Janics: Czechoslovak Policy and the Hungarian Minority

No matter what the regime, we must expect that there will always be minorities."³⁴ The gullible Vámbéry believed Benes's assurances that a democratic Hungary could count on a generous Czechoslovakia: Throughout the war, Vámbéry remained one of Benes's staunchest public supporters in the United States.

Benes's deception of Vámbéry took place at a time when he was fully engaged in his efforts to extend his expulsion plans to the Hungarians: As Smutny recorded, a few months later, a conversation between Benes and Philip B. Nichols, British Minister accredited to the Czechoslovak Government-in-exile: " . . . [Benes] insisted that the British Government give its explicit approval to the transfer: Nichols asked for a memorandum on how the transfer would be carried out: Dr. Benes spoke of two million Germans and 400,000 Hungarians . . . [But he] rejected the notion of a memorandum. First I want a decision regarding the principle, [he said], then I shall hand over a memorandum. Furthermore, it is possible that Roosevelt will need the vote of 400,000 Hungarians in the United States, and everything will collapse. Benes laughed, and so did Nichols."³⁵

Benes's battle against the Hungarians was not yet won. And he admonished in March 1943 his Slovak followers: "I don't want to hide from you the fact that not everything is won for Slovakia yet, grave dangers lay still ahead."³⁶

As World War II was drawing to a close, there was no time to lose. The world public opinion had to be made aware of the "necessity" to liquidate the national minorities. The world had to be persuaded that the existence of national minorities is harmful and dangerous, that their international protection should cease, that their elimination would serve world peace. Benes's concept had finally won international approval. Nothing was heard of the principle of intentional protection of the national minorities at the peace conference, nor during the subsequent decades. Benes's thesis that the question of national minorities was strictly a matter of internal affairs become unwritten international law.

The Benes thesis on national minorities was the topic of a lecture at Oxford in November 1943 by one of Benes's closest collaborators, Dr. Hubert Ripka, in which he said. "It does not seem likely that we shall return to the international protection of minorities . . . Germany and Hungary have used the national minorities as fifth columns. They had used them for aggressive and military purposes . . . hence it is just and right to oblige Germany and Hungary to bring home their compatriots . . ."³⁷

The essential point in Ripka's lecture was to lump Germans and Hungarians together. This has been a maxim of the Benes propaganda ever since the First World War. For the time being, however, Benes's campaign, advocating the expulsion of minorities, scored success against the Germans only.

It was during his stay in the United States, in the spring of 1943, that Benes received word of the Soviet consent to his transfer plans of the Germans. "Moscow communicated its agreement in principle via Ambassador Bogolomov [in London] to Dr. Ripka on June 5, 1943, who immediately forwarded the information to me in Washington; thus, I was able to discuss it with Roosevelt as well."³⁸ At that time, much as he tried, Benes was unable to obtain Moscow's support to the transfer of the Hungarians Nevertheless, in his negotiations with President Roosevelt, he made full use of the British and Soviet support of the principle of expulsion: "After I obtained the agreement of London and Moscow, I brought up the matter with Roosevelt, who immediately gave me his personal agreement, adding that anything that brought about a catastrophe such as Munich has to be eliminated once and for all."³⁹ Benes then immediately informed the British Government of his discussions with Roosevelt: "He [Roosevelt] agrees with the plan that after this war the number of Germans in Czechoslovakia should be reduced to a minimum by means of resettlement: He asked no questions with regard to Slovakia."⁴⁰ The last sentence was a clever remark to keep the unresolved Hungarian problem alive with the British.

No breakthrough in the Hungarian problem had occurred, as Benes hoped it might, during his Visit to Moscow in December 1943: He signed a treaty of friendship, mutual aid, and postwar cooperation with the Soviet Union. He discussed with Stalin and Molotov both the German and Hungarian problems. They reconfirmed their agreement on the expulsion of Czechoslovakia's Germans, but Moscow did not consent yet explicitly to the transfer of the Hungarians. Nevertheless, Benes did make enough headway that he could write to the Polish Premier Mikolajczyk in London: "Moscow accepted the notion of the transfer of our Germans. . . We will have united or parallel policies toward Hungary."⁴¹ There is no trace in Benes's memoirs that Mikolajczyk would have ever objected to the expulsion of the Hungarian minority from Czechoslovakia. Such a friendly gesture considering the friendly treatment of Polish refugees in Hungary during the war would have been warranted both then and after the war.

In Moscow, in December 1943, Benes conducted a series of negotiations with the leaders-in-exile of the Czechoslovak Communist Party. The published minutes of these discussions extensively mention the question of expulsions:

Only the anti-Fascists, democrats, and Communists among the German population will be allowed to remain in our country, as well as those who participated in the anti-Hitler struggle abroad. Benes emphasized that he obtained the agreement of the Soviet Union to the relocation of the Germans from the territory of the Republic, and he had likewise obtained ever earlier the written consent of the British and of Roosevelt. We will employ the same method against the Hungarians as we had against the Germans, a measure that will be facilitated by the exchange of the Slovak population of Hungary with the Hungarians of Slovakia.⁴²

The Slovak-Hungarian population "exchange," which from then on became a corollary of Benes expulsion plans, was a rather lopsided affair. There were at best 200,000 Slovaks in Hungary, attracted by the fertile Hungarian South, an island of settlers, far removed from the mountainous home of the Slovaks in the North whereas there were at least 600,000 Hungarians in Slovakia, most of them living along the northern rim of the large homogeneous Hungarian ethnic bloc of the mid-Danube region, and separated from the rest of Hungary only by the willful political boundary drawn after World War I.

