Talk:Edvard Beneš

message: It is well-known that Benes did not simply die, but rather he was assasinated by the communist secret police, who dumped him through the window. For a man who did such evil against hundreds of thousands of german and hungarian people and whose name remains cursed for seventy-seven generations to come, such violent ending was very fitting, and should not be supressed!
:Assuming that you are in good faith, anon, are you sure you are not confusing him with Jan Masaryk? -- Alan Peakall 20:19, 7 June 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Censorship in the article 

message: 3rd President of Czechoslovakia was Emil Hácha. Jan Syrový has never been Czechoslovak president, nor acting.
--Black&White (talk) 00:49, 5 February 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Succession in presidency 

message: I'm not too familiar with Czech history, but the assertion that Edvard Beneš was not responsible for the decrees informally named after him is somewhat counterintuitive. This statement needs a citation.--Qmwne235 23:47, 31 May 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Beneš decrees were all legal norms with power of Act issued by the president in exile during Nazi occupation and afterwards in short interim period between liberation of the country and establishing of the Provisional National Assembly in October 1945, which subsequently confirmed them. Only a part of these "decrees" had anything to do with "Germans, Hungarians, domestic collaborators and traitors" and of course, none of these were Beneš's maverick-like actions. In fact, most of them were product of wide consensus between Czechoslovak government-in-exile and different groups of domestic as well as exiled resistance, both communist and non-communist. Of course, transfer (called "expulsion" by Germans with apparent propagandistic purpose) of German and Hungarian minorities (in case of Hungarians never realized) with exception of German and Hungarian anti-fascists was a policy backed and finally confirmed by allied powers, formally at Potsdam conference, but it was negotiated and accepted by them long time before that, practically since they recognized Czechoslovakia's goverment in exile and declared Munich agreement null and void from the beginning.88.101.177.121 (talk) 13:40, 7 June 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Not responsible for [[Beneš decrees]]?  

message: I wrote: "They were a central part of the large-scale ethnic cleansing in Soviet-dominated Eastern Europe after 1945." and this has been deleted. 
But this is exactly what Wikipedia says in the entry on ethnic cleansing !.
What should be a better term for the complete deportation of the Sudenten Germans and of the Hungarians ??
--Ft93110 (talk) 20:57, 2 June 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  Beneš decrees not ethnic cleansing ? 

message: "In March 1939, Hácha's government was bullied into authorising the German occupation of the remaining Czech territory."
Bullied by who? In whose opinion was there any bullying? Is this statement politically correct? This needs clarification and citation.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by Saparonia (talk • contribs) 21:06, 21 January 2015 (UTC)
thread_title:  Needed Citation 

message: I agree that even inclines toward POV in this edit. The adverb emphasizes counter-expectation (see here) and also adds emotional explicitness and strength (see here and especially here) to the already factual statement "Czechoslovakia was not consulted ...". Doremo (talk) 13:58, 23 March 2015 (UTC)
thread_title:  Adverb ''even'' (minor edit) 

message: :(Citizenship)
 Decree No. 33/1945 of August 2, 1945.
 On the basis of this decree, the Czechoslovak State released from its citizenship   
 those persons who, "in compliance with the regulations of the foreign occupation
 forces had acquired German or Hungarian citizenship".
:No Czechoslovak (Czech) legal norm (decree, law, etc.) ever existed that would have dealt with the displacement of the German population.
:cf. Potsdam Agreement.
*Potsdam Agreement 1945
*President Decrees
Posp68 (talk) 13:37, 19 July 2015 (UTC)
thread_title:  Beneš decrees 

