Janics: Czechoslovak Policy and the Hungarian Minority

PLANS IN EXILE AND THE MINORITIES

Right after Munich, in the fall and winter of 1938-1939, Czechoslovak exiles began to organize themselves. When war broke out in September 1939, they began to coordinate their plans with the policies of the Allies. The formulation of exile plans had met with some difficulties, mainly on account of conflicts between Czechs and Slovaks, both at home and abroad. On October 17,1939, the Czechoslovak National Committee was formed in Paris, mostly by followers of former President Edvard Benes. In February 1940, also in Paris, a Slovak National Committee was formed by Milan Hodza, former Czechoslovak Prime Minister. Before long, it was the group of exiles around Benes that set the tone of exile politics and it was that group that founded the Czechoslovak government-in-exile in London in 1940.¹ After the fail of France in the spring of 1940, the London government led by President Benes became the sole agent of exile politics. Even the Communists and a few Social Democrats who emigrated to Moscow recognized the London government in the summer of 1940, in order to further its international recognition.²

The rift between the followers of Benes and Hodza was never healed. Hodza, who moved to Washington, never found his way to the London Czechoslovak government-in-exile, nor was he capable of forming his own exile organization of international prestige and influence among the exiles comparable to the Benes achievement. The conflict between Hodza and Benes was over the future structure of both Czechoslovakia and of Central Europe in general. Hodza in exile became an ardent advocate of a federal reorganization of Central Europe, and he opposed Benes's centralist concept of a unitary Czechoslovak nation which denied the existence of a separate Slovak nation. Later on, they also disagreed on the exile government's foreign policy, with Hodza becoming ever more critical of Benes Soviet Orientation. There was no way to bridge the gap between the two antagonists. Conveniently for Benes, Hodza died in 1944. While their conflict still caused inconveniences to Benes, he referred to Hodza and his followers contemptuously as autonomists, a bad word since it was associated in prewar Czechoslovak politics with Hlinka's followers who, in turn, became the Slovak fascists of the Hitler years. To Benes's way of thinking, Hodza and his most distinguished follower, Stefan Osusky, former Czechoslovak Minister to Paris, betrayed Czechoslovak unity. As he contemptuously remarked at the time when his Slovak opponents-in-exile set up headquarters in the United States: "The trend toward [Czechoslovak] unity is more alive at home than among the neophyte [Slovak] autonomists, Messrs. Osusky and Hodza."³

The wartime activity of the Czechoslovak government-in-exile in London was dominated by the talents and prestige of President Benes. In due course, his authority became dictatorial. He fought with great perseverance and consistency for his nationalist objectives. He waited patiently till the moment became suitable for action. He was an opportunist and a master of political maneuverings. He paid scant attention to momentary setbacks. He was self-centered, ruthless. He lacked a sense of solidarity even with his collaborators. He lacked, as one of his closest collaborators observed, "spiritua1 greatness." Above all, he was unscrupulous and clever in exploiting the opportunities for action. His characterization by Jaromir Smutny, head of the President's Chancellery, is the most fitting:

Benes is an excellent tactician and strategist, the great Machiavelli of our time, but he lacks the charisma to move the masses . . . Benes is our good fortune, without him we would devour each other in our personal struggles for power. We recognize Benes , because he is high above us in intelligence, as well as in determination and capacity for work . . . He is a machine, born to think and work, without any human feelings-which also accounts for his weaknesses.⁴

In both World Wars, his tactics were aimed at the creation of faits accomplis, which were attainable only under the chaotic conditions of the aftermath of a war. In the last few months of the First World War, he was successful with his faits accomplis policy in the matter of Czechoslovakia's frontiers, Toward the end of the Second World War his aim was to liquidate the national minorities within those frontiers before the pressure of world public opinion could intervene against his brutal objectives. His plans to expel the Hungarian minority entirely by a fait accompli did not succeed. Yet, in the postwar turmoil, he had some success in expelling the Hungarians, which could not have been achieved in peaceful times at all.

