From Trianon to the First Vienna Arbitral Award

The Intense Agitations of Masaryk and Benes for an
Ambitious Czech Political Role

Masaryk's image has been propagated by Czech political writers as a great humanist and democrat. First of all it is necessary to note that he went into exile at the outbreak of World War I and succeeded with his foreign connections to help to undermine the AustroHungarian Monarchy. With the assistance of certain interestgroups he shaped a state for the Czechs. His private action cannot be called a democratic enterprise. It was not approved by the Czech voters. In the last prewar elections he received only 2% of the votes.(1) Before the creation of the Czechoslovak republic, he promised that equal rights would be incorporated in the constitution for all inhabitants of the new state. When he became President of the republic, he was no longer concerned with the protection of individual rights from an oppressive majority.(2) In Masaryk's view the Slovaks were really Czechs,(3) and should not have right to selfdetermination. Previously, he did not respect the constitutional provisions, and he made decisions on the advice of his selected but not elected politicians. Those motions were put to vote in the Parliament, and the party discipline was applied for their passage. Under those circumstances none can speak of proper democratic procedures. Under the rule of such a President the magnificent declarations about democratic principles remained only empty and meaningless words to cover the Czech oppression of other nationalities.

It was a great failure of the Czechoslovak internal and external policies that they were determined by Benes in an authoritarian way. While in power, it was impossible to critize him openly. The Czechs had to bear the consequences of an enforced obedience. After his resignation and escape to England, at the beginning of November 1938, Senator Matousek presented a Bill for creating a committee according to paragraph 54 of the constitution to

investigate the causes of the national and governmental catastrophe. It was moved that the Permanent Committee of the National Assembly should conduct deliberations for instituting a special committee of investigation to determine the causes and establish responsibilities for the national tragedy. The committee of investigation would consist of four appointed members, among them one expert on international and one on constitutional law, and three members of the Chamber of Deputies and two senators. The Permanent Committee of the Chamber of Deputies would appoint three members of the committee of investigation which should report its findings to the Permanent Committee of the National Assembly in three months. Reasons given for the introduction of the bill were the avoidance of the political errors of the past, and charting a future line of foreign policy in conformity with the national interest. Documents found in the archives of the Council of Ministers and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs could furnish useful and decisive elements for a new foreign policy. Matousek severely critized the conduct of the foreign policy of Benes and his arbitrary decisions contradictory to the reports and recommendations of the ambassadors which resulted in a mistrust towards the CSR in many countries.(4)

During those months in 1918 and l919in Paris when thetCSR was being created, the nascent state was subordinated to foreign interests. There was a lack of sufficient confidence in the strength and initiative of the Czech nation. Much consideration was given to the wish for future allies. Twenty years later the Czech view was the same. In September 1938 a Czech commentator wrote that the British government decides the fate of Europe on the basis of Lord Runciman's and Chamberlain's reports.(5) In international politics many interests cross each other but the moral power of a nation has to exercise its influence. The CSR was artificially built in foreign chancelleries and its survival was tied to foreign help. Benes was not cautious, he did not rely on the inner forces of the Czech people and disregarded the historic role of Bohemia. He did not take realistic decisions in times of trial. He counted on foreign intervention and compassion from others. In September 1938 the Czechs kept saying that they were not alone because France, Soviet Russia, Rumania and Yugoslavia were behind them. In 1919 Benes alarmed France by pointing to a Communist menace for Europe from the Hungarian Soviet republic. This "threat" existed only for 133 days. In 1945 Benes in exile went from London to Moscow and brought Soviet Russia to the Upper Danubian basin. The Czechs did not see the political errors in their own actions, they blamed others for the failures of their own making. They complained that their allies abandoned them in 1938. The Czechs did not demonstrate organizational or state maintaining skills when the golden opportunity presented itselL They cultivated megalomania and xenomania which destroyed them in 1938 and 1948. Their

propaganda was based on obsession with the need of foreign intervention which finally led to the termination of Czech independence.

