President Beneš had a good understanding of the situation. He could tell that the
foundations of Czechoslovakia's security system had started to crack. Although it
remained firmly committed to help maintain Czechoslovak national security, France
was afraid of Germany; Great Britain was officially disinterested in the Czechoslovak-German crisis, privately hostile to Prague, and cautiously sympathetic to the Konrad Henlein movement; and to top it off, Moscow's stock in Prague, as Newton
observed, had sunk to a new low.
80 It was hard to imagine a worse scenario. Yet
there was one. What if behind the facade of hostile rhetoric between Berlin and Moscow there lurked the possibility of a rapprochement? In that case, the information Beneš started receiving from Berlin would put the show trials in Moscow
in an altogether different light. He had a reason to fear precisely that development.
Notes
1.ACC CPC, Fond 19, inventory no. 5.
2.The Klement Gottwald faction won over the so-called opportunists at the party's 5th
Congress in Prague, from 18 to 23 February 1929. Thereafter, the CPC attempted--with
minor exceptions--to follow Moscow's instruction with complete obedience.
3.ACC CPC, archival number 66062. This is an undated and unsigned forty-three-page
analysis of the CPC. The document was written in the 1930s, possibly by someone from the
counterintelligence section of the Ministry of Interior.
4.Before World War II, Bruce Lockhart wrote, " Czechoslovakia had been the European democracy with the least contrast between wealth and poverty." See
R. H. Bruce Lockhart
, My Europe ( London: Putnam, 1952), 123.
5.ACC CPC, Fond 19, inventory no. 5, signature 1223; the intelligence report is dated 13 November 1936. Ibid., signature 1063. A top-secret Communist party of Czechoslovakia
report on party membership up to I July 1935 states: October 1932 (59,405), October 1933
(50,647), January 1934 (27,367), January 1935 (32,051), June 1935 (43,491), and July 1935
(48,000). From another report (ACC CPC, Fond 19, inventory no. 5, signature 1223), the
Intelligence Central of the Police Directorate, 2 July 1937, reported to the Police Presidium
that at the end of 1936 the CPC had about 75,000 members; as a result of a large-scale
campaign to recruit new members, the party had about 90,000 by June 1937. The number of
the party's elected representatives in the two houses of the Czechoslovak parliament remained
unchanged between 1929 and 1935 (30 members in the house, 16 members in the senate). The
ups and downs in party membership are explainable, at least partly, by intermittent purges. 6.ACC CPC, Fond 19, inventory no. 5, signature 1223. The report of the Intelligence
Central of the Presidium of the Police Directorate is dated 2 July 1937.
7.Ibid. The confidential report on CPC finances was dated 13 November 1936.
8.According to an official publication of the
Comintern's Executive Committee, Thesen
und Beschlüsse ( Basel: Prometheus, 1933), 24, the Comintern spent $650,000 annually in
support of communist movements worldwide.
9.ACC CPC, Fond 19, inventory no. 5, signature 530.
11.Ibid., signature 69. "Proti jednotné frontě fašismu, jednotnou frontu komunismu!" Rudý večernik, 27 October 1933. 12.Ibid., signature 70; Central Committee Resolution of 29 October 1933, Proti
fašistické diktatůře, za diktatůru proletariátu ( Prague: Max Forejt, 1933). -86-
Questia, a part of Gale, Cengage Learning. www.questia.com
Publication information:
Book title: Czechoslovakia between Stalin and Hitler:The Diplomacy of Edvard Benes in the 1930s.
Contributors: Igor Lukes - Author.
Publisher: Oxford University Press.
Place of publication: New York.
Publication year: 1996.
Page number: 86.
This material is protected by copyright and, with the exception of fair use, may
not be further copied, distributed or transmitted in any form or by any means.
One moment ...
- Georgia
- Arial
- Times New Roman
- Verdana
- Courier/monospaced
Reset