Allied public opinion paid no attention during the war to the question of Hungarian minority in Slovakia. There were other, more important matters to think about. Even for the Hungarian public, the future of minorities remained a moot issue until 1944. In the spring of 1944, however, rumors of a radical solution of the question of minorities began spreading. On the eve of Hungary's German occupation, in March 1944, a Hungarian -publicist wrote:

In his Moscow statement, following the signing of the Soviet-Czechoslovak treaty [in December 1943], Benes declared that Stalin hoped for a Czechoslovakia that would be as homogeneous as possible. And in his London speech, on February 2 [l944] Benes emphasized that by Czechoslovakia he always meant Czechoslovakia before Munich. How is this compatible with a nationally homogeneous Czechoslovakia, which, presumably, Stalin wishes to see? In one way only, namely, by Benes's plan of making Czechoslovakia into a homogeneous nation-state by means of mass expulsions. Items to this effect in fact have begun to appear for some time in the world press; reports are circulating that the Czechs are planning to expel most of the Sudeten-Germans.⁵

While the fate of the Sudeten Germans was a matter of guesswork, as -for the future of the Hungarian minority, the Hungarian press did not even have guesses to offer. Hungarian public opinion had no inkling of what in exile circles had become a decided matter: Czechoslovakia would be restored as an ethnically pure nation-state, according to plans for the liquidation of both the Hungarian and the German minorities. How did the exiles reach this extreme decision?

Between Munich and the end of the war, the public statements of President Benes and his collaborators regarding the national minorities have undergone changes according to the changing military-political situation. The toughest threats alternated with democratic promises. Yet, in retrospect, a systematic scheme is detectable in Benes's pronouncements, revealing three phases of his policy for the liquidation of the minorities.

The President's attitude from Munich to the end of August 1939 was threatening, militant, anti-minority. During this first phase, Benes believed in a grand European coalition against Hitler and in a quick military defeat of Hitlerism. The anti-minority pronouncements suddenly came to a halt with the signing of the Soviet-German Non-Aggression Pact on August 23, 1939, and the subsequent outbreak of war in September.

Czechoslovak historiography since the war skips the second phase that lasted from September 1939 to Hitler's attack on Russia in June 1941. It is de rigeur today to maintain that exile policy consistently condemned the collective betrayal of the minorities. Those who wish to keep alive the theory of the collective crime of the Hungarians as a justification of the reprisals taken against them, after the war, are fond of quoting Benes's following words: "Already in November 1938 I said that the minorities will have to suffer for the war which inevitably had to break out."⁶ No doubt, with no letdown, Benes was filled with feelings of rage and revenge against the minorities. He was encouraged by the anti-German mood rising in Europe. He was hopeful that with a new world conflict, the forcible reduction of the large German minority within Czech historical boundaries would become possible, something for which the conditions after the First World War were not favorable. On November 12, 1938, Benes confided to his close collaborator, Hubert Ripka: There will be great changes in our country, both on socio-economic and political levels. New people with new ideas will come forward. Their methods in dealing with the Germans and with minorities in general will be completely different . . ."⁷ Also, in a letter he wrote to Kr. Rasín in November 1938, Benes expressed his faith in Hitler's imminent defeat and in the subsequent radical settling of accounts with the minorities: "Of course, we must never forgive anyone for their betrayal. We shall never give away our rights, and Our stolen territories."⁸ He spoke with equal determination in Chicago on July 8, 1939: "We will not accept the Vienna Award by which Hungary violated Slovakia and Sub-Carpathia."⁹ He struck a no less resolute tone in a letter he wrote on August 21, 1939 from London to his friends at home: "As regards Our wishes, for the time being, we will speak with restraint but gradually will advance the maximum attainable demands."¹⁰

However, with the outbreak of war, Benes was forced to face the new -reality. Above all, he realized that he would have to count on a long war. He was aware that time changes the mood of the moment, and unforeseen circumstances may arise.

To what extent political morality is the product of circumstances and of the moment, this was demonstrated by the sudden change in Benes's public attitude in the second phase of his policy toward the national minorities in the fall of 1939.

