The last democratic president, who tried to topple a government with resignations and instead handed it to Gottwald
On 25 February 1948, with Communist militias controlling Prague and civil war imminent, Beneš accepted the resignations of twelve non-Communist ministers.
Beneš was a central figure in the Czechoslovak independence movement, co-founding the Czechoslovak National Council with Masaryk and Štefánik during the First World War. As foreign minister for 17 years from 1918, he shone at the League of Nations, built the Little Entente with Romania and Yugoslavia, and forged alliance treaties with France and the Soviet Union. Elected president in 1935, he resigned after Munich and led the government-in-exile in London, securing Britain's repudiation of the Munich Agreement. In February 1948, he accepted the resignations of non-Communist ministers and sanctioned Gottwald's Communist-dominated government, a decision that sealed Czechoslovakia's entry into the Soviet bloc.
Activities and affiliations
- 1918–1935 Diplomacy and international organization · Czechoslovakia
- 1935–1948 Government and administration · Czechoslovakia
Career Timeline
- 1915–1918Secretary of the Czechoslovak National Council
- 1918–1935Foreign Minister of Czechoslovakia
- 1921–1922Prime Minister of Czechoslovakia
- 1935–1938President of Czechoslovakia
- 1940–1945President of the Czechoslovak government-in-exile
- 1945–1948President of Czechoslovakia
Related historical events
- 1944–1949The People's Democracies of Eastern EuropePresident of CzechoslovakiaHe signed the treaty with the Soviet Union in December 1943, issued the nationalisation decrees of October 1945, and resigned in June 1948.
- 1947–1948The Marshall Plan and the Cold Warthe president who sanctioned the communist governmentHe accepted the non-communist ministers' resignations and approved Gottwald's communist-led government; his calculation that the resignations would bring down the government failed.
The Beneš Decrees and the Expulsion of Germans and Hungarians (1945–1946)
Beneš had decided during his London exile that the Sudeten Germans would be expelled once Czechoslovakia was restored. He regarded the behaviour of the ethnic Germans in 1938 as treasonous, and in 1942 he named the Greek-Turkish population exchange of 1922–23 as his model, though unlike that precedent he proposed financial compensation for the expelled Germans.[P63] Arriving in Prague on 10 May 1945, he called for the "liquidation" of Germans and Hungarians "in the interest of a united national state of Czechs and Slovaks."[P79] The measures issued that year, known as the Beneš decrees (officially "Decrees of the President of the Republic"), stripped citizens of German and Hungarian ethnicity of their nationality and expropriated and nationalised their property.[P192] Within this framework roughly three million Germans and Hungarians lost their property and became subject to expulsion.[P80] The expulsion of the Hungarian minority was halted shortly after it began under Soviet objections, while the Germans of the Sudetenland continued to be expelled; Czechoslovak authorities did not follow the prior-notification and humane-treatment provisions required by Article 12 of the Potsdam Protocols, and only a negligible number of Germans remained in the Sudetenland.[P80]