Edvard Beneš (May 28th 1884 with Kožlany - September 3rd, 1948) was one of the founders of the Czechoslovakia, like its president of the Republic of 1935 to 1948 (of 1938 to 1945 in exile).

The disciple of the Spirit of the Lights

Born in a country family, Edvard Beneš is the youngest child of ten children. Its family is directed on the left. It obtains its baccalaureat in a college of the district pragois of Vinohrady. He studied then the right and the sociology with the Université Charles of Prague. He continues his studies with London and Berlin, but especially with Paris with the Sorbonne and the Private school of political sciences. He obtains a doctorate in right to the university of Dijon in France, 1908. This long stay in France will impregnate in him, and its policy, a deep francophilia which will last until 1938.

Beneš becomes professor with the Université Charles of Prague in 1909. It adheres to the Czech party progressist Masaryk. He marries, on December 10th, 1909, Hana Vlčková. Thanks to one of the aunts of his wife, it obtains broad financial means. Those will be put at contribution during the First World War.

Edvard Beneš settled in France in 1915. It militated at the sides of its mentor Tomáš Masaryk and of Milan Rastislav Štefánik for the disappearance of the Austria-Hungary. It began its political career in the Czechoslovakian National council in exile in Paris. This one had been respectively recognized by France, England and finally the United States in 1918. During the negotiation on the treaty of Versailles, it achieves a very active lobbying to make it possible future Czechoslovakia to keep the Western borders of Bohemia in spite of a strong German minority.

The politician of the inter-war period

He was a burning defender of the idea of the Czechoslovakia - meeting of the Bohemia, Moravie and Slovakia - entity without historical base. Indeed, even if these two people spoke about the very close languages, their cultural traditions and roots historical were very opposite. Bohemia, where the tradition hussite was strong, had belonged to the Holy roman Empire, Slovakia, very impregnated of Catholicism, never. In addition Hungarian and Ukrainian minorities, even more alien, were hostile in the new State, where the Czechs themselves were minority. This State nevertheless was created by the treated Saint-Germain-in-Bush hammer in 1919 and increased by the Traité of Trianon in 1920, on the debris of the Empire of Austria-Hungary, on the basis of Right of the People to have themselves, pursuant to the 14th point of the declaration of the president Wilson.

After having been Foreign Minister of the Czechoslovakia news, deputy at the Parliament, SDN, Beneš chairs was the architect of the security system in Europe, founded on the Little Entente and alliance with the Soviet Union. It became the second president of the Czechoslovakian République the December 18th 1935 following the resignation of Tomáš Masaryk. It remains it until the Accords of Munich; it gives up its load on October 5th, 1938 and is replaced by Emil Hácha like president of the republic. It then leaves its country with the secret financial aid of Stalin for an exile with Chicago where it teaches philosophy. Since the beginning of the 20th century Chicago counted the greatest number of Czechs to the the United States. It leaves then to London where it founds in 1940 the Czechoslovakian government in exile and assumes the presidency of it.

In 1941, Beneš signs with Stalin a treaty of alliance and organizes with the assistance of the English the attack against Reinhard Heydrich, Reichprotektor and torturer of the Czech country (May 1942). This attack will be followed of a cruel repression. The Red Army releases is country and Prague in April and May 1945, while the American army releases the west and Pilsen. Beneš is confirmed in its function of president of the Republic at this time by the temporary government chaired by the Socialist of Fierlinger left and re-elected on June 19th, 1946.

After the German occupation and in the absence of an elected Parliament, but pursuant to the decisions taken by the Allies with the conference of Potsdam, it signs the “Décrets Beneš” of which most known the expropriation and the forced expatriation of the German of Sudètes concern and of the Hungarians of Slovakia. The existence of these decrees, by the means of the exploitation which is made by it by the conservative parties of Bavaria and Austria, continuous to pollute the atmosphere of the relations germano-Czech. In the actual position of the things, these decrees were maintained by the Czech republics which followed one another of 1945 our days and integrated in the legal corpus of the European Union in 1996.

The victim of the blow of Prague

After the elections of 1946, the PCT which had obtained 38% of the votes dominated the political life and its general secretary, Gottwald became President of the Council. Beneš was done many illusions on its personal relationship with Stalin, to which he believed capacity to maintain a democracy pluralist in Czechoslovakia. It will be crushed by the Cold war. Under the pressure of Stalin, taken again by the Communist party, Beneš had to refuse the assistance of the Marshall plan, which would have led the PCT to the defeat with the elections of 1948. Also, on February 21st, 1948, Gottwald the crisis by a total seizure of the Communists precipitates on the police force, which causes the resignation of the liberal ministers, with the encouragement of Beneš: Gottwald then carries out massive arrests in the army, the press and the opposition parties, which are then given up by Beneš. It is the Coup of Prague.

February 25th, 1948, it accepts, under the pressure of the Communist party and of Klement Gottwald, the resignation of the democratic coalition government and entrusts to the Communist party the responsibility to form a new government under its nearly exclusive control. The Parliament, purified, voted confidence with the new government unanimously. After faked elections or only the PCT and its trustworthy could present itself, he refuses to ratify the new constitution which devotes the total seizure of the PCT on the country and resigns of its position of president of the Republic the June 7th 1948. He dies on September 2nd, 1948

Heritage

Its hatred of the Habsbourg was such as it made him pronounce this word: “Rather Hitler that Habsbourg! ”. This in known as length on the rejection which this dynasty had generated at Beneš; but also at the Czechs who constantly re-elected it. This blindness was to have dramatic consequences for the Czechoslovakia and all Europe.

Czechoslovakia, was created by a vote of the deputies Czech and Slovak in 1918 but it resisted neither the rise of the Nazism into 1938/39, neither with the Cold war, nor with the collapse of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and was divided into Czech Republic and Slovakia.

See too

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