title: St. Germain (Theosophy)

text: The scholar K. Paul Johnson maintains that the "Masters" that Madame Blavatsky wrote about and produced letters from were actually idealizations of people who were her mentors.


title: St. Germain (Theosophy)

text: Also see the article "Talking to the Dead and Other Amusements" by Paul Zweig, "The New York Times", 5 October 1980, which maintains that Madame Blavatsky's revelations were fraudulent.


title: Mansi people

text: The Mansi (Mansi: Мāньси / Мāньси мāхум, "Māńsi / Māńsi māhum", ) are a Ugric indigenous people living in Khanty–Mansia, an autonomous okrug within Tyumen Oblast in Russia. In Khanty–Mansia, the Khanty and Mansi languages have co-official status with Russian. The Mansi language is one of the postulated Ugric languages of the Uralic family. The Mansi people were formerly known as the Voguls.


title: Mansi people

text: Together with the Khanty people, the Mansi are politically represented by the Association to Save Yugra, an organisation founded during Perestroika of the late 1980s. This organisation was among the first regional indigenous associations in Russia.


title: Mansi people

text: The ancestors of Mansi people populated the areas west of the Urals. Mansi findings have been unearthed in the vicinity of Perm.


title: Mansi people

text: In the first millennium BC, they migrated to Western Siberia where they assimilated with the native inhabitants. According to others they are originated from the south Ural steppe and moved into their current location about 500 AD.


title: Mansi people

text: The Mansi have been in contact with the Russian state at least since the 16th century when most of western Siberia was brought under Russian control by Yermak Timofeyevich. Due to their higher exposure to Russian and Soviet control, they are generally more assimilated than their northern neighbours, the Khanty.


title: Mansi people

text: The Mansi were semi-nomadic hunters and fishermen. Some Mansi also raised reindeer. A few Mansi engaged in agriculture (cultivating barley) and raised cattle and horses.


title: Mansi people

text: During the winter, the Mansi lived in stationary huts made out of earth and branches at permanent villages. During the spring, the Mansi moved towards hunting and fishing grounds, where they constructed temporary rectangular-shaped shelters out of birch-bark and poles.


title: Mansi people

text: Weapons utilized by the Mansi were advanced for the period and included longbows, arrows, spears, and the use of iron helmets and chain mail.


title: Grapefruit–drug interactions

text: Some fruit juices and fruits can interact with numerous drugs, in many cases causing adverse effects. The effect was first discovered accidentally, when a test of drug interactions with alcohol used grapefruit juice to hide the taste of the ethanol.


title: Grapefruit–drug interactions

text: The effect is most studied with grapefruit and grapefruit juice, but similar effects have been observed with certain other citrus fruits. A 2005 medical review advised patients to avoid all citrus juices until further research clarifies the risks. It was reported in 2008 that similar effects had been observed with apple juice.


title: Grapefruit–drug interactions

text: One whole grapefruit, or a small glass () of grapefruit juice, can cause drug overdose toxicity. Fruit consumed three days before the medicine can still have an effect. The relative risks of different types of citrus fruit have not been systematically studied. Affected drugs typically have an auxiliary label saying "Do not take with grapefruit" on the container, and the interaction is elaborated upon in the package insert. People are also advised to ask their physician or pharmacist about drug interactions.


title: Grapefruit–drug interactions

text: The effects are caused by furanocoumarins (and, to a lesser extent, flavonoids). These chemicals inhibit key drug metabolizing enzymes, such as cytochrome P450 3A4 (CYP3A4). CYP3A4 is a metabolizing enzyme for almost 50% of drugs, and is found in the liver and small intestinal epithelial cells. As a result, many drugs are affected. Inhibition of enzymes can have two different effects, depending on whether the drug is either


title: Grapefruit–drug interactions

text: In the first instance, inhibition of drug-metabolizing enzymes results in elevated concentrations of an active drug in the body, which may cause adverse effects. Conversely, if the medication is a prodrug, it needs to be metabolised to be converted to the active drug. Compromising its metabolism lowers concentrations of the active drug, reducing its therapeutic effect, and risking therapeutic failure.


title: Grapefruit–drug interactions

text: Low drug concentrations can also be caused when the fruit suppresses drug absorption from the intestine.


title: Grapefruit–drug interactions

text: The effect of grapefruit juice with regard to drug absorption was originally discovered in 1989. The first published clinical report on grapefruit drug interactions was in 1991 in "The Lancet" entitled "Interactions of Citrus Juices with Felodipine and Nifedipine."


title: Grapefruit–drug interactions

text: Citrus fruits may contain various polyphenols, including naringin and furanocoumarins, such as bergamottin, dihydroxybergamottin, and bergapten. Grapefruit, Seville oranges, and bergamot contain naringin. Furanocoumarins may have a stronger effect than naringin.


title: Grapefruit–drug interactions

text: Organic derivatives of furanocoumarin interfere with liver and intestinal enzyme CYP3A4 and may be responsible for the effects of grapefruit on the enzyme. Cytochrome isoforms affected by grapefruit components also include CYP1A2, CYP2C9, and CYP2D6. Drugs metabolized by these enzymes may have interactions with citrus chemicals.


title: Grapefruit–drug interactions

text: When drugs are taken orally, they enter the gut lumen to be absorbed in the small intestine and sometimes, in the stomach. In order for drugs to be absorbed, they must pass through the epithelial cells that line the lumen wall before they can enter the hepatic portal circulation to be distributed systemically in blood circulation. Drugs are metabolized by drug-specific metabolizing enzymes in the epithelial cells. Metabolizing enzymes transform these drugs into metabolites. The primary purpose for drug metabolism is to detoxify, inactivate, solubilize and eliminate these drugs. As a result, the amount of the drug in its original form that reaches systemic circulation is reduced due to this first-pass metabolism.


title: Grapefruit–drug interactions

text: Many drugs are impacted by consumption of citrus juice. When the metabolizing enzyme is inhibited, less of the drug will be metabolized by it in the epithelial cells. This interaction is particularly dangerous when the drug in question has a low therapeutic index, so that a small increase in blood concentration can be the difference between therapeutic effect and toxicity. Citrus juice inhibits the enzyme only within the intestines if consumed in small amounts. When larger amounts are consumed they may also inhibit the enzyme in the liver. The hepatic enzyme inhibition may cause an additional increase in potency and a prolonged metabolic half-life (prolonged metabolic half-life for all ways of drug administration). The degree of the effect varies widely between individuals and between samples of juice, and therefore cannot be accounted for "a priori".


title: Grapefruit–drug interactions

text: Another mechanism of interaction is possibly through the multidrug resistance-associated protein 2 localized in the brush border of the enterocytes.


title: Grapefruit–drug interactions

text: Grapefruit–drug interactions that affect the pre-systemic metabolism (i.e., the metabolism that occurs before the drug enters the blood) of drugs have a different duration of action than interactions that work by other mechanisms, such as on absorption, discussed below.


title: Grapefruit–drug interactions

text: The interaction is greatest when the juice is ingested with the drug or up to 4 hours before the drug.


title: Grapefruit–drug interactions

text: The location of the inhibition occurs in the lining of the intestines, not within the liver. The effects last because grapefruit-mediated inhibition of drug metabolizing enzymes, like CYP3A4, is irreversible; that is, once the grapefruit has "broken" the enzyme, the intestinal cells must produce more of the enzyme to restore their capacity to metabolize drugs that the enzyme is used to metabolize. It takes around 24 hours to regain 50% of the cell's baseline enzyme activity and it can take 72 hours for the enzyme activity to completely return to baseline. For this reason, simply separating citrus consumption and medications taken daily does not avoid the drug interaction.


title: Grapefruit–drug interactions

text: For medications that interact due to inhibition of OATP (organic anion-transporting polypeptides), a relative short period of time is needed to avoid this interaction, and a 4-hour interval between grapefruit consumption and the medication should suffice. For drugs recently sold on the market, drugs have information pages (monographs) that provide information on any potential interaction between a medication and grapefruit juice. Because there is a growing number of medications that are known to interact with citrus, patients should consult a pharmacist or physician before consuming citrus while taking their medications.


title: Grapefruit–drug interactions

text: Grapefruit is not the only citrus fruit that can interact with medications. One medical review advised patients to avoid all citrus.


title: Grapefruit–drug interactions

text: The first approach involves risk to trial volunteers. The first and second approaches have another problem: the same fruit cultivar could be tested twice with different results. Depending on growing and processing conditions, concentrations of the interacting polyphenol compounds can vary dramatically. The third approach is hampered by a paucity of knowledge of the genes in question.


title: Grapefruit–drug interactions

text: A descendant of citrus cultivars that cannot produce the problematic polyphenol compounds would presumably also lack the genes to produce them. Many citrus cultivars are hybrids of a small number of ancestral species, which have now been fully genetically sequenced.


title: Grapefruit–drug interactions

text: Many traditional citrus groups, such as true sweet oranges and lemons, seem to be bud sports, mutant descendants of a single hybrid ancestor. In theory, cultivars in a bud sport group would be either all safe or all problematic. However, new citrus varieties arriving on the market are increasingly likely to be sexually created hybrids, not asexually created sports.


title: Grapefruit–drug interactions

text: The ancestry of a hybrid cultivar may not be known. Even if it is known, it is not possible to be certain that a cultivar will not interact with drugs on the basis of taxonomy, as it is not known which ancestors lack the capacity to make the problematic polyphenol compounds. However, many of the citrus cultivars known to be problematic seem to be closely related.


title: Grapefruit–drug interactions

text: Pomelo (the Asian fruit that was crossed with an orange to produce grapefruit) contains high amounts of furanocoumarin derivatives. Grapefruit relatives and other varieties of pomelo have variable amounts of furanocoumarin.


title: Grapefruit–drug interactions

text: The Dancy cultivar has a small amount of pomelo ancestry, but is genetically close to a non-hybrid true mandarin (unlike most commercial mandarins, which may have much more extensive hybridization). Eight Dancy fruits, all picked at one time from one tree, have been blended and tested for furanocoumarins; none were detectable.


title: Grapefruit–drug interactions

text: Both sweet oranges and bitter oranges are mandarin-pomelo hybrids. Bitter oranges (such as the Seville oranges often used in marmalade) can interfere with drugs including etoposide, a chemotherapy drug, some beta blocker drugs used to treat high blood pressure, and cyclosporine, taken by transplant patients to prevent rejection of their new organs. Evidence on sweet oranges is more mixed.