The Nazi-Soviet Pact and the outbreak of war changed the tone of Czechoslovak exile pronouncements. No longer are the minorities branded by collective betrayal. A Spirit of reconciliation is sounded in the -solemn declaration of the Czechoslovak National Committee on October 17, 1939, the day of its founding in Paris: "We enter the struggle in the Spirit of Masaryk and stefánik, in the name of our national heroes and -martyrs. We do not recognize any differences of party, or class, or any. thing else. We are determined to fight for a free and democratic Czechoslovakia, for a republic which will be just towards all its nationalities. We -want a socially just Czechoslovak Republic, built on equal rights and duties of all its citizens."¹¹ There is not a word about the minorities "base betrayal" which must be punished.

Cultivating the spirit of reconciliation, Benes went even farther in one of his London speeches in the fall of 1939: "Now we may all be able to evaluate correctly what our Republic had meant to the Czechs, the Slovaks, the Germans, the Hungarians, the Ruthenes, to all its inhabitants. We also declare that in the realm of social justice and nationality politics in particular we will eliminate the errors which existed in Our Republic in the past."¹² These words are worlds apart from the charges that, despite perfect equality with the majority, the national minorities had been in 1938 the prime causes of Czechoslovakia's catastrophe.

The fate of Czechoslovakia's Hungarian minority after World War II was, in fact, not determined by their prewar behavior but, rather, by the vicissitudes of the international military or political situation. To state this truth has been treated as treason after the war. A whole set of myths, feeding on deep-seated prejudices and distortions has sprouted and grown out of control ever since. And, as time passes, it becomes ever more difficult to argue against them.

A great success of exile policy was the British recognition of the provisional government formed from the Czechoslovak National Committee on July 24, 1940. At the same time, the British also recognized the continuity of Benes's presidency. On that occasion, in his first message as restored president, Benes was still paying tribute to past democratic principles, to be applicable in the future to the minorities as well: "I solemnly declare all these fundamental principles political and legal, and I emphasize that these principles are applicable to all citizens of our state, to all members of our nation, to Czechs, Slovaks, Germans, Ruthenians and others."¹³

Although the Hungarians were relegated to the "others," the pledge of democratic treatment must have applied to them too, if it did explicitly even to the Germans. All the more so, since the Western powers at that time still maintained diplomatic relations with Hungary. This was no time to speak of the minorities' collective guilt or of reprisals against them. The future was to be guided by Czechoslovak republican traditions of a common democratic past.

The "democratic" second phase regarding the treatment of the minorities in Benes's policy did not end abruptly. And during the second phase, its guiding principle was tolerance-sandwiched between the sharp tone of the first phase, before the outbreak of the war, and the third phase, shortly after Hitler's invasion of Russia.

The change to the third phase had come gradually. Even after the Nazi attack on the Soviet Union, Benes still struck a conciliatory note, he said on July 26,1941: "The most significant thing, politically, diplomatically, and legally is that your President elected by the large majority of Czechs, Slovaks, Germans, Ruthenians according to Our constitution prior to Munich has again been recognized and is functioning . . ."¹⁴ Once again, he omitted mentioning the Hungarians explicitly, which in this particular case, was not only forgetful on his part but ungrateful as well. After all, in 1935, the Hungarians too voted for Benes to succeed Masaryk as president.

Significantly, during the second phase of the western exiles' tolerance toward the minorities, the illegal Communist party at home, too, knew nothing of the "betrayal" of the Hungarian minority. The Communists -at that time advocated a program of a "Soviet Slovakia," and even rejected the idea of Czechoslovak continuity. From the Communist point -of view, this seemed a popular course to take at that time. After all, until the Nazi attack On the Soviet Union, the USSR was represented by an ambassador in Bratislava, the capital of "independent" Slovakia.¹⁵

The London exile's tolerance toward the minorities came publicly to an end soon after Hitler's invasion of Russia. Moreover, even during that publicly "democratic" second phase, behind-the-scenes discussions had taken place on the subject of minorities which kept the continuity of in-tolerance alive. On the subject of minorities, for instance, Presidential Secretary Smutny recorded on March 9, 1940 a noteworthy discussion: "The view seems gradually prevailing is that the Sudeten German question has to be solved by a transfer of the Germans. Dr. Benes remarked, however, that a certain number of Germans was bound to remain within the borders of the Republic, for it is not possible to expel three and a half million Germans. Nevertheless, he is in agreement with the principle of expulsion."¹⁶