The Encircled Encircler

The year 1938 was of crucial importance for the fate of the CSR. It fell into a state of economic, strategic and political encirclement The political wizard of the republic, Benes, successfully surrounded Hungary after World War I with a military alliance of the Little Entente that gave him a feeling of security besides the FrancoCzechoslovak and Soviet-Czchoslovak treaty of mutual assitance. In the twentieth year of the republic, the German, Hungarian and Polish territorial claims threatened this artificial state. These neighbours isolated President Benes and his government from their supposed allies. The CSR had a long common frontier with her unfriendly neighbours: 2,000 km with Germany, 1,000 km with Poland and 800 km with Hungary. The Czechs in their feeling of false security cheated, defrauded and oppressed those citizens of their state who were not Czechs. The nationalities fought a permanent life-and-death struggle with the happy possessors of the power of government. Czech internal policy was based on the oppression of the minorities which were more numerous than the oppressors. This was done with the blessings of the League of Nations, and the Western European democracies, the guarantors of the CSR. All five non-Czech nationalities demanded the transformation of the republic in a neutral, federal state with equal rights for every citizen regardless of their language. The promised autonomy for the Slovaks and Ruthenians was not granted as long as Benes stayed in office. Benes was willing to provoke a European war in order to risk the survival of Czech hegemony in Central Europe. However, the existing military alliance didnot work for rescuing the CSR. After twenty years of existence, the Prague government sensed the danger and finally promised some rights to the nationalities which had been guaranteed in the peace treaties. Even during the crisis, Benes and other Czech politicians delayed the necessary reforms and postponed for months the publication of the reform plans which contained insufficient concessions to the nationalities. When the Prague government came under pressure, it produced four consecutive plans only to exacerbate both internal and external relations. The mutilated Trianon-Hungary did not exert too much constraining force on Prague. It was the duty of the Budapest government to support the demands of the Magyar minority in the CSR and call the attention of other friendly governments by diplomatic means to the sufferings of their brethren under Czech rule. Economic boycott, commercial isolation and communication ban by Germany, Poland and Hungary were not used to compel the CSR to give concessions to the nationalities. The blessings of democracy existed only on paper in the CSR. There was no equal

justice, understanding or patience in the republic for every citizen. The non-Czech population lived in constant fear and subjugation. In 1938 the most blatant Czech injustices became exposed and unmasked. The Hungarian policy of revision of the Trianon treaty faced a crucial test. The public opinion of friendly states had to be rallied for the support of the rights of Hungarians under foreign domination.

A Czech national fantasy, an absurd imperialism and a harmful ambition tried to build a state without the necessary historical background, ethnic force and military accomplishments. Czech politicians during World War I succeeded in gaining territory from Austria-Hungary regardless of the ethnic composition of the population for the proposed state. They forced the Slovaks to recognize the fiction of a Czechoslovak nation, not admitting the historical, cultural, linguistic, religious, ideological and emotional differences between Czechs and Slovaks. During their twenty years in the same state, the Slovaks learned to dislike the Czech rule. The supposedly governirig nation, the Slovaks were determined at the first opportune moment to assert their national demands against the Czech "sister" nation and shake off the repugnant idea of Czechoslovakism. Prague eminently played the role of a great magician-tactician, and created the impression at the League of Nations in Geneva that the most democratic form of government was established in Czechoslovakia. They spread their propaganda in the press and through the private connections of Benes and other politicians who wanted to maintain the status quo post bellum. Petitions containing the grievances of the national minorities of the CSR never got to the League of Nations for open discussion. When the Versailles system tottered under the weight of historical changes, the Prague government started to wane. Its British and French supporters attempted to intervene in the internal affairs of the CSR by sending there an independent observer. In the presence of a British mediator, one could not speak of the sovereignty of the Czechoslovak state. The Czechs needed an external intervention for solving their enormous problems which had accumulated during the twenty years of their statehood. As long as Benes was among them in the CSR, the Czechs were not willing to conclude an honest agreement with the nationalities and the autonomist Slovaks, the other "branch" of the invented "Czechoslovak nation".

