to Britain, immediately outside of London, he headed the Czechoslovakian government-in-exile as president. In Britain, he organized various movements against German occupation of his home country, one of which culminated in the assassination of Reinhard Heydrich. After the war ended, he returned to Czechoslovakia and resumed his role as the president of the nation, with a new policy to eventually deport ethnic Germans to Germany and Austria. On 7 Jun 1948, he resigned once again, this time due to the communist takeover several months before; Prime Minister Klement Gottwald, the head of the communist movement, succeeded him as the next president. Beneš died at his villa in Sezimovo Ústí, Czechoslovakia.
Edvard Beneš, sometimes anglicised to Edward Benesh (Czech pronunciation: [ˈɛdvard ˈbɛnɛʃ] (About this soundlisten); 28 May 1884 – 3 September 1948), was a Czech politician and statesman who was President of Czechoslovakia from 1935 to 1938 and again from 1945 to 1948. He also led the Czechoslovak government-in-exile 1939 to 1945, during World War II. As President, Beneš faced two major crises which both resulted in his resignation.
His first resignation came after the Munich Agreement and subsequent German occupation of Czechoslovakia in 1938, which brought his government into exile in the United Kingdom. The second came about with the 1948 communist coup, which created a communist regime. Before his time as President, Beneš was also the first Minister of Foreign Affairs (1918–1935) and the fourth Prime Minister (1921–1922) of Czechoslovakia. A member of the Czechoslovak National Social Party, he was known as a skilled diplomat.[1]
Contents
1 Early life
1.1 Birth and family
1.2 Education and marriage
2 Political career before independence
3 Foreign minister
4 First presidency
4.1 Sudeten Crisis
5 Wartime exile in Britain
5.1 Organizing the government-in-exile
5.2 Operation Barbarossa begins
5.3 Working with the Czech resistance
5.4 Britain rejects the Munich Agreement
6 Second presidency
6.1 Role in the Prague uprising
6.2 Return to Prague
6.3 Expulsion of the Sudeten Germans
6.4 Communist coup of 1948
7 Death
8 Legacy
9 In fiction
10 See also
11 References
12 Sources
12.1 Primary sources
13 External links
Early life
Birth and family
Eduard Beneš was born into a peasant family in 1884 in the small town of Kožlany, Bohemia, in what was then the Austro-Hungarian Empire. He was the youngest son and tenth child overall of Matěj Beneš (1843–1910) and Anna Petronila (née Beneš;[2] 1840–1909).[3][4] One of his siblings was the future Czechoslovak politician Vojta Beneš. His nephew through his brother Václav was Bohuš Beneš, a diplomat and author. Bohuš was the father of Emilie Benes Brzezinski, an American sculptor, and Václav E. Beneš, a Czech-American mathematician.[5]
Education and marriage
Edvard Beneš with his wife Hana, seen here in 1934.
Beneš spent much of his youth in the Vinohrady district of Prague, where he attended a grammar school from 1896 to 1904, his landlord's family being acquainted with his future wife Anna Vlčková (1885–1974) (cs). The two would later study French, history, and literature together at the Sorbonne. Edvard and Anna got engaged in May 1906, and married in November 1909. Some time after their engagement, Anna changed her name to Hana, which was the name Edvard had called her by since he met her (because he had just ended a relationship with another woman named Anna). Around the same time, Edvard Beneš also changed his name, going from the original spelling "Eduard" to "Edvard".[6][7]
He played soccer as an amateur for Slavia Prague.[8] After studying philosophy at Charles-Ferdinand University in Prague, Beneš left for Paris and continued his studies at the Sorbonne and at the Independent School of Political and Social Studies. He completed his first degree in Dijon, where he received his doctorate of law in 1908. Beneš then taught for three years at a business college, and after his 1912 habilitation in philosophy, Beneš became a lecturer of sociology at Charles University. He was also involved in scouting.[9]
In 1907, Beneš published over 200 articles in the Czech social democratic newspaper Právo Lidu (cs) containing his impressions of life in Western Europe.[10] Beneš wrote he found the German "empire of force and power" repulsive after visiting Berlin, and from London he wrote that "The situation here is terrible and so is life".[10] During World War II, when Beneš was living in exile in London, the German Propaganda Ministry gleefully republished his articles from 1907 expressing mostly negative sentiments about life in Britain.[10] Paris, the "city of light", was, however, a city that Beneš loved, as he wrote that he found it to be "almost miraculously...a magnificent synthesis of modern civilization, of which France is the bearer".[10] For the rest of his life, Beneš was a passionate Francophile and he always stated that Paris was his favorite city.[11]
Political career before independence
During World War I, Beneš was one of the leading organizers of an independent Czechoslovakia from abroad. He organized a pro-independence and anti-Austrian secret resistance movement, Maffia. In September 1915, he went into exile in Paris, where he made intricate diplomatic efforts to gain recognition from France and the United Kingdom for Czechoslovak independence. From 1916 to 1918, he was a Secretary of the Czechoslovak National Council in Paris and Minister of the Interior and of Foreign Affairs in the Provisional Czechoslovak government.
In May 1917, Beneš, Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk and Milan Rastislav Štefánik were reported to be organizing a "Czechoslovak Legion" to fight for the Western Allies in France and Italy, recruited from among Czechs and Slovaks who were able to get to the front and also from the large emigrant populations in the United States, which was said to number more than 1,500,000.[12] The force grew into one of tens of thousands and took part in several battles, including the Battles of Zborov and Bakhmach in Russia.[13]
Foreign minister
From 1918 to 1935, Beneš was the first and longest-serving Foreign Minister of Czechoslovakia. On 31 October 1918, Karel Kramář reported from Geneva to Prague: "If you saw our Dr. Beneš and his mastery of global questions...you would take off your hat and say it was truly marvelous!"[14] His international stature was such that he held the post through 10 successive governments, one of which that he headed himself from 1921 to 1922. In 1919, his decision to pull demoralized Czechoslovak Legions out of the Russian Civil War was denounced by Kramář as a betrayal.[15] He represented Czechoslovakia at the 1919 peace conference in Paris, which led to the Versailles Treaty.
A committed Czechoslovakist, Beneš did not consider Czechs and Slovaks to be separate ethnicities. He served in the National Assembly from 1920 to 1925 and again from 1929 to 1935, representing the Czechoslovak National Social Party (called the Czechoslovak Social Party until 1925). He briefly returned to the academic world as a professor, in 1921. After Jan Černý's first stint as prime minister, Beneš formed a government (cs) for a little over a year from 1921 to 1922.
In the early 1920s, Beneš and his mentor President Masaryk viewed Kramář as the principal threat to Czechoslovak democracy, seeing him as a "reactionary" Czech chauvinist who was opposed to their plans for Czechoslovakia as a multi-cultural, multi-ethnic state.[15] Masaryk and Beneš were openly doubtful of Kramář's commitment to "Western values" that they were committed to such as democracy, enlightenment, rationality and tolerance, seeing him as a romantic Pan-Slavist who looked towards the east rather than the west for ideas.[15]
Kramář very much resented the way in which Masaryk openly groomed Beneš as his successor, noting that Masaryk put articles into the Constitution that set 45 as the age limit for senators, but 35 as the age limit for the presidency, which conveniently made Beneš eligible for the presidency.[15] The charge of Czech chauvinism against Kramář had some substance as he openly proclaimed his belief that the Czechs should be the dominant people in Czechoslovakia, denounced Masaryk and Beneš for their belief that the Sudeten Germans should be equal to the Czechs, and made clear his opposition to having German as one of the official languages of Czechoslovakia, views that made him abhorrent to Beneš.[16]
Between 1923 and 1927, Beneš was a member of the League of Nations Council, serving as president of its committee from 1927 to 1928. He was a renowned and influential figure at international conferences, such as those at Genoa in 1922, Locarno in 1925, The Hague in 1930 and Lausanne in 1932.
First presidency
President Beneš visiting a police station in Brno, 1938.
When President Tomáš Masaryk retired in 1935, Beneš succeeded him. Under Masaryk, the Hrad ("the castle", as the Czechs called the presidency) had built up into a major extra-constitutional institution enjoying considerably more informal power than the plain language of the Constitution indicated.[17] The framers of the Constitution had intended to create a parliamentary system in which the Prime Minister would be the country's leading political figure. However, due to a complex system of proportional representation, no party even approached the 151 seats needed for a majority; as mentioned above, there were ten cabinets during Masaryk's presidency.
The Czech historian Igor Lukeš (cs) wrote about the power of the Hrad under Beneš: "By the spring of 1938, the Czechoslovak parliament, the prime minister, and the cabinet had been pushed aside by Beneš. During the dramatic summer months he was – for better or worse – the sole decision-maker in the country".[17]
Sudeten Crisis
Main article: Munich Agreement
Edvard Beneš opposed Nazi Germany's claim to the German-speaking Sudetenland in 1938. The crisis began on 24 April 1938 when Konrad Henlein at the party congress of the Sudeten German Party in Karlsbad (modern Karlovy Vary) announced the 8-point "Karlsbad programme" demanding autonomy for the Sudetenland.[18] Beneš rejected the Karlsbad programme, but in May 1938 offered the "Third Plan" which would have created 20 cantons in the Sudetenland with substantial autonomy, which in turn was rejected by Henlein.[19] Beneš was keen to go to war with Germany provided that one or more of the Great Powers fought alongside Czechoslovakia, but was unwilling to fight Germany alone.[20] Sergei Aleksandrovsky, the Soviet minister in Prague, reported to Moscow after talking to Beneš that he was hoping to fight a "war against the whole world" provided the Soviet Union was willing to come in.[20]
In London in May 1938, Beneš came under very intense British pressure to accede to the Karlsbad programme, which he initially refused. The British viewed the Sudetenland crisis as a domestic Czechoslovak crisis with international ramifications whereas Beneš saw the crisis as a matter between Czechoslovakia vs. Germany.
In July 1938, the British Foreign Secretary Lord Halifax offered the services of a British mediator Lord Runciman, to resolve the crisis, with the promise that Britain would support Czechoslovakia if Beneš was willing to accept the conclusions of Runciman's findings.[21] Seeing a chance to enlist British support, Beneš accepted the Runciman Mission.[21] The British historian A. J. P. Taylor wrote: "Beneš, whatever his other defects, was an incomparable negotiator; and the talents which had been a match for Lloyd George in 1919, soon took Runciman's measure in 1938...Instead, Runciman found that he was being maneuvered into a position where he had to endorse the Czech offers as reasonable, and to condemn the obstinacy of the Sudetens, not of Beneš. An appalling consequence [for Britain] loomed ever nearer; if Beneš did all that Runciman asked of him, and more, Great Britain would be saddled with the moral obligation to support Czechoslovakia in the ensuring crisis. To avert this consequence, Runciman, far from urging Beneš on, had to preach delay. Beneš did not allow him to escape".[22]
On 4 September 1938, Beneš presented the "Fourth Plan", which, had it happened, would have come very close to turning Czechoslovakia into a federation, and would have given the Sudetenland widespread autonomy. Henlein rejected the Fourth Plan and instead launched a revolt in the Sudetenland, which soon failed. On 12 September 1938, in his keynote speech at the Nuremberg party rally, Adolf Hitler demanded the Sudetenland join Germany. On 30 September 1938, Germany, Italy, France and the United Kingdom signed the Munich Agreement, which allowed for the annexation and military occupation of the Sudetenland by Germany. Czechoslovakia was not consulted. Beneš agreed, despite opposition from within his country, after France and the United Kingdom warned that they would remain neutral, despite their previous promises, in a war between Germany and Czechoslovakia.[23] Beneš was forced to resign on 5 October 1938, under German pressure,[23] and was replaced by Emil Hácha.
In March 1939, German troops marched into what remained of Czechoslovakia, which they declared a protectorate of Nazi Germany and detached Slovakia as a puppet state, thereby completing the German occupation of Czechoslovakia which would last until 1945.
Wartime exile in Britain
See also: German occupation of Czechoslovakia and United Kingdom home front during World War II
Beneš posing with members of the Czechoslovak Air Force, recently returned to the United Kingdom from the Middle East.
On 22 October 1938, Beneš went into exile in Putney, London. Czechoslovakia's intelligence service headed by František Moravec was still loyal to Beneš, which gave him a valuable bargaining chip in his dealings with the British as Paul Thümmel, a highly ranking officer of the Abwehr, Germany's military intelligence, was still selling information to Moravec's group.[24] In July 1939, Beneš realising that "information is power", started to share with the British some of the intelligence provided by "Agent A-54" as Thümmel was code-named.[24] As the British lacked any spies in Germany comparable to Agent A-54, the British were intensely interested in the intelligence provided by him, which Beneš used to bargain with in dealings with the British.[24]
By July 1939, the Danzig crisis had pushed Britain to the brink of war with Germany, and British decision-makers were keenly interested in any high-level intelligence about Germany.[24] In the summer of 1939, Beneš hoped that the Danzig crisis would end in war, seeing a war with Germany as his only hope of restoring Czechoslovakia.[24] At the same time, Beneš started to have regular lunches with Winston Churchill, at the time only a backbench Conservative MP, and Harold Nicolson, a backbencher National Labour MP who was likewise opposed to the Munich Agreement.[24] Besides his new British friends like Churchill and Nicolson, Beneš also resumed contact with old British friends from World War I such as the historian Robert Seton-Watson and the journalist Henry Wickham Steed, who wrote articles urging the restoration of Czechoslovakia to its pre-Munich Agreement borders.[24]
On 23 August 1939, Beneš met Ivan Maisky, the Soviet ambassador to the Court of St. James, to ask for Soviet support. According to Maisky's diary, Beneš told him that he wanted a common frontier between Czechoslovakia and the Soviet Union.[25] Furthermore, Maisky's diary had Beneš saying that if Czechoslovakia were restored, he would cede Ruthenia, whose people Beneš noted were mostly Ukrainian, to the Soviet Union to bring about a common frontier.[25]
On the same day, Beneš learned of the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact. When he confronted Maisky, he was told that war would break out "in two weeks' time", causing Beneš to write: "My overall impression is that the Soviets want war, they have prepared for it conscientiously and they maintain that the war will take place – and that they have reserved some freedom of action for themselves... [The pact was] a rather rough tactic to drive Hitler into war... the Soviets are convinced that the time has come for a final struggle between capitalism, fascism and Nazism and that there will be a world revolution, which they will trigger at an opportune moment when others are exhausted by war ".[26] Maisky would be proven right on 1 September, when Germany invaded Poland, and the British and French both declared war on Germany two days later.