Benes counted mainly on Soviet and Czech Communist Support against the Hungarians. In a note addressed to Václav Nosek and Vladimir Clementis, dated December 21, 1943, Klement Gottwald from Moscow informed the Communist exiles in London of his discussions with Benes:

The President of the Republic explained to us his population transfer . . . Our reply was that the tactics of the measure have to be modified. It would be more useful if the matter could be solved in the spirit of the anti-Fascist struggle within the framework of punishing the war criminals who committed crimes against Czechoslovakia The President stated in his response that his original plan can be realized with the application of our tactics. At the same time, he emphasized that, as a consequence of this cleansing action, the Czechoslovak Republic will be converted into a nation-state.⁴³

Ever since the thesis of "anti-Fascist tactics" dominated both Communist and non-Communist Czechoslovak interpretations of the expulsion policy. The postwar persecution of the Hungarian minority, too has been described as an "anti-Fascist" activity. Actually, ideological "tactics" did not matter. Naked force prevailed against the Hungarian minority.

The re-conquest of the "lost Slovak lands (inhabited mostly by Hungarians) became the battle cry of the Czechoslovak military units formed on Soviet territory: "Prepare for the struggle . . . to free our brothers and sisters pining under the yoke of Hungarian counts and gendarmes!"⁴⁵

All anti-Fascist resistance movements in Europe called for liberation of the nation and the return of lost territories. The anti-Fascist Hungarian resistance alone was condemned to couple its struggle with surrender of purely Hungarian territories to vindictive neighbors. Well before the end of the war, the decision to restore the boundaries drawn up after World War I by the Treaty of Trianon was already an accomplished diplomatic fact. And, on top of that, Hungarian anti-Fascists were condemned to face the possibility that Victory over the enemy might confront them with the threat of expulsion from their homelands.

Although during his visit to Moscow in December 1943, Benes failed to get unqualified Soviet support to his plan to expel the Hungarian minority from Czechoslovakia, he did not lose faith in the final triumph of his policy. Dated January 19, 1944, the Foreign Ministry of the Czechoslovak Government-in-exile issued a circular signed by Hubert Ripka, informing the Allied Embassies in London of Benes's negotiations in Moscow. The circular exuded confidence that it will be possible to lump together the German and Hungarian questions.

The Soviet Union is in agreement with us that, given our experience with the Sudeten. Germans (and with the Hungarians) it will benecessary to reduce their numbers to the lowest level, to a degree that will enable us to build a true Czechoslovak nation-state. The British and the United States governments also agree with our stand.⁴⁶

Following the German occupation of Hungary, in March 1944, when a new Hungarian government was installed under Nazi auspices, the Czechoslovak émigré press in Moscow (Ceskoslovenské; Listy; Nasé Vojsko v SSSR) struck a strident tone against the Hungarians and made no secret of the expulsion plans. The Hungarian Communist exiles, however, remained strangely silent on the expulsion issue, and it is not known whether there has ever been any exchange of views between Czechoslovak and Hungarian Communist exiles in Moscow on the expulsion of the Hungarian minority from Czechoslovakia.⁴⁷ Anyway, Hungary's occupation in the spring of 1944 enabled the Czechoslovak propaganda to fully identify the Hungarians with the despised Nazi Germans. There was no longer any fear either of a Hungarian military or political force capable of resisting population expulsions. The stage seemed to be set for a fait accompli solution to the Hungarian problem.

Communist views regarding minority rights, once inspired by "class consideration," had completely disappeared by the spring of 1944. On May 11, 1944, Klement Gottwald stated in a broadcast Over Radio Moscow: " . . .the moment is not far away when we will sweep our country clean of the dirty German and Hungarian traftor5."⁴⁸

The Czech Communist party paper in Moscow, Ceskoslovenské Listy, considered the Hungarian question as already settled. In its issue of August 1, 1944, the paper wrote: ". . . what applied to the Germans, applies to the Hungarians as well."⁴⁹ Not even the Jews were spared of nationalist hatred if they have anything to do with Germans or Hungarians. The Jews are being exterminated by the Nazis irrespective of their nationality, but the Communist Václav Koplecky, Gottwald's closest collaborator, declares:

Those Jews who feel as Germans or Hungarians must face the same measures that will be taken against the Germans and Hungarians in Czechoslovakia. The liquidation of anti-Semitism does not mean that we will grant the Jews special privileges if they feel as Germans or Hungarians. Nor will we allow those who feel as Germans or Hungarians to hide their true feelings behind the claim of Jewishness. Liquidation of anti-Semitism cannot be allowed to cause harm to the national and Slav character of the future Czechoslovak Republic.

By the summer of 1944, the Moscow Communist exiles had become as ultra-chauvinist Czechoslovaks as the London bourgeois exiles. F. Hála, representing the London exiles, reported of his negotiations with the Moscow exiles: "Gottwald, Kopecky, and