title: Grapefruit–drug interactions

text: Tests on some tangelos (hybrids of mandarins/tangerines and pomelo or grapefruit) have not shown significant amounts of furanocoumarin; these studies were also conducted on eight fruit all picked at one time from one tree.


title: Grapefruit–drug interactions

text: Common lemons are the product of orange/citron hybridization, and hence have pomelo ancestry, and although Key limes are papeda/citron hybrids, the more commercially prevalent Persian limes and similar varieties are crosses of the Key lime with lemons, and hence likewise have pomelo ancestry. These limes can also inhibit drug metabolism. Other less-common citrus species also referred to as lemons or limes are genetically distinct from the more common varieties, with different proportions of pomelo ancestry.


title: Grapefruit–drug interactions

text: Marketing classifications often do not correspond to taxonomic ones. The "Ambersweet" cultivar is classified and sold as an orange, but does not descend from the same common ancestor as sweet oranges; it has grapefruit, orange, and mandarin ancestry. Fruits are often sold as mandarin, tangerine, or satsuma (which may be synonyms). Fruit sold under these names include many which are, like Sunbursts and Murcotts, hybrids with grapefruit ancestry. The diversity of fruits called limes is remarkable; some, like the Spanish lime and Wild lime, are not even citrus fruit.


title: Grapefruit–drug interactions

text: In some countries, citrus fruit must be labelled with the name of a registered cultivar. Juice is often not so labelled. Some medical literature also names the cultivar tested.


title: Grapefruit–drug interactions

text: The discovery that flavonoids are responsible for some interactions make it plausible that other fruit and vegetables are affected.


title: Grapefruit–drug interactions

text: Apple juice, especially commercially produced products, interferes with the action of OATPs. This interference can decrease the absorption of a variety of commonly used medications, including beta blockers like atenolol, antibiotics like ciprofloxacin, and antihistamines like montelukast.


title: Grapefruit–drug interactions

text: Apple juice has been implicated in interfering with etoposide, a chemotherapy drug, and cyclosporine, taken by transplant patients to prevent rejection of their new organs.


title: Grapefruit–drug interactions

text: Pomegranate juice inhibits the action of the drug metabolizing enzymes CYP2C9 and CYP3A4. However, as of 2014, the currently available literature does not appear to indicate a clinically relevant impact of pomegranate juice on drugs that are metabolized by CYP2C9 and CYP3A4.


title: Grapefruit–drug interactions

text: Researchers have identified over 85 drugs with which grapefruit is known to have an adverse reaction. According to a review done by the Canadian Medical Association, there is an increase in the number of potential drugs that can interact with grapefruit juice, and of the number of fruit types that can interact with those drugs. From 2008 to 2012, the number of drugs known to potentially interact with grapefruit, with risk of harmful or even dangerous effects (gastrointestinal bleeding, nephrotoxicity), increased from 17 to 43.


title: Grapefruit–drug interactions

text: The interaction between citrus and medication depends on the individual drug, and not the class of the drug. Drugs that interact usually share three common features: they are taken orally, normally only a small amount enters systemic blood circulation, and they are metabolized by CYP3A4. However, the effects on the CYP3A4 in the liver could in principle cause interactions with non-oral drugs, and non-CYP3A4-mediated effects also exist.


title: Grapefruit–drug interactions

text: Cytochrome isoforms affected by grapefruit components include CYP3A4, CYP1A2, CYP2C9, and CYP2D6. Drugs that are metabolized by these enzymes may have interactions with components of grapefruit.


title: Grapefruit–drug interactions

text: An easy way to tell if a medication may be affected by grapefruit juice is by researching whether another known CYP3A4 inhibitor drug is already contraindicated with the active drug of the medication in question. Examples of such known CYP3A4 inhibitors include cisapride (Propulsid), erythromycin, itraconazole (Sporanox), ketoconazole (Nizoral), and mibefradil (Posicor).


title: Grapefruit–drug interactions

text: Research has been done on the interaction between amphetamines and CYP2D6 enzyme, and researchers concluded that some parts of substrate molecules contribute to the binding of the enzyme.


title: Ridley Road (TV series)

text: Ridley Road is a British four-part television drama which premiered on BBC One on 3 October 2021, about Jewish opposition to British Fascism in the 1960s. It was adapted by Sarah Solemani from Jo Bloom's 2014 novel of the same name. The series is directed by Lisa Mulcahy and the executive producer is Nicola Shindler.


title: Ridley Road (TV series)

text: Vivien Epstein is the daughter in a traditional suburban 1960s Manchester Jewish family, comprising father David, mother Liza and a relative Roza whom the family is sheltering. The father arranges a marriage (with neither Vivien's desire nor her consent) with the father of a local Jewish boy. Vivien already has a beau, Jack, who leaves for London, desolate.


title: Ridley Road (TV series)

text: Vivien has no intention of becoming a bride. She leaves to find some Jewish relatives in London, rents a room with a non-Jewish East End resident Nettie Jones, and gets a job as a hairdresser in Soho. Far-right fascism is on the rise. One of her East End relatives, Soly Malinovsky, is a London black cab driver who heads a Jewish anti-fascist group. He asks Vivien to get involved ("anti-fascists do, they don't just say"). She agrees to infiltrate the organisation of Colin Jordan, the neo-Nazi leader of the East End thugs. Jordan's organisation (where Jack is already undercover) is based in the country mansion of a far-right English aristocrat.


title: Ridley Road (TV series)

text: Vivien affects a relationship with Jordan and his young son, and she allows Jordan to seduce her. However, both Vivien and Jack have their cover blown and are both in danger of being killed; but they each separately manage hair-raising escapes, Vivien taking a suitcase of incriminating documents that prove that Jordan has set up an illegal training camp for a neo-Nazi militia. (The police agree to investigate and prosecute Jordan.) Vivien's parents, who were devastated at her abandonment of the family home and the arranged betrothal, are now very proud of her anti-fascist work. After a tearful family reunion, Vivien flies off to Tel Aviv with Jack.


title: Ridley Road (TV series)

text: The series was filmed in Ashton under Lyne, Bolton, Manchester and Liverpool and at Broughton Hall near Skipton, North Yorkshire.


title: Ridley Road (TV series)

text: Gillean Craig, for the "Church Times", was unimpressed, saying: "The plot is paper-thin, and the pile-up of improbabilities is too great. This is a lost opportunity: the theme deserves a far more rigorous head as well as heart."


title: Ridley Road (TV series)

text: Lucy Mangan, in a three-starred review for "The Guardian", said: "The direction feels strangely stilted and the dialogue flimsy, the script never quite first-class. The parts set in the hairdresser’s where Vivien gets a job are almost cartoonish, and the relentless salt-of-the-earthiness of everyone born in the East End becomes quite grating. Still, even if you might wish it exhibited a bit more complexity and artistic refinement, it is a drama with resonance. It has the right story to tell – alas – in our current dark age.


title: Ridley Road (TV series)

text: Carol Midgley, for "The Times", gave it four stars, saying "What makes Ridley Road a joy to watch is not only the stellar cast, but the storytelling... It is beautifully crafted, weaving in archive footage, making it look as if Vivien is actually in Sixties London."


title: Ridley Road (TV series)

text: Reviewing "Ridley Road" for "The Independent", Ed Cumming said: "By setting a made-up story within accurate historical context, Solemani gives herself plenty of freedom, and takes advantage of the licence. Ridley Road is an action thriller as well as a period piece, with chases, fights and romance to go with its political context... The contemporary parallels are so near to the surface that there’s no need to lay them on too thickly. Instead, Ridley Road shows that extremism needn’t arise out of extraordinary situations. It emerges from everyday life."


title: Joe Dallesandro

text: Joseph Angelo D'Allesandro III (born December 31, 1948) is an American actor and Warhol superstar. Having also crossed over into mainstream roles such as mobster Lucky Luciano in the film "The Cotton Club", Dallesandro was a sex symbol of gay subculture in the 1960s and 1970s, and of several American underground films.


title: Joe Dallesandro

text: Dallesandro starred in the 1968 film "Flesh" as a male prostitute. The film was produced by Andy Warhol. In 1970, "Rolling Stone" declared Dallesandro's second starring vehicle, "Trash", the "Best Film of the Year", making him a star of the youth culture, sexual revolution, and subcultural New York City art collective of the 1970s. Dallesandro also starred in 1972's "Heat", another Warhol film that was conceived as a parody of the film "Sunset Boulevard".


title: Joe Dallesandro

text: Joe Dallesandro was born in Pensacola, Florida, to Joseph Angelo D'Allesandro II, who was in the U.S. Navy. His mother, Thelma Testman, was 16 years old. By the time Joe III was five years old, his mother was serving fifteen years in a Federal Penitentiary for interstate auto theft.


title: Joe Dallesandro

text: Dallesandro and his brother Bobby were taken to New York by their father, who worked as an electrical engineer. Both boys were eventually placed into the Angel Guardian Home in Harlem, prior to being fostered by a couple in Brooklyn. The family later moved to North Babylon, Long Island. The senior D'Allesandro would visit them about once a month at their foster parents' home.


title: Joe Dallesandro

text: Dallesandro was initially content living with his foster parents, but later reportedly began to resent them, thinking that they were preventing him from living with his father.


title: Joe Dallesandro

text: Dallesandro began acting out, and became aggressive. He repeatedly ran away from his foster home until his birth father finally relented and allowed Joe to live with him. At age 14, Dallesandro and his brother moved to Queens to live with their paternal grandparents and their father.


title: Joe Dallesandro

text: At age 15, he was expelled from school for punching the school principal, who had reportedly insulted his father. After this, he began hanging out with gangs and stealing cars. In one such instance, Dallesandro panicked and smashed the stolen car he was driving through the gate of the Holland Tunnel. He was stopped by a police roadblock and was shot once in the leg by police who mistakenly thought he was armed. Dallesandro managed to escape being caught by police, but was later arrested when his father took him to the hospital for his gunshot wound. He was sentenced to Camp Cass Rehabilitation Center for Boys in the Catskills in 1964.


title: Joe Dallesandro

text: In 1965, aged 16, he ran away from the camp, and supported himself by nude modeling, appearing most notably in short films and magazine photos for Bob Mizer's Athletic Model Guild.


title: Joe Dallesandro

text: Dallesandro met Andy Warhol and Paul Morrissey in 1967 while they were shooting "Four Stars", and they cast him in the film on the spot. Warhol would later comment "In my movies, everyone's in love with Joe Dallesandro."