Organizing the government-in-exile
Main article: Czechoslovak government-in-exile
In October 1939, Beneš organised the Czechoslovak National Liberation Committee, which immediately declared itself the Provisional Government of Czechoslovakia. Britain and France withheld full recognition, though unofficial contacts were permitted.[27] A major issue in wartime Anglo-Czechoslovak relations was the Munich Agreement, which the British still stood by, and which Beneš wanted the British to abrogate.[28] The issue was important because as long the British continued to view the Munich Agreement as being in effect, they recognized the Sudetenland as part of Germany, a British war aim that Beneš naturally objected to. A problem for Beneš during the Phoney War in the winter of 1939–40 was the British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain attached much hope to the idea that anti-Nazi conservatives in Germany would persuade the Wehrmacht to overthrow Hitler, and as the anti-Nazi conservatives were adamant that the Sudetenland remain part of Germany, Chamberlain made it clear that Britain was not at war to undo the Munich Agreement.[29]
On 22 February 1940 during a secret meeting in Switzerland between Ulrich von Hassell representing the German conservatives and James Lonsdale-Bryans representing Great Britain, the former told the latter there was no possibility of a post-Nazi Germany ever agreeing to return the Sudetenland.[30] In 1939 and 1940, Chamberlain repeatedly made public statements that Britain was willing to make an "honorable peace" with a post-Nazi Germany, which meant the Sudetenland would remain within the Reich.[29] Beneš with his insistence on restoring Czechoslovakia to its pre-Munich borders was seen by Chamberlain as an obstacle that was standing in the way of his hope that the Wehrmacht would depose Hitler.
After the Dunkirk evacuation, Britain was faced with a German invasion while the British Army had lost most of its equipment, which it had to abandon at Dunkirk. At the same time, 500 Czechoslovak airmen had arrived in Britain together with half of a division, which Beneš called his "last and most impressive argument" for diplomatic recognition.[27] On 21 July 1940, the United Kingdom recognised the National Liberation Committee as being the Czechoslovak government-in-exile, with Jan Šrámek as prime minister and Beneš as president.[27] In reclaiming the presidency, Beneš took the line that his 1938 resignation had been under duress and so was void.
The intelligence provided by Agent A-54 was greatly valued by MI6, the British intelligence service, and Beneš used it to improve his bargaining position, telling the British he would share more intelligence from Agent A-54 in return for concessions to his government-in-exile.[31] As part of his efforts to improve his bargaining position, Beneš often exaggerated to the British the efficiency of Moravec's group, the Czechoslovak army in exile and the underground UVOD resistance group.[31] Besides Agent A-54, the Prime Minister of the Czech government under the Protectorate, General Alois Eliáš, was in contact with Moravec's agents. Beneš's efforts paid off as he was invited to lunch, first at 10 Downing Street by Churchill (who was now Prime Minister), and then by King George VI at Buckingham Palace.[31]
In September 1940, MI6 set up a communications center in Surrey for Czechoslovak intelligence and in October 1940 a Victorian mansion at Leamington Spa was given to the Czechoslovak brigade under General Miroslav.[31] At the same time, Moravec's group began to work with the Special Operations Executive (SOE) to plan resistance in the Protectorate of Bohemia-Moravia, through the distance between Britain and the Protectorate made it difficult for the SOE to parachute in agents.[31]
In November 1940, in the wake of the London Blitz, Beneš, his wife, their nieces and his household staff moved to The Abbey at Aston Abbotts, near Aylesbury in Buckinghamshire. The staff of his private office, including his secretary, Eduard Táborský (cs), and his chief of staff, Jaromír Smutný (cs), moved to the Old Manor House in the neighbouring village of Wingrave, and his military intelligence staff, headed by František Moravec, was stationed in the nearby village of Addington.
Operation Barbarossa begins
Beneš's relations with the Polish government-in-exile headed by General Władysław Sikorski were difficult due to the Teschen dispute, as General Sikorski insisted on claiming the region for Poland, while Beneš argued that it should return to Czechoslovakia when the war was over.[32] However, Beneš felt a Polish-Czechoslovak alliance was needed to counter Germany in the post-war world, and came around to the idea of a Polish-Czechoslovak federation as the best way of squaring the circle caused by the Teschen dispute.[32] In November 1940, Beneš and Sikorski signed an agreement in principle calling for federation, through Beneš's insistence that the Slovaks were not a nation and Slovakia would not be a full member of the federation caused much tension between himself and Slovak members of the government-in-exile.[32]
However, after Operation Barbarossa brought the Soviet Union into the war in June 1941, Beneš started to lose interest in the project, through a detailed agreement for the proposed federation was worked out and signed in January 1942.[32] The Russophile Beneš always felt more comfortable with dealing with Russians rather than the Poles, whose behavior in September 1938 was a source of much resentment to Beneš.[32] The promise from the Narkomindel that the Soviet Union supported returning Teschen to Czechoslovakia negated the whole purpose of the proposed federation for Beneš.[32]
On 22 June 1941, Germany launched Operation Barbarossa and invaded the Soviet Union. President Emil Hacha of the puppet government serving under the Protectorate praised Hitler in a statement for launching the "crusade against Bolshevism" and urged Czech workers to work even harder for a German victory, observing that much of the material used by the Wehrmacht was manufactured in the Protectorate.[33] Through Moravec, Beneš sent word to both General Eliáš and Hacha that they should resign rather than give comfort to the enemy, stating his belief that the Soviet Union would inevitably defeat Germany and thus would have a decisive role in the affairs of Eastern Europe after the war.[33] Moreover, Beneš charged that if the most of the resistance work in the Protectorate were done by the Czech communists that would give them "a pretext to take over power on the basis of the justified reproach that we helped Hitler".[33]
During the war Beneš told Ehrenburg, the Soviet writer: “The only salvation lies in a close alliance with your country. The Czechs may have different political opinions, but on one point we can be sure. The Soviet Union will not only liberate us from the Germans. It will also allow us to live without constant fear of the future.”[34][35]
On 18 July 1941, the Soviet Union recognized Beneš's government-in-exile, promised non-interference in the internal affairs of Czechoslovakia, allowed the government-in-exile to raise an army to fight alongside the Red Army on the Eastern Front; and recognized the borders of Czechoslovakia as those before the Munich Agreement.[33] The last was the most important to Beneš, as the British government still maintained that the Munich Agreement was in effect and regarded the Sudetenland as part of Germany.[33] Even the United States (which was neutral) very tentatively regarded the government-in-exile as only a "provisional" government and rather vaguely stated the borders of Czechoslovakia were to be determined after the war, implying the Sudetenland might remain part of Germany.[33]
Working with the Czech resistance
See also: Resistance in the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia and Operation Anthropoid
During the summer and fall of 1941, Beneš came under increasing pressure from the Allies to have the Czechs play a greater role in resistance work.[36] The Narkomindel informed Beneš that the Soviets were disappointed that there was so little sabotage going on in the factories of the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia, which were such an important source of arms and other material for the Wehrmacht.[36] Likewise, the British started to demand that the Czechs do more resistance work.[36] Moravec after meeting the MI6's Director, Stewart Menzies, told Beneš that the British viewpoint was that when the United Kingdom was fighting for its life that "placing violets at the grave of the unknown soldier was simply not good enough".[36]
Making matters worse for Beneš was in late September 1941 that Reinhard Heydrich, who effectively taken over the Protectorate, launched a major crackdown on resistance.[37] The Prime Minister, General Eliáš, was arrested on 27 September 1941 on Heydrich's orders; martial law was proclaimed in the Protectorate; thousands were arrested and executed including two prominent leaders of the UVOD resistance group, Josef Bílý (cs) and Hugo Vojta (cs) who were arrested and shot without trial.[37]
On 5 October 1941, the lines of communication between the UVOD group and London were severed when the Gestapo, during the course of its raids, seized various radios and the codes for communicating with London.[37] At the same time, the Gestapo also learned of the existence of Agent A-54 and after an investigation arrested Thümmel, depriving Beneš of one of his most valuable bargaining chips.[37] Faced with this situation when the Allies were demanding more Czech resistance at the same time that Heydrich had launching a crackdown that was weakening the resistance, Beneš decided in October 1941 on a spectacular act of resistance that would prove to the world that the Czechs were still resisting.[38]
Edvard Beneš (right) gives medals to soldiers, including the later Operation Anthropoid assassins Jozef Gabčík and Jan Kubiš, 1940.
In 1941, Beneš and František Moravec planned Operation Anthropoid to assassinate Reinhard Heydrich,[39] a high-ranking German official who was responsible for suppressing Czech culture, and for deporting and executing members of the Czech resistance. Beneš felt his dealings with the Allies, especially his campaign to persuade the British to nullify the Munich Agreement, was being weakened by the lack of any visible resistance in the Protectorate.[40] Beneš decided that assassinating Heydrich was the best way to improve his bargaining position, and it was largely he who pressed for Operation Anthropoid.[41]
Upon learning of the nature of the mission, resistance leaders begged the Czechoslovak government-in-exile to call off the attack, saying that "An attempt against Heydrich's life... would be of no use to the Allies and its consequences for our people would be immeasurable."[42] Beneš personally broadcast a message insisting that the attack go forwards,[42] although he denied any involvement after the war.[43] Historian Vojtěch Mastný argues that he "clung to the scheme as the last resort to dramatize Czech resistance."[43] The 1942 assassination resulted in brutal German reprisals such as the execution of thousands of Czechs and the eradication of two villages: Lidice and Ležáky.
Britain rejects the Munich Agreement
In 1942, Beneš finally persuaded the Foreign Office to issue a statement saying Britain had revoked the Munich Agreement and supported the return of the Sudetenland to Czechoslovakia.[28] Beneš saw the statement by the Foreign Secretary, Anthony Eden, to the House of Commons on 5 August 1942 revoking the Munich Agreement as a diplomatic triumph for himself.[27] Beneš had been greatly embittered by the behavior of the ethnic Germans of the Sudetenland in 1938, which he viewed as treasonous, and during his exile in London had decided that when Czechoslovakia was reestablished, he was going to expel all of the Sudeten Germans into Germany.[28] During his exile, Beneš had come to obsessively brood over the behavior of the Sudetenlanders and had reached the conclusion that they were all collectively guilty of treason.[32] In 1942, he stated the compulsory population exchange between Greece and Turkey in 1922–23 was his model for solving the problem of the Sudetenland, though unlike the Greek-Turkish population exchange, he proposed financial compensation to be paid to the Sudeten Germans expelled into Germany.[44]
Although not a Communist, Beneš was also on friendly terms with Joseph Stalin. Believing that Czechoslovakia had more to gain from an alliance with the Soviet Union than one with Poland, he torpedoed plans for a Polish–Czechoslovak confederation and in 1943, he signed an entente with the Soviets.[45][46][47] During his visit to Moscow to sign the alliance, Beneš complained about the "feudal" systems existing in Poland and Hungary, charging that unlike Czechoslovakia, which after World War I had broken up the estates owned mostly by ethnic Germans and Hungarians, the majority of the land in Poland and Hungary was still owned by the nobility, which he claimed was the source of political and economic backwardness in both nations.[48] Speaking of Hungary, Beneš told Stalin:
"The British and Americans are beginning to understand it. But they are afraid that the revolution in Hungary might be like the one after the last war-Bela Kun and all that. That's why the occupation of Hungary is so important. I think that it is important also that you, not only the British and the Americans share in it. I can imagine what would happen if the British alone were there. The Hungarian aristocrats take them out for weekends and for hunting, tell them stories about how their democracy is the oldest in Europe about their parliament. All that is lies, but the British would be impressed".[48]
Beneš believed in the ideal of "convergence" between the Soviet Union and the western nations, arguing that based on what he was seeing in wartime Britain that the western nations would become more socialist after the war while at same time that wartime liberalising reforms in the Soviet Union meant the Soviet system would be more "western" after the war.[32] Beneš hoped and believed that the wartime alliance of the "Big Three" of the Soviet Union, the United Kingdom, and the United States would continue after the war, with the "Big Three" co-operating in an international system that would hold Germany in check.[32]
Through Beneš did not attend the Tehran Conference himself, the news of the mood of harmony that prevailed among the American, Soviet and British delegations at Tehran certainly gave him hope that the Big Three alliance would continue after the war.[49] Beneš saw the role of Czechoslovakia and his own role as being that of a mediator between the Big Three.[50] The fact that his old friend Churchill took him into his confidence concerning the post-war borders of Poland boosted Beneš's own perception of himself as an important diplomat, settling the disputes of Eastern Europe.[51] After talking to Beneš for four hours on 4 January 1944 about Poland's post-war borders, Churchill cabled to American President Franklin D. Roosevelt: "Beneš may be most useful in trying to make the Poles see reason and in reconciling them to the Russians, whose confidence he has long possessed".[51]
Second presidency
Beneš returning to Prague after the Prague uprising, 16 May 1945.
In April 1945, Beneš flew from London to Košice in eastern Slovakia, which had been taken by the Red Army and which became the temporary capital of Czechoslovakia.[52] Upon arriving, Beneš announced a coalition government had been formed called the National Front, with the Communist Party leader Klement Gottwald as prime minister.[53] Besides Gottwald, communists were named as ministers of defence, the interior, education, information, and agriculture.[53] The most important non-Communist minister was the foreign minister, Jan Masaryk, the long-term Czechoslovak minister in London.[53] Besides the Communists, the other parties in the National Front government were the Social Democratic Party, Beneš own National Socialist Party (no relation to Hitler's National Socialists), the People's Party and the Slovak Democratic Party.[53]
Beneš also announced the Košice programme, which declared that Czechoslovakia was now to be a state of Czechs and Slovaks with the German minority in the Sudetenland and the Hungarian minority in Slovakia to be expelled; there was to be a degree of decentralization with the Slovaks to have their own National Council, but no federation; capitalism was to continue, but the "commanding heights" of the economy were to be controlled by the state; and finally Czechoslovakia was to pursue a pro-Soviet foreign policy.[54]
Role in the Prague uprising
Main article: Prague uprising
During the Prague uprising, which started on 5 May 1945, the city was surrounded by Wehrmacht and SS units, the latter in a vengeful mood. The Czech resistance appealed to the First Division of the German-sponsored Russian Liberation Army commanded by General Sergei Bunyachenko to switch sides, promising them that they be granted asylum in Czechoslovakia and would not be repatriated to the Soviet Union, where they faced execution for treason for fighting for Germany.[55] As the Czech resistance lacked heavy arms such as tanks and artillery, the 1st Division was badly needed to help hold Prague.