The culture and civilization that the Hungarians created with their knowledge, skills and organizing abilities was exposed to systematic destruction for twenty years by the Czechs in Slovakia. The Magyars became a despised minority on their own native land. The former Hungarian system of public administration was altered to the detriment of the Magyars, their landed property was confiscated under the pretext of land reform, many of their schools were closed, some of their churches were taken away from them, their newspapers suppressed, and their literary publications

censored. Under those circumstances no wonder that the national minorities wanted to return together with their land to their national states. In the changed military power structure the Czech primacy could not be upheld any longer. The Czechs became encircled by their political opponents. The Anschluss was more severe in its consequences for the Czechs than the attempted restoration of the Habsburgs that the Prague government prevented from happening after World War I. Germany encircled Bohemia from three sides, and beside the existing frontiers they established direct borders with Hungary, Italy and Yugoslavia. The penetration of the German influence in Central Europe affected the interests of the two other members of the Little Entente, too. The Czechs became the victims of the policy of Benes whom they trusted for twenty years.

After more than ten years of the Czechoslovak crisis of 1938, some incriminating information was disclosed in the British Foreign Office against Benes and Hodza. Documents, dated on 11 November 1938, revealed that Benes and Hodza had privately deposited British banknotes and bank certificates in the value of two or three million British pounds in banks in the United Kingdom at the time of the Czechoslovak crucial days. The information was given by a man named, Samson, long resident in Britain. A personal friend of Mrs. Hodza, Mrs. Stern, from Czechoslovakia, went to see Samson, and asked him to put in his bank for safekeeping a box which she had received from Mrs. Hodza from Switzerland. The box contained banknotes of L 50.00 and L 100.00 together with bank receipts of fifty million pounds, sent out by Benes and Hodza to be deposited in Britain. Inquiries were made at the Head Office of the Lloyds bank, and it was confirmed that Samson deposited three million pounds in one of the branches where he added verbally that other considerable sums were deposited on behalf of Benes at various other banks.(6)

Benes had a reputation from the years of his first exile and during his tenure of office as Foreign Minister that he did not perform his political activities according to the consistent rules of double-entry bookkeeping. The greatest worry of the displaced politicians from Prague was the transfer of funds in an illegal way from Czechoslovakia to Britain, France or Switzerland. Jan Masaryk, the ambassador of Czechoslovakia to Britain, contacted the Foreign Office for the transfer to his account in London of a sum of about L 21,000.00 standing to his credit in Prague, thus evading the Czechoslovak exchange restrictions. He requested the use of the Czechoslovak Refugee Relief Fund of the Lord Mayor of London for his own personal purposes. He added that Benes at that moment had sufficient money, and was to receive L 15,000.00 from his publishers in advance for his planned book. Part of the money which Masaryk wished to transfer belonged to Benes, as it was found out by the Anglo-Czechoslovak Bank.(7) The leaders of Czechoslovakia did not stay in their places when time came to give account for the conduct of their policy during their tenure of office. They escaped abroad.

The Political Activities of Benes During His Second Exile

In Britain Benes lived from the income of millions of pounds sterling and was watching from the background the political events. In April 1939 he formed a political directorium of Czech politicians living abroad. His presidency terminated by his resignation in October, and by the election of Hacha as new president in November 1938. After the outbreak of World War II in September 1939, Benes created a Czechoslovak National Committee abroad which was recognized by the British and French governments. When in 1940 France fell to the Germans, the British recognized Benes' group as a provisional Czechoslovak government in exile, and Benes as president. A state council was established with displaced politicians at hand. Contrary to the wish of Benes, those Czech politicians who escaped from Bohemia to Moscow became politically active.(8) This prevented Benes from repeating his old political game from World War I of renewing Czechoslovakism according to his ideas.