title: Joe Dallesandro

text: Dallesandro played a hustler in his third Warhol film, "Flesh" (1968), where he had several nude scenes. "Flesh" became a crossover hit with mainstream audiences, and Dallesandro became the most popular of the Warhol stars. "New York Times" film critic Vincent Canby wrote of him: "His physique is so magnificently shaped that men as well as women become disconnected at the sight of him."


title: Joe Dallesandro

text: As Dallesandro's underground fame began to cross over into the popular culture, he appeared on the cover of "Rolling Stone" in April 1971. He was also photographed by some of the top celebrity photographers of the time: Francesco Scavullo, Annie Leibovitz, Richard Avedon.


title: Joe Dallesandro

text: Dallesandro appeared in "Lonesome Cowboys" (1968), "Trash" (1970), "Heat" (1972), "Andy Warhol's Frankenstein", and "Andy Warhol's Dracula" (both 1974), also directed by Morrissey. These last two films were shot in Europe. After filming was complete, he chose not to return to the U.S. He appeared in Serge Gainsbourg's "Je t'aime moi non plus" (France, 1976), which starred Gainsbourg's girlfriend, British actress Jane Birkin.


title: Joe Dallesandro

text: Dallesandro continued to star in films made mainly in France and Italy for the rest of the decade, returning to the U.S. in the 1980s. He made several mainstream films during the 1980s and 1990s. One of his first notable roles was that of 1920s gangster Lucky Luciano in Francis Coppola's "The Cotton Club" (1984). Working with manager/attorney Stann Findelle, his career enjoyed a resurgence.


title: Joe Dallesandro

text: He had roles in "Critical Condition" (1987) opposite Richard Pryor, "Sunset" (1988) with Bruce Willis and James Garner, "Cry-Baby" (1990) with Johnny Depp, "Guncrazy" (1992) with Drew Barrymore, and Steven Soderbergh's 1999 film "The Limey". He has also worked in television. In 1986, he co-starred in the ABC drama series "Fortune Dane". The series lasted only five episodes. Dallesandro was also a regular for the first season (1987-1988) of the CBS crime drama series "Wiseguy", appeared three episodes on NBC’s "Miami Vice", and a two hour episode of ABC's "Matlock" in 1990.


title: Joe Dallesandro

text: The Teddy Award, an honor recognizing those filmmakers and artists who have contributed to the further acceptance of LGBT people, culture and artistic vision, was awarded to Joe in February 2009. A biography, "Little Joe: Superstar" by Michael Ferguson was released earlier in 2001, and a filmed documentary, Little Joe (2009), was released with Dallesandro serving as writer and producer. His adopted daughter, Vedra Mehagian, also served as a producer of the film.


title: Joe Dallesandro

text: In 2018 he starred as himself in Uli Lommel's "Factory Cowboys: Working with Warhol". The film was based on Lommel's own biography and partly on Dallesandro's memories of the period during which he worked with Andy Warhol.


title: Joe Dallesandro

text: He married his first wife, Leslie, the daughter of his father's girlfriend, in 1967. Their son, Michael, was born December 19, 1968. The marriage was dissolved in 1969. His second marriage was to Theresa ("Terry") in 1970. Their son, Joseph A. Dallesandro, Jr., was born November 14, 1970. The couple divorced in early 1978. In 1987, Dallesandro was married a third time, to Kimberly ("Kim"). Dallesandro has a grandson and a granddaughter by his son Michael, as well as a grandson by his son Joseph.


title: Joe Dallesandro

text: Semi-retired from acting, as of 2009 Dallesandro managed a residential hotel building in Los Angeles.


title: Geological history of Earth

text: The geological history of Earth follows the major geological events in Earth's past based on the geological time scale, a system of chronological measurement based on the study of the planet's rock layers (stratigraphy). Earth formed about 4.54 billion years ago by accretion from the solar nebula, a disk-shaped mass of dust and gas left over from the formation of the Sun, which also created the rest of the Solar System.


title: Geological history of Earth

text: Initially, the Earth was molten due to extreme volcanism and frequent collisions with other bodies. Eventually, the outer layer of the planet cooled to form a solid crust when water began accumulating in the atmosphere. The Moon formed soon afterwards, possibly as a result of the impact of a planetoid with the Earth. Outgassing and volcanic activity produced the primordial atmosphere. Condensing water vapor, augmented by ice delivered from comets, produced the oceans. However, more recently, in August 2020, researchers reported that sufficient water to fill the oceans may have always been on the Earth since the beginning of the planet's formation.


title: Geological history of Earth

text: As the surface continually reshaped itself over hundreds of millions of years, continents formed and broke apart. They migrated across the surface, occasionally combining to form a supercontinent. Roughly , the earliest-known supercontinent Rodinia, began to break apart. The continents later recombined to form Pannotia, , then finally Pangaea, which broke apart .


title: Geological history of Earth

text: The present pattern of ice ages began about , then intensified at the end of the Pliocene. The polar regions have since undergone repeated cycles of glaciation and thaw, repeating every 40,000–100,000 years. The last glacial period of the current ice age ended about 10,000 years ago.


title: Geological history of Earth

text: The Precambrian includes approximately 90% of geologic time. It extends from 4.6 billion years ago to the beginning of the Cambrian Period (about 539 Ma). It includes three eons, the Hadean, Archean, and Proterozoic.


title: Geological history of Earth

text: Major volcanic events altering the Earth's environment and causing extinctions may have occurred 10 times in the past 3 billion years.


title: Geological history of Earth

text: During Hadean time (4.6–4 Ga), the Solar System was forming, probably within a large cloud of gas and dust around the sun, called an accretion disc from which Earth formed .


title: Geological history of Earth

text: The Hadean Eon is not formally recognized, but it essentially marks the era before we have adequate record of significant solid rocks. The oldest dated zircons date from about .


title: Geological history of Earth

text: Earth was initially molten due to extreme volcanism and frequent collisions with other bodies. Eventually, the outer layer of the planet cooled to form a solid crust when water began accumulating in the atmosphere. The Moon formed soon afterwards, possibly as a result of the impact of a large planetoid with the Earth. More recent potassium isotopic studies suggest that the Moon was formed by a smaller, high-energy, high-angular-momentum giant impact cleaving off a significant portion of the Earth. Some of this object's mass merged with the Earth, significantly altering its internal composition, and a portion was ejected into space. Some of the material survived to form an orbiting moon. Outgassing and volcanic activity produced the primordial atmosphere. Condensing water vapor, augmented by ice delivered from comets, produced the oceans. However, more recently, in August 2020, researchers reported that sufficient water to fill the oceans may have always been on the Earth since the beginning of the planet's formation.


title: Geological history of Earth

text: During the Hadean the Late Heavy Bombardment occurred (approximately ) during which a large number of impact craters are believed to have formed on the Moon, and by inference on Earth, Mercury, Venus and Mars as well. However, some scientists argue against this hypothetical Late Heavy Bombardment, pointing that the this conclusion has been drawn from data which are not fully representative (only a few crater hotspots on the Moon have been analysed).


title: Geological history of Earth

text: The Earth of the early Archean () may have had a different tectonic style. During this time, the Earth's crust cooled enough that rocks and continental plates began to form. Some scientists think because the Earth was hotter, that plate tectonic activity was more vigorous than it is today, resulting in a much greater rate of recycling of crustal material. This may have prevented cratonization and continent formation until the mantle cooled and convection slowed down. Others argue that the subcontinental lithospheric mantle is too buoyant to subduct and that the lack of Archean rocks is a function of erosion and subsequent tectonic events. Some geologists view the sudden increase of aluminum content in zircons as an indicator of the beginning of plate tectonics.


title: Geological history of Earth

text: In contrast to the Proterozoic, Archean rocks are often heavily metamorphized deep-water sediments, such as graywackes, mudstones, volcanic sediments and banded iron formations. Greenstone belts are typical Archean formations, consisting of alternating high- and low-grade metamorphic rocks. The high-grade rocks were derived from volcanic island arcs, while the low-grade metamorphic rocks represent deep-sea sediments eroded from the neighboring island rocks and deposited in a forearc basin. In short, greenstone belts represent sutured protocontinents.


title: Geological history of Earth

text: The Earth's magnetic field was established 3.5 billion years ago. The solar wind flux was about 100 times the value of the modern Sun, so the presence of the magnetic field helped prevent the planet's atmosphere from being stripped away, which is what probably happened to the atmosphere of Mars. However, the field strength was lower than at present and the magnetosphere was about half the modern radius.


title: Geological history of Earth

text: The geologic record of the Proterozoic () is more complete than that for the preceding Archean. In contrast to the deep-water deposits of the Archean, the Proterozoic features many strata that were laid down in extensive shallow epicontinental seas; furthermore, many of these rocks are less metamorphosed than Archean-age ones, and plenty are unaltered. Study of these rocks show that the eon featured massive, rapid continental accretion (unique to the Proterozoic), supercontinent cycles, and wholly modern orogenic activity. Roughly , the earliest-known supercontinent Rodinia, began to break apart. The continents later recombined to form Pannotia, 600–540 Ma.


title: Geological history of Earth

text: The first-known glaciations occurred during the Proterozoic, one began shortly after the beginning of the eon, while there were at least four during the Neoproterozoic, climaxing with the Snowball Earth of the Varangian glaciation.


title: Geological history of Earth

text: The Phanerozoic Eon is the current eon in the geologic timescale. It covers roughly 539 million years. During this period continents drifted about, eventually collected into a single landmass known as Pangea and then split up into the current continental landmasses.


title: Geological history of Earth

text: The Paleozoic spanned from roughly (Ma) and is subdivided into six geologic periods; from oldest to youngest they are the Cambrian, Ordovician, Silurian, Devonian, Carboniferous and Permian. Geologically, the Paleozoic starts shortly after the breakup of a supercontinent called Pannotia and at the end of a global ice age. Throughout the early Paleozoic, the Earth's landmass was broken up into a substantial number of relatively small continents. Toward the end of the era the continents gathered together into a supercontinent called Pangaea, which included most of the Earth's land area.


title: Geological history of Earth

text: The Cambrian is a major division of the geologic timescale that begins about 538.8 ± 0.2 Ma. Cambrian continents are thought to have resulted from the breakup of a Neoproterozoic supercontinent called Pannotia. The waters of the Cambrian period appear to have been widespread and shallow. Continental drift rates may have been anomalously high. Laurentia, Baltica and Siberia remained independent continents following the break-up of the supercontinent of Pannotia. Gondwana started to drift toward the South Pole. Panthalassa covered most of the southern hemisphere, and minor oceans included the Proto-Tethys Ocean, Iapetus Ocean and Khanty Ocean.