General Buynachenko and his 1st Division defected to the Allied side, where it played a key role in holding off the German forces intent on retaking Prague and prevented the SS from massacring the people of Prague.[55] However, when General Buyachenko learned on 7 May that he and his men would not be offered asylum after all, the 1st Division abandoned Prague in order to surrender to the American 3rd Army. Despite the promise that the men of 1st Division would be granted asylum, Beneš instead repatriated the 1st Division, and the rest of the ROA men in Czechoslovakia who were captured by his government, to the Soviet Union.[55]
Return to Prague
After the Prague uprising at the end of World War II, Beneš returned home and resumed his former position as President. Article 58.5 of the Constitution said, "The former president shall stay in his or her function till the new president shall be elected". He was unanimously confirmed in office by the Interim National Assembly on 28 October 1945. In December 1945, all of the Red Army forces left Czechoslovakia.[52] On 19 June 1946, Beneš was formally elected to his second term as President.[56]
Beneš presided over a coalition government, the National Front, from 1946 headed by Communist Party leader Klement Gottwald as prime minister. In the elections of May 1946, the Communists won 38% of the vote with the Czech National Socialists winning 18%, the People's Party 16%, the Slovak Democrats 14% and the Social Democrats 13%.[53] Until the summer of 1947, Czechoslovakia had what the British historian Richard J. Crampton called "a period of relative tranquility" with democracy reestablished, and institutions such as the media, opposition parties, the churches, the Sokols, and the Legionnaire veteran associations all existing outside of state control.[53]
In July 1947, both Beneš and Gottwald had decided to accept Marshall Plan aid, only for the Kremlin to inform Gottwald to do an U-turn on the question of accepting the Marshall Plan.[57] When Beneš visited Moscow, the Soviet Foreign Minister Vyacheslav Molotov quite brutally informed him that the Kremlin regarded accepting Marshall Plan aid as a violation of the 1943 alliance, causing Beneš on his return to Prague to speak of a "second Munich", saying it was not acceptable for the Soviet Union to veto decisions made by Czechoslovakia.[57] The volte-face on the issue of the Marshall Plan did much damage to the image of the Czechoslovak Communists, and public opinion started to turn against them.[58] A public opinion poll showed that only 25% of the voters planned to vote Communist after the rejection of the Marshall Plan.[58]
In September 1947, the Communist-dominated police in Slovakia announced the discovery of an alleged separatist plot led by the followers of Father Tiso who were allegedly infiltrating the Slovak Democrats, but by November 1947, the supposed plot was revealed as a canard, with the media exposing the evidence for it as being manufactured by the police.[58] The scandal in Slovakia led to demands by the other parties of the National Front that the police be depoliticised.[58] During this time, Beneš had become increasingly disillusioned with the Communists, telling his ambassador in Belgrade to report to him personally as there were so many Communist agents both in the Czechoslovak embassy in Belgrade and in his own office that there it was the only way of ensuring secrecy.[59]
Expulsion of the Sudeten Germans
Main article: Expulsion of Germans from Czechoslovakia
Beneš was strongly opposed to the presence of Germans in the liberated republic[citation needed]. Believing that vigilante justice would be less divisive than trials, upon his arrival in Prague on May 10, he called for the "liquidation of Germans and Hungarians"[citation needed] in the "interest of a united national state of Czechs and Slovaks."[60] As part of the Košice programme, Germans in the Sudetenland and Hungarians in Slovakia were to be expelled[citation needed].
The Beneš decrees (officially called "Decrees of the President of the Republic"), among other things, expropriated the property of citizens of German and Hungarian ethnicity and facilitated Article 12 of the Potsdam Agreement by laying down a national legal framework for the loss of citizenship[citation needed] and the expropriation of about three million Germans and Hungarians. However, Beneš's plans for expelling the Hungarian minority from Slovakia caused tensions with Hungary, whose coalition government was likewise leaning towards the Soviet Union, and ultimately objections from Moscow ended the expulsion of the Hungarians shortly after it had begun. [52] In contrast, the Soviets had no objections to the expulsions of the Sudeten Germans, and the Czechoslovak authorities continued to expel the Sudeten Germans pursuant to the Potsdam Agreement until the Sudetenland had no more Germans.[52]
On 15 March 1946, SS Obergruppenführer Karl Hermann Frank went on trial in Prague for war crimes.[61] Beneš ensured that Frank's trial received maximum publicity[citation needed], being broadcast live on state radio, and statements from Frank's interrogations being leaked to the press.[61] On the stand, Frank remained a defiant Nazi, snarling insults at his Czech prosecutors, saying the Czechs were still Untermenschen ("sub-humans") as far he was concerned, and only expressing regret that he did not kill more Czechs when he had the chance. After Frank's conviction, he was publicly hanged before thousands of cheering people outside of Pankrác Prison on 22 May 1946.[61] As Frank was a Sudeten German, the political purpose of his trial was to symbolize to the world what Beneš called the "collective criminality" of the Sudeten Germans[citation needed], which thus justified their expulsions.[61] The historian Mary Heimann wrote that though Frank was indeed guilty of war crimes and treason, his trial was used for a political purpose[citation needed], namely to illustrate the collective criminality of the Sudeten Germans to the world.[61]
Communist coup of 1948
Main article: 1948 Czechoslovak coup d'état
Communist Party leader Klement Gottwald, whose coup ousted Beneš for the second time.
On 12 February 1948, the non-Communist ministers threatened to resign unless the "packing" of the police by the Communist interior minister, Václav Nosek (cs), stopped at once.[58] The Communists set up "action committees", whom Nosek ordered the civil servants to take their orders from.[59] Nosek also illegally had arms issued to the action committees.[59] On 20 February, the Communists formed the "people's militia" of 15,000.[59] On 21 February 1948, 12 non-Communist ministers resigned to protest Gottwald's refusal to stop the packing of the police with Communists despite the majority of the Cabinet having ordered it to end.[58] The non-Communists believed that Beneš would side with them to allow them to stay in office as a caretaker government until new elections.
Beneš initially refused to accept their resignations and insisted that no government could be formed without the non-Communist parties. However, Gottwald had by this time dropped all pretense of working within the system. He threatened a general strike unless Beneš appointed a Communist-dominated government. The Communists also occupied the offices of the non-Communists who had resigned. Faced with the crisis, Beneš hesitated and sought more time.[59]
On 22 February, a large parade by the Communist action committees took place in Prague, and ended with the people's militia attacking the offices of opposition parties and the Sokols.[59] Amid fears that civil war was imminent and rumours that the Red Army would sweep in to back Gottwald, Beneš gave way. On 25 February, he accepted the resignations of the non-Communist ministers and appointed a new Communist-dominated government in accordance with Gottwald's specifications.[59] The non-Communist parties were still nominally represented, so the government was still technically a coalition. However, with the exception of Masaryk, the non-Communist ministers were fellow travelers. In effect, Beneš had given legal sanction to a Communist coup.
During the crisis, Beneš failed to rally support as he could have done from the Sokols, the Legionnaire veterans' associations, the churches and many of the university students.[59] Crampton wrote:"In February 1948, Beneš still commanded enormous respect and authority", and if he used his moral prestige, he could have rallied public opinion against the Communists.[62] However, Beneš still saw Germany as the main danger to Czechoslovakia and ultimately believed that Czechoslovakia needed the alliance with the Soviet Union more than the other way around, and as such Prague could never afford a lasting rift with Moscow.[59] Finally, Beneš was a deeply ill man in February 1948, suffering from high blood pressure, arteriosclerosis and spinal tuberculosis, and his poor health contributed to the lack of fight in him.[62]
Shortly afterward, elections were held in which voters were presented with a single list from the National Front, now a Communist-dominated organization. On 12 March 1948, professor Václav Černý visited Beneš at his villa at Sezimovo Usti, where the president spoke in such violent and vulgar language against Stalin, whom he accused of using him, that Černý did not bother writing down what he was saying under the grounds that it was unpublishable.[63] The newly elected National Assembly approved the Ninth-of-May Constitution shortly after it had been sworn in. Although it was not a completely Communist document, it was close enough to the Soviet Constitution that Beneš refused to sign it. He resigned as President on 7 June 1948, and Gottwald took over most presidential functions until being elected his successor a week later.[62]
On 14 August 1948, the Soviet and Czechoslovak media launched a campaign of vilification against Beneš, accusing him of being an enemy of the Soviet Union and claimed that he refused a Soviet offer of unilateral military assistance in September 1938 because he wanted the Munich Agreement imposed on Czechoslovakia.[64] On his deathbed, Beneš became furious about the claim the Soviet Union had offered to help unilaterally in 1938 with the former presidential chancellor Jaromír Smutný (cs) writing: "He would like to know when, by whom and to whom was the offer made".[64] During the Communist era in Czechoslovakia, Beneš was vilified as a traitor who refused an alleged offer by Stalin to assist Czechoslovakia unilaterally in 1938 because he supposedly wanted the Munich Agreement to be imposed on his country.[65]
Death
Already in poor health after suffering two strokes in 1947, Beneš was an even more broken man after seeing the undoing of his life's work. He died of natural causes at his villa in Sezimovo Ústí on 3 September 1948, just seven months after the end of the liberal democratic government he helped create.[3] He is interred in the garden of his villa, and his bust is part of the gravestone. His wife Hana, who lived until 2 December 1974, is interred next to him.
Statue of Beneš in front of the headquarters of the Czech Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Prague
Edvard Benes blue plaque, 26 Gwendolen Avenue, Putney
26 Gwendolen Avenue, Putney
Legacy
Much controversy remains on his character and policy.[66] According to SVR, Beneš had closely co-operated with the Soviet intelligence before the war especially with Soviet agent Pyotr Zubov.[67]
Beneš's friend, the British historian A. J. P. Taylor, wrote in 1945: "Beck, Stojadinović, Antonescu, and Bonnet despised Beneš's integrity and prided themselves on their cunning; but their countries, too, fell before the German aggressor, and every step they took has made the resurrection of their countries more difficult. In contrast, the foreign policy of Dr. Beneš during the present war has won Czechoslovakia a secure future".[68] The leaders to whom Taylor were referred were Colonel Jozef Beck, the Polish foreign minister 1932–39 and a leading figure in the Sanation military dictatorship, who at times was willing to flirt with the Third Reich to achieve his goals; Milan Stojadinović, who served as the prime minister of Yugoslavia 1935–39 and who followed a pro-German foreign policy; General Ion Antonescu, the Conducător (dictator) of Romania 1940–44; and Georges Bonnet, the French foreign minister 1938–39, who favored abandoning Eastern Europe to Nazi Germany. Taylor's assessment that Beneš was a man of integrity (unlike Bonnet, Antonescu, Beck and Stojadinović) and that he was leading Czechoslovakia in the right direction was widely shared in 1945.[68]
In fiction
In 1933, H. G. Wells wrote The Shape of Things to Come, a prediction of World War II. In Wells' depiction, the war starts in 1940 and drags on until 1950, and Czechoslovakia avoids being occupied by Germany, with Beneš remaining its president throughout the war. Wells assigns to Beneš the role of initiating a ceasefire, and the book, supposedly written in the 22nd century, remarks, "The Beneš Suspension of Hostilities remains in force to this day".
In Prague Counterpoint, the second volume of Bodie and Brock Thoene's Zion Covenant Series, Hitler plots to kill Beneš by an assassin, but the assassin is tackled by an American journalist and captured by Beneš's bodyguards. Hitler later uses the execution of the Sudeten assassin to proclaim him a martyr, as a continuing fuse to the Sudeten Crisis.
Czechoslovakia, or Czecho-Slovakia[2] (/?t??ko?slo??væki?, -k?-, -sl?-, -?v??-/;[3][4] Czech and Slovak: ?eskoslovensko, ?esko-Slovensko),[5][6] was a sovereign state in Central Europe that existed from October 1918, when it declared its independence from the Austro-Hungarian Empire, until its peaceful dissolution into the Czech Republic and Slovakia on 1 January 1993.
From 1939 to 1945, following its forced division and partial incorporation into Nazi Germany, the state did not de facto exist but its government-in-exile continued to operate.
From 1948 to 1990, Czechoslovakia was part of the Eastern Bloc with a command economy. Its economic status was formalized in membership of Comecon from 1949 and its defense status in the Warsaw Pact of May 1955. A period of political liberalization in 1968, known as the Prague Spring, was forcibly ended when the Soviet Union, assisted by several other Warsaw Pact countries, invaded Czechoslovakia. In 1989, as Marxist–Leninist governments and communism were ending all over Europe, Czechoslovaks peacefully deposed their government in the Velvet Revolution; state price controls were removed after a period of preparation.
In 1993, Czechoslovakia split into the two sovereign states of the Czech Republic and Slovakia.
Contents
1 Characteristics
2 Names
3 History
3.1 Origins
3.2 First Czechoslovak Republic
3.2.1 Formation
3.2.2 Ethnicity
3.2.3 Interwar period
3.3 Munich Agreement, and Two-Step German Occupation
3.4 Socialist Czechoslovakia
3.5 After 1989
4 Government and politics
4.1 Constitutional development
4.2 Heads of state and government
4.3 Foreign policy
4.3.1 International agreements and membership
4.4 Administrative divisions
5 Population and ethnic groups
6 Economy
7 Resource base
8 Transport and communications
9 Society
10 Education
11 Religion
12 Health, social welfare and housing
13 Mass media
14 Sports
15 Culture
16 Postage stamps
17 See also
18 Notes
19 References
20 Sources
21 Further reading
22 External links
Characteristics
Form of state
1918–1938: A democratic republic championed by Tomáš Masaryk.
1938–1939: After annexation of Sudetenland by Nazi Germany in 1938, the region gradually turned into a state with loosened connections among the Czech, Slovak, and Ruthenian parts. A large strip of southern Slovakia and Carpatho-Ukraine was annexed by Hungary, and the Zaolzie region was annexed by Poland.
1939–1945: The region was split into the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia and the Slovak Republic. A government-in-exile continued to exist in London, supported by the United Kingdom, United States and their Allies; after the German invasion of Soviet Union, it was also recognized by the Soviet Union. Czechoslovakia adhered to the Declaration by United Nations and was a founding member of the United Nations.
1946–1948: The country was governed by a coalition government with communist ministers, including the prime minister and the minister of interior. Carpathian Ruthenia was ceded to the Soviet Union.
1948–1989: The country became a Marxist-Leninist state under Soviet domination with a command economy. In 1960, the country officially became a socialist republic, the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic. It was a satellite state of the Soviet Union.
1969–1990: Czechoslovakia formally became a federal republic comprising the Czech Socialist Republic and the Slovak Socialist Republic. In late 1989, the communist rule came to an end during the Velvet Revolution followed by the re-establishment of a democratic parliamentary republic.
1990–1992: Shortly after the Velvet Revolution, the state was renamed the Czech and Slovak Federal Republic, consisting of the Czech Republic and the Slovak Republic (Slovakia) until the peaceful dissolution on January 1, 1993.
Neighbours
Austria 1918 – 1938, 1945 – 1992
Germany (Both predecessors, West Germany and East Germany, were neighbors between 1949 and 1990.)
Hungary
Poland
Romania 1918 – 1938
Soviet Union 1945 – 1991
Ukraine 1991 – 1992 (Soviet Union member until 1991)
Topography
The country was of generally irregular terrain. The western area was part of the north-central European uplands. The eastern region was composed of the northern reaches of the Carpathian Mountains and lands of the Danube River basin.
Climate
The weather is mild winters and mild summers. Influenced by the Atlantic Ocean from the west, Baltic Sea from the north, and Mediterranean Sea from the south. There is no continental weather.