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message: I have concerns about some of the recent edits made today, which seemed to be editorialising about Benes-going out of the way to say how "wrong" in his policies towards the Soviet Union. That is a common line of criticism of Beneš, but it is phased in a manner that seems to violate the neutrality rules. Anyhow of the statements here are wrong-Beneš was genuinely angry about the Munich Agreement, so to say that his criticism of Britain and France for the Munich Agreement was only an attempt to "appease" Stalin is downright malicious. Which brings us to the crux of the matter, which is the paragraph which shows that Beneš was wrong in trying to preserve his country's independence from Nazi Germany, and he just should had rolled over and accepted that having his country occupied by Germany was all for the best. George Kennan was a noted American diplomat, so I suppose there is nothing wrong about citing his views here, but Kennan should be given as the final word on the subject. There are a great many opinions about the wisdom and justice of the Munich Agreement, and Kennan is only one opinion. 
Furthermore, Kennan was a Russophobe-anyone familiar with his work will note the recurring references to Russians as a stupid and brutal "Asiatic" people full of envy and hate at the superior civilization of the West. In this regard, note the admiring introduction Kennan wrote in 1989 to that classic work of Russian-bashing, The Empire of the Czars by the Marquis de Custine, which he significantly praised as a seminal work about "eternal Russia". In other words, what is he is saying here that through on the surface things have changed, but deep down nothing has really changed in Russia between 1839 and 1989, and what Custine wrote all the back in 1839 is just as relevant today. To say there nothing had really changed in Russia between 1839-1989 and there were really no importance differences between the policies of the Emperor Nicholas I and Mikhail Gorbachev requires considerable myopia and ignorance, if not downright stupidity. This whole idea about an "eternal Russia" that never changes is just as stupid as the equally popular and equally facile idea of an "eternal America" or "eternal England" that never changes. To be fair, Kennan was right about some lines of continuity between Imperial Russia and the Soviet Union, but his claim that both Imperial Russia and the Soviet Union were manifestations of essentially the same thing requires considerable distortion of the facts. To take one example, all of the Russian emperors and empresses from Peter the Great on saw themselves as Europeans, and as a part of the West, an aspect of Russian history that Kennan had no interest in because it did not fit with his prejudices. My point here is that just because Kennan says somethings does not automatically make it right. 
Kennan was a Germanophile and a recurring theme of his writings was that a strong Germany was required to keep Russia out of central Europe, which led him in the 1930s to see Nazi Germany as the lesser evil as at least Hitler was a "bulwark against Bolshevism". Kennan's commentary about the justice of the Munich Agreement as being all for the best needs to be seen in this light. Which of course brings us to the central matter: why at present does this article scream out in fury about how "wrong" Beneš was in letting his country fall under Soviet domination while saying also saying how "wrong" he was in opposing German domination of his country. So domination of the Czechs by Germany is good as it "was in the best interests of the country", but domination by the Soviet Union is bad? That strikes me as a grotesque violation of the NPOV rules. The article says that if it came to war in 1938, then Czechoslovakia would had be devastated so Beneš was not acting in the "best interests" of his country to seeking to preserve its independence. The part about a devastating war is true, but sometimes the price of freedom has to be paid in blood. In 1948, Beneš gave in to the Communists because he feared otherwise it would led to a civil war. Here, the article condemns Beneš, saying how "wrong" he was in trusting the Communists. This seems like a double standard. Note the way in which article goes out of its way to say that Beneš did not live enough to see the invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968, which proves how "wrong" he was. It might seem more relevant to note that he did see the occupation of his country by Germany in 1939. I think this needs to be noted that for him, Germany was the main danger, which guided his policies towards the Soviet Union in World War II and after. Talking about what happened in 1968 in the context of what was happening in 1943 is rather ahistorical. In 1943, for Beneš, what had happened in 1938 and 1939 were the things that were influencing his decisions, not something happened in 1968. This is a really obvious point that I should not be having to make.