title: Geological history of Earth

text: The Ordovician period started at a major extinction event called the Cambrian–Ordovician extinction event some time about 485.4 ± 1.9 Ma. During the Ordovician the southern continents were collected into a single continent called Gondwana. Gondwana started the period in the equatorial latitudes and, as the period progressed, drifted toward the South Pole. Early in the Ordovician the continents Laurentia, Siberia and Baltica were still independent continents (since the break-up of the supercontinent Pannotia earlier), but Baltica began to move toward Laurentia later in the period, causing the Iapetus Ocean to shrink between them. Also, Avalonia broke free from Gondwana and began to head north toward Laurentia. The Rheic Ocean was formed as a result of this. By the end of the period, Gondwana had neared or approached the pole and was largely glaciated.


title: Geological history of Earth

text: The Ordovician came to a close in a series of extinction events that, taken together, comprise the second-largest of the five major extinction events in Earth's history in terms of percentage of genera that became extinct. The only larger one was the Permian-Triassic extinction event. The extinctions occurred approximately and mark the boundary between the Ordovician and the following Silurian Period.


title: Geological history of Earth

text: The most-commonly accepted theory is that these events were triggered by the onset of an ice age, in the Hirnantian faunal stage that ended the long, stable greenhouse conditions typical of the Ordovician. The ice age was probably not as long-lasting as once thought; study of oxygen isotopes in fossil brachiopods shows that it was probably no longer than 0.5 to 1.5 million years. The event was preceded by a fall in atmospheric carbon dioxide (from 7000ppm to 4400ppm) which selectively affected the shallow seas where most organisms lived. As the southern supercontinent Gondwana drifted over the South Pole, ice caps formed on it. Evidence of these ice caps have been detected in Upper Ordovician rock strata of North Africa and then-adjacent northeastern South America, which were south-polar locations at the time.


title: Geological history of Earth

text: The Silurian is a major division of the geologic timescale that started about 443.8 ± 1.5 Ma. During the Silurian, Gondwana continued a slow southward drift to high southern latitudes, but there is evidence that the Silurian ice caps were less extensive than those of the late Ordovician glaciation. The melting of ice caps and glaciers contributed to a rise in sea levels, recognizable from the fact that Silurian sediments overlie eroded Ordovician sediments, forming an unconformity. Other cratons and continent fragments drifted together near the equator, starting the formation of a second supercontinent known as Euramerica. The vast ocean of Panthalassa covered most of the northern hemisphere. Other minor oceans include Proto-Tethys, Paleo-Tethys, Rheic Ocean, a seaway of Iapetus Ocean (now in between Avalonia and Laurentia), and newly formed Ural Ocean.


title: Geological history of Earth

text: The Devonian spanned roughly from 419 to 359 Ma. The period was a time of great tectonic activity, as Laurasia and Gondwana drew closer together. The continent Euramerica (or Laurussia) was created in the early Devonian by the collision of Laurentia and Baltica, which rotated into the natural dry zone along the Tropic of Capricorn. In these near-deserts, the Old Red Sandstone sedimentary beds formed, made red by the oxidized iron (hematite) characteristic of drought conditions. Near the equator Pangaea began to consolidate from the plates containing North America and Europe, further raising the northern Appalachian Mountains and forming the Caledonian Mountains in Great Britain and Scandinavia. The southern continents remained tied together in the supercontinent of Gondwana. The remainder of modern Eurasia lay in the Northern Hemisphere. Sea levels were high worldwide, and much of the land lay submerged under shallow seas. The deep, enormous Panthalassa (the "universal ocean") covered the rest of the planet. Other minor oceans were Paleo-Tethys, Proto-Tethys, Rheic Ocean and Ural Ocean (which was closed during the collision with Siberia and Baltica).


title: Geological history of Earth

text: A global drop in sea level at the end of the Devonian reversed early in the Carboniferous; this created the widespread epicontinental seas and carbonate deposition of the Mississippian. There was also a drop in south polar temperatures; southern Gondwana was glaciated throughout the period, though it is uncertain if the ice sheets were a holdover from the Devonian or not. These conditions apparently had little effect in the deep tropics, where lush coal swamps flourished within 30 degrees of the northernmost glaciers. A mid-Carboniferous drop in sea-level precipitated a major marine extinction, one that hit crinoids and ammonites especially hard. This sea-level drop and the associated unconformity in North America separate the Mississippian Period from the Pennsylvanian period.


title: Geological history of Earth

text: The Carboniferous was a time of active mountain building, as the supercontinent Pangea came together. The southern continents remained tied together in the supercontinent Gondwana, which collided with North America-Europe (Laurussia) along the present line of eastern North America. This continental collision resulted in the Hercynian orogeny in Europe, and the Alleghenian orogeny in North America; it also extended the newly uplifted Appalachians southwestward as the Ouachita Mountains. In the same time frame, much of present eastern Eurasian plate welded itself to Europe along the line of the Ural mountains. There were two major oceans in the Carboniferous: the Panthalassa and Paleo-Tethys. Other minor oceans were shrinking and eventually closed the Rheic Ocean (closed by the assembly of South and North America), the small, shallow Ural Ocean (which was closed by the collision of Baltica, and Siberia continents, creating the Ural Mountains) and Proto-Tethys Ocean.


title: Geological history of Earth

text: During the Permian all the Earth's major land masses, except portions of East Asia, were collected into a single supercontinent known as Pangaea. Pangaea straddled the equator and extended toward the poles, with a corresponding effect on ocean currents in the single great ocean ("Panthalassa", the "universal sea"), and the Paleo-Tethys Ocean, a large ocean that was between Asia and Gondwana. The Cimmeria continent rifted away from Gondwana and drifted north to Laurasia, causing the Paleo-Tethys to shrink. A new ocean was growing on its southern end, the Tethys Ocean, an ocean that would dominate much of the Mesozoic Era. Large continental landmasses create climates with extreme variations of heat and cold ("continental climate") and monsoon conditions with highly seasonal rainfall patterns. Deserts seem to have been widespread on Pangaea.


title: Geological history of Earth

text: After the vigorous convergent plate mountain-building of the late Paleozoic, Mesozoic tectonic deformation was comparatively mild. Nevertheless, the era featured the dramatic rifting of the supercontinent Pangaea. Pangaea gradually split into a northern continent, Laurasia, and a southern continent, Gondwana. This created the passive continental margin that characterizes most of the Atlantic coastline (such as along the U.S. East Coast) today.


title: Geological history of Earth

text: The Triassic Period extends from about 252.17 ± 0.06 to 201.3 ± 0.2 Ma. During the Triassic, almost all the Earth's land mass was concentrated into a single supercontinent centered more or less on the equator, called Pangaea ("all the land"). This took the form of a giant "Pac-Man" with an east-facing "mouth" constituting the Tethys sea, a vast gulf that opened farther westward in the mid-Triassic, at the expense of the shrinking Paleo-Tethys Ocean, an ocean that existed during the Paleozoic.


title: Geological history of Earth

text: The remainder was the world-ocean known as Panthalassa ("all the sea"). All the deep-ocean sediments laid down during the Triassic have disappeared through subduction of oceanic plates; thus, very little is known of the Triassic open ocean. The supercontinent Pangaea was rifting during the Triassic—especially late in the period—but had not yet separated. The first nonmarine sediments in the rift that marks the initial break-up of Pangea—which separated New Jersey from Morocco—are of Late Triassic age; in the U.S., these thick sediments comprise the Newark Supergroup.


title: Geological history of Earth

text: Because of the limited shoreline of one super-continental mass, Triassic marine deposits are globally relatively rare; despite their prominence in Western Europe, where the Triassic was first studied. In North America, for example, marine deposits are limited to a few exposures in the west. Thus Triassic stratigraphy is mostly based on organisms living in lagoons and hypersaline environments, such as "Estheria" crustaceans and terrestrial vertebrates.


title: Geological history of Earth

text: During the early Jurassic, the supercontinent Pangaea broke up into the northern supercontinent Laurasia and the southern supercontinent Gondwana; the Gulf of Mexico opened in the new rift between North America and what is now Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula. The Jurassic North Atlantic Ocean was relatively narrow, while the South Atlantic did not open until the following Cretaceous Period, when Gondwana itself rifted apart.


title: Geological history of Earth

text: The Tethys Sea closed, and the Neotethys basin appeared. Climates were warm, with no evidence of glaciation. As in the Triassic, there was apparently no land near either pole, and no extensive ice caps existed. The Jurassic geological record is good in western Europe, where extensive marine sequences indicate a time when much of the continent was submerged under shallow tropical seas; famous locales include the Jurassic Coast World Heritage Site and the renowned late Jurassic "lagerstätten" of Holzmaden and Solnhofen.


title: Geological history of Earth

text: In contrast, the North American Jurassic record is the poorest of the Mesozoic, with few outcrops at the surface. Though the epicontinental Sundance Sea left marine deposits in parts of the northern plains of the United States and Canada during the late Jurassic, most exposed sediments from this period are continental, such as the alluvial deposits of the Morrison Formation. The first of several massive batholiths were emplaced in the northern Cordillera beginning in the mid-Jurassic, marking the Nevadan orogeny. Important Jurassic exposures are also found in Russia, India, South America, Japan, Australasia and the United Kingdom.


title: Geological history of Earth

text: During the Cretaceous, the late Paleozoic-early Mesozoic supercontinent of Pangaea completed its breakup into present day continents, although their positions were substantially different at the time. As the Atlantic Ocean widened, the convergent-margin orogenies that had begun during the Jurassic continued in the North American Cordillera, as the Nevadan orogeny was followed by the Sevier and Laramide orogenies. Though Gondwana was still intact in the beginning of the Cretaceous, Gondwana itself broke up as South America, Antarctica and Australia rifted away from Africa (though India and Madagascar remained attached to each other); thus, the South Atlantic and Indian Oceans were newly formed. Such active rifting lifted great undersea mountain chains along the welts, raising eustatic sea levels worldwide.


title: Geological history of Earth

text: To the north of Africa the Tethys Sea continued to narrow. Broad shallow seas advanced across central North America (the Western Interior Seaway) and Europe, then receded late in the period, leaving thick marine deposits sandwiched between coal beds. At the peak of the Cretaceous transgression, one-third of Earth's present land area was submerged. The Cretaceous is justly famous for its chalk; indeed, more chalk formed in the Cretaceous than in any other period in the Phanerozoic. Mid-ocean ridge activity—or rather, the circulation of seawater through the enlarged ridges—enriched the oceans in calcium; this made the oceans more saturated, as well as increased the bioavailability of the element for calcareous nanoplankton. These widespread carbonates and other sedimentary deposits make the Cretaceous rock record especially fine. Famous formations from North America include the rich marine fossils of Kansas's Smoky Hill Chalk Member and the terrestrial fauna of the late Cretaceous Hell Creek Formation. Other important Cretaceous exposures occur in Europe and China. In the area that is now India, massive lava beds called the Deccan Traps were laid down in the very late Cretaceous and early Paleocene.