Also, Secretary Smutny's notes imply that the principle of expulsion began to find support in certain British circles. According to a letter sent to Prague: "The first question politically influential Englishmen are asking us: What do we intend to do with our Germans?"¹⁷ In contrast to what is being said about the Germans, the tone of discussions on the Hungarians is still remarkably conciliatory at that time. According to Smutny's notes, in the course of a confidential discussion, Benes declared on April 5, 1940: "As for me, I believe that we will not quite regain our former boundaries in Slovakia. But it is not even in our interest to spoil again our relations with the Hungarians. Especially in view of the past and present behavior of the Slovaks."¹⁸

Benes's remarks gain truly historical significance in view of the fact that after the war Slovakia's Hungarians were declared no less responsible than the Germans for destroying the Czechoslovak Republic. After the war, it was conveniently glossed over that at one time, President Benes himself knew nothing of the "collective sin" of the "Fascist" Hungarian minority. Rather, he found the "behavior" of the Slovaks blameworthy. His anger against the Slovaks at that particular time might have been aroused by the expulsion of Czechs from Tiso's "independent" Slovakia.

British involvement in Benes's expulsion plans against the Germans was taking shape rapidly, as recorded by this entry in one of the documents on early wartime exile policy: "We share with the British our views regarding the Sudetenland; it has to be part of the Republic once again. They [the British] want us to have as few Germans as possible . . . . They reckon with frontier rectification's. They talk seriously about the expulsion of Germans from the country's interior."¹⁹

In February 1940, while tension between the United States and Germany was growing day by day, Benes felt the time had come to inform Roosevelt about his views. He asked the Czechoslovak ambassador in Washington, Vladimir Hurban, to relay his ideas to the President: "I emphasized the need of a unitary Czechoslovak state, [the need of the revision of boundaries between Czechoslovakia and Hungary [sic] , of letting the Ruthenians decide for themselves; otherwise we insist on our rights; with minor boundary changes, the Sudeten Germans have to be returned [to Czechoslovakia] . In principle, we accept the idea of federation but we want to know in advance with whom and how we are to be united."²⁰ This text, prepared by Benes for the sake of informing the President of the United States, is remarkable for its complete lack of any trace of hostility toward the Hungarians.

In dealing with the British, too, from the very beginning, distinction had been made between the German question and the Hungarian question. There was no British inclination shown to discuss the case of Czechoslovakia's Hungarians on the same level with that of the Sudeten Germans. Also, the British were reluctant to discuss future boundary questions, always so dear to Benes's heart. Minister of Foreign Affairs, Lord Halifax, informing Benes of the recognition of the Czechoslovak Government-in-exile, stated in a letter in July1940: "I wish it were clear that His Majesty's Government has no intention to commit itself, by this act of recognition, to any particular future solution of the boundary problem in Central Europe."²¹

In the spring of 1941, the Czechoslovak government-in-exile discussed the transfer of the Germans, but the positions taken were not unanimous. A member of the exile government, Jaroslav Stránsky, opposed Benes's views on expulsions. As Smutny noted: "He does not like the expulsion of populations. This, he thinks, is a Nazi invention. He would understand if [spontaneous] expulsions would take place in the moment of victory; but not by means of decrees; that would be cruel."²² Yet, in due course, Stránsky too accepted the principle of population transfer, along with all the other members of the Czechoslovak government-in-exile.

When the time for exploiting victory was approaching, Benes and his collaborators returned in full force to the post-Munich anti-minority accusations, namely, that the national minorities had been the prime cause of all of Czechoslovakia's and of Europe's disasters. Consequently, since they are a cancer of civilized society, the minorities have to disappear either by expulsion or by assimilation. Death to the minorities! The loose anti-minority slogans of the post-Munich Phase One became concrete policies of Phase Three by the end of the war. The battle cry against the minorities was no longer just a matter of abstract arguments. It was a policy of intended faits accomplis. And its target was not only the German minority, but the Hungarian minority as well.