A great deal of nonsense has been written about Stalin's Russia and Hitler's Germany being "mirror images" of each other. Both regimes were monstrous and inhumane, but not in the same way. For example, Stalin's hand can be seen in almost everything as there all sorts of documents bearing his signature or more commonly his initial. The same is not the case with Hitler who had an aversion to paperwork and hardly signed anything. Hitler envisioned exterminating entire peoples, most notably the Jews. Stalin carried out policies that led to deaths of tens of millions of people, but he never sought to exterminate nations. A case in point; in 1944, the Chechens were deported to Kazakhstan as a "traitor nation" and by 1946, 75% of the Chechens who were alive in 1944 were dead. This was monstrous and cruel, a horrific disaster for the Chechen people, but there is no evidence that Stalin wanted to kill every single Chechen men, women and child in the same way that Hitler wanted to kill every single Jewish men, women and child. It was within his power to wipe out the Chechens and he did not do that. The surviving Chechens were still alive when Stalin died in 1953 and were allowed to go home in 1957. My point here is that Soviet Communism was evil, but it was not a "mirror image" of Nazi Germany; these regimes were evil in different ways, not the same way. Getting back to Beneš, to say as some people say that the policies of Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union towards Czechoslovakia were a "mirror image" is profoundly stupid. Had Germany won the Second World War, the majority of the Czechs living in the Reich Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia were going to be deported to a reservation in Siberia and millions of settlers from Germany were going to be brought in to replace them. Only a minority of Czechs who were willing to be "Germanized" would be allowed to stay and in case of these people, they were going have to renounce the Czech language and culture in favor of the German language and culture. 
There were numerous injustices and wrongs during the Communist period in Czechoslovakia, but the Soviets never tried to deport almost entire Czech nation to Siberia while forcing the remainder to speak Russian instead of Czech. The Communist era lasted from 1948 to 1989, and the Soviets never deported the Czech people to Siberia to make way for way for millions of Russian settlers, and there is no evidence that they ever thought about doing that. Yes, during the Communist era, there was a state-sanctioned antisemitism under the guise of "anti-Zionism", most notably with the Slánský trial of 1952, but the Czechoslovak Communists never tried to exterminate the remaining Czechoslovak Jews in the same way that the Nazis did. So to say that there is no difference between German domination and Soviet domination of Czechoslovakia is wrong. What happened during the Communist era in Czechoslovak history was certainly terrible, but to make out as this article does at present that the Soviet domination of Czechoslovakia was far worse than domination by Nazi Germany shows a massive and appalling ignorance. 
This comment by Kennan that is approving quoted here shows: "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 the true heroic one of realism" shows that Kennan did not know much about history. If Germany had won the Second World War, most of this "magnificent younger generation" of Czechs would had been deported from their homeland to the "reservation" in Siberia that Hitler was planing to send them to. This difference between German policies towards Czechoslovakia and Soviet policies towards Czechoslovakia does much to explain Beneš's foreign policy. The British historian A.J.P. Taylor, who was a close friend of Beneš, claimed that in 1947 he had a talk with Beneš, during which the latter said that German domination meant the Czechs were going to be expelled from homeland while if his country came under Soviet domination, the Czechs would continue to live in their homeland and their language and culture would continue. This goes a long way towards explaining why Beneš considered Soviet domination to be the lesser evil compared to German domination. Beneš ended his talk with Taylor by saying he did not want Czechoslovakia to fall under Soviet domination, but if he to choose between Germany and the Soviet Union, he would go with the latter. One may object that we only have Taylor's word for this, but the views ascribed by him to Beneš are entirely consistent with what is known of his views. In the late 1940s, quite a few people in both western and eastern Europe took it for granted that the Germans would go back to their bad old ways if they had half a chance, so Beneš was by no means unique in thinking that the Germans were not going to change. Look at William Shirer's book The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, published in 1960, which hints a number of times that West German democracy is not going to last, and there is a real possibility of the Germans going back to the bad old ways. As late as 1990, both Margaret Thatcher and Francois Mitterrand believed that German reunification would mean a Fourth Reich, so Beneš's fears of Germany after 1945 reflected what many people felt. 
