Czechoslovak government - in - exile The Czechoslovak government - in - exile ( sometimes styled officially as the Provisional Government of Czechoslovakia ) was an informal title conferred upon the Czechoslovak National Liberation Committee , initially by British diplomatic recognition . The name came to be used by other World War II Allies as they subsequently recognized it . The Committee was originally created by the former Czechoslovak President , Edvard Beneš in Paris , France in October 1939 . Unsuccessful negotiations with France for diplomatic status , as well as the impending Nazi occupation of France , forced the Committee to withdraw to London in 1940 . From there , it moved to Aston Abbots , Buckinghamshire in 1941 , where it sought relative safety from the London Blitz . It was the legitimate government for Czechoslovakia throughout the Second World War . A specifically anti - Fascist government , it sought to reverse the Munich Agreement and the subsequent German occupation of Czechoslovakia , and to return the Republic to its 1937 boundaries . As such it was ultimately considered , by those countries that recognized it , the legal continuation of the First Republic of Czechoslovakia . From committee to government . Seeing the end of the Republic as a " fait accompli " , Edvard Beneš resigned as president of the First Czechoslovak Republic one week after the Munich Agreement ceded the Sudetenland to Nazi Germany . He initially fled to the University of Chicago , where he took refuge in the same community that had once buoyed his predecessor and friend , Tomáš Masaryk . While there , he was urged to quickly return to Europe to organize some kind of government - in - exile . He therefore returned to Europe to live in Paris along with several other key players in his former administration . After World War II formally broke out , the group became known as the Czech National Liberation Committee , and immediately began to seek international recognition as the exiled government of Czechoslovakia . By the end of 1939 , though , France and Britain had extended it the right to conclude international treaties — France on 13 November and Britain on 20 December 1939 — but did not yet see those treaties as having been concluded in the name of the Czechoslovak Republic . It was in fact France herself that proved the greatest obstacle to accepting the Committee as a full government - in - exile . The government of Édouard Daladier was ambivalent towards the ambitions of the Committee and of Czechoslovakia in general . Though he had publicly seen the appeasement of Hitler as the road to war , Daladier ultimately capitulated to the wishes of Neville Chamberlain . After the war came , he and his government dithered over whether the Soviet or Nazi threat was the greater . Likewise , though he extended recognition to the Committee as a non - governmental agency , his government was non - committal to Beneš himself , and saw many possibilities for a post - war Czechoslovakia . One of its principal reservations about giving governmental status to Beneš , was the fact of the murky situation in the then - independent Slovakia . The French government of the winter of 1939 felt that Beneš was not necessarily speaking for all Czechoslovaks , based on the relatively fluid situation in Slovakia . France ' s diplomacy towards Beneš was therefore agile . It avoided any direct expression of support for the Beneš Committee ' s desire to return to the First Republic . However , as Beneš was the key to getting military support from the well - trained Czechoslovak army , France was in fact the first nation to conclude a treaty with the Committee . The 2 October 1939 agreement between France and Beneš allowed for the reconstitution of the Czechoslovak army on French territory . Ultimately , units of the First Division of the Czechoslovak Army fought alongside their hosts in the final stages of the Battle of France . It was the failure of the Allied military forces in this battle which most directly helped the ambitions of the Beneš Committee . With the fall of France , the views of the newly appointed prime minister Winston Churchill took predominance over the concerns of the waning Third Republic . He was very much clearer than his predecessor with respect to Czechoslovak affairs , and quickly recognized Beneš as the president of a government - in - exile after the fall of France . Nevertheless , the Committee still felt somewhat insecure about this recognition , because it specifically mentioned Beneš as president , but did not explicitly link Beneš to the previously - existing government . Thus , they pressed the British in April 1941 for even greater clarity . On the 18th of that month , they sent a letter to the British requesting that their agreements " be concluded , as before September , 1938 , in the name of the Czechoslovak Republic " . British Foreign Minister Anthony Eden gave such assent on 18 July 1941 . The United States and the Soviet Union were effectively forced to do the same later in the year , as Slovakia declared war on the two countries . With an Axis government both firmly and formally in place in Bratislava , the only friendly government left to recognize by the later half of 1941 was that of Beneš . The remaining legal question was whether the Beneš government was actually a " continuation " of the First Republic , or a successor without solid constitutional underpinnings . This doubt was erased by the spring of 1942 . Following almost six months of planning behind enemy lines , Czechoslovak Allied operatives in Bohemia fatally wounded Reinhard Heydrich , the dictator at the head of the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia . The success of this mission , Operation Anthropoid , caused Britain and Free France ( itself a government - in - exile ) to formally repudiate the Munich Agreement , thus conferring " de jure " legitimacy on the Beneš government as the continuation of the First Republic . The government ' s continued health now depended on Allied military victory . Planning for the future . Beneš hoped for a restoration of the Czechoslovak state in its pre - Munich form after the anticipated Allied victory , a false hope . Beneš determined to strengthen Czechoslovak security against future German aggression through alliances with Poland and the Soviet Union . The Soviet Union , however , objected to a tripartite Czechoslovak - Polish - Soviet commitment . In December 1943 , Beneš ' s government concluded a treaty with the Soviets . Beneš ' s interest in maintaining friendly relations with the Soviet Union was motivated also by his desire to avoid Soviet encouragement of a postwar communist coup in Czechoslovakia . Beneš worked to bring Czechoslovak communist exiles in the United Kingdom into cooperation with his government , offering far - reaching concessions , including nationalization of heavy industry and the creation of local people ' s committees at the war ' s end . In March 1945 , he gave key cabinet positions to Czechoslovak communist exiles in Moscow . The " German problem " . During the latter years of the war , Beneš worked toward resolving the German minority problem and received consent from the Allies for a solution based on a postwar transfer of the Sudeten German population . Especially after the Nazi reprisals for the assassination of Reinhard Heydrich , most of the Czech resistance groups demanded , based on German Nazi terror during occupation , the " final solution of the German question " ( ) which would have to be " solved " by deportation of the ethnic Germans to Germany and Austria . These demands were adopted by the Government - in - Exile , which sought the support of the Allies for this proposal , beginning in 1943 .