Names
See also: Hyphen War and Name of the Czech Republic
1918–1938: Czechoslovak Republic (abbreviated ?SR), or Czechoslovakia, before the formalization of the name in 1920, also known as Czecho-Slovakia or the Czecho-Slovak state[7]
1938–1939: Czecho-Slovak Republic, or Czecho-Slovakia
1945–1960: Czechoslovak Republic (?SR), or Czechoslovakia
1960–1990: Czechoslovak Socialist Republic (?SSR), or Czechoslovakia
1990–1992: Czech and Slovak Federative Republic (?SFR), or Czechoslovakia
History
Main articles: History of Czechoslovakia, History of the Czech lands, and History of Slovakia
Origins
Main article: Origins of Czechoslovakia
Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk, founder and first president
Czechoslovak troops in Vladivostok (1918)
Czechoslovak declaration of independence rally in Prague on Wenceslas Square, 28 October 1918
The area was long a part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire until the empire collapsed at the end of World War I. The new state was founded by Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk[8] (1850–1937), who served as its first president from 14 November 1918 to 14 December 1935. He was succeeded by his close ally, Edvard Beneš (1884–1948).
The roots of Czech nationalism go back to the 19th century, when philologists and educators, influenced by Romanticism, promoted the Czech language and pride in the Czech people. Nationalism became a mass movement in the second half of the 19th century. Taking advantage of the limited opportunities for participation in political life under Austrian rule, Czech leaders such as historian František Palacký (1798–1876) founded many patriotic, self-help organizations which provided a chance for many of their compatriots to participate in communal life prior to independence. Palacký supported Austro-Slavism and worked for a reorganized and federal Austrian Empire, which would protect the Slavic speaking peoples of Central Europe against Russian and German threats.
An advocate of democratic reform and Czech autonomy within Austria-Hungary, Masaryk was elected twice to the Reichsrat (Austrian Parliament), first from 1891 to 1893 for the Young Czech Party, and again from 1907 to 1914 for the Czech Realist Party, which he had founded in 1889 with Karel Kramá? and Josef Kaizl.
During World War I small numbers of Czechs and Slovaks, the Czechoslovak Legions, fought with the Allies in France and Italy, while large numbers deserted to Russia in exchange for its support for the independence of Czechoslovakia from the Austrian Empire.[9] With the outbreak of World War I, Masaryk began working for Czech independence in a union with Slovakia. With Edvard Beneš and Milan Rastislav Štefánik, Masaryk visited several Western countries and won support from influential publicists.[10]
First Czechoslovak Republic
Main article: First Czechoslovak Republic
Formation
Czechoslovakia in 1928
The Bohemian Kingdom ceased to exist in 1918 when it was incorporated into Czechoslovakia. Czechoslovakia was founded in October 1918, as one of the successor states of the Austro-Hungarian Empire at the end of World War I and as part of the Treaty of Saint-Germain-en-Laye. It consisted of the present day territories of Bohemia, Moravia, Slovakia and Carpathian Ruthenia. Its territory included some of the most industrialized regions of the former Austria-Hungary.
Ethnicity
See also: Ethnic minorities in Czechoslovakia
Linguistic map of Czechoslovakia in 1930
The new country was a multi-ethnic state, with Czechs and Slovaks as constituent peoples. The population consisted of Czechs (51%), Slovaks (16%), Germans (22%), Hungarians (5%) and Rusyns (4%).[11] Many of the Germans, Hungarians, Ruthenians and Poles[12] and some Slovaks, felt oppressed because the political elite did not generally allow political autonomy for minority ethnic groups.[citation needed] This policy led to unrest among the non-Czech population, particularly in German-speaking Sudetenland, which initially had proclaimed itself part of the Republic of German-Austria in accordance with the self-determination principle.
The state proclaimed the official ideology that there were no separate Czech and Slovak nations, but only one nation of Czechoslovaks (see Czechoslovakism), to the disagreement of Slovaks and other ethnic groups. Once a unified Czechoslovakia was restored after World War II (after the country had been divided during the war), the conflict between the Czechs and the Slovaks surfaced again. The governments of Czechoslovakia and other eastern European nations deported ethnic Germans to the West, reducing the presence of minorities in the nation. Most of the Jews had been killed during the war by the Nazis and their allies.
Ethnicities of Czechoslovakia in 1921[13]
Czechoslovaks 8,759,701 64.37%
Germans 3,123,305 22.95%
Hungarians 744,621 5.47%
Ruthenians 461,449 3.39%
Jews 180,534 1.33%
Poles 75,852 0.56%
Others 23,139 0.17%
Foreigners 238,784 1.75%
Total population 13,607,385
Ethnicities of Czechoslovakia in 1930[14]
Czechoslovaks 10,066,000 68.35%
Germans 3,229,000 21.93%
Ruthenians 745,000 5.06%
Hungarians 653,000 4.43%
Jews* 354,000 2.40%
Poles 76,000 0.52%
Romanians 14,000 0.10%
Foreigners 239,000 1.62%
Total population 14,726,158
*Jews identified themselves as Germans or Hungarians (and Jews only by religion not ethnicity), the sum is, therefore, more than 100%.
Interwar period
During the period between the two world wars, democracy thrived in Czechoslovakia. Of all the new states established in central Europe after 1918, only Czechoslovakia preserved a democratic government until the war broke out. Thus, despite regional disparities, its level of development was much higher than that of neighboring states.[citation needed] The population was generally literate, and contained fewer alienated groups. The influence of these conditions was augmented by the political values of Czechoslovakia's leaders and the policies they adopted. Under Tomas Masaryk, Czech and Slovak politicians promoted progressive social and economic conditions that served to defuse discontent.
Foreign minister Beneš became the prime architect of the Czechoslovak-Romanian-Yugoslav alliance (the "Little Entente", 1921–38) directed against Hungarian attempts to reclaim lost areas. Beneš worked closely with France. Far more dangerous was the German element, which after 1933 became allied with the Nazis in Germany. The increasing feeling of inferiority among the Slovaks,[15] who were hostile to the more numerous Czechs, weakened the country in the late 1930s. Many Slovaks supported an extreme nationalist movement and welcomed the puppet Slovak state set up under Hitler's control in 1939.[citation needed]
After 1933, Czechoslovakia remained the only democracy in central and eastern Europe.[16]
Munich Agreement, and Two-Step German Occupation
Main article: German occupation of Czechoslovakia
The partition of Czechoslovakia after Munich Agreement
The car in which Reinhard Heydrich was killed
Territory of the Second Czechoslovak Republic (1938–1939)
In September 1938, Adolf Hitler demanded control of the Sudetenland. On 29 September 1938, Britain and France ceded control in the Appeasement at the Munich Conference; France ignored the military alliance it had with Czechoslovakia. During October 1938, Nazi Germany occupied and annexed the Sudetenland border region, effectively crippling Czechoslovak defences.
On 15 March 1939, the remainder ("rump") of Czechoslovakia was invaded and divided into the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia and the puppet Slovak State.
Much of Slovakia and all of Carpathian Ruthenia were annexed by Hungary. Poland occupied Zaolzie, an area whose population was majority Polish, in October 1938.
The eventual goal of the German state under Nazi leadership was to eradicate Czech nationality through assimilation, deportation, and extermination of the Czech intelligentsia; the intellectual elites and middle class made up a considerable number of the 200,000 people who passed through concentration camps and the 250,000 who died during German occupation.[17] Under Generalplan Ost, it was assumed that around 50% Czechs would be fit for Germanization. The Czech intellectual elites were to be removed not only from Czech territories but from Europe completely. The authors of Generalplan Ost believed it would be best if they emigrated overseas, as even in Siberia they were considered a threat to German rule. Just like Jews, Poles, Serbs, and several other nations, Czechs were considered to be untermenschen by the Nazi state.[18] In 1940, in a secret Nazi plan for the Germanization of the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia it was declared that those considered to be of racially Mongoloid origin and the Czech intelligentsia were not to be Germanized.[19]
The deportation of Jews to concentration camps was organized under the direction of Reinhard Heydrich, and the fortress town of Terezín was made into a ghetto way station for Jewish families. On 4 June 1942 Heydrich died after being wounded by an assassin in Operation Anthropoid. Heydrich's successor, Colonel General Kurt Daluege, ordered mass arrests and executions and the destruction of the villages of Lidice and Ležáky. In 1943 the German war effort was accelerated. Under the authority of Karl Hermann Frank, German minister of state for Bohemia and Moravia, some 350,000 Czech laborers were dispatched to the Reich. Within the protectorate, all non-war-related industry was prohibited. Most of the Czech population obeyed quiescently up until the final months preceding the end of the war, while thousands were involved in the resistance movement.
For the Czechs of the Protectorate Bohemia and Moravia, German occupation was a period of brutal oppression. Czech losses resulting from political persecution and deaths in concentration camps totaled between 36,000 and 55,000. The Jewish population of Bohemia and Moravia (118,000 according to the 1930 census) was virtually annihilated. Many Jews emigrated after 1939; more than 70,000 were killed; 8,000 survived at Terezín. Several thousand Jews managed to live in freedom or in hiding throughout the occupation.
Despite the estimated 136,000 deaths at the hands of the Nazi regime, the population in the Reichsprotektorate saw a net increase during the war years of approximately 250,000 in line with an increased birth rate.[20]
On 6 May 1945, the third US Army of General Patton entered Pilsen from the south west. On 9 May 1945, Soviet Red Army troops entered Prague.
Socialist Czechoslovakia
Main articles: History of Czechoslovakia (1948–1989) and Czechoslovak Socialist Republic
Socialist coat of arms in 1960–1990
After World War II, pre-war Czechoslovakia was re-established, with the exception of Subcarpathian Ruthenia, which was annexed by the Soviet Union and incorporated into the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic. The Beneš decrees were promulgated concerning ethnic Germans (see Potsdam Agreement) and ethnic Hungarians. Under the decrees, citizenship was abrogated for people of German and Hungarian ethnic origin who had accepted German or Hungarian citizenship during the occupations. In 1948, this provision was cancelled for the Hungarians, but only partially for the Germans. The government then confiscated the property of the Germans and expelled about 90% of the ethnic German population, over 2 million people. Those who remained were collectively accused of supporting the Nazis after the Munich Agreement, as 97.32% of Sudeten Germans had voted for the NSDAP in the December 1938 elections. Almost every decree explicitly stated that the sanctions did not apply to antifascists. Some 250,000 Germans, many married to Czechs, some antifascists, and also those required for the post-war reconstruction of the country, remained in Czechoslovakia. The Beneš Decrees still cause controversy among nationalist groups in the Czech Republic, Germany, Austria and Hungary.[21]
Spartakiad in 1960
Carpathian Ruthenia (Podkarpatská Rus) was occupied by (and in June 1945 formally ceded to) the Soviet Union. In the 1946 parliamentary election, the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia was the winner in the Czech lands, and the Democratic Party won in Slovakia. In February 1948 the Communists seized power. Although they would maintain the fiction of political pluralism through the existence of the National Front, except for a short period in the late 1960s (the Prague Spring) the country had no liberal democracy. Since citizens lacked significant electoral methods of registering protest against government policies, periodically there were street protests that became violent. For example, there were riots in the town of Plze? in 1953, reflecting economic discontent. Police and army units put down the rebellion, and hundreds were injured but no one was killed. While its economy remained more advanced than those of its neighbors in Eastern Europe, Czechoslovakia grew increasingly economically weak relative to Western Europe.
The currency reform of 1953 caused dissatisfaction among Czechoslovak laborers. Prior to World War II, the Czech purchasing power surpassed that of the Soviet Union by 115-144%. This disparity was noted after Czechoslovakia came under the Soviet Bloc. To equalize the wage rate, Czechoslovaks had to turn in their old money for new at a decreased value. This lowered the real value of wages by about 11%.[22] The banks also confiscated savings and bank deposits to control the amount of money in circulation. The economy continued to suffer as production achievements of bituminous coal was less than anticipated. Bituminous coal powered 85% of Czechoslovakia's economy. Because of low production, coal was utilized in industry only. Pre-war years, consumers used both coal and lignite for fuel, however due to low production, coal was for industrial use only which meant the consumer was only able to utilize lignite. In 1929, a typical family of four consumed approximately 2.34 tons of lignite, but by 1953 it was allowed to use only 1.6-1.8 tons per year.[22]
Czechoslovakia after 1969
In 1968, when the reformer Alexander Dub?ek was appointed to the key post of First Secretary of the Czechoslovak Communist Party, there was a brief period of liberalization known as the Prague Spring. In response, after failing to persuade the Czechoslovak leaders to change course, five other members of the Warsaw Pact invaded. Soviet tanks rolled into Czechoslovakia on the night of 20–21 August 1968.[23] Soviet Communist Party General Secretary Leonid Brezhnev viewed this intervention as vital for the preservation of the Soviet, socialist system and vowed to intervene in any state that sought to replace Marxism-Leninism with capitalism.[24] In the week after the invasion there was a spontaneous campaign of civil resistance against the occupation. This resistance involved a wide range of acts of non-cooperation and defiance: this was followed by a period in which the Czechoslovak Communist Party leadership, having been forced in Moscow to make concessions to the Soviet Union, gradually put the brakes on their earlier liberal policies.[25] In April 1969 Dub?ek was finally dismissed from the First Secretaryship of the Czechoslovak Communist Party. Meanwhile, one plank of the reform program had been carried out: in 1968–69, Czechoslovakia was turned into a federation of the Czech Socialist Republic and Slovak Socialist Republic. The theory was that under the federation, social and economic inequities between the Czech and Slovak halves of the state would be largely eliminated. A number of ministries, such as education, now became two formally equal bodies in the two formally equal republics. However, the centralized political control by the Czechoslovak Communist Party severely limited the effects of federalization.
The 1970s saw the rise of the dissident movement in Czechoslovakia, represented among others by Václav Havel. The movement sought greater political participation and expression in the face of official disapproval, manifested in limitations on work activities, which went as far as a ban on professional employment, the refusal of higher education for the dissidents' children, police harassment and prison.
After 1989
Main article: History of Czechoslovakia (1989–1992)
The Visegrád Group signing ceremony in February 1991
In 1989, the Velvet Revolution restored democracy. This occurred at around the same time as the fall of communism in Romania, Bulgaria, Hungary and Poland.
The word "socialist" was removed from the country's full name on 29 March 1990 and replaced by "federal".
In 1992, because of growing nationalist tensions in the government, Czechoslovakia was peacefully dissolved by parliament. On 1 January 1993 it formally separated into two independent countries, the Czech Republic and the Slovak Republic.
Government and politics
Main articles: History of Czechoslovakia (1918–1938) and Politics of Communist Czechoslovakia
After World War II, a political monopoly was held by the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia (KS?). Gustáv Husák was elected first secretary of the KS? in 1969 (changed to general secretary in 1971) and president of Czechoslovakia in 1975. Other parties and organizations existed but functioned in subordinate roles to the KS?. All political parties, as well as numerous mass organizations, were grouped under umbrella of the National Front. Human rights activists and religious activists were severely repressed.