title: Geological history of Earth

text: The Cenozoic Era covers the  million years since the Cretaceous–Paleogene extinction event up to and including the present day. By the end of the Mesozoic era, the continents had rifted into nearly their present form. Laurasia became North America and Eurasia, while Gondwana split into South America, Africa, Australia, Antarctica and the Indian subcontinent, which collided with the Asian plate. This impact gave rise to the Himalayas. The Tethys Sea, which had separated the northern continents from Africa and India, began to close up, forming the Mediterranean Sea.


title: Geological history of Earth

text: The Paleogene (alternatively Palaeogene) Period is a unit of geologic time that began and ended 23.03 Ma and comprises the first part of the Cenozoic Era. This period consists of the Paleocene, Eocene and Oligocene Epochs.


title: Geological history of Earth

text: In many ways, the Paleocene continued processes that had begun during the late Cretaceous Period. During the Paleocene, the continents continued to drift toward their present positions. Supercontinent Laurasia had not yet separated into three continents. Europe and Greenland were still connected. North America and Asia were still intermittently joined by a land bridge, while Greenland and North America were beginning to separate. The Laramide orogeny of the late Cretaceous continued to uplift the Rocky Mountains in the American west, which ended in the succeeding epoch. South and North America remained separated by equatorial seas (they joined during the Neogene); the components of the former southern supercontinent Gondwana continued to split apart, with Africa, South America, Antarctica and Australia pulling away from each other. Africa was heading north toward Europe, slowly closing the Tethys Ocean, and India began its migration to Asia that would lead to a tectonic collision and the formation of the Himalayas.


title: Geological history of Earth

text: During the Eocene ( - ), the continents continued to drift toward their present positions. At the beginning of the period, Australia and Antarctica remained connected, and warm equatorial currents mixed with colder Antarctic waters, distributing the heat around the world and keeping global temperatures high. But when Australia split from the southern continent around 45 Ma, the warm equatorial currents were deflected away from Antarctica, and an isolated cold water channel developed between the two continents. The Antarctic region cooled down, and the ocean surrounding Antarctica began to freeze, sending cold water and ice floes north, reinforcing the cooling. The present pattern of ice ages began about .


title: Geological history of Earth

text: The northern supercontinent of Laurasia began to break up, as Europe, Greenland and North America drifted apart. In western North America, mountain building started in the Eocene, and huge lakes formed in the high flat basins among uplifts. In Europe, the Tethys Sea finally vanished, while the uplift of the Alps isolated its final remnant, the Mediterranean, and created another shallow sea with island archipelagos to the north. Though the North Atlantic was opening, a land connection appears to have remained between North America and Europe since the faunas of the two regions are very similar. India continued its journey away from Africa and began its collision with Asia, creating the Himalayan orogeny.


title: Geological history of Earth

text: The Oligocene Epoch extends from about to . During the Oligocene the continents continued to drift toward their present positions.


title: Geological history of Earth

text: Antarctica continued to become more isolated and finally developed a permanent ice cap. Mountain building in western North America continued, and the Alps started to rise in Europe as the African plate continued to push north into the Eurasian plate, isolating the remnants of Tethys Sea. A brief marine incursion marks the early Oligocene in Europe. There appears to have been a land bridge in the early Oligocene between North America and Europe since the faunas of the two regions are very similar. During the Oligocene, South America was finally detached from Antarctica and drifted north toward North America. It also allowed the Antarctic Circumpolar Current to flow, rapidly cooling the continent.


title: Geological history of Earth

text: The Neogene Period is a unit of geologic time starting 23.03 Ma. and ends at 2.588 Ma. The Neogene Period follows the Paleogene Period. The Neogene consists of the Miocene and Pliocene and is followed by the Quaternary Period.


title: Geological history of Earth

text: During the Miocene continents continued to drift toward their present positions. Of the modern geologic features, only the land bridge between South America and North America was absent, the subduction zone along the Pacific Ocean margin of South America caused the rise of the Andes and the southward extension of the Meso-American peninsula. India continued to collide with Asia. The Tethys Seaway continued to shrink and then disappeared as Africa collided with Eurasia in the Turkish-Arabian region between 19 and 12 Ma (ICS 2004). Subsequent uplift of mountains in the western Mediterranean region and a global fall in sea levels combined to cause a temporary drying up of the Mediterranean Sea resulting in the Messinian salinity crisis near the end of the Miocene.


title: Geological history of Earth

text: The Pliocene extends from to . During the Pliocene continents continued to drift toward their present positions, moving from positions possibly as far as from their present locations to positions only 70 km from their current locations.


title: Geological history of Earth

text: South America became linked to North America through the Isthmus of Panama during the Pliocene, bringing a nearly complete end to South America's distinctive marsupial faunas. The formation of the Isthmus had major consequences on global temperatures, since warm equatorial ocean currents were cut off and an Atlantic cooling cycle began, with cold Arctic and Antarctic waters dropping temperatures in the now-isolated Atlantic Ocean. Africa's collision with Europe formed the Mediterranean Sea, cutting off the remnants of the Tethys Ocean. Sea level changes exposed the land-bridge between Alaska and Asia. Near the end of the Pliocene, about (the start of the Quaternary Period), the current ice age began. The polar regions have since undergone repeated cycles of glaciation and thaw, repeating every 40,000–100,000 years.


title: Geological history of Earth

text: The Pleistocene extends from to 11,700 years before present. The modern continents were essentially at their present positions during the Pleistocene, the plates upon which they sit probably having moved no more than relative to each other since the beginning of the period.


title: Geological history of Earth

text: The Holocene Epoch began approximately 11,700 calendar years before present and continues to the present. During the Holocene, continental motions have been less than a kilometer.


title: Geological history of Earth

text: The last glacial period of the current ice age ended about 10,000 years ago. Ice melt caused world sea levels to rise about in the early part of the Holocene. In addition, many areas above about 40 degrees north latitude had been depressed by the weight of the Pleistocene glaciers and rose as much as over the late Pleistocene and Holocene, and are still rising today. The sea level rise and temporary land depression allowed temporary marine incursions into areas that are now far from the sea. Holocene marine fossils are known from Vermont, Quebec, Ontario and Michigan. Other than higher latitude temporary marine incursions associated with glacial depression, Holocene fossils are found primarily in lakebed, floodplain and cave deposits. Holocene marine deposits along low-latitude coastlines are rare because the rise in sea levels during the period exceeds any likely upthrusting of non-glacial origin. Post-glacial rebound in Scandinavia resulted in the emergence of coastal areas around the Baltic Sea, including much of Finland. The region continues to rise, still causing weak earthquakes across Northern Europe. The equivalent event in North America was the rebound of Hudson Bay, as it shrank from its larger, immediate post-glacial Tyrrell Sea phase, to near its present boundaries.


title: Edvard Beneš

text: Edvard Beneš (; 28 May 1884 – 3 September 1948) was a Czech politician and statesman who served as the president of Czechoslovakia from 1935 to 1938, and again from 1945 to 1948. He also led the Czechoslovak government-in-exile 1939 to 1945 during World War II.


title: Edvard Beneš

text: As president, Beneš faced two major crises, which both resulted in his resignation. His first resignation came after the Munich Agreement and subsequent German occupation of Czechoslovakia in 1938, which brought his government into exile in the United Kingdom. The second came about with the 1948 Communist coup, which created the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic. Before his time as president, Beneš was also the first foreign affairs minister (1918–1935) and the fourth prime minister (1921–1922) of Czechoslovakia. A member of the Czech National Social Party, he was known as a skilled diplomat.


title: Edvard Beneš

text: Beneš was born into a peasant family in 1884 in the small town of Kožlany, Kingdom of Bohemia, Cisleithania, in what was then the Austro-Hungarian Empire. He was the youngest son and tenth child overall of Matěj Beneš (1843–1910) and Anna Petronila (née Beneš; 1840–1909). One of his siblings was the future Czechoslovak politician Vojta Beneš. His nephew through his brother Václav was Bohuš Beneš, a diplomat and author. Bohuš was the father of Emilie Benes Brzezinski, an American sculptor, and Václav E. Beneš, a Czech-American mathematician.


title: Edvard Beneš

text: Beneš spent much of his youth in the Vinohrady district of Prague, where he attended a grammar school from 1896 to 1904. His landlord's family was acquainted with his future wife Anna Vlčková (1885–1974, later Hana Benešová) (). The two would study French, history, and literature together at the Sorbonne. Edvard and Anna got engaged in May 1906, and married in November 1909. Some time after their engagement, Anna changed her name to Hana. Edvard had always preferred to call her Hana, because he had just ended a relationship with another woman named Anna. Around the same time, Edvard Beneš also changed his name, going from the original spelling "Eduard" to "Edvard".


title: Edvard Beneš

text: He played football (soccer) as an amateur for Slavia Prague. After studying philosophy at Charles-Ferdinand University in Prague, Beneš left for Paris and continued his studies at the Sorbonne and at the Independent School of Political and Social Studies. He completed his first degree in Dijon, where he received his doctorate of law in 1908. Beneš then taught for three years at a business college, and after his 1912 habilitation in philosophy, Beneš became a lecturer of sociology at Charles University. He was also involved in scouting.


title: Edvard Beneš

text: In 1907, Beneš published over 200 articles in the Czech social democratic newspaper "Právo Lidu" () containing his impressions of life in Western Europe. Beneš wrote he found Germany to be repulsive and an "empire of force and power" after visiting Berlin. In London, he wrote that "the situation here is terrible and so is life". During World War II, when Beneš was living in exile in London, the German Propaganda Ministry gleefully republished his articles from 1907 expressing mostly negative sentiments about life in Britain. However, Beneš loved Paris, the "city of light". He wrote that he found it to be "almost miraculously ... a magnificent synthesis of modern civilization, of which France is the bearer". For the rest of his life, Beneš was a passionate Francophile and he always stated that Paris was his favorite city.