The entry of the USSR into the war against Germany in June 1941 ended the isolation of Benes from the Moscow based Czech refugees. Soviet Russia concluded a treaty of mutual aid against Germany with the Czechoslovak government in exile, and gave diplomatic recongnition to the Benes group in London. At that time Russia also recognized the pre-Munich boundaries of the CSR. The British government did not accept the idea of the legal existence and continuity of the pre-1938 CSR. Benes, however, experienced difficulties with Moscow. He was not able to influence the Czech politicians there and lead them in accordance with the concept of his political game. The Czech exiles in Moscow were put under Russian control. Benes invited to his government in exile in London two Moscow-based Czech politicians but his offer was rebuffed.(9) The former president in exile reactivated his memoranda-writing activity and tactics of persuasion for reaching his political ends. The allies against Nazi-Germany listened to some of his proposals and the Munich agreement was declared null and void by its signatory, the British government, on 5 August 1942, and its was followed by the French government in exile in London with a similar declaration on 29 September of the same year.

When the fortunes of war started to change in favour of Soviet Russia, Benes began to build his political future on Russian assistance. He arrived in Moscow on 11 December 1943.(10) Two days later he signed a treaty of friendship, mutual assistance and postwar cooperation. The exiled president and ally of the USSR received a red carpet treatment in Moscow, and promises for noninterference in the internal affairs of other states in the post-war period. This was put in a special clause of the treaty between the two parties.(ll) The British government did not give its approval to the signature of the Russo-Czechoslovak pact. The conclusion of this treaty submitted Benes to Stalin.(12) In a written agreement Stalin assured Benes on 8 May 1944 that a civilian administration on the territories occupied by the Soviet troops would be transfered to the

Czechoslovak government.(l3) Six years earlier in September 1938, after the receipt of the Anglo-French demarche, Benes said that there was a third possibility: a close association with Russia. Benes, in his vindictiveness against the French and British for their participation in the Munich agreement, turned for help to the Soviet Union, and, with Russian assistance, took revenge on Germany and Hungary. They were within his reach due to Russian advancement into German and Hungarian territory. His plan for the expulsion of the German and Hungarian population from their homes in the regions handed over to Benes by Stalin, leaving behind them their possessions, came closer to realization. One of the greatest Czech chauvinists, who liked to glitter in democratic colours, wanted to revenge himself on the Sudeten Germans and Magyars for his own political misfortune. Already in 1942, he had turned to the British Foreign Of fice to obtain their consent for his plan of the deportation of three and a half million Sudeten Germans from Bohemia. In the British view there was no reason for such an action, and the Russians likewise rejected his plan in 1942 when the military situation was catastrophic on the Russian front. Benes pursued his plan to the end. In June 1943, Benes presented his project to President Roosevelt in Washington, and told him that Britain and Russia already had given their consent to the ejection of the German population from the territory of the former CSR. It was told him in Washington that with regard to the concurrence of the two other allies, no resistance could be expected from the USA to his plan. Benes returned to his London headquarters, and informed the Russian ambassador to his government in exile, that Britain and the USA had agreed to the expulsion of the German population from the pre-war Czechoslovak territory, and only Moscow opposed to it.(l4) When it was communicated to Moscow that the British and American governments had already accepted the responsibility for the Benes plan, finally the consent was given by the Soviets. On 8 August 1945 the Potsdam conference sanctioned it.)15) The liquidation of the international agreement provoked by the Czechs in 1938 received another favourable declaration for the Czechoslovak government in exile towards the end of the war. On September 27, 1944 the Corriere di Roma reported that the Italian Council of Ministers decided that the Munich agreement of September 29, 1938 and the Vienna arbitration of November 2, 1938 were null and void. Reason for this action was given only briefly: they were the results of the foreign policy of the Fascist government of Italy.(16) Neither detailed examination of historic documents nor demographic statistics were necessary for reaching a conclusion by the democratic Italian government. The standpoint occupied by the defeated Italy in this question was not a logical approach for the conduct of foreign policy. It was rather a hasty reaction in 1944 against the foreign policy of the government of Mussolini.

