Edvard Beneš' Undoing of Munich: A Message to a Czechoslovak Politician in Prague

Abstract

This is the first translation into any foreign language of the perhaps most important testimony written by Edvard Beneš from his London exile in the second half of November 1938 shortly after the Munich tragedy. Challenged by a sincere young politician from Prague, Ladislav Rašín, the ex-President of Czechoslovakia replies by providing a comprehensive defence of his foreign and domestic policy. His comments on the appeasement policy of the French and British governments, on the chances of reaching an agreement with `our Germans', as well as with Hitler, with the Slovaks seeking an autonomous status, as well as with Poland, requesting territorial adjustment, provide indispensable source material for any historian of the Sudeten crisis. Of the three choices he faced in September 1938 — military defeat from a combined German-Polish invasion, a humiliating settlement if Hitler's outrageous terms were accepted, or approval of the conditions imposed by the Great Powers rather than by Hitler alone — Beneš was passionately convinced that the last option was the optimal one. Unlike young Czech patriots, including Rašín, Beneš did not believe in the military alternative.