title: Edvard Beneš

text: During World War I, Beneš was one of the leading organizers of an independent Czechoslovakia from abroad. He organized a pro-independence and anti-Austrian secret resistance movement, Maffia. In September 1915, he went into exile in Paris, where he made intricate diplomatic efforts to gain recognition from France and the United Kingdom for Czechoslovak independence. From 1916 to 1918, he was a Secretary of the Czechoslovak National Council in Paris and Minister of the Interior and of Foreign Affairs in the Provisional Czechoslovak government.


title: Edvard Beneš

text: In May 1917, Beneš, Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk and Milan Rastislav Štefánik were reported to be organizing a "Czechoslovak Legion" to fight for the Western Allies in France and Italy, recruited from among Czechs and Slovaks who were able to get to the front and also from the large emigrant populations in the United States, which was said to number more than 1,500,000. The force grew into one of tens of thousands and took part in several battles, including the Battles of Zborov and Bakhmach in Russia.


title: Edvard Beneš

text: From 1918 to 1935, Beneš was the first and longest-serving Foreign Minister of Czechoslovakia. On 31 October 1918, Karel Kramář reported from Geneva to Prague: "If you saw our Dr. Beneš and his mastery of global questions ... you would take off your hat and say it was truly marvelous!" His international stature was such that he held the post through 10 successive governments, one of which he headed himself from 1921 to 1922. In 1919, his decision to pull demoralized Czechoslovak Legions out of the Russian Civil War was denounced by Kramář as a betrayal. He represented Czechoslovakia at the 1919 peace conference in Paris, which led to the Versailles Treaty.


title: Edvard Beneš

text: A committed Czechoslovakist, Beneš did not consider Czechs and Slovaks to be separate ethnicities. He served in the National Assembly from 1920 to 1925 and again from 1929 to 1935, representing the Czechoslovak National Social Party (called the Czechoslovak Social Party until 1925). He briefly returned to the academic world as a professor, in 1921. After Jan Černý's first stint as prime minister, Beneš formed a government () for a little over a year from 1921 to 1922.


title: Edvard Beneš

text: In the early 1920s, Beneš and his mentor President Masaryk viewed Kramář as the principal threat to Czechoslovak democracy, seeing him as a "reactionary" Czech chauvinist who was opposed to their plans for Czechoslovakia as a multi-cultural, multi-ethnic state. Masaryk and Beneš were openly doubtful of Kramář's commitment to "Western values" that they were committed to such as democracy, enlightenment, rationality and tolerance, seeing him as a romantic Pan-Slavist who looked towards the east rather than the west for ideas.


title: Edvard Beneš

text: Kramář very much resented the way in which Masaryk openly groomed Beneš as his successor, noting that Masaryk put articles into the Constitution that set 45 as the age limit for senators, but 35 as the age limit for the presidency, which conveniently made Beneš eligible for the presidency. The charge of Czech chauvinism against Kramář had some substance as he openly proclaimed his belief that the Czechs should be the dominant people in Czechoslovakia, denounced Masaryk and Beneš for their belief that the Sudeten Germans should be equal to the Czechs, and made clear his opposition to having German as one of the official languages of Czechoslovakia, views that made him abhorrent to Beneš.


title: Edvard Beneš

text: Between 1923 and 1927, Beneš was a member of the League of Nations Council, serving as president of its committee from 1927 to 1928. He was a renowned and influential figure at international conferences, such as those at Genoa in 1922, Locarno in 1925, The Hague in 1930 and Lausanne in 1932.


title: Edvard Beneš

text: When President Tomáš Masaryk retired in 1935, Beneš succeeded him. Under Masaryk, the "Hrad" ("the castle", as the Czechs called the presidency) had been built up into a major extra-constitutional institution enjoying considerably more informal power than the plain language of the Constitution indicated. The framers of the Constitution had intended to create a parliamentary system in which the Prime Minister would be the country's leading political figure. However, due to a complex system of proportional representation, no party even approached the 151 seats needed for a majority; as mentioned above, there were ten cabinets during Masaryk's presidency.


title: Edvard Beneš

text: The Czech historian Igor Lukeš () wrote about the power of the "Hrad" under Beneš: "By the spring of 1938, the Czechoslovak parliament, the prime minister, and the cabinet had been pushed aside by Beneš. During the dramatic summer months he was – for better or worse – the sole decision-maker in the country".


title: Edvard Beneš

text: Edvard Beneš opposed Nazi Germany's claim to the German-speaking Sudetenland in 1938. The crisis began on 24 April 1938 when Konrad Henlein at the party congress of the Sudeten German Party in Karlsbad (modern Karlovy Vary) announced the 8-point "Karlsbad programme" demanding autonomy for the Sudetenland. Beneš rejected the Karlsbad programme, but in May 1938 offered the "Third Plan" which would have created 20 cantons in the Sudetenland with substantial autonomy, which in turn was rejected by Henlein. Beneš was keen to go to war with Germany provided that one or more of the Great Powers fought alongside Czechoslovakia, but was unwilling to fight Germany alone. Sergei Aleksandrovsky, the Soviet minister in Prague, reported to Moscow after talking to Beneš that he was hoping to fight a "war against the whole world" provided the Soviet Union was willing to come in.


title: Edvard Beneš

text: In London in May 1938, Beneš came under diplomatic pressure from the British government to accede to the Karlsbad programme, which he initially refused. The British viewed the Sudetenland crisis as a domestic Czechoslovak crisis with international ramifications whereas Beneš saw the crisis as a matter between Czechoslovakia vs. Germany.


title: Edvard Beneš

text: In July 1938, the British Foreign Secretary Lord Halifax offered the services of a British mediator Lord Runciman, to resolve the crisis, with the promise that Britain would support Czechoslovakia if Beneš was willing to accept the conclusions of Runciman's findings. Seeing a chance to enlist British support, Beneš accepted the Runciman Mission. The British historian A. J. P. Taylor wrote: "Beneš, whatever his other defects, was an incomparable negotiator; and the talents which had been a match for Lloyd George in 1919, soon took Runciman's measure in 1938 ... Instead, Runciman found that he was being maneuvered into a position where he had to endorse the Czech offers as reasonable, and to condemn the obstinacy of the Sudetens, not of Beneš. An appalling consequence [for Britain] loomed ever nearer; if Beneš did all that Runciman asked of him, and more, Great Britain would be saddled with the moral obligation to support Czechoslovakia in the ensuring crisis. To avert this consequence, Runciman, far from urging Beneš on, had to preach delay. Beneš did not allow him to escape".


title: Edvard Beneš

text: On 4 September 1938, Beneš presented the "Fourth Plan", which, had it happened, would have come very close to turning Czechoslovakia into a federation, and would have given the Sudetenland widespread autonomy. Henlein rejected the Fourth Plan and instead launched a revolt in the Sudetenland, which soon failed. On 12 September 1938, in his keynote speech at the Nuremberg party rally, Adolf Hitler demanded the Sudetenland join Germany. On 30 September 1938, Germany, Italy, France and the United Kingdom signed the Munich Agreement, which allowed for the annexation and military occupation of the Sudetenland by Germany. Czechoslovakia was not consulted. Beneš agreed, despite opposition from within his country, after France and the United Kingdom warned that they would remain neutral, despite their previous promises, in a war between Germany and Czechoslovakia. Beneš was forced to resign on 5 October 1938, under German pressure, and was replaced by Emil Hácha.


title: Edvard Beneš

text: Despite many Czechs viewing the Munich Agreement as part of a "Western betrayal", some scholars such as George F. Kennan and John Holroyd-Doveton suggest that the Agreement may have been a surprisingly positive outcome for Czechoslovakia. They argue that, if war had broken out in 1938, Czechoslovakia would have faced a similar destruction as Poland did the following year. As Poland was attacked in 1939, France failed its own invasion efforts in Germany. One can only assume France's attack would have been equally futile in 1938, had a Czech-German war been sparked. George F. Kennan wrote in his memoirs:


title: Edvard Beneš

text: The benefit of the Munich Agreement was that it has preserved for the exacting task of the future a magnificent younger generation disciplined, industrious and physically fit that would have undoubtedly been sacrificed if the solution had been the romantic one of hopeless resistance rather than the humiliating but true heroic one of realism.


title: Edvard Beneš

text: It is the opinion of several Czech, Slovak and German historians that the Czechoslovak border fortifications made the Czechoslovak-German boundary the best-fortified in Europe as it was built on the French model of the Maginot line defense system. Despite this belief, Germany's occupation of Austria earlier that year meant Czechoslovakia could equally have been attacked from the south. If Czechoslovakia had fought, it might have assisted Britain, France and the Soviet Union, but it may not have benefitted Czechoslovakia itself. There were various predictions of how long it would take the German army to defeat the Czechs, but seldom did a prediction contemplate a Czech victory. Speculating the length of a hypothesised Czech-German war, Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk predicted two months, Winston Churchill wagered three months and according to Lavrentiy Beria's son, his father envisioned at least six months. Six months of modern warfare in a small country like Czechoslovakia would likely have left her devastated.


title: Edvard Beneš

text: Regardless, in March 1939, German troops marched into what remained of Czechoslovakia. They declared the nation a protectorate of Nazi Germany and detached Slovakia as a puppet state, thereby completing the German occupation of Czechoslovakia which would last until 1945.


title: Edvard Beneš

text: On 22 October 1938, Beneš went into exile in Putney, London. Czechoslovakia's intelligence service headed by František Moravec was still loyal to Beneš, which gave him a valuable bargaining chip in his dealings with the British as Paul Thümmel, a highly ranking officer of the "Abwehr", Germany's military intelligence, was still selling information to Moravec's group. In July 1939, Beneš realising that "information is power", started to share with the British some of the intelligence provided by "Agent A-54" as Thümmel was code-named. As the British lacked any spies in Germany comparable to Agent A-54, the British were intensely interested in the intelligence provided by him, which Beneš used to bargain with in dealings with the British.


title: Edvard Beneš

text: By July 1939, the Danzig crisis had pushed Britain to the brink of war with Germany, and British decision-makers were keenly interested in any high-level intelligence about Germany. In the summer of 1939, Beneš hoped that the Danzig crisis would end in war, seeing a war with Germany as his only hope of restoring Czechoslovakia. At the same time, Beneš started to have regular lunches with Winston Churchill, at the time only a backbench Conservative MP, and Harold Nicolson, a backbencher National Labour MP who was likewise opposed to the Munich Agreement. Besides his new British friends like Churchill and Nicolson, Beneš also resumed contact with old British friends from World War I such as the historian Robert Seton-Watson and the journalist Henry Wickham Steed, who wrote articles urging the restoration of Czechoslovakia to its pre-Munich Agreement borders.