As the Red Army was approaching the borders of the former CSR, Benes wanted to make a deal with the Soviet government for the

administration of that territory. For this reason, he went from London to Moscow. Once he was there he had to accept a Czechoslovak government appointed by Russia which was not exactly to his liking. He soon became aware of it: he had made an error when he trusted Stalin. Under the protection of the Soviet army he reached the capital of Eastern Slovakia, Kassa (Kosice) on 5 April 1945, and was back in Prague on 11 May. He returned to his former capital with foreign military aid but without the consent of the population. During his stopover in Kosice, he proclaimed the notorious "program of Kosice". The program of the renewed Czechoslovakia contained the suppression of his political opponents, and the persecution of the non-Slovak, non-Czech and nonSlavic population of the new and diminished Czechoslovakia. The real character of Benes was reflected in his dictatorship. The appointed members of the government, recruited from the six coalition parties, among them the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia and the Communist Party of Slovakia, accepted a program on Russian soil, dictated partly by Moscow and partly by Benes. The formation of local national councils (soviets) was a Communist idea but the terrorization of the non-Slovak and non-Czech nationalities by those local councils was in the plan of Benes. He issued orders for the expulsion of the enemies of the state from their homes, and for the confiscation of their property. The so-called unreliable persons were deprived of their citizenship. They became unemployable with this presidential decree and their livelihood was taken away from them. With the help of Moscow, the Slovaks to a certain degree avoided the wrath of Benes. In spite of Benes' protest, Slovakia received a provincial government beside the central government in Prague.(17) The Sudeten German communities were surrounded by armed Czechs who expelled the population from their homes, forcing them to leave all their belongings behind. Benes, the coalition government and the local councils reserved the same treatment for that part of the Hungarian population which was put again under Czecho-Slovak rule. The army units of the "independent,' Slovakia (1939-1945), which fought the Russians, suddenly became so1diers of the Czecho-Slovak army by putting the Czecho-Slovak tricolor on their old Slovak army uniforms. They were used for billeting in the Magyar communities and chasing the unprotected population into Hungary. Czech and Slovak democrats, Communists and Fascists equally took part in the confiscation of Hungarian property, unlawful detention of Hungarians and deprivation of their human rights. The Potsdam conference did not approve the plan of the Czechoslovak government for the deportation of the Hungarians from their villages and towns to Hungary. Benes wanted to repeat his fait accompli tactics from World War I without waiting for peace negotiations. After the rebuff in Potsdam, the "democratic" Czechoslovak government tried to use other methods for getting rid of the Hungarians thrown for a second time in the twentieth century under Czecho-Slovak oppression. The

Prague government initiated negociations with the Soviet-occupied Hungary for an exchange of population. It was thought in Prague that the Slovaks living in Southern Hungary would be willing to relocate themselves in the state of the Slovaks and Czechs --at that time free of Russian occupation-- and Prague could force an equal number of Hungarians to leave the republic. An agreement for the exchange of population was signed between Prague and Budapest in February 1946 but it backfired for the Czechs and Slovaks. An exodus of Slovaks from Hungary did not materialize. Rich Hungarian farmers from southern Slovakia were selected for transfer by the Czecho-Slovak authorities in exchange for mostly poverty-stricken Slovaks. The land evacuated by the Hungarian farmers was destined to the Slovaks willing to move under those conditions to the CSR in 1946 and 1947.

The wrath of Benes did not spare even innocent Magyar children. They could not go to school since it was prohibited to open schools with Hungarian language of instruction. This anomaly was changed in 1948 only after the elimination of Benes from the presidency by a coup d'etat. In 1949 the Communist Party ordered the reopening of the Hungarian schools in Slovakia.