An atmosphere of utmost hostility surrounded the minorities at the war's end. Unlike after World War I, no measures for the international protection of national minorities had been even considered after World War II. The peace conference after World War II regarded the national minorities as "sinful," and eager to condemn and punish them. The peace settlement surrendered the national minorities to the nationalist greed arid vengeance of the victors. History's clock was turned back.

The attitude of the peacemakers after World War II in a way returned to the pre-World War I philosophy. It rehabilitated the long outdated principle that national minorities have no rights or, if at all, only as individual citizens. This "civil rights" approach, recognizing individual lights, as every nationality expert knows, in practice does not protect the national minorities; rather, it surrenders them to the arbitrary rule of the dominant majority. This is exactly the kind of approach the oppressed nationalities of Central Europe had fought against since World War I and nobody knew the score better than Benes having been once himself a member of an oppressed nationality before World War I.

It was sheer hypocrisy on Benes's part to assure the West during World War II that "the minorities will be guaranteed the rights of individuals and of citizens."²³ He knew very well that such "guarantees" are worthless. Anyway, by embracing later the principle of expulsion and assimilation as a "solution" of the minority problem, he openly admitted that he is for the liquidation rather than the protection of the minorities.

Benes's triumph in his battle against minorities affected primarily the Hungarian minority of over three million people in the Danube region. After World War II, they became Europe's largest remaining minority. No effective guarantees have been drawn up for their protection either in the peace settlement, or ever since.

When during the Second World War, Benes launched his campaign for the creation of an ethnically homogeneous Czechoslovak nation-state, he accused both the Germans and the Hungarian minorities of ingratitude for the democratic rights they have enjoyed in interior Czechoslovakia. He failed to mention, however, that the status of the German minority was far more favorable than that of the Hungarian minority.

Before Hitler's rise to power, Czech-German relations in fact seemed to be moving toward a status of parity in Czechoslovakia, a favored treatment which the Hungarian minority has never been able to achieve. A much larger proportion of Germans than Hungarians entered the civil service or became officers in the army. Education in their own language was more readily available to the Germans than to the Hungarians. The Hungarians were never allowed a university of their own, whereas German higher education flourished. In general, the Germans were much better integrated into the state than the Hungarians.

In Slovakia, the home of the Hungarians, Slovak nationalism was given free reign to reduce the Hungarians from one-time status of majority to the status of a second-class minority. Consequently, all the customary minority grievances entrenched themselves much more deeply in Slovakia than in Bohemia, the home of the Germans. Prague in fact often kept referring to the satisfaction and loyalty of the Germans to rebuke the Hungarians for their constant complaints - particularly during the Locarno era of the 1920s when Czechoslovakia's relations had greatly improved with Weimar Germany, but not at all with Horthy's Hungary.²⁴

Common historical traditions between Czechs and Germans were apparently more conducive to appeasement in Bohemia between the two rival nationalities than between Slovaks and Hungarians in Slovakia. Both Germans and Czechs were developed national societies. The Slovaks, on the other hand, were struggling to create a national society of their own which they have never achieved before. Demographic data duly mirrored the difference between the Status of Germans and Hungarians in Czechoslovakia. The Hungarian minority diminished under Czechoslovak rule, whereas the German minority increased.²⁵

Although the Germans, not unlike the Hungarians, had been incorporated against their will into the newly founded state of Czechoslovakia after World War I, the Germans found a more secure place for themselves in the new Republic than did the Hungarians. As an impartial observer, the Swede A. Karlgren remarked:

The Germans were forced to concede that the state organized by the Czechoslovaks without their help, was completely capable of surviving . . . Around 1925, the German parties gave up one after the other the policy of boycotting the Czechoslovak state, and adopted a line usually referred to as activist, which consisted in collaborating with the Czechoslovaks, and defended their rights within the framework of the constitution. They accepted positions offered in the government. By 1930, all the significant German parties had become activist in this sense.