title: Edvard Beneš

text: On 23 August 1939, Beneš met Ivan Maisky, the Soviet ambassador to the Court of St. James, to ask for Soviet support. According to Maisky's diary, Beneš told him that he wanted a common frontier between Czechoslovakia and the Soviet Union. Furthermore, Maisky's diary had Beneš saying that if Czechoslovakia were restored, he would cede Ruthenia, whose people Beneš noted were mostly Ukrainian, to the Soviet Union to bring about a common frontier.


title: Edvard Beneš

text: On the same day, Beneš learned of the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact. When he confronted Maisky, he was told that war would break out "in two weeks' time", causing Beneš to write: "My overall impression is that the Soviets want war, they have prepared for it conscientiously and they maintain that the war will take place – and that they have reserved some freedom of action for themselves ... [The pact was] a rather rough tactic to drive Hitler into war ... the Soviets are convinced that the time has come for a final struggle between capitalism, fascism and Nazism and that there will be a world revolution, which they will trigger at an opportune moment when others are exhausted by war". Maisky would be proven right on 1 September, when Germany invaded Poland, and the British and French both declared war on Germany two days later.


title: Edvard Beneš

text: In October 1939, Beneš organised the Czechoslovak National Liberation Committee, which immediately declared itself the Provisional Government of Czechoslovakia. Britain and France withheld full recognition, though unofficial contacts were permitted. A major issue in wartime Anglo-Czechoslovak relations was the Munich Agreement, which the British still stood by, and which Beneš wanted the British to abrogate. The issue was important because as long the British continued to view the Munich Agreement as being in effect, they recognized the Sudetenland as part of Germany, a British war aim that Beneš naturally objected to. A problem for Beneš during the Phoney War in the winter of 1939–40 was the British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain attached much hope to the idea that anti-Nazi conservatives in Germany would persuade the Wehrmacht to overthrow Hitler, and as the anti-Nazi conservatives were adamant that the Sudetenland remain part of Germany, Chamberlain made it clear that Britain was not at war to undo the Munich Agreement.


title: Edvard Beneš

text: On 22 February 1940 during a secret meeting in Switzerland between Ulrich von Hassell representing the German conservatives and James Lonsdale-Bryans representing Great Britain, the former told the latter there was no possibility of a post-Nazi Germany ever agreeing to return the Sudetenland. In 1939 and 1940, Chamberlain repeatedly made public statements that Britain was willing to make an "honorable peace" with a post-Nazi Germany, which meant the Sudetenland would remain within the "Reich". Beneš with his insistence on restoring Czechoslovakia to its pre-Munich borders was seen by Chamberlain as an obstacle that was standing in the way of his hope that the Wehrmacht would depose Hitler.


title: Edvard Beneš

text: After the Dunkirk evacuation, Britain was faced with a German invasion while the British Army had lost most of its equipment, which it had to abandon at Dunkirk. At the same time, 500 Czechoslovak airmen had arrived in Britain together with half of a division, which Beneš called his "last and most impressive argument" for diplomatic recognition. On 21 July 1940, the United Kingdom recognised the National Liberation Committee as being the Czechoslovak government-in-exile, with Jan Šrámek as prime minister and Beneš as president. In reclaiming the presidency, Beneš took the line that his 1938 resignation had been under duress and so was void.


title: Edvard Beneš

text: The intelligence provided by Agent A-54 was greatly valued by MI6, the British intelligence service, and Beneš used it to improve his bargaining position, telling the British he would share more intelligence from Agent A-54 in return for concessions to his government-in-exile. As part of his efforts to improve his bargaining position, Beneš often exaggerated to the British the efficiency of Moravec's group, the Czechoslovak army in exile and the underground . Besides Agent A-54, the Prime Minister of the Czech government under the Protectorate, General Alois Eliáš, was in contact with Moravec's agents. Beneš's efforts paid off as he was invited to lunch, first at 10 Downing Street by Churchill (who was now Prime Minister), and then by King George VI at Buckingham Palace.


title: Edvard Beneš

text: In September 1940, MI6 set up a communications center in Surrey for Czechoslovak intelligence and in October 1940 a Victorian mansion at Leamington Spa was given to the Czechoslovak brigade under General Miroslav. At the same time, Moravec's group began to work with the Special Operations Executive (SOE) to plan resistance in the Protectorate of Bohemia-Moravia, though the distance between Britain and the Protectorate made it difficult for the SOE to parachute in agents.


title: Edvard Beneš

text: In November 1940, in the wake of the London Blitz, Beneš, his wife, their nieces and his household staff moved to The Abbey at Aston Abbotts, near Aylesbury in Buckinghamshire. The staff of his private office, including his secretary, Eduard Táborský (), and his chief of staff, Jaromír Smutný (), moved to the Old Manor House in the neighbouring village of Wingrave, and his military intelligence staff, headed by František Moravec, was stationed in the nearby village of Addington.


title: Edvard Beneš

text: Beneš's relations with the Polish government-in-exile headed by General Władysław Sikorski were difficult due to the Teschen dispute, as General Sikorski insisted on claiming the region for Poland, while Beneš argued that it should return to Czechoslovakia when the war was over. However, Beneš felt a Polish-Czechoslovak alliance was needed to counter Germany in the post-war world, and came around to the idea of a Polish-Czechoslovak federation as the best way of squaring the circle caused by the Teschen dispute. In November 1940, Beneš and Sikorski signed an agreement in principle calling for federation, though Beneš's insistence that the Slovaks were not a nation and Slovakia would not be a full member of the federation caused much tension between himself and Slovak members of the government-in-exile.


title: Edvard Beneš

text: However, after Operation Barbarossa brought the Soviet Union into the war in June 1941, Beneš started to lose interest in the project, though a detailed agreement for the proposed federation was worked out and signed in January 1942. The Russophile Beneš always felt more comfortable with dealing with Russians rather than the Poles, whose behavior in September 1938 was a source of much resentment to Beneš. The promise from the Narkomindel that the Soviet Union supported returning Teschen to Czechoslovakia negated the whole purpose of the proposed federation for Beneš.


title: Edvard Beneš

text: On 22 June 1941, Germany launched Operation Barbarossa and invaded the Soviet Union. President Emil Hacha of the puppet government serving under the Protectorate praised Hitler in a statement for launching the "crusade against Bolshevism" and urged Czech workers to work even harder for a German victory, observing that much of the material used by the Wehrmacht was manufactured in the Protectorate. Through Moravec, Beneš sent word to both General Eliáš and Hacha that they should resign rather than give comfort to the enemy, stating his belief that the Soviet Union would inevitably defeat Germany and thus would have a decisive role in the affairs of Eastern Europe after the war. Moreover, Beneš charged that if the most of the resistance work in the Protectorate were done by the Czech communists that would give them "a pretext to take over power on the basis of the justified reproach that we helped Hitler".


title: Edvard Beneš

text: During the war Beneš told Ilya Ehrenburg, the Soviet writer: "The only salvation lies in a close alliance with your country. The Czechs may have different political opinions, but on one point we can be sure. The Soviet Union will not only liberate us from the Germans. It will also allow us to live without constant fear of the future."


title: Edvard Beneš

text: On 18 July 1941, the Soviet Union and UK recognized Beneš's government-in-exile, promised non-interference in the internal affairs of Czechoslovakia, allowed the government-in-exile to raise an army to fight alongside the Red Army on the Eastern Front; and recognized the borders of Czechoslovakia as those before the Munich Agreement. The last was the most important to Beneš, as the British government still maintained that the Munich Agreement was in effect and regarded the Sudetenland as part of Germany. Even the United States (which was neutral) very tentatively regarded the government-in-exile as only a "provisional" government and rather vaguely stated the borders of Czechoslovakia were to be determined after the war, implying the Sudetenland might remain part of Germany.


title: Edvard Beneš

text: During the summer and fall of 1941, Beneš came under increasing pressure from the Allies to have the Czechs play a greater role in resistance work. The Narkomindel informed Beneš that the Soviets were disappointed that there was so little sabotage going on in the factories of the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia, which were such an important source of arms and other material for the Wehrmacht. Likewise, the British started to demand that the Czechs do more resistance work. Moravec after meeting the MI6's Director, Stewart Menzies, told Beneš that the British viewpoint was that when the United Kingdom was fighting for its life that "placing violets at the grave of the unknown soldier was simply not good enough".


title: Edvard Beneš

text: Making matters worse for Beneš was in late September 1941 that Reinhard Heydrich, who effectively taken over the Protectorate, launched a major crackdown on resistance. The Prime Minister, General Eliáš, was arrested on 27 September 1941 on Heydrich's orders; martial law was proclaimed in the Protectorate; thousands were arrested and executed including two prominent leaders of the , Josef Bílý () and Hugo Vojta () who were arrested and shot without trial.


title: Edvard Beneš

text: On 5 October 1941, the lines of communication between the UVOD group and London were severed when the Gestapo, during the course of its raids, seized various radios and the codes for communicating with London. At the same time, the Gestapo also learned of the existence of Agent A-54 and after an investigation arrested Thümmel, depriving Beneš of one of his most valuable bargaining chips. Faced with this situation when the Allies were demanding more Czech resistance at the same time that Heydrich had launching a crackdown that was weakening the resistance, Beneš decided in October 1941 on a spectacular act of resistance that would prove to the world that the Czechs were still resisting.


title: Edvard Beneš

text: In 1941, Beneš and František Moravec planned Operation Anthropoid to assassinate Reinhard Heydrich, a high-ranking German official who was responsible for suppressing Czech culture, and for deporting and executing members of the Czech resistance. Beneš felt his dealings with the Allies, especially his campaign to persuade the British to nullify the Munich Agreement, was being weakened by the lack of any visible resistance in the Protectorate. Beneš decided that assassinating Heydrich was the best way to improve his bargaining position, and it was largely he who pressed for Operation Anthropoid.


title: Edvard Beneš

text: Upon learning of the nature of the mission, resistance leaders begged the Czechoslovak government-in-exile to call off the attack, saying that "An attempt against Heydrich's life ... would be of no use to the Allies and its consequences for our people would be immeasurable." Beneš personally broadcast a message insisting that the attack go forwards, although he denied any involvement after the war. Historian Vojtěch Mastný argues that he "clung to the scheme as the last resort to dramatize Czech resistance." The 1942 assassination resulted in brutal German reprisals such as the execution of thousands of Czechs and the eradication of two villages: Lidice and Ležáky.