In 1946 another method was practiced in the CSR for the extinction of the Magyars. It was called re-slovakization, i.e., forced acceptance of the Slovak nationality. Between 17 June 1946 and 30 December 1947, during the savage period of denationalization, 135,317 applications were filed out of fear.l8 All the applications were not favourably accepted by the new conquerors and promoters of Pan-Slavism. 81,141 applications were immediately rejected. By 30 December 1947, 326,679 persons, including members of families, were recognized of Slovak nationality by the Central Committee for Re-Slovakization.l9 This procedure of forced slovakization, often with the use of gendarmerie, went against the inner convictions of the sacrificed persons. Even such Hungarians who did not speak Slovak were threatened and intimidated to a point that they sent in their applications to the committee in the hope of retaining their possessions or employment. It was not a voluntary desire on their part to become officially member of an alien nation. In their defencelessness they simply wanted to prevent the ejection of their families on 24-hour notice to Hungary.

The planned expulsion of the Magyars from the partially renewed CSR after 1945 did not succeed completely. Between 1 April 1947, and 10 June 1948, there were 68,407 Hungarians forcibly transfered to Hungary from the CSR. Since the end of the war in 1945 about 100,00 Magyars escaped to Hungary in order to avoid Czech and Slovak persecutions. In addition, 44,129 Magyars were forcibly evicted from their homes in Slovakia to the empty frontier regions of Bohemia from where three and a half million Sudeten Germans had been deported to Germany.(20) All this happened in the CSR under the leadership of Benes.

The Autonomist Slovaks and Benes After 1945

In the disruption of the first Czechoslovak republic the Slovaks played a decisive role. Reverend Hlinka and his Slovak Populist Party began the Slovak opposition to the Czech rule already in 1919 at the Paris peace conference, and that struggle went on for twenty years. During that time the Slovaks unsuccessfully tried to remove the Czech influence from Slovakia. This goal was attained with the aid of Hitler in 1939 in the creation of a separate Slovak state. In 1945, after the collapse of the Slovak republic, the functionaries of the Slovak Populist Party, at home or captured on territories controlled by the victorious allies, were put on trial in the CSR. The Peoples' Courts conducted the trials. In Pressburg Mgr. Tiso, President of the first Slovak republic in history, was sentenced to death by hanging. Benes could not tolerate a second president in the same state. He was reelected in Prague on 19 May 1946. The following year he did not commute the death sentence of his rival. In April 1947 Tiso was hanged and with his execution the idea of a Slovak independent state received a mortal blow. The revenge of Benes on his political opponents after his return to Prague from his second exile in 1945 resulted in the following court sentences: 362 executions, 420 imprisonments for life, 160,000 years of prison terms for 13,548 persons.(2)l During the 1,000 years of common history, the Hungarians did not execute Slovaks for political reasons or send them to concentration camps as their "sister" Czech nation punished them during only twenty years of cohabitation in the same state.

Benes received another surprise from the Slovaks. In September 1943 an illegal Slovak national council was formed in Pressburg composed of Communists and Democrats. This political movement produced unwanted effects on the plans of Benes for the restoration of the Czechoslovak state. Independently of this Slovak initiative, General Catlos, Commander-in-Chief of fascist Slovakia's army, still at war with the Soviet Union, made an attempt to save himself in case of Soviet victory. He sent a message to Moscow on 2 August 1944: "...the Slovak declaration of war on the USSR and the allies would be cancelled and simultaneously war would be declared on Hungary which would make the new regime at once popular. Overnight German military and civilian measures in Slovakia would be eliminated and possibilities created for big Soviet operations..." (22) Catlos continued his message with these words: "...the national-political consequences would ensue after the end of the war, so that the Slovak political matters might be solved in accordance with the interests of the USSR...,, There should be direct Slovak-Soviet contacts.(23) Catlos, a rebel Lutheran, really did not fit in the Catholic Slovak Populist Party, and sooner or later it was inevitable that he revealed his true identity. The German protection of Slovakia was nearing its end, and the Slovaks, incapable by themselves of assuming independent statehood, were ready to place

themselves under Soviet rule. A similar violent and hostile antiMagyar Slovak nationalism was expressed in the attitude of the President of the Slovak republic (Mgr. Tiso). It was made public on the 14 and 15 January 1947 in the Peoples' Court of Slovakia in Pressburg at the trial of Tiso. He admitted in the presence of his former Minister of Defence, Gen. Catlos, taken to court from his prison in Russia to testify against his former President, that the Slovak republic gave Croatia, a similar so-called independent state under German protection, supplies, clothing and armaments to equip and prepare the Croatian army to fight Hungary in alliance with Slovakia at the end of the war.(24) The Slovaks and Croats were encouraged to think of such action because of the German antagonism towards Hungary.