Constitutional development
Main article: Constitutional Court of Czechoslovakia
Federative coat of arms in 1990–1992
Czechoslovakia had the following constitutions during its history (1918–1992):
Temporary constitution of 14 November 1918 (democratic): see History of Czechoslovakia (1918–1938)
The 1920 constitution (The Constitutional Document of the Czechoslovak Republic), democratic, in force until 1948, several amendments
The Communist 1948 Ninth-of-May Constitution
The Communist 1960 Constitution of the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic with major amendments in 1968 (Constitutional Law of Federation), 1971, 1975, 1978, and 1989 (at which point the leading role of the Communist Party was abolished). It was amended several more times during 1990–1992 (for example, 1990, name change to Czecho-Slovakia, 1991 incorporation of the human rights charter)
Heads of state and government
See also: Leaders of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia
List of presidents of Czechoslovakia
List of Prime Ministers of Czechoslovakia
Foreign policy
International agreements and membership
In the 1930s, the nation formed a military alliance with France, which collapsed in the Munich Agreement of 1938. After World War II, active participant in Council for Mutual Economic Assistance (Comecon), Warsaw Pact, United Nations and its specialized agencies; signatory of conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe.[26]
Administrative divisions
Main article: Administrative divisions of Czechoslovakia
1918–1923: Different systems in former Austrian territory (Bohemia, Moravia, a small part of Silesia) compared to former Hungarian territory (Slovakia and Ruthenia): three lands (zem?) (also called district units (kraje)): Bohemia, Moravia, Silesia, plus 21 counties (župy) in today's Slovakia and three counties in today's Ruthenia; both lands and counties were divided into districts (okresy).
1923–1927: As above, except that the Slovak and Ruthenian counties were replaced by six (grand) counties ((ve?)župy) in Slovakia and one (grand) county in Ruthenia, and the numbers and boundaries of the okresy were changed in those two territories.
1928–1938: Four lands (Czech: zem?, Slovak: krajiny): Bohemia, Moravia-Silesia, Slovakia and Sub-Carpathian Ruthenia, divided into districts (okresy).
Late 1938 – March 1939: As above, but Slovakia and Ruthenia gained the status of "autonomous lands". Slovakia was called Slovenský štát, with its own currency and government.
1945–1948: As in 1928–1938, except that Ruthenia became part of the Soviet Union.
1949–1960: 19 regions (kraje) divided into 270 okresy.
1960–1992: 10 kraje, Prague, and (from 1970) Bratislava (capital of Slovakia); these were divided into 109–114 okresy; the kraje were abolished temporarily in Slovakia in 1969–1970 and for many purposes from 1991 in Czechoslovakia; in addition, the Czech Socialist Republic and the Slovak Socialist Republic were established in 1969 (without the word Socialist from 1990).
Population and ethnic groups
Main article: Demographics of Czechoslovakia
Economy
Main article: Economy of Czechoslovakia
Before World War II, the economy was about the fourth in all industrial states in Europe. The state was based on strong economy, manufacturing cars (Škoda, Tatra), trams, aircraft (Aero, Avia), ships, ship engines (Škoda), canons, shoes (Ba?a), turbines, guns (Zbrojovka Brno). It was the industrial workshop for Austro-Hungarian empire. The Slovak lands were more in agriculture.
After World War II, the economy was centrally planned, with command links controlled by the communist party, similarly to the Soviet Union. The large metallurgical industry was dependent on imports of iron and non-ferrous ores.
Industry: Extractive industry and manufacturing dominated the sector, including machinery, chemicals, food processing, metallurgy, and textiles. The sector was wasteful in its use of energy, materials, and labor and was slow to upgrade technology, but the country was a major supplier of high-quality machinery, instruments, electronics, aircraft, airplane engines and arms to other socialist countries.
Agriculture: Agriculture was a minor sector, but collectivized farms of large acreage and relatively efficient mode of production enabled the country to be relatively self-sufficient in food supply. The country depended on imports of grains (mainly for livestock feed) in years of adverse weather. Meat production was constrained by shortage of feed, but the country still recorded high per capita consumption of meat.
Foreign trade: Exports were estimated at US$17.8 billion in 1985. Exports were machinery (55%), fuel and materials (14%), and manufactured consumer goods (16%). Imports stood at estimated US$17.9 billion in 1985, including fuel and materials (41%), machinery (33%), and agricultural and forestry products (12%). In 1986, about 80% of foreign trade was with other socialist countries.
Exchange rate: Official, or commercial, rate was crowns (K?s) 5.4 per US$1 in 1987. Tourist, or non-commercial, rate was K?s 10.5 per US$1. Neither rate reflected purchasing power. The exchange rate on the black market was around K?s 30 per US$1, which became the official rate once the currency became convertible in the early 1990s.
Fiscal year: Calendar year.
Fiscal policy: The state was the exclusive owner of means of production in most cases. Revenue from state enterprises was the primary source of revenues followed by turnover tax. The government spent heavily on social programs, subsidies, and investment. Budget was usually balanced or left small surplus.
Resource base
Main article: Resource base of Communist Czechoslovakia
After World War II, the country was short of energy, relying on imported crude oil and natural gas from Soviet Union, domestic brown coal, and nuclear and hydroelectric energy. Energy constraints were a major factor in the 1980s.
Transport and communications
Main article: Transport in Czechoslovakia
[icon]
This section needs expansion. You can help by adding to it. (September 2016)
Slightly after the foundation of Czechoslovakia in 1918, there was a lack of needful infrastructure in many areas – paved roads, railways, bridges etc. Massive improvement in the following years enabled Czechoslovakia to develop its industry. Prague's civil airport in Ruzyn? became one of the most modern terminals in the world, when it was finished in 1937. Tomáš Ba?a, Czech entrepreneur and visionary outlined his ideas in the publication "Budujme stát pro 40 milion? lidí", where he described the future motorway system. Construction of the first motorways in Czechoslovakia begun in 1939, nevertheless, they were stopped after Nazi occupation during the World War II.
Society
Main article: Society of Communist Czechoslovakia
Education
Main article: Education in Czechoslovakia
Education was free at all levels and compulsory from age 6 to 15. The vast majority of the population was literate. There was a highly developed system of apprenticeship training and vocational schools supplemented general secondary schools and institutions of higher education.
Religion
Main article: Religion in Czechoslovakia
In 1991: Roman Catholics 46%, Evangelical Lutheran 5.3%, Atheist 30%, n/a 17%, but there were huge differences in religious practices between the two constituent republics; see Czech Republic and Slovakia.
Health, social welfare and housing
Main article: Health and social welfare in Communist Czechoslovakia
After World War II, free health care was available to all citizens. National health planning emphasised preventive medicine; factory and local health care centres supplemented hospitals and other inpatient institutions. There was substantial improvement in rural health care during the 1960s and 1970s.
Mass media
Main article: Mass media in Communist Czechoslovakia
During the era between the World Wars, Czechoslovak democracy and liberalism facilitated conditions for free publication. The most significant daily newspapers in these times were Lidové noviny, Národní listy, ?eský deník and ?eskoslovenská republika.
During Communist rule, the mass media in Czechoslovakia were controlled by the Communist Party. Private ownership of any publication or agency of the mass media was generally forbidden, although churches and other organizations published small periodicals and newspapers. Even with this information monopoly in the hands of organizations under KS? control, all publications were reviewed by the government's Office for Press and Information.
Sports
See also: Czechoslovakia at the Olympics
The Czechoslovakia national football team was a consistent performer on the international scene, with eight appearances in the FIFA World Cup Finals, finishing in second place in 1934 and 1962. The team also won the European Football Championship in 1976, came in third in 1980 and won the Olympic gold in 1980.
Well-known football players such as Pavel Nedv?d, Antonín Panenka, Milan Baroš, Tomáš Rosický, Vladimír Šmicer or Petr ?ech were all born in Czechoslovakia.
The International Olympic Committee code for Czechoslovakia is TCH, which is still used in historical listings of results.
The Czechoslovak national ice hockey team won many medals from the world championships and Olympic Games. Peter Š?astný, Jaromír Jágr, Dominik Hašek, Peter Bondra, Petr Klíma, Marián Gáborík, Marián Hossa, Miroslav Šatan and Pavol Demitra all come from Czechoslovakia.
Emil Zátopek, winner of four Olympic gold medals in athletics, is considered one of the top athletes in Czechoslovak history.
V?ra ?áslavská was an Olympic gold medallist in gymnastics, winning seven gold medals and four silver medals. She represented Czechoslovakia in three consecutive Olympics.
Several accomplished professional tennis players including Ivan Lendl, Jan Kodeš, Miloslav Me?í?, Hana Mandlíková, Martina Hingis, Martina Navratilova, Jana Novotna, Petra Kvitová and Daniela Hantuchová were born in Czechoslovakia.
World economic crisis and its effects on Beneš’ foreign policy
The October 24, 1929 New York stock market crash began the world
wide economic crisis. The crisis affected the Danube basin particularly
deeply. In 1919-1920, the economic and political unit that the Monarch
represented became seven small countries, all jealously guarding their
economic and political independence. These countries managed to achieve
a measure of stability by the mid-20s, organizing their economies around
huge foreign loans of short and long term. The economic crisis had a very
powerful fiscal aspect – the fiscal equilibrium was disrupted and the
international credit system collapsed – putting the newly created countries
in a tight economic position. The foreign banks – themselves in trouble –
began to recall their loans made in Eastern Europe. From an economic
perspective, these years seemed to validate those who thought it a mistake
to break up the market equilibrium of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy.889
The economic crisis also had an impact on international relations.
Lack of space prevents us from discussing here each proposal and the
reaction to it. Instead, we will sketch the more important plans proposed to
solve the economic problems, from which – as appropriate to our topic –
we will discuss their effect on Benes’ plan of integration. The proposed
plans, in chronological order, for the solution to the economic crisis
were:890
Aristide Briand puts forward a pan-European memorandum (May 1,
1930), in which he proposes the organization of a ‘United States of
Europe’. In its original concept, the idea was to unite the countries of
Europe, excluding the Soviet Union, in a customs union. The plan was
rejected by the majority of European politicians; hence, no definitive steps
were taken.
In an effort to counterbalance France, Germany made a proposal in
the late 1930s for preferential treatment. It made an offer to all the
Danubian countries – with the exception of Czechoslovakia – that each
undertake to accept an agreed amount of agricultural products at a
specified price. The proposal found favor with the agricultural countries of
Central and Eastern Europe, and Germany began bilateral talks with them.
The third significant proposal was for a German-Austrian customs
union (March 19, 1931). The intent of the plan was to erase the customs
888 Romportlová: A kereskedelmi politika … op. cit., p. 38.
889 Ormos: Franciaország és … op. cit., p. 27.
890 Ibid, pp. 43-80.
202
barrier between Germany and Austria, as well as to harmonize external
tariffs. This was to have been the ‘cold Anschluss.’
891 The emergence of
this alternative created a large international difficulty. In response to
international pressure organized by the France and, for once, supported by
the England, Johann Schober (Austrian Vice-Chancellor) and Julius
Curtius (German Foreign Minister) were forced to announce the
cancellation of the customs union plan.
Italy put forward the Brocchi Plan (April 1931). The Italians, like the
French, wanted to remove German influence, proposed an Italian-AustrianHungarian economic cooperation. Inginio Brocchi, Italy’s Foreign
Minister, envisioned the union to be based on bilateral preferential export
subsidies.
The British Foreign Office proposed (January 17, 1932) that the six
Danubian countries – Austria, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Romania,
Yugoslavia and Bulgaria – for a customs union. Essentially, the British
plan was for a (sort of) economic reconstitution of the Monarchy.892 Berlin
and Rome immediately rejected the plan, while Paris, initially in support,
also decided to reject it. Berlin deemed this customs union as being
contrary to German interests; Italy saw it as endangering the ItalianAustrian-Hungarian plan; Paris worried about an emerging area of British
influence, creating imbalance.
André Tardieu’s plan (March 2, 1932) proposed that Austria,
Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Romania and Yugoslavia create a system of
preferential tariffs. This plan was supported enthusiastically by Benes but
failed due to German and Italian resistance.893 The plan revealed that
France made an attempt to organize a Danubian-basin economic union –
under French influence. The French government felt that the regional crisis
was primarily an agricultural crisis, hence, the best solution was the
creation of a term of reference for the agricultural countries.894
The number of plans put forward clearly shows that the Great Powers
(France, England, Italy and a gradually recovering Germany) recognized
that the one which can secure decisive influence over central and southeastern Europe is the one which can cooperate in effecting a solution to the
economic crisis.
If we examine the proposed plans from the point of view of the Benes
led Czechoslovak foreign policy, it is obvious that – with the exception of
the French plan – they all posed serious hazards to Czechoslovakia. The
Brocchi plan meant that Austria will become distanced from the Lany
agreement and for a strong Central European block with Italy and
Hungary.895 The German-Austrian plan raised the specter of Anschluss and
891 Herceg: A szarajevói merénylett?l … op. cit., p. 192.
892 Diószegi, László: A nagyhatalmak és a Duna-medence az 1930-as években [The
Great Powers and the Danubian basin in the 1930s]. In: Magyarország és a
nagyhatalmak a 20 században [Hungary and the Great Powers in the 20th
century]. Teleki László Alapítvány, Budapest, 1995, pp. 100-101.
893 Ibid, pp. 101-106.
894 Ormos: Franciaország és … op. cit., p. 52.
895 Vondracek: The foreign policy … op. cit., pp. 318-326.
203
the emergence of German economic and political power in the Danubian
valley.896 The German plan for preferential treatment seriously endangered
the existence of the Little Entente. Benes rightly felt that, in response to the
economic advantages offered by Germany to Yugoslavia and Romania, –
especially the absorption of their grain surpluses by the German market –
they will value it more than the Little Entente and become more amenable
toward German plans. To Benes, German ambitions, in the long term,
raised the fear of a German influenced Danubian-basin.897
Czechoslovakia found itself in grave trouble as a result of the
international economic situation, as the carefully erected system of allies
and security was seriously compromised. Austria tended more and more
toward the position that “For Austria, there is no solution without
Germany,” which would break the circle woven around Hungary by Benes.
The circle was also showing other weak points: Romania and Yugoslavia
were conducting trade negotiations with Germany,898 raising the real
possibility of the disintegration of the Little Entente. Benes could only
continue to rely on his earlier supporter, France, for all practical purposes a
French-Czechoslovak affiliation. It is then not surprising that when the
German-Austrian plan surfaced, Czechoslovakia joined France in vocal
objection in Vienna on the very first day. The seriousness of the FrenchCzechoslovak situation is indicated in that, in the interest of breaking off
trade talks with Germany, Yugoslavia was granted a loan of 8 million
pound sterling by the French, and Romania 10 million. As was, Benes had
to make full use of his diplomatic skills to convince Romania and
Yugoslavia to commit to the French-Czechoslovak policy at the Little
Entente conference in Bucharest in May.899
The united French-Czechoslovak direction finally deflected the peril
as Romania and Yugoslavia suspended their talks with Germany after the
Little Entente conference, dealing a defeat to the German government in
1931. It had to relinquish its plans for the creation of a central and east
European economic block. This German setback was only temporary, as it
attained successes in this direction is subsequent years.
The German-Austrian customs union raised fears mainly in France
and Czechoslovakia,900 but its sinking by the French created an excellent
896 John R. Lampe – Marvin J. Jackson: Balkan economic history, 1505-1950.
Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1976, pp. 179-194.