title: Edvard Beneš

text: Arnold J. Toynbee, a prominent historian at the time, vehemently made the argument that the Czech regime was largely comparable to the situations in Germany, Poland and with the Magyars.


title: Edvard Beneš

text: In 1942, Beneš finally persuaded the Foreign Office to issue a statement saying Britain had revoked the Munich Agreement and supported the return of the Sudetenland to Czechoslovakia. Beneš saw the statement by the Foreign Secretary, Anthony Eden, to the House of Commons on 5 August 1942 revoking the Munich Agreement as a diplomatic triumph for himself. Beneš had been greatly embittered by the behavior of the ethnic Germans of the Sudetenland in 1938, which he viewed as treasonous, and during his exile in London had decided that when Czechoslovakia was reestablished, he was going to expel all of the Sudeten Germans into Germany. At the Munich Debate in the House of Commons, Anthony Eden acknowledged that there had been "discrimination, even severe discrimination" against the Sudeten Germans. During his exile, Beneš had come to obsessively brood over the behavior of the Sudetenlanders and had reached the conclusion that they were all collectively guilty of treason. In 1942, he stated the compulsory population exchange between Greece and Turkey in 1922–23 was his model for solving the problem of the Sudetenland, though unlike the Greek-Turkish population exchange, he proposed financial compensation to be paid to the Sudeten Germans expelled into Germany.


title: Edvard Beneš

text: Although not a Communist, Beneš was also on friendly terms with Joseph Stalin. Believing that Czechoslovakia had more to gain from an alliance with the Soviet Union than one with Poland, he torpedoed plans for a Polish–Czechoslovak confederation and in 1943, he signed an entente with the Soviets. During his visit to Moscow to sign the alliance, Beneš complained about the "feudal" systems existing in Poland and Hungary, charging that unlike Czechoslovakia, which after World War I had broken up the estates owned mostly by ethnic Germans and Hungarians, the majority of the land in Poland and Hungary was still owned by the nobility, which he claimed was the source of political and economic backwardness in both nations.


title: Edvard Beneš

text: Beneš believed in the ideal of "convergence" between the Soviet Union and the western nations, arguing that based on what he was seeing in wartime Britain that the western nations would become more socialist after the war while at same time that wartime liberalising reforms in the Soviet Union meant the Soviet system would be more "western" after the war. Beneš hoped and believed that the wartime alliance of the "Big Three" of the Soviet Union, the United Kingdom, and the United States would continue after the war, with the "Big Three" co-operating in an international system that would hold Germany in check.


title: Edvard Beneš

text: Though Beneš did not attend the Tehran Conference himself, the news of the mood of harmony that prevailed among the American, Soviet and British delegations at Tehran certainly gave him hope that the Big Three alliance would continue after the war. Beneš saw the role of Czechoslovakia and his own role as being that of a mediator between the Big Three. The fact that his old friend Churchill took him into his confidence concerning the post-war borders of Poland boosted Beneš's own perception of himself as an important diplomat, settling the disputes of Eastern Europe. After talking to Beneš for four hours on 4 January 1944 about Poland's post-war borders, Churchill cabled to American President Franklin D. Roosevelt: "Beneš may be most useful in trying to make the Poles see reason and in reconciling them to the Russians, whose confidence he has long possessed".


title: Edvard Beneš

text: In April 1945, Beneš flew from London to Košice in eastern Slovakia, which had been taken by the Red Army and which became the temporary capital of Czechoslovakia. Upon arriving, Beneš formed a coalition government called the National Front, with the Communist Party leader Klement Gottwald as prime minister. Besides Gottwald, communists were named as ministers of defence, the interior, education, information, and agriculture. The most important non-Communist minister was the foreign minister, Jan Masaryk, the long-term Czechoslovak minister in London and son of Tomáš Masaryk. Besides the Communists, the other parties in the National Front government were the Social Democratic Party, Beneš own National Social Party (no relation to Hitler's National Socialists), the People's Party and the Slovak Democratic Party.


title: Edvard Beneš

text: Beneš also instituted the Košice programme, which declared that Czechoslovakia was now to be a state of Czechs and Slovaks with the German population in the Sudetenland and the Hungarian population in Slovakia to be expelled; there was to be a degree of decentralization with the Slovaks to have their own National Council, but no federation; capitalism was to continue, but the "commanding heights" of the economy were to be controlled by the state; and finally Czechoslovakia was to pursue a pro-Soviet foreign policy.


title: Edvard Beneš

text: During the Prague uprising, which started on 5 May 1945, the city was surrounded by Wehrmacht and SS units, the latter in a vengeful mood. The Czech resistance appealed to the First Division of the German-sponsored Russian Liberation Army commanded by General Sergei Bunyachenko to switch sides, promising them that they be granted asylum in Czechoslovakia and would not be repatriated to the Soviet Union, where they faced execution for treason for fighting for Germany. As the Czech resistance lacked heavy arms such as tanks and artillery, the First Division was badly needed to help hold Prague.


title: Edvard Beneš

text: General Buynachenko and his First Division defected to the Allied side, where it played a key role in holding off the German forces intent on retaking Prague and prevented the SS from massacring the people of Prague. However, when General Buyachenko learned on 7 May that he and his men would not be offered asylum after all, the First Division abandoned Prague in order to surrender to the American 3rd Army. Despite the promise that the men of First Division would be granted asylum, Beneš instead repatriated the First Division, and the rest of the ROA men in Czechoslovakia who were captured by his government, to the Soviet Union.


title: Edvard Beneš

text: After the Prague uprising at the end of World War II, Beneš returned home and resumed his former position as president. Article 58.5 of the Constitution said, "The former president shall stay in his or her function till the new president shall be elected". He was unanimously confirmed in office by the Interim National Assembly on 28 October 1945. In December 1945, all of the Red Army forces left Czechoslovakia. On 19 June 1946, Beneš was formally elected to his second term as president.


title: Edvard Beneš

text: Beneš presided over a coalition government, the National Front, from 1946 headed by Communist Party leader Klement Gottwald as prime minister. In the elections of May 1946, the Communists won 38% of the vote with the Czech National Social Party winning 18%, the People's Party 16%, the Slovak Democrats 14% and the Social Democrats 13%. Until the summer of 1947, Czechoslovakia had what the British historian Richard J. Crampton called "a period of relative tranquility" with democracy reestablished, and institutions such as the media, opposition parties, the churches, the Sokols, and the Legionnaire veteran associations all existing outside of state control.


title: Edvard Beneš

text: In July 1947, both Beneš and Gottwald had decided to accept Marshall Plan aid, only for the Kremlin to order Gottwald to do a U-turn on the question of accepting the Marshall Plan. When Beneš visited Moscow, the Soviet Foreign Minister Vyacheslav Molotov quite brutally informed him that the Kremlin regarded accepting Marshall Plan aid as a violation of the 1943 alliance, causing Beneš on his return to Prague to speak of a "second Munich", saying it was not acceptable for the Soviet Union to veto decisions made by Czechoslovakia. The volte-face on the issue of the Marshall Plan did much damage to the image of the Czechoslovak Communists, and public opinion started to turn against them. A public opinion poll showed that only 25% of the voters planned to vote Communist after the rejection of the Marshall Plan.


title: Edvard Beneš

text: In September 1947, the Communist-dominated police in Slovakia announced the discovery of an alleged separatist plot led by the followers of Father Tiso who were allegedly infiltrating the Slovak Democrats, but by November 1947, the supposed plot was revealed as a canard, with the media exposing the evidence for it as being manufactured by the police. The scandal in Slovakia led to demands by the other parties of the National Front that the police be depoliticised. During this time, Beneš had become increasingly disillusioned with the Communists, telling his ambassador in Belgrade to report to him personally, as there were so many Communist agents both in the Czechoslovak embassy in Belgrade and in his own office that it was the only way of ensuring secrecy.


title: Edvard Beneš

text: Beneš opposed the presence of Germans in the liberated republic. Believing that vigilante justice would be less divisive than trials, upon his arrival in Prague on 10 May, he called for the "liquidation of Germans and Hungarians" in the "interest of a united national state of Czechs and Slovaks." As part of the Košice programme, Germans in the Sudetenland and Hungarians in Slovakia were to be expelled.


title: Edvard Beneš

text: The "Beneš decrees" (officially called "Decrees of the President of the Republic"), among other things, expropriated the property of citizens of German and Hungarian ethnicity and facilitated Article 12 of the Potsdam Agreement by laying down a national legal framework for the loss of citizenship and the expropriation of about three million Germans and Hungarians. However, Beneš's plans for expelling the Hungarian minority from Slovakia caused tensions with Hungary, whose coalition government was likewise leaning towards the Soviet Union, and ultimately objections from Moscow ended the expulsion of the Hungarians shortly after it had begun. In contrast, the Soviets had no objections to the expulsions of the Sudeten Germans, and the Czechoslovak authorities continued to expel the Sudeten Germans pursuant to the Potsdam Agreement until only a negligible number of Germans remained in the Sudetenland.


title: Edvard Beneš

text: On 15 March 1946, SS "Obergruppenführer" Karl Hermann Frank went on trial in Prague for war crimes. Beneš ensured that Frank's trial received maximum publicity, being broadcast live on state radio, and statements from Frank's interrogations being leaked to the press. On the stand, Frank remained a defiant Nazi, snarling insults at his Czech prosecutors, saying the Czechs were still "Untermenschen" ("sub-humans") as far he was concerned, and only expressing regret that he did not kill more Czechs when he had the chance. After Frank's conviction, he was publicly hanged before thousands of cheering people outside of Pankrác Prison on 22 May 1946. As Frank was a Sudeten German, the political purpose of his trial was to symbolize to the world what Beneš called the "collective criminality" of the Sudeten Germans, which thus justified their expulsions. The historian Mary Heimann wrote that though Frank was indeed guilty of war crimes and treason, his trial was used for a political purpose, namely to illustrate the collective criminality of the Sudeten Germans to the world.


title: Edvard Beneš

text: On 12 February 1948, the non-Communist ministers threatened to resign unless the "packing" of the police by the Communist interior minister, Václav Nosek (), stopped at once. The Communists set up "action committees", whom Nosek ordered the civil servants to take their orders from. Nosek also illegally had arms issued to the action committees. On 20 February, the Communists formed the "people's militia" of 15,000. On 21 February 1948, 12 non-Communist ministers resigned to protest Gottwald's refusal to stop the packing of the police with Communists despite the majority of the Cabinet having ordered it to end. The non-Communists believed that Beneš would side with them to allow them to stay in office as a caretaker government until new elections.