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EDVARD BENEŠ: CZECHOSLOVAKIA’S STRUGGLE FOR FREEDOM Title: Czechoslovakia’s Struggle for Freedom Originally published: London, The Dalhousie Review, 1941 Language: English The excerpts used are from the original, pp. 1–16. About the author Edvard Beneš [1884, Kožlany (near Rakovník, west Bohemia) – 1948, Sezimovo Ústí (south Bohemia)]: politician and sociologist. He came from a farming family. He studied sociology, economics and law at Prague, Paris, Berlin and Dijon. At an early age he became a follower of Tomáš G. Masaryk and adopted his political and social philosophy, including a deep suspicion of liberalism and political parties. In 1915, he joined Masaryk in organizing the anti-Austrian resistance in exile, was a cofounder of the Czechoslovak National Council and was, together with the Slovak Milan R. Štefánik, its main representative in Paris. Immediately after the declaration of an independent Czechoslovakia in 1918, Beneš became the Minister of Foreign Affairs, a position he kept until 1935, when he became the second president of Czechoslovakia, taking over from Masaryk. From 1923 to 1935, he was a member of the reformist, nationalist Czechoslovak National Socialist Party founded in 1897. Beneš was the principal creator of the Czechoslovak interwar alliance system based on a military pact with France and on the Little Entente with Romania and Yugoslavia . This system, shaped by the Versailles peace settlement and the League of Nations , started to break down in the mid-1930s. Shortly after the Munich Agreement and the German occupation of the borderlands in September 1938, Beneš went into exile again. In 1939, he started to organize the ‘second resistance movement.’ In 1940, the Czechoslovak government-in-exile was formed in London with President Beneš leading the effort for the annulment of the Munich ‘Diktat.’ In 1943, he concluded a new treaty with the Soviet Union, which, it was hoped, would be the basic guarantee of postwar Czechoslovak security. Later, he negotiated an agreement on the postwar political system with Czech and Slovak Communist exiles in Moscow. His name is also connected with the presidential decrees (commonly called the ‘Beneš Decrees’) enabling the expulsion of millions of Sudeten Germans and hundreds of thousands of Hungarians from Czechoslovakia immediately after the war. Beneš was re-elected president in 1946 but was not in a position to thwart the Communist take-over in February 1948. After the fall of the Communist dictatorship in 188 SELF-DETERMINATION, DEMOCRATIZATION, AND THE HOMOGENIZING STATE late 1989, Beneš became a matter of intellectual controversy not only in the Czech Republic, but also abroad, especially with regard to the Beneš Decrees. He remains one of the most tragic and contested figures of modern Czech history. Main works: Problémy nové Evropy a zahraniční politika československá [Problems of the new Europe and Czechoslovak foreign policy] (1924); Světová válka a naše revoluce, 3 vols. [The world war and our revolution] (1927–1928); Francie a nová Evropa [France and the new Europe] (1932); Boj o mír a bezpečnost státu [The fight for peace and state security] (1934); Demokracie dnes a zítra [Democracy today and tomorrow] (1942); Úvahy o slovanství [Essays on Slavdom] (1944); Šest let exilu a druhé světové války [Six years of exile and the Second World War] (1945); Paměti [Memoirs] (1947); Mnichovské dny [The Munich days] (1955). Context In the 1930s, as a consequence of the Great Depression and the rise of Nazi Germany, both the internal situation and international position of Czechoslovakia deteriorated. The alliance system built by Beneš in the previous decade based on treaties with France and, after 1934, with the USSR as well as the Little Entente, failed to ward off growing German pressure, which culminated in the Munich Agreement of September 1938. The four Great Powers—Germany, Italy, France and Great Britain—made Czechoslovakia cede large border areas with a German-speaking majority to Germany, but guaranteed the independence of the rest of the country. As a result of this agreement, Beneš resigned from presidency and went into exile. Later, in mid-March 1939, Nazi Germany occupied the rest of Czechoslovakia and created the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia. The Slovaks then declared their independence, and Carpathian Ruthenia was annexed by Hungary. This made it possible for Beneš to claim that the Munich Agreement was invalid and revoke his resignation from the presidency, something the Western powers were hesitant to recognize at this point. In 1940, Beneš set up a provisional Czechoslovak government in London and...

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