897 The foreign policy views of Benes in the early 1930s is well summarized in
Edouard Beneš: The problem of Central-Europe. Minister for Foreing Affairs
of Czehoslovakia. Speech delivered March 21, 1934, before the Foreign Affairs
Committee of the Czehoslovak Parlament and Senate. In: The Montevideo
Conference. New York, 1934, pp. 159-172.
898 Hans-Paul Höpfner: Deutsche Südosteuropapolitik in der Weimarer Republik.
Frankfurt-Bern, 1983, pp. 94-95; Ránki, György: A Duna-völgyi kis országok a
nemzetközi gazdaság és politika rendszerében [The small danubian states
within the international economic and political system]. In: Ránki, György
(ed.): A Harmadik Birodalom árnyékában [In the shadow of the Third Reich].
Budapest, 1988.
899 Vondracek: The foreign policy … op. cit., pp. 312-326.
900 Beneš: The problem of … op. cit., pp. 160-164.
Edvard Benes (1884-1948), the second and fourth president of Czechoslovakia
(1935-8, 1945-8), was considered - despite the trauma of Munich he carried
This article is based on new archival materials in several languages, published and unpublished,
which I have scrutinized while editing the first critical and reconstructed edition of Edvard Benes'
Memoirs, Pamëti 1938-45, vols I- III (Prague 2007) [hereafter Benes, Pamëti (2007)]. This particular article attempts to bring the controversial personality of Benes into the broader context
of the War in the East: especially Benes' relationship with Soviet Russia, its dictator Stalin and
the new geopolitical emplacement of Czechoslovakia. I am grateful to the Institute of Integrated
International Studies at Trinity College for having invited me to Dublin in April 2006 to present
an earlier draft of this article.
1 For the origins of this quotation see note 32.
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620 Journal of Contemporary History Vol 44 No 4
with him - to be one of the most accomplished and resourceful European
statesmen among those exiled in England during the second world war. Because
the last decade of his life was marred by substantial contradictions in his political behaviour, the Foreign Office considered him a politicaliability, though
it recognized his formidable negotiating abilities,2 while his Czech contemporaries saw in Benes a really outstanding but also controversial Czechoslovak
statesman.
At least four serious charges have since been levelled against Benes: the first
concerns his surrender to the Munich Diktat. The second charge maintains
that he, first among European statesmen during the war, sold the country
to Stalin. The third, voiced by the Slovaks, accuses Benes of being the main
guardian of the artificial 'Czechoslovak' union, thereby effectively blocking
throughout his lifetime Slovak aspirations towards full autonomy. Finally, the
most serious charge, from the human rights perspective, has come from the
Germans, who have maintained that Benes was the chief architect of the expulsion of three million Sudeten Germans, mostly old men, women and children,
of whom a quarter of a million are said to have died.3 Thus the same man who
in 1939, upon his arrival in the United States, was hailed as 'Europe's most
distinguished democrat',4 whose country had been sacrificed by the western
appeasers to Hitler in Munich in 1938, ended up after the war being branded
as a genocidal culprit.5 And if we add his unwavering acceptance of the Soviet
version of the Katyn massacre, Benes seems to have carried a moral burden
heavier than the average democratic statesman.
In this article, I would like to confront one of these charges, namely Benes'
alleged surrender to Stalin, which was to bring about dire consequences for
his country and Eastern Europe under Soviet domination.6 Most commenta2 Martin D. Brown, Dealing with Democrats: The British Foreign Office and the Czechoslovak
Émigrés in Great Britain, 1939 to 1945 (Frankfurt 2006), 59; Vit Smetana, In the Shadow of
Munich: British Policy towards Czechoslovakia from the Endorsement tothe Renunciation of the
Munich Agreement, 1938-1942 (Prague 2008).
3 German figures, calculated on overall population losses of the Sudeten German civilian population 1945-7. See Theodor Schieder et al. (eds), Dokumentation der Vertreibung der Deutschen aus
Ost-Mitteleuropa, vol. 4, Die Vertreibung der deutschen Bevölkerung aus der Tschechoslowakei
(Bonn 1957-61). A critical Czech study by Jaroslav Kucera suggests figures ten times lower: see
Odsunové ztráty sudetonëmeckého obyvatelstva (Prague 1992), 32, also quoted in J. Hoensch
and H. Lemberg (eds), Begegnung und Konflikt (Essen 2001), 231-44. The Joint Czech-German
Commission of Historians agreed in 1996 on Sudeten German population losses in 1945 at
an undetermined level of between 24,000 and 30,000. See Konfliktni spolecenstvt, katastrofa,
uvolneni (Prague 1996), 29-30. See also the more recent treatment in N. Naimark, Fires of Hatred:
Ethnic Cleansing in Twentieth -Century Europe (Cambridge, MA, and London 2001), 108-38.
4 The University ofChicago Magazine, November 1938, 17-18.
5 This appears to be the single most important reason why Benes' candidature for the Nobel
Peace Prize was thwarted in 1947 by numerous protests, coming especially from German Social
Democrats who had been exiled in Sweden during the war (author's correspondence with the
Nobel Institute in Oslo, July 1998).
6 Unsubstantiated and quite silly charges have been made by a former NKVD senior officer that
his organization paid Benes $10,000 and helped him to escape to England via France in 1938. Benes
in fact flew to England quite overtly, via the Netherlands, in mid-October 1938. His journey was
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Haunen The Challenges and Dilemmas of President Benes after Munich 62 1
tors observed that it was either at the end of 1943, as a result of Benes' fateful
pilgrimage to Moscow, or even later, in February 1948 during the communist
seizure of power in Prague, that the Czechoslovak statesman had surrendered
to Stalin. Benes' declining health, and hence the growing margin of human
error in his judgments, have been often mentioned as contributing factors.7
Did he err in putting his trust in Stalin? When Benes negotiated with the Soviet
dictator, did he succumb to Stalin's satanic charm, as did his successor Emil
Hácha, when he faced Hitler during the night of 14-15 March 1939? What if
Benes embraced the pro-Soviet option purely pragmatically, or with a streak of
vengeance, to overcome his humiliation resulting from the betrayal of France
and Hitler's beastly verbal attacks?8
To find the answer, we may draw on several helpful testimonies. Jaromir
Smutny, head of Benes' presidential chancellery and one of his closest associates, has offered in his diaries a rare insight into his master's Machiavellian
mind, while recognizing at the same time Benes' unrivalled experience in international affairs.9 Eduard Táborsky, who served his master during the war as
personal secretary and legal adviser, and who, like Smutny, was also present in
Moscow when Benes met Stalin, has provided a comprehensive dscription of
the pluses and minuses of Benes as statesman and diplomat. With special reference to the enigmatic Benes-Stalin relationship, Táborsky enumerates several
possible factors, such as Benes' early love affair with socialism, his insistence
on speaking Russian with Soviet leaders (notwithstanding his barely adequate
knowledge of that language), his exaggerated loquacity, his belief in the 'theory
of convergence', his late embracing of neo-Slavism, and other points, adding
for good measure the 'Munich complex', which led to Benes' notorious distrust
of the British. However, Táborsky 's long catalogue of Benes' virtues and vices
reported in the international press, including German papers! See Pavel and Anatoli j Sudoplatov,
Special Tasks, the Memoirs of an Unwanted Witness - a Soviet Spymaster (Boston 1994), 62-3.
The Russian version of the Sudoplatovs' book carries a different, more plausible story about Benes,
but still implies collaboration between the Czechoslovak president and the NKVD, for which no
data are offered: Spetsoperatsii-Lubianka i Kreml, 1930-1950 gody (Moscow 1997), 99.
7 One of the first political analysts who convincingly argued that Benes' failure was caused not
by physical exhaustion, but by his entrenched belief that Stalinism and democracy could converge, was Curt F. Beck in his brilliant article, 'Can Communism and Democracy Coexist? Benes's
Answer', American Slavic and East European Review 11(3) (October 1952), 189-206. See Benes'
own writing: Democracy Today and Tomorrow (London 1939), especially the expanded Czech
editions published in 1942 and 1946 (Demokracie dnes a ztira), 247ff. In the last chapter of his
Memoirs he repeats the question: is a transformation of postwar democracy actually possible, and
is it possible for it to coexist and co-operate with the system of Soviet socialism? See: E. Benes,
Parneti (Prague 1948), 426-30; E. Benes: Memoirs (London 1954), 182-6; Parneti II (2007),
281-5.
8 Attacks such as Hitler's Nuremberg speech of 12 September and the Sportpalast speech of 26
September 1938. As for the sarcasticomments on Benes' trip to Moscow in 1943, see, among
others, The Times, 20 December 1943; Newsweek, 27 December 1943; New Leader, 15 January
1944.
9 Smutny's diaries were published as Dokumenty ζ historie ceskoslovenské politiky 1939-1943
(Prague 1966), eds L. Otáhalová and M. Cervinková [hereafter Smutny Diaries] (Prague 1966),
here vol. I, nos 69 and 288.
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622 Journal of Contemporary History Vol 44 No 4
tends to exaggerate the role of ideology and minimize the decisive role which
geopolitics played in Benes' thinking.10
I am proposing a different approach. The study of Benes' writings and the
testimonies of direct witnesses has led me to a different hypothesis. Benes' decision to turn to Russia in order to establish a common border to receive military
assistance must have occurred earlier, as a direct consequence of the Munich
tragedy, when France and Britain refused to defend Czechoslovakia against
nazi Germany. Benes believed he had found the answer to Czechoslovakia's
vulnerable strategic placement, which was so nakedly exposed under the dramatic circumstances ofthe Sudeten crisis. Although one cannot exclude Benes'
deep emotional involvement, given the highly traumatic impact of the Munich
Diktat, his decision to turn to Russia at this nerve-racking moment was nevertheless deeply rational. It was based on a perfectly logical but at the same
time desperate analysis of Central European geopolitics of survival. During
the Sudeten crisis, President Benes was confronted with the ominous perspective that Czechoslovakia, whose borders he had literally helped to create at
the Peace Conference in 1919, and which he tried to protect against fascist
encirclement as the last surviving bastion of democracy in Central Europe,
was abandoned by the West and sold down the river to Hitler. Hence Benes'
traumatic determination, born in the immediate aftermath of Munich at the
most humiliating moment of his political career, to provide Czechoslovakia in
the future with a permanent strategic guarantee of Russian assistance, which
would be activated in the event of a German threat.
Already in 1935, following a belated French response to German rearmament, Benes, in his capacity as foreign minister, went to Moscow to sign a treaty
of friendship and mutual assistance, which, however, could be set in motion
only in the event of German invasion and if the French intervened first.11 In
September 1938, while German divisions were massed along Czechoslovakia's
vulnerable border, the Red Army was about 1000 miles away, separated by
hostile Poland and hesitating Romania, whose governments refused to give
permission for it to pass through.12
It was, therefore, not surprising that during the agonizing days following
10 Edward Taborsky, President Edvard Benes Between East and West 1938-1948 (Stanford,
CA, 1981), 1-29; see also an earlier document, Taborsky's letter to the editor of the Manchester
Guardian of 10 January 1949, entitled 'Dr Benes and the Russians', and his 'Benes and the Soviets'
in Foreign Affairs (January 1949). The popular polemic books by Toman Brod, Ceskoslovensko a
Sovëtsky svaz 1939-1945 (Prague 1992) and Osudny omyl Edvarda Benese (Prague 2002), fit the
same category. Benes' systematic study of socialist literature has recently been well documented
in the new political biography by Jindfich Dejmek, Edvard Benes, vol. 1, Revolutionary and
Diplomat 1884-1935 (Prague 2006), 58-88.
11 Text of the treaty published in Izvestiiand Pravda, 18 May 1935.
12 For further details see: M. Hauner, 'The Quest for the Romanian Corridor: The Soviet
Union, Romania and Czechoslovakia during the Sudeten Crisis of 1938', in Fritz Taubert (ed.),
Mythos München (Munich 2002), 39-77; Hugh Ragsdale, The Soviets, the Munich Crisis and
the Coming of World War Π (Cambridge 2004); Marian Zgórniak, Wojskowe aspekty kryzysu
czech oslowackiego 1938 roku (Cracow 1966); Marian Zgórniak, Sytuacja militarna Europy w
okresie kryzysu politycznego 1938 roku (Warsaw 1979).
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Haunen The Challenges and Dilemmas of President Benes after Munich 623
Munich,13 Benes was primarily thinking about how to bring about a major
geopolitical change by radically correcting the desperate strategic balance in
Central Europe in favour of Czechoslovakia. Such radical change could not
be achieved without redrawing the existing borders in Eastern Europe, including those of Poland and Romania, so as to allow the Soviet Union to have a
common border with the Czechoslovak Republic and to facilitate the transit
of Soviet troops westwards against German invaders. A simple glance at the
map will tell us that the easternmost province of Czechoslovakia, which was
to serve as the platsdarm of Russian troops, was Subcarpathian Ruthenia,
which until 1919, when the Peace Conference decided so, had for centuries
been part of the Hungarian Kingdom and never connected with historic Czech
territory.14
The second strategic lesson that followed the traumatic Munich settlement
was to prevent the Poles and Hungarians from assisting Germany in carving up
Czechoslovak territory. Benes did not pretend to hide that his third aim was to
keep the disaffected Slovak subjects in submission through the deterrent of the
Red Army stationed in Ruthenia. Finally, regarding the Sudeten Germans, the
largest 'minority' in the country and hostile to the entire Czechoslovak project,
apart from a vague intention substantially to reduce their numbers by internal and external transfers, Benes had to think hard about how much Sudeten
German-inhabited territory of unique strategic significance he was prepared to
sacrifice for good. And we shall see, unpredictably, that he would.
Czechoslovakia, however, did not disintegrate solely because of external
threats posed by German, Polish and Hungarian revisionism. Benes had to
admit that the multiethnic republic had been even more vulnerable to internal
disruptions. He would use the analogy of two revolvers: the one held against
the Czechs by the Sudeten Germans, the other by the Slovaks. 'When we
refused to give in, the former threatened us they would join Germany and
the latter that they would separate; we must get rid of these two revolvers.'15
Much as he hesitated at first to invite the Soviet air force during the September
crisis,16 after Munich Benes did not seem to care that, as a consequence of the
13 The best testimony for Benes' mental and physical exhaustion following Munich and his
resignation on 5 October 1938 are the preserved diary entries by his wife Hana, in The National
Museum Archives Prague, Hana Benesová private papers, Box 1.
14 The Russians, understandably, prefer the term Transcarpathian Ukraine {Zakarpatskaia
Ukraina). Peter Svorc, Zakletá zem. Podkarpatská Rus 1918-1946 (Prague 2007); A.I. Pushkash,
Tsivilizatsiia Hi Varvarstvo. Zakarpatie 1918-45 (Moscow 2006); V.V. Marjina, Zakarpatskaia
Ukraina ν politike Benesa i Stalina 1939-194Sgg. Dokumentalnyi ocherk (Moscow 2003);
Piotr and Sergei Godmash, Podkarpatskaia Rus i Ukraina (Uzhgorod 2003); Vincent Shandor,
Carp atbo-Ukr aine in the Twentieth Century (Cambridge, MA, 1997).
