page_title: Karel Janoušek
section_title: Czechoslovakia 1945–71
hierarchical_section_title: Karel Janoušek / Czechoslovakia 1945–71
caption_attribution_description: František Moravec - officer of Czechoslovak Military Intellingence (picture taken while in US exile)
context_page_description: Dr Karel Janoušek, KCB was a senior Czechoslovak Air Force officer. He began his career as a soldier, serving in the Austrian Imperial-Royal Landwehr 1915–16, Czechoslovak Legion 1916–20 and Czechoslovak Army 1920–24.
  In 1924 Janoušek transferred to the Czechoslovak Air Force and in 1926 he qualified as an aircraft pilot. In 1930 he co-wrote a textbook on aerial warfare tactics. In the 1930s he was a staff officer. From 1936 he studied meteorology and geophysics at the Charles University and in 1939 he was awarded a doctorate in natural sciences.
  In the Second World War Janoušek escaped first to France and then the United Kingdom. In the UK he commanded the RAF's Czechoslovak squadrons, was knighted by HM King George VI and ultimately promoted to Air Marshal. In occupied Czechoslovakia the Nazis retaliated against Janoušek's Free Czechoslovak service by jailing his wife and much of their family.
  In 1945 Janoušek returned to Czechoslovakia, where he found his wife and several of their relatives had died in imprisonment. He was sidelined by the increasingly pro-Communist commanders of the Czechoslovak Air Force.
context_section_description: Janoušek himself returned to Czechoslovakia on 13 August 1945. In six years of occupation the Nazis had jailed most of his family. His wife Anna and one of his sisters had died in Auschwitz. One of his brothers had died in Buchenwald. Two of his brothers-in-law had also died in jail: one in Litoměřice in Bohemia and the other in Pankrác Prison in Prague.
  General Vicherek had been sent to the Soviet Union on 1 May and made Commander of the Czechoslovak Air Force on 29 May. On 19 October 1945 Janoušek's post of Inspector of the Air Force ceased to exist. The next day he accepted the post of Deputy Chief of the General Headquarters for Special Tasks. He followed his late father into the Czechoslovak Social Democratic Party. In January 1946 the Chief of the Staff of the Czechoslovak Armed Forces, General Bohumil Boček, appraised Janoušek as "lazy, insincere, and disgruntled".
  Nevertheless, that spring Janoušek travelled to the UK to negotiate the purchase of UK and US materiél for the Czechoslovak Air Force. On 8 June 1946 he took part in a victory parade in London, and on 11 June he attended a Royal Garden Party hosted by HM King George VI. On 15 February 1947 Janoušek was appointed interim inspector of Air Defense by the General Staff. On 15 September he was a member of the Czechoslovak delegation at the seventh anniversary of the Battle of Britain.
  But at the same time the Czechoslovak Communist Obranné zpravodajství (OBZ) military and political intelligence organisation was monitoring Janoušek's social life and visits to foreign embassies. On 15 October 1947 General Boček again appraised Janoušek, declaring "Janoušek is not suitable for a position in Command because of his attitude and therefore should only be employed in administration."
  In February 1948 the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia seized power. Three days later Boček ordered Janoušek, Brig Gen Alois Liška and military intelligence chief Gen František Moravec to take leave "for health reasons" pending a final decision about their future. In March Gen Šimon Drgáč personally told Janoušek there was no place for him under the Communist régime. Janoušek applied for a job at the International Civil Aviation Organization in Montreal, for which he had helped to lay the foundations at the 1944 Chicago conference. Dr Josef Dubský at the ICAO offered him a job, but Bedřich Reicin at the OBZ refused to let Janoušek leave Czechoslovakia.
caption: General František Moravec was among the senior military officers purged at the same time as Janoušek
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