Benes and Hungary After 1945

Back again in Prague, Benes raised his demands against Hungary. The Czech reoccupation of Hungarian territory with Soviet assistance and the brutal persecution of the Hungarian population in the CSR did not satisfy the democrat-dictator President. He demanded five villages from Hungary to widen the bridgehead on the right bank of the Danube at Pressburg. The reason given for this demand was the difficulty in supplying the city with food. It was an unexampled and unjustified demand. His wish was partially fulfilled by the peacemakers, and the CSR occupied three additional villages from Hungary: Horvatjarfalu, Oroszvar and Dunacsuny, according to the Paris peace treaty of 10 February 1947.(25) The Hungarian population in the villages attached to the CSR immediately became persecuted outcasts and augmented the number of proscribed subjects in the state of the Czechs and Slovaks. Benes demanded additional territory from Hungary to the already occupied former Upper Hungary, although he knew very well that Britain and the USA did not intend to restore the pre-World War II boundaries of the CSR. In his broadcast from London, Benes stated on 26 July 1941, that in the renewed Czechoslovak state the borders of Slovakia and Hungary would be revised.(26) Benes and Stalin, with the silent assistance of the victorious Western democracies, ruined Hungary to an even greater extent than the Trianon treaty.

After 1945 it has been forbidden in Hungary or in the successor states to even mention the peaceful revision of the borders or to complain against oppression, humiliation and degradation of the Hungarian minorities in the neighbouring states. The application of racist hatred by the Czechs and Slovaks against unarmed Hungarians handed over to them by the great powers demonstrates only the political immaturity, insecurity and monstrosity of the rulers of the CSR.

Conclusion

Within twenty-seven years Hungarians were, for the second time in the 20th century, placed under foreign domination. Benes succeeded twice in forming the most improvised, artificially built state in Europe. In 1938 his adroitness abandoned him, his own falsehood turned against him, and the state under his leadership staggered. After World War II, the second time in one generation, the Hungarian nation had to accept a verdict, originated from Benes and Stalin, for territorial changes, with the concurrence of Britain, France and the United States of America. These three latter states liked to glitter as the occasional champions of human rights and democratic institutions. They threw millions of Hungarians into Czecho-Slovakia, Russia, Rumania and Yugoslavia. Benes had the opportunity to fulfill a historic mission for the Czech people but, in the process, he became the destroyer of the Central European nations. Benes misled the French by not keeping his promises for the respect of the obligations the CSR assumed in the peace treaties after World War I. He could not delude the Russians who mercilessly removed him from the presidency in February 1948. The fallen political magician of the Hradsin Castle resigned from his high office for the second time in his life on 7 June 1948. Within four months he died on his private estate in Sezimovo Usti. Following his disappearance from the political arena, the Prague Parliament did not order an investigation, as in 1938, to determine the causes, and the culpability for the loss of freedom and independence of Bohemia, Moravia, Silesia and Slovakia. The verdict will be pronounced by the examination of historical documents when they will be accessible for research. His ruthless and chauvinistic activities, together with his hatred for his political opponents, contributed much to the extinction of the independence of Bohemia and other East-Central European nations. The Czechs supported the war machine of Hitler, and the Slovaks totally collaborated with Hitler in their Slovak republic. At the Paris peace conference in 1946, the Hungarian delegation bravely defended in their carefully elaborated submissions the interests of the Magyar nation. Every effort was in vain, since the fate of the country and nation was in the hands of the Pan-Slavists, and the mutilation of Hungary at Trianon was repeated in Paris once again. The Czechs and Hungarians during their long national history lost the territory of their states partially or entirely to foreign invaders. They were occupied and liberated several times but every change in state sovereignty was accompanied by the deprivation of their freedom by conquerors and liberators alike. Foreign intervention has brought oppression to them, and has caused human tragedies.