15 Benes' conversation with Jaroslav Stránsky, recorded by Jaromir Smutny, 11 April 1941,
Aston Abbotts: in Smutny Diaries, no. 153.
16 Apart from the lack of logistical preparations and inadequate airfields ready to receive the
Soviet air force in September 1938, Benes' main reason not to appeal for Soviet military assistance
was political. He did not wish to be accused by France and Britain of having been instrumental
in the 'Sovietization' of Eastern Europe by starting what he called 'the second Spanish Civil War'.
(See Benes' key letter of November 1938 to Ladislav Rasin; English translation in M. Hauner,
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624 Journal of Contemporary History Vol 44 No 4
Soviet advance, Poland and Romania might become targets of Sovietization
- as long as this could weaken German influence. Moreover, if communism
was to come with the Red Army to Central Europe, it should be considered as
the right punishment for the West's betrayal. It would also result in the necessary social purge of the reactionary and backward elements in Eastern Europe.
Benes believed in the inevitability of a social revolution in Central Europe,
which, as he predicted many times, would accompany the new European war,
and thus repeat in substance the experience of the Great War of 1914-18.
To him, as a social thinker and practitioner of power politics, the coming
war appeared as a powerful catalyst expediting the solution of many social
problems, which would otherwise have taken centuries to solve.17 Benes must
be regarded as one of the earliest exponents of the concept referred to as the
'Thirty Years' European Civil War', whose interpreters maintained that both
world wars must be linked together in one giant social conflict. Benes had
embraced it considerably earlier, before the concept caught the attention of
political scientists.18
There is no other alternative policy than the one I pursued . . . and I am not going to give in
even if I become an outcast for the rest of my life. Either my policy will prevail or fascism will
spread. Do not worry; I shall take care of myself while in America. I shall neither give up nor
retreat from my ideas. Will act as I used to with Masaryk.19
Thus spoke Edvard Benes at the end of January 1939 - until four months
earlier the President of the Czechoslovak Republic. He was now a private person, living with his wife Hana in political exile in the London suburb of Putney,
'Edvard Benes' Undoing of Munich: A Message to a Czechoslovak Politician in Prague', Journal
of Cotemporary History 38(4) (October 2003), 563-77.) Two historians of Czech descent: Ivan
Pfaff, Die Sowjetunion und die Verteidigung der Tschechoslowakei 1934-1938 (Cologne 1996),
320, 363; and, to a lesser extent, Igor Lukes, Czechoslovakia between Stalin and Hitler (Oxford
1996), 191, 198-201, have built their case on the intended Sovietization of Czechoslovakia in
1938, using as their main argument a conjured speech by Stalin's chief propagandist Andrei
Zhdanov, allegedly delivered in Prague on 21 August 1938, and other fabricated evidence. My
own critical analysis appeared in: 'Zrada, sovëtizace, nebo historicky lapsus?' Soudobé dëjiny 4
(1999), 545-71; and 'Could Czechoslovakia have been Saved in September 1938 and the Myths
of Munich: New Research and Old Problems', Kosmas (Czechoslovak and Central European
Journal) (Fall 2004), 46-63.
On Red Army operational deployment and Soviet railway capacity I am most grateful to
Professor Bruce W. Menning (US Army Command and General Staff College at Fort Leavenworth,
Kansas) for allowing me to quote from his conference papers: 'Soviet Railroads and War Planning
1927-1939' (1996); 'Soviet Railroads and War Planning 194Γ (1995); and 'The Munich Crisis in
Light of Soviet War Planning and Military Readiness' (2000).
17 See E. Benes, Fall and Rise of a Nation: Czechoslovakia 1 938-1 941 , ed. and intro. M. Hauner
(New York 2004), especially ch. VIII; Pamëti (1948), 199, 218; Memoirs (1954), 136, 144; Parneti
II (2007), 145, 154.
18 E.g. Ernst Nolte, Der europäische Bürgerkrieg 1917-1945: Nationalsozialismus und
Bolschewismus (Frankfurt 1987).
19 T.G. Masaryk (1850-1937), together with Benes the co-founder of Czechoslovakia and its
first president, from 1918 to 1935. For the source of this quotation see note 31 below.
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Haunen The Challenges and Dilemmas of President Benes after Munich 625
not even in his own apartment, but sharing a few rooms in a modest house
rented by his nephew, Bonus Benes, a junior diplomat with the Czechoslovak
legation.20 Benes had left Czechoslovakiafter his resignation three months
earlier and was preparing himselfor his first visit to the United States as a
visiting professor at the University of Chicago.21 The person who took down
these notes was Jaroslav Drábek, a young lawyer from Prague on a legal business trip to London. He served at the same time as a messenger for one of the
first resistance groups.22
Benes was still convalescing from the Munich trauma, which must have
paralysed him both physically and mentally for a while.23 The European crisis
was not moving fast enough in the direction he would have favoured: that is,
towards the formation of a 'Great Alliance' of democratic powers, including
the United States and, above all, the Soviet Union - which of course was not
a democracy but a totalitarian dictatorship. Benes, however, like Churchill at
the time, was convinced that without engaging the mighty human and industrial resources of Russia and America the fascist coalition of three revisionist
powers, Germany, Italy and Japan, later to be known as the Axis, could not
be defeated.
Benes' mind was constantly preoccupied with the future of Czechoslovakia,
whose final borders he had helped to determine at the Peace Conference of
1919. While his senior colleague and co-founder of Czechoslovakia, Thomas
Garrigue Masaryk, received the honorary title President-Liberator, Edvard
Benes became known as the President-State Builder (Budovatel). Hence his
obsession with the optimal configuration of the next Czechoslovak State that
was to be reassembled after the war, which he regarded as inevitable.
After the Anschluss of Austria by nazi Germany in mid-March 1938, Benes
appeared to be trying to cut a deal with Konrad Henlein's Sudeten German
Party, the largest and most militant political party in the country. The negotiations between the Sudeten German Party and the Czechoslovak Government
went through several stages - without any chance of succeeding. Henlein
appeared to want autonomy; in reality he aimed to destroy Czechoslovakia.24
The collapse of the so-called Fourth Plan in early September 1938 was
20 Author's interviews in 1992 with Bonus Benes's widow, Mrs Emilie Benes, McLeane,
Virginia.
21 The account of Benes' stay in the USA between February and July 1939 had been originally
drafted by his archivist Jan Opocensky. However, the chapter - with the exception of a few
episodes such as Benes' secret meeting with F.D. Roosevelt - was never incorporated in Benes'
Memoirs, published in 1947. Opocensky's manuscript is available in the critical edition: Formování
ceskoslovenského zahranicního odboje 1938-1939, ed. and intro. by M. Hauner (Prague 2000)
[hereafter cited as Formation].
22 Author's interview with Jaroslav Drábek in Washington, DC, in 1992. For his book, see
further note 3 1 .
23 According to the diaries of his wife Hana, preserved in the National Museum Archives in
Prague (Hana Benesová, private papers, diaries, Box 1), the physically and mentally exhausted
president spent most of October 1938 resting in bed.
24 Documents on German Foreign Policy 1918-1945, series D/I, no. 107 [hereafter cited as
DGFPorADAP].
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626 Journal of Contemporary History Vol 44 No 4
followed in quick succession by a series of political explosions of varying
intensity: Hitler's speech in Nuremberg; the uprising in the Sudeten districts;
the sudden departure of Lord Runciman and his mission from Prague; Prime
Minister Chamberlain's first visit to Germany to meet Hitler at Berchtesgaden;
the Anglo-French ultimatum to the Czechoslovak Government to surrender
to Germany all border districts with a German majority; the Czechoslovak
general mobilization and Allied partial mobilizations in response to Hitler's
excessive demands at the second meeting between Hitler and the British prime
minister in Bad Godesberg; and, finally, Chamberlain's third flight to Germany
to meet Hitler, Daladier and Mussolini at the crucial Munich Conference.
It was in response to the shocking news that Chamberlain took a plane to
fly to Germany to meet Hitler that Benes concocted ahighly secret plan, later
referred toas the 'Fifth Plan', in which he was prepared to offer Hitler territorial
concessions - but only through French mediation.25 Minister Jaromir Necas,
a Social Democrat, took this highly contentious and secret plan, summed up
in a dozen points in the president's characteristic handwriting, to Paris on 15
September, the same day as Neville Chamberlain flew to Munich.26 Benes' plan
was to prevent the anticipated Anglo-German deal calling for an amputation
of Czechoslovakia. According to Benes' highly secret counterproposal, around
6000 sq. km. of Sudeten territory would be offered to Hitler, but with the obligation to absorb into the Reich between 1.5 and 2 million Sudeten Germans
from other districts. When Daladier brought the Benes terms to London on 17
September, Chamberlain dismissed them as belated and inadequate, for he had
already made a more generous offer to Hitler two days earlier.27
In January 1939, however, when Benes spoke to Drábek, he went beyond the
limits of the earlier Fifth Plan. As his finger wandered over the map, he now
considered giving up to Germany a territory larger than he had suggested in the
instructions to Necas four months earlier. Benes was now 'offering' up to two
25 J. Kren, V emigraci (Prague 1969), 460; J.W. Brügel, Tschechen und Deutsche 1939-46
(Munich 1974), 239-40; V. Kural, Misto spolecenství konflikt. Cesi a Nëmci ve velkonëmecké
físi a cesta k odsunu 1938-45 (Prague 1994), 106; V. Kural, Vlastenci proti okupaci. Ústfední
vedení odboje domácího 1940-1943 (Prague 1997), 37; D. Brandes, Der Weg zur Vertreibung
1938-1945. Pläne und Entscheidungen zum Transfer der Deutschen aus der Tschechoslowakei
und aus Polen (Munich 2001), 5-7.
26 Although Benes ordered Necas to destroy his handwritten instructions, they survived the war
and were published by two communist historians in 1957. Their authenticity has never been challenged. For the Czech version: Mnichov ν dokumentech II. Zrada ceské a slovenské burzoasie na
ceskoslovenském lidu [Munich in Documents, vol. II] (Prague 1958), 209-10. A verified French
translation is printed in: Documents diplomatiques français 1932-1939, 2nd series, vol. XI (Paris
1977), no. 192. See also the analysis of Jonathan Zorach, 'The Necas Mission during the Munich
Crisis', East Central Europe 1-2 (1989), 53-70. Benes himself never admitted the existence of the
'Fifth Plan', assuming until 1943 that Necas had destroyed his instructions. The document has
been included in the recently published critical edition of Benes' memoirs: Parneti I (2007), 21-3;
Parneti III (2007), no. 52.
27 As confirmed by the Munich Settlement of29(30) September 1938, Czechoslovakia ceded to
Germany 29,000 sq. km. - a five times larger piece of territory than Benes proposed - with 3.4
million inhabitants (of whom around half-a-million were Czech-speaking).
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Hauner The Challenges and Dilemmas of President Benes after Munich 627
million Sudeten Germans with about 10,000 to 15,000 sq. km. of territory.
Starting in the west from Cheb (Eger), running through Karlsbad, Ústí (Aussig),
Dëcin (Tetschen), Libérée (Reichenberg); in Moravia the new map of transferred territories included Sumperk (Mährisch Schönberg), Krnov (Jägerndorf),
together with five major salients, plus three or four German-language pockets,
containing altogether 1.4 million German-speaking inhabitants. The rest of
the quota was to be provided through compensation transfers and by horsetrading the additional half-a-million Sudeten Germans in exchange for territories in Prussian Silesia, such as Glatz (Kladsko) and Ratibor, where Czech used
to be spoken in earlier generations.
'The Republic's borders must be pushed eastwards,' Benes kept repeating in
front of his flabbergasted Prague visitor.
That's no panslavism, but a law of geography. We must become [Russia's] neighbours. That
will make us stronger vis-à-vis Germany and help to zip up Slovakia definitively with us.
There is too much rabble over there and they remain politically immature ... the Slovaks will
definitively fall in our arms when they see the great brethren marching from the east.
The last sentence was added rather mischievously. The bond between the
Czechs and Slovaks was to be re-cemented by the dominant ideology of
'Czechoslovakism', of which Benes was the most single-minded champion.
(The bond, however, was completely broken in less than two months. Under
direct German pressure, Slovak separatists proclaimed on 14 March their first
'independent' state in history; on the following day Hitler occupied Prague.)
Benes' further fantasy reconstruction to achieve a more homogeneous and
geopolitically viable Czechoslovakia was to be crowned by the creation of a
new capital near Velehrad in southern Moravia. Regarding the prospects of
the Hungarian (750,000) and Polish minorities (70-100,000) in the future
Czechoslovak state, Benes said nothing. He made, nevertheless, a few extremely negative comments about Poland. He could not forget the humiliating Polish
ultimatum announcing the military occupation of the Tesin pocket (Zaolzie),
with terms attached that sounded more arrogant than those demanded by Herr
Hitler. In his thoughts Benes had already punished the Poles. He wished their
state to be reduced to 20 million inhabitants. His main target was the Polish
aristocracy, a parasitic class that should be put away and cease to play the role
of the nation's élite. A family friend, who visited him in Chicago in the summer
of 1939, noticed that Benes's aversion against the Poles was visibly stronger
than against the Germans:
I don't believe in an agreement with the Poles. They will always betray us. We cannot link
up with them against the Germans. It is useless. They will betray us! This is a law of nature!
That does not mean that we should plot with the Germans against the Poles. They must settle
it among themselves. It is Hitler who will help us to achieve [direct] neighbourhood with
Russia!28
28 Speaking to Frank Munk, who visited him in Chicago in July 1939, Benes said that 'Poland
must be beaten just as we have been . . . The Poles supported Munich and carry, therefore, 50
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628 Journal of Contemporary History Vol 44 No 4
Germany was on the upswing and Benes, abandoned by his former allies
and by the League, was a realist who had to develop new ideas around a
certain modus vivendi with his overwhelming, aggressive neighbour. Even
after the annexation of the Sudetenland, the reduced rump-Czechoslovakia,
among all 10 neighbours of Hitler's Reich, still had the longest frontier with
Germany. The fragile new state, which had officially changed its title from
Czechoslovakia to 'Czecho-Slovakia', was constricted from three sides by a
python-like Germany. The German border was now less than 50 kilometres
from Prague. All rail connections between Prague and the republic's major
cities ran across German territory. Since the annexed Sudetenland contained
most of Czechoslovakia's border fortifications, the new country was in a
hopeless strategic position. Benes' mind, therefore, seemed to be constantly
preoccupied with designing the optimal shape of the future Czechoslovakia in
response to the following challenges:
(1) The contemporary Slovak trend towards autonomy and eventual separation had to be stopped through reinforcing the Czecho-Slovak link and by
pushing the country's centre of gravity to the East. In Benes' thinking, the
future Czechoslovak Republic, paradoxically, with its core Czech population of 7 million, could survive without most of its original 3.5 million
Germans; but would have lost its raison d'être if 2 million Slovaks were
left out.
