Milan Hauner

Beginnings of the Czechoslovak Government in Exile

1939–1941

The beginnings of the Czechoslovak Government in Exile are among the most
complicated chapters in the history of the Second World War. The process took place
almost simultaneously in three countries. Its ups and downs were inextricably
intertwined with the controversial personality of the ex-president Edvard Beneš, who
tells his version of events in letters to his brother Vojta. From the uncertain Political
Directorate in Chicago, via the quarrelsome National Committee in Paris, the path led
through two further advancements until the humiliating term ‘provisional’ was
dropped by the British Foreign Office in July 1941.

Beneš and Early Exile

‘We saw the only future in a war between Europe and

Hitler, otherwise we stood no chance of
being liberated…’
Edvard Beneš1

The beginnings of the Czechoslovak Government in Exile are

inseparable from the activities of the leading Czechoslovak statesman
of the period, Dr. Edvard Beneš (1884–1948), the second (1935–38)
and fourth Czechoslovak president (1945–48). Could it be otherwise?
It seems improbable that anyone else could have personified the
Czechoslovak cause during the Second World War as indefatigably as
Beneš did. Why was it so? What made the pedantic and entirely anti-
charismatic Beneš irreplaceable? Could not someone like Jan Masaryk
or Stephan Osuský have substituted for him?
Why did he go into exile, why would he have wanted to become
president again? Beneš resigned on 5 October 1938, five days after the
Munich verdict. He would spend the following days slowly recovering
from a physical and mental collapse2 until his surprisingly sudden
departure by air on 22 October to England. He and his wife Hana were
accompanied on the flight by Bohuš Beneš, the president’s nephew,
who was employed as a junior diplomat at the Czechoslovak Legation
in London. He came to Prague, presumably directed by the British
104 Milan Hauner

Secret Service, to escort his uncle to England quickly because of tips

received that unspecified German agents were endangering the former
president’s life. Once in London, Beneš and his wife occupied as
private persons two spare rooms in a rented house in Putney, a suburb
of London where the family of Bohuš Beneš lived.3
Beneš was still convalescing when he landed in England.
Establishing an exile government was certainly not his priority at the
time. On the other hand, with Munich constantly on his mind, his
unceasing motivation can be best summed up in his own definition as
the ‘undoing of Munich’ (odčinit Mnichov).
Nevertheless, faithful to the title of this paper, I must concentrate
on the first indications of an exile proto-government in whatever
shape and form. Given the unbalanced source material, one of the
ways of tracing Beneš’s original thoughts would be through his
private correspondence, rather than his evidently biased wartime
Paměti (Memoirs).4 His most intimate companion was of course his
wife. But Hana (Hančí), alas, did not leave any diaries – except her
pocket calendars. On the other hand, Beneš’s correspondence with his
elder brother Vojta provides an interesting clue to relatively
unexplored evidence,5 enabling us to trace his ideas regarding the
beginnings of an exile government in addition to the existing primary
and secondary sources.6
First, a few words about Beneš and why this period 1938–48, the
last decade of his life, was so crucial. Furthermore, what were the
contentious issues which made him into the most controversial
Czechoslovak politician of the century?
At least four serious political charges have been laid against
Beneš since then. The first one – which forms very much the backdrop
to this paper – concerns his surrender to the Munich ‘Diktat’. The
second charge is that he, the first among East European statesmen
during World War Two, sold out the country to Stalin. The third one,
laid by the Slovaks, accuses Beneš of being the main guardian of the
artificial ‘Czechoslovak’ union, thereby acting as the main obstacle to
Slovak autonomy or independence. And finally, the most serious
challenge from the human rights perspective comes from the Sudeten
Germans who maintain that Beneš must be seen as the main architect
of the expulsion of over three million Sudeten Germans, mostly old