page_title: Beneš decrees
section_title: Historical overview
hierarchical_section_title: Beneš decrees / Historical overview
caption_attribution_description: English: Jan Šrámek (1870-1956). Czech politician. Čeština: Jan Šrámek (1870-1956). Český politik.
context_page_description: The Decrees of the President of the Republic and the Constitutional Decrees of the President of the Republic, commonly known as the Beneš decrees, were a series of laws drafted by the Czechoslovak government-in-exile in the absence of the Czechoslovak parliament during the German occupation of Czechoslovakia in World War II. They were issued by President Edvard Beneš from 21 July 1940 to 27 October 1945 and retroactively ratified by the Interim National Assembly of Czechoslovakia on 6 March 1946.
  The decrees dealt with various aspects of the restoration of Czechoslovakia and its legal system, denazification, and reconstruction of the country. In journalism and political history, the term "Beneš decrees" refer to the decrees of the president and the ordinances of the Slovak National Council concerning the status of ethnic Germans, Hungarians and others in postwar Czechoslovakia and represented Czechoslovakia's legal framework for the expulsion of Germans from Czechoslovakia.
context_section_description: Beneš, who was elected president of Czechoslovakia in 1935, resigned after the Munich Agreement in 1938. After the occupation of Czechoslovakia Beneš and other Czechoslovak politicians and officials emigrated to France, establishing the Czechoslovak National Committee, in November 1939, to restore Czechoslovakia. The committee's primary task was to establish a Czechoslovak army in France. After the fall of France the committee moved to London, where it became the Interim Czechoslovak Government. The government was recognized as the interim Czechoslovak government by Great Britain on 21 July 1940 and in 1941 it was fully recognized by the U.S. and the USSR as the government of the allied state. Since its recognition in 1940, the government issued the decrees to rule over Czechoslovak citizens abroad.
  Beneš and other Czechoslovak politicians blamed the national minorities (Hungarians and Germans) for the collapse of Czechoslovakia, which was why they wanted to create an ethnically homogeneous nation-state.
caption: Jan Šrámek, 1940–1945 Prime Minister of the Czechoslovak government in exile
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