(2) The transfer of the Sudeten Germans, together with substantial pieces
of territory, would have to be accepted as inevitable. Benes was ready to
trim around 10,000 sq. km. of historic Czech and Moravian territories,
provided Germany would also take 2 million Sudeten Germans: almost
two-thirds of the total. He calculated that the future Czechoslovakia, with
a solid Slavic majority of 10 million Czechs and Slovaks, could handle
an extra 1 million loyal German-speaking citizens, composed mostly of
Social Democrats, Communists and Jews, who should further be subjected to internal transfer and redistribution, so that in every constituency
'Czechoslovaks' would always outvote German-speakers.
(3) The easternmost province, Subcarpathian Ruthenia (Transcarpathian
Ukraine), was to be offered to the Soviet Union in exchange for a common
border and guarantee of permanent military assistance. The purpose of
this pragmatic transaction, concocted, needless to say, without the consent
of its inhabitants, was perfectly rational from Benes' point of view. It was
meant to repair Czechoslovakia's catastrophic strategic deficiency, which
had been so alarmingly exposed during the Sudeten crisis. By acquiring a
direct border with Russia, the mighty Red Army would in future fulfil a
double function: preventing German aggression and scaring off separatist
Slovaks.
In summing up Benes' thinking on reconstructed Czechoslovakia in early
percent responsibility for Munich': Record of the Munk-Benes conversation in Formation^ no. 60;
Parneti III (2007), no. 114.
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Hauner The Challenges and Dilemmas of President Benes after Munich 629
1939, one can assume, on the basis of the available evidence, that being a
realist he accepted for the time being the annexation of the Sudetenland by
Germany, enforced by at least three verdicts: the Lord Runciman Mission
(Report of 21 September 1938), the Anglo-French Plan of 19 September
1938, and the Munich Settlement of 30 September 1938.29 Not surprisingly,
Benes' geopolitical ideas for a sweeping reconstruction of Czechoslovakia were
founded on the ultra-secret 'Fifth Plan', originally designed to deal exclusively
with the Sudeten German Question. After Munich, however, Benes became
preoccupied with another radical concept: to 'push the republic eastwards',
for the sake of establishing a common border with Russia and thereby gaining
optimal security against future German attack. It would cost him Ruthenia
- which in denial of international law and the promise of full autonomy was
ruled during the 20 interwar years directly from Prague. Slovakia, on the other
hand, was to be re-attached with a stronger bond to the Bohemian core.
The 'grand design' of Benes - the President-State Builder - contained,
nevertheless, additional flaws affecting Czechoslovakia's direct neighbours.
If the Soviet Union was to gain direct access to Czechoslovakia through
Ruthenia, those areas of Romania and Poland that blocked access to Ruthenia
from the east would have to be occupied by the Red Army before it could enter
Ruthenia. While Benes was using the slogan 'Push the Republic Eastwards', it
was in fact the Soviets who, in real geopolitical terms, were pushing westwards.
Moreover, Benes indicated that he was ready to cede to Russia not only the
entire Subcarpathian Ruthenia up to the town of Uzhorod, but also a portion
of eastern Slovakia with mixed Slovak and Ukrainian (and Hungarian!) settlements, as far as Presov.
The 'Ides of March' in 1939 - the day Hitler marched into Prague and dissolved rump-Czechoslovakia - shocked and surprised Benes, who was then
in Chicago. But he immediately seized the new opportunity offered by Hitler's
outrageous breach of the Munich Settlement. A new stage of planning the
future of Czechoslovakia would begin for Benes, whose underlying purpose
was to be the 'Undoing' of Munich.30 The first portion of his three-tier plan,
the solution of the German Problem, territorially and ethnographically, would
undergo the most controversial changes until mid- 1942, when the idea of a
global transfer with as few territorial concessions as possible would win the
upper hand in Benes' thinking. The second point of his overall plan of reconstruction, the Slovak Question, would remain fundamentally the same - with
the added proviso concerning the transfer of the Hungarian minority (which
had to be abandoned in 1945 because Stalin opposed it for practical reasons).
Regarding the third point, the sacrifice of Ruthenia for the sake of having a
common border with the USSR, Benes would use as an enticement, whenever
he could win Soviet support. And also because he had nothing else with which
to bargain with Stalin.
29 Benes, Pamëti III (2007), no. 54, no. 61, no. 62, no. 75.
3U M. Hauner, hdvard Benes Undoing or Munich: A Message to a Czechoslovak Politician in
Prague', Journal of Contemporary History 38(4), 563-77.
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630 Journal of Contemporary History Vol 44 No 4
As for the messenger Jaroslav Drábek, after his return to Prague he paid
dearly for his underground activities under the German occupation. Arrested
and transferred to Auschwitz, he survived by a miracle. Drábek himself published a volume of memoirs in which he recounted this memorable story.31
Don't be afraid of Germany. She cannot win. She is going to succeed in the beginning but in
the end victory will come through the United States and through Russia.32
Was Benes aware what his pursuit of a common border with the Soviet Union
would entail for the geopolitical balance in Central Europe? Like the sorcerer's
apprentice in Goethe's poem, did Benes not realize early enough the risk that
by providing direct assistance to the Red Army through a common border, he
would also open the floodgates to communist infiltrationf Central Europe?
He did, of course, realize that. This is why he hoped that Soviet military
assistance in September 1938 would follow a French intervention that was
supposed to come first. Since the latter failed to materialize, Benes considered
it too risky to make an exclusive appeal for Soviet help, for fear that the West
would then regard Czechoslovakia, according to the current nazi slogan, as
the 'Soviet aircraft carrier' anchored in the centre of Europe. This is why, as
Benes passionately argued in his Memoirs and later before Stalin and Molotov,
he refused to issue orders to resist German aggression and call to Moscow in
September 1938, despite appeals from his military commanders and radical
politicians.33 The shock and the subsequent trauma of Munich, however, made
such an impact on Benes that he refused to absolve the West from its betrayal.
He was now prepared to bank the future of Czechoslovakia on exclusive Soviet
assistance against the German Drang nach Osten.
Benes' overall relationship with Russia thus appeared to be fairly complex,
for it contained elements of his early socialist idealism as well as his recent
pragmatism. Although Benes had never visited Russia prior to 1935, as a fellow socialist he was in touch with Russian exiles from the 1905 revolution and
taught himself Russian. During the first world war Benes did not go to Russia
31 I had the good fortune to meet Jaroslav Drábek in his retirement home in Washington in
1992, shortly before he died. He told me about this episode, since I knew that his report had survived and had been cited by several historians: see Jaroslav Drábek, Ζ casù dobrych i zlych (Prague
1992), 31-45. In addition, I am much indebted to his son, Jan Drábek, for letting me see the full
text of his father's original manuscript. See also Stanislav Kokoska, Ζ druhé republiky, vol. II, ed.
Antonin Klimek et al. (Prague 1993), 365-75.
32 Jaroslav Drábek, Ζ casù dobrych i zlych, op. cit.
33 Benes, Pamëti I(2007), ch. 1.5.6. J. Smutny's notes taken in Moscow on December 11, 1943,
after the Stalin-Benes argument over Munich, are revealing: Ceskoslovensko-sovëtské vztahy ν
diplomatickych jednáních 1939-1945, vol. II (Prague 1999) [hereafter cited as CSV II], 129-32;
original in the Smutny Collection, No. 4894, Columbia University, Bahkmeteff Archives. Although
Stalin blamed Benes for failing to appeal for Soviet assistance, he never revealedetails of how the
Red Army and Air Force would have reached Czechoslovakia in September 1938, and whether
the Soviet Union was then ready to start alone war against Poland and Germany. For military and
logistic aspects, see the detailed studies by Hauner and Ragsdale in note 12 above.
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Haunen The Challenges and Dilemmos of President Benes after Munich 63 I
like his mentor T.G. Masaryk, who had spent a year there from 1917 to 1918
during the dramatic period of two revolutions. Masaryk's chief task was to
organize the Czech Legion from prisoners-of-war to fight along the Entente
for the establishment of an independent Czech state. When the war ended
with the foundation of Czechoslovakia, one of Benes' major tasks as the first
foreign minister was to pull out the Czech Legion from Siberia, where it had
been since May 1918, entangled in fighting the Bolsheviks. This was the main
reason why diplomatic relations between the Soviet Union and Czechoslovakia
were not initiated until the nazis came to power in neighbouring Germany and
Czechoslovakia began eagerly to look for new allies.
Although Benes would usually stress geography first, history was equally
important to him. He was well aware of the long tradition of Russo-Prussian
military partnership, stretching back to the Tauroggen Convention of 1812.
Benes himself witnessed in 1922 the Rapallo Agreement and the ensuing
collaboration between the Reichswehr and the Red Army. In 1935 he went
to Moscow to sign the Treaty of Mutual Assistance. Two years later, Benes
feared that pro-German elements in the Soviet armed forces were allegedly
plotting to overthrow Stalin. Without asecond thought, he accepted Marshal
Tukhachevsky's liquidation as the victory of the anti-German faction led by
Stalin, thereby preventing a 'second Rapallo': 'No executions . . . can shake
this [Soviet-Czechoslovak] friendship,' he told the Soviet ambassador.34 But it
also meant that Benes was thereby directly consenting to the continuation of
Stalin's bloody purges for the sake of his Raison d'Etat.
Thus, when the Czechoslovak crisis reached its climax in the second half of
September 1938, Benes' view of the Soviet Union reflected, paradoxically, two
contrasting attitudes. On the one hand, he needed the Soviets against the naked
German threat. On the other, when it became obvious that building a democratic alliance including Bolshevik Russia was a delusion, and that the German
dictator would not be deterred from attacking Czechoslovakia, Benes hesitated
to avail himself of an unilateral Russian offer withouthe backing of France
- for fear of starting a civil (i.e., another 'Spanish') war in Central Europe.35
Even if it became clear that Britain would not fight to keep the Sudeten
34 AVP SSSR [Foreign Policy Archives of the USSR], f.48, op.43, p.252, d.37, L.35-42. The
Benes-Alexandrovsky meeting took place on 3 July 1937. Alexandrovsky's diaries are cited in:
N. Abramov, 'Delo Tukhachevskogo - novaia versiia', Novoe Vremia 13 (1989), 37-9; V.A.
Lebedev, 'M.Tukhachevskii i voenno-fashistskii zagovor', Voenno-istoricheskii arkhiv, 1 (1993),
3-82. An inaccurate translation appeared in Yurii L. Dyakov and Tatyana S. Bushueva, How the
Soviets Militarized Germany 1 922-1 933, and Paved the Way to Fascism: From the Secret Archives
of the Former Soviet Union (Moscow 1994), 322-5. Although Benes boasted to Churchill that he
had received German evidence on the Tukhachevsky conspiracy earlier, which he had passed on to
Stalin, a senior NKVD officer categorically denied this, insisting that there was no so-called Benes
dossier to be found in the Soviet archives and that no information reported by Benes was included
in the indictment ofTukhachevsky and his group. See Benes, Parneti II (2007), 162; W. Churchill,
The Second World War, vol. I (London 1948), 225; cf. note 6 above: P. and A. Sudoplatov (1994),
op. cit., 90-3; (1997), op. cit., 136-41.
35 S.S. Alexandrovskn, Miunkhen. Sviditelstvo ochevidtsa , Mezhdunarodnaia zhizn 11 (1988),
128-42.
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632 Journal of Contemporary History Vol 44 No 4
Germans inside Czechoslovakia, Benes still needed to convince the world that
defending the Czechoslovak Cause - which, oddly enough, also meant keeping the Sudeten Germans within Czechoslovakia - should be identified with
the defence of democracy at large.36
Furthermore, it remains to be conclusively proved that the 80 Red Army divisions deployed in the Belorussian and Kiev military districts during September
1938 were meant for a war against Germany, rather than as a deterrent against
Poland.37 In spite of Litvinov's pressing, Stalin would not take a tougher line visà-vis Hitler;38 nor was there any serious indication that the Soviets would repeat
in Eastern Europe the Komintern performance in Spain.39 The morale of the
officer corps was badly shaken by the continued purges, which at the time of the
Czechoslovak Crisis reached another high point in the persecution of the Soviet
Far Eastern Army, involved in early August in the fighting against the Japanese
near Lake Khasan. A cease-fire was negotiated soon afterwards, because Moscow
had to avoid fighting simultaneous wars in Europe and in Asia.
Political geography was decisive. Benes understood that neither the Red
Army nor the Soviet Air Force could have reached Czechoslovakia to protect
her from a direct German assault. He would, nevertheless, allow the legend
of plausible Soviet assistance to spread in order to castigate the West for the
Munich betrayal.40 Yet Benes remained a 'Westerner' at heart, in spite of the
agony of Munich. After his resignation in early October 1938, he preferred to
go into exile to England and the United States. If he occasionally threatened
that he might go to Moscow in the event of an early outbreak of war, he knew
very well that as a fugitive western statesman he could not function in Stalin's
Russia.41 During a secret meeting with the American president on 28 May
36 As explained by Benes himself in Pamëti I (2007), 352.
37 This may be difficult to prove, because the Soviet mobilization plans had since 1935 considered Germany and Poland together as the main adversaries in the West: correspondence with Prof.
Bruce W. Menning (US Army Command and General Staff College at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas)
concerning Soviet mobilization plans in 1938 and 1939. See note 16.
38 Zara Steiner, 'The Soviet Commissariat of Foreign Affairs and the Czechoslovak Crisis in
1938: New Material from the Soviet Archives', The Historical Journal 42(3) (1999), 751-79.
39 Regarding the larger question of Komintern activities within the context of Soviet foreign
policy and war preparations, see F.I. Firsov, 'Arkhivy Kominterna i vneshniaia politika SSSR ν
1939-1941 gg.', Novata i noveishaia istoria 6 (1992), 12-35; Ν. S. Lebedeva and M. M. Narinskii
(eds), Komintern i vtoraia mirovaia voina, 2 vols (Moscow 1994 and 1998); V.V. Marjina,
'Komintern: Likvidatsiia ili modifikatsiia 1 939-1 943gg.', Slavianovedenie 5 (1994), 14-28; N.S.
Lebedeva, 'The Comintern and Poland 1939-1943', International Affairs 8 (1993), 83-94.
40 Erica Mann, writer and daughter of Thomas Mann, published an interview with Benes in the
Chicago Daily News, 18 April 1939, which was reprinted in The New Republic on 3 May 1939.
Its most conspicuous headings were: 'Russia Faithful Till Last', and 'Willing to Act Alone.'
41 In the summer of 1939 Benes indicated in his message to supporters at home that he might
go to Moscow first, in the event of war. See Formation, no. 62 of 22 June 1939. In October 1939
Benes was approached by the communist deputy Jan Sverma to move to Soviet Russia, so as to
organize from there the movement for the liberation of Czechoslovakia under the banner of the
socialist world revolution. Benes declined, with an argument that he saw his role precisely in bringing West and East together in the fight against fascism. See also Benes, Memoirs (1954), 140-3;
Pamëti II (2007), 150.
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