Moreover, this article goes out of its way to demonize Beneš as "wrong" and as the man who let his country came under Soviet Union because saw "the Soviet Union as a friend instead of an enemy". It is true that Beneš believed and wanted the Big Three alliance of the Soviet Union, the United States and the United Kingdom to continue after the war, and he was wrong about that, but he was far from alone in this. What Beneš saw Czechoslovakia's role was as the "bridge" that would help keep the "Big Three" alliance. So in other words, he was pro-Soviet, but this needs to be understood in the sense that he believed that the "Big Three" alliance would continue after World War II, and Czechoslovakia would play a mediating role in keeping the "Big Three" alliance going. Beneš did not think it would be necessary to choose between East and West, as he wanted Czechoslovakia to an ally of the all "Big Three" powers at once, as he failed to foresee the Cold War. So the article attacks him for not seeing the Soviet Union as an "enemy" as should have done is attacking him for being something that he was not. The real reason why the Czechoslovak Communists had such a dominant position in the Czechoslovak Third Republic is because in the elections of May 1946 the Communists won 38% of the vote, making them the largest party. The 1946 elections were free and fair elections, and if the Communists won the largest share of the vote in 1946, it is because a great many ordinary Czechs and Slovaks supported them. Whatever was a wise thing to do is another matter, but that is a fact, and that cannot be blamed on Beneš. Had another party won the majority of the vote, then the leader of that party would have named premier by Beneš in 1946. Gottwald was the leader of the largest party, and that is why he was named premier. And Gottwald abused that position to "pack" the civil service with Communist supporters. 
What caused the "Velvet Coup" was that Beneš, promoted by the non-Communist ministers in the National Front, tried to stop the Communist "packing" of the police. The negative comparison this article draws between Czechoslovakia and Finland does not work. The same issue of the Communist "packing" of the police occurred in Finland in late 1940s, and the only difference is that the Finnish government chose not do anything about it for long time as would provoke the Soviet Union. And even when the Finnish government tried to restrain the Communist-dominated police, they went out of their way to assure the Kremlin that they wanted Finland to stay within the Soviet sphere of influence. And Yugoslavia is also different in the sense that the Communists did take over the state organs, but in that case, the majority of Yugoslav Communists were loyal to Tito, not Stalin. The majority of Czechoslovak Communists including Gottwald were loyal to Stalin. At present, this article is blaming everything that went wrong in Czechoslovakia between 1948-1989 solely on one man (which is neither correct nor fair), taking Beneš to task for not being a Cold Warrior, who should had pursued an anti-Soviet line, instead of hoping that the Big Three alliance would last. What Beneš should and should not have done is matter of much historical debate; for the sake of balance, one can cite historians who hold different views on this subject, which is something I strongly feel should be done, to provide the reader with the diversity of views on Beneš. But as interesting as all this is, I think the article on the whole should stick with a survey of what Beneš did and why, instead of going on at length about what he should have done.                    
And then there is a matter of this article calling the French "timid". Germany had three times the population as France did and likewise had an economy that was three times as larger. The greater size of the German economy gave the Reich a natural advantage over France, an aspect of history that does not interest at all those wanting to promote this stupid stereotype of the French as "cheese-eating surrender monkeys". The French decision to adopt a defensive strategy made in 1929 after the French agreed to pull out of the Rhineland in 1930 is by no means as stupid and "cowardly" as it often made out to be. Indeed, one might actually argue that given that the greater population size and economy of Germany that the French were actually brave in deciding to ultimately resist this colossus rather than following the path chosen by many other nations, in seeking an accommodation with the Third Reich. It is true that French leaders like Georges Bonnet did want an understanding with Germany, but he was minority, and his views did not win out in the end. In September 1939, Bonnet was against declaring war on Germany, but France did declare war on Germany. The French strategy against Germany was that of la guerre de longue durée, in which the French would fight a defensive struggle that would gradually grind the Germans down. From the French viewpoint, given