Czech-German cooperation was jolted by the world economic crisis. More than half of Czechoslovakia's unemployed were Germans.²⁷ No wonder, when Hitler rose to power, Nazi propaganda found fertile ground in the Sudeten German regions of Czechoslovakia. Yet it should also be remembered, despite Nazi propaganda, that German Socialist workers remained to the very end in the vanguard of the democratic revolutionary struggle.

The entire peaceful historical record of Czech-German relations came to be forgotten during the Second World War. Only bitter memories were remembered. Retribution for defeat in the Battle of White Mountain in 1620 became the Czech exile's battle cry against the German minority. In the words of the leader of the Czech Communists, Kiement Gottwald who, in his exile in Moscow joined Benes in London to campaign for the expulsion of the Germans:

You must prepare for the final retribution of White Mountain, for the return of the Czech lands to the Czech people. We will expel for good all descendants of the alien German nobility, the robbers who carried out their misdeeds after White Mountain.²⁸

After the guns of the Second World War fell silent, deeds followed words. On June 23,1945, a triumphant Gottwald declared: Now we definitely compensate for White Mountain . . . And not only that; now we reach even deeper into our nation's history: By confiscating the property of the Germans we wilt rectify the mistakes committed by the kings of the? Pøemysl dynasty who called in the German settlers: Now they will be expelled from our land once and for all."²⁹

It is difficult to reconcile these words with the Marxist theory of class struggle and internationalism: Nobody at that time had even attempted to do so: But more recently, another Czech Communist, Karel Pomajzl, did come up with just that: "Intervention [of the Western imperialist powers] into the internal affairs of Czechoslovakia [after the war] was not excluded . . . [therefore], when the Socialist revolution began to evolve from a democratic national revolution and the workers launched their struggle against the bourgeoisie which had always used nationalism to paralyze the socialist revolution, the expulsion of the Germans was the best solution."³⁰ In other words, according to this Marxist interpretation, expulsion was a preventive measure against the threat of Western imperialist intervention."

It took little effort on Benes's part to have his German expulsion plans endorsed by the Allies "in the interest of peace and security." However, it was not so easy to force his demand for the expulsion of the Hungarians into the larger framework of "European peace and security." Nevertheless, since winning so easily both Western and European support for his German expulsion plans, it might have seemed to Benes realistic to assume that the principle of population transfer may win approval sooner or later against the Hungarian minority as well: It did not: As far as the Hungarians were concerned, the Western Powers were not impressed by Benes's arguments in favor of expulsion: His appeal to Czechoslovakia's right to self-defense, and to collective reprisals as a punishment for collective crimes was effective against the Germans, but he never succeeded in convincing the Western Powers that the Hungarian minority would jeopardize either the security of Czechoslovakia or the peace of Europe.

After the war, some Slovak nationalists thought the Czechoslovak leaders in exile did not press hard enough the issue of expulsion against the Hungarians: These charges were unfounded: Both Benes in London and Gottwald in Moscow did everything they could to win support for the same punishment against both Germans and Hungarians: The Hungarian expulsion plans ultimately met with success in Moscow: But neither London nor Washington were wining to close ranks with Moscow regarding the expulsion of the Hungarians.

At the Outset, the British commitment to population transfer was strictly a theoretical one: As Benes recorded in his memoirs: We were told, via British Ambassador Nichols, (accredited to the Czechoslovak Government-in-exile), that the British Government discussed the questions of expulsion of minorities from the Republic in detail: In view of all that happened to us in 1938: the British will not object to the Principle of transfer of minority populations, on the grounds that Czechoslovakia should become as nationally homogeneous as possible."³¹ Several historians interpreted this as a British promise to support the expulsion of the Hungarians too: The truth of the matter is that Benes never received such a promise, although he tried hard to get one.

Benes commented in his memoirs on his difficulties with the "solution" of the Hungarian problem: "This [the expulsion] solution is particularly applicable to our Hungarians, and I spend all my efforts to convince all our allies to that effect, thus ensuring final peace and Czechoslovak-Hungarian cooperation after the war."³² He went on arguing with the Allies along these lines, claiming that the Hungarians can prove their acceptance of democracy only if they agreed to the expulsion of the Hungarian minority from Slovakia.

Janics: Czechoslovak Policy and the Hungarian Minority