It is interesting to note that almost four decades after the Munich agreement Chinese historians analyze the events from their viewpoint. They see Central Europe as a key point of imperialistic expansion in 1938 and also in 1968. In 1938 Nazi Germany started

the weakening of the first Czechoslovak republic by annexing the Sudeten German population to Germany. The Chinese view does not mention that the annexation of Sudetenland was sanctioned by a four power agreement which ended the persecution of the German minority. Thirty years after Munich, the government of Soviet Russia (27) ordered its troops to invade the diminished CSR. In 1968 that occupation lacked the nicety and legality of an international agreement. The Chinesse authors emphasize that the Czechs were not invited to Munich (28) but at the same time forget to add for the sake of objectivity that the Hungarians were not admitted either to the 1918 negotiations in Paris when Hungary was mutilated. The Czech political exiles applied different tactics in 1945 from those in 1918. Their political alliance with the French in 1918 and with the Russians in 1945 ended in subservience to their supposed benefactors. Foreign dictatorships occupied Central Europe in 1939 and in 1945 as a result of the Czech political plots against the interests of the historic Bohemia and of East-Central Europe. The selling out of the Bohemian independence during the two World Wars proved to be a fatal mistake even for the originators of those disastrous alliances who temporarily had drawn personal advantage from their political actions.

The future free development of the peoples in East-Central Europe --among them of Hungary, Bohemia and Slovakia--can be secured only when the nations of that area once again could belong to their own zone of interest without the selfish interference of the great powers. The Polish political initiative called the "Third Europe" of 1938, or the medieval Polish-Hungarian-Bosnian northsouth foreign policy concept of forming a wall against the intruders in a renewed, negotiated, modern form, could offer security and protection to the small nations in the Danubian and Carpathian areas against the undesirable interference and domination of the great powers. After so much suffering and political turmoil the psychological conditions have arrived for a true neighbourly cooperation and better understanding. The existing disputes could be settled on the basis of mutual respect and recognition of the basic interests of each nation without the intrusion of the neighbouring powers into that troubled region

Footnotes

1. Szporluk, R., Masaryk's Idea of Democrecy, SEER, XLI, 1962, 40.

2. Ibid., 35.

3. Ibid., 43.

4. Affari Esteri, No. 1724/1094.

5. Ceske Slovo, 18 Sept., 1938.

6. PRO., FO., 432/215B8, 492, 497, 498.

7. Ibid., 480, 485.

8. Miksche, Op. Cit., 36.

9. Taborsky, Eduard, Benes and Stalin--Moscow, 1943 and 1945,

JCEA XIII,1953, 181.

10. Ibid., 159.

11. Ibid., 162.

12. Miksche, Op. cit., 36.

13. Taborsky, Op. cit., 271.

14. Wallace, William W., The Foreign Policy of President Benes

in the Approach of Munich, SEER, XXXIX, 1960, 133.

15. Miksche, Op. cit., 40, 41.

16. Corriere di Roma, 27 Sept., 1944.

17. Lastovicka, Bohuslav, Vznik a vyznam kosickeho vladniho

programu, CCH, 8, 1960, 452.

18. Zvara, Juraj, A magyar dolgozok reszvetele a szocialista

Csehszlouakia epiteseben, 211.

19. Botka & Assoc., Magyarok Csehszlovakiaban, 239.

20. Ibid.

21. Forst de Battaglia, Otto, Zwischeneuropa, I. 12.

22. Culen, K., Op. cit., 169.

23. Ibid., 170.

24. Ibid., 408.

25. Wagner, Francis S., Hungarians in Czechoslovakia, SNCE, 34, Separatum.

26. Lastovicka, B., Op. cit., 452.

27. Munich 1938 de la capitulation a la guerre, 80.

28. Ibid., 50

From Trianon to the First Vienna Arbitral Award