the disparity of numbers between Germany with 70 million people vs. France with 40 million people, this is not as irrational and stupid as it is often made out to be. Historians who blast the French for their "cowardice" in pursuing a defensive strategy and praise the Germans for their "courage" in pursing an offensive strategy ignore the fact that Germany's greater population meant the Germans could take far higher casualties and keep fighting as they always replace their losses, an option that the French did not have. Offensive operations as a general rule involve greater casualties than defensive operations, and the French could not take losses on the same scale that the Germans could if they wanted to win the war. And of the two nations that the French really, really wanted as their allies, the United States was isolationist while Great Britain until 1939 refused to make the "continental commitment", leading the French to the entirely reasonable conclusion that they might have to take on Germany without the support of les Anglo-Saxons the next time around. Despite what they said in public, the French were well aware that they had won in 1918 because of the help from the "Anglo-Saxon" powers, and it greatly worried them that they might have to fight another war with Germany without the support of les Anglo-Saxons, which is why I think this article calling the French "timid" is way off base. Demography and the lack of Anglo-American support instead of obnoxious and false national stereotypes about the French as "cheese-eating surrender monkeys" explain la guerre de longue durée strategy. If the treaty of alliance that the French signed with the United States and Great Britain in 1919 had come into effect instead of being stillborn, the French might have pursued a different strategy for they would have known that they had full support of the USA and the British Empire behind them.      
The problem with French strategy was this. In the 1920s, Germany was more or less disarmed and the French were occupying the Rhineland, which served as a "collateral" for German good behavior. At the same time, the French created what they called the cordon sanitaire in eastern Europe, signing alliances with Poland in 1921, Czechoslovakia in 1924, Romania in 1926 and Yugoslavia in 1927. Where the problems started was when the French agreed in 1929 to pull out of the Rhineland in 1930. Without the Rhineland as "collateral", the French were pretty certain that Germany was going to rearm, bring in conscription and remilitarise the Rhineland, which is exactly what did happen. The decision to build the Maginot Line in 1929, which costed 3 billion francs, was a tacit French admission that Germany was going to violate Part V of the Treaty of Versailles in the near-future. The French pulled out of the Rhineland in June 1930 and by February 1932 Germany was demanding very loudly at the World Disarmament Conference the right to rearm. The problem with la guerre de longue durée strategy was the French still had the commitment to go to war if Germany attacked any of their allies in eastern Europe while they were planning to stick to a defensive strategy. The French never did work out to how to square this circle caused by their alliances in eastern Europe signed in the 1920s vs. building the Maginot Line in the 1930s. Beneš could see what the implications of the French building the Maginot Line were, and even more so after Germany remiltarised the Rhineland in March 1936. After Germany started building the West Wall in June 1936, Beneš knew the French would probably not launch an offensive into the Rhineland, which was the basic assumption made in 1924 when he signed the alliance with France. He stuck with the alliance with France because of the lack of a better alternative. That is why Beneš signed the alliance with the Soviet Union in 1935, to provide for an alternative great power to assist Czechoslovakia since the French were evidently going to stay behind the Maginot Line in the event of war. Beneš's pro-Soviet statements in the period 1935-38 have to been understood in this light. Unlike his allies, Milan Stojadinović of Yugoslavia and to a lesser extent King Carol II of Romania, Beneš was not willing to see his country enter the German sphere of influence. A great deal has been written on all this, but to call the French cowardly as this article does is really wrong. Does anyone else have any thoughts about this?--A.S. Brown (talk) 23:56, 11 April 2019 (UTC)
thread_title: Neutrality

message: People have been adding and removing and re-adding and re-removing the category "Czech Freemasons" to the article going back some time now, so I decided to Google if Beneš was a Freemason. According to this source, he was indeed a Mason, joining in 1927. However, I don't think that this fact is really notable or warrants mention in the article. Besides, I'm unsure where this could even be put. Do you guys have any opinions on the matter? - 212.130.152.24 (talk) 08:48, 11 November 2019 (UTC)
thread_title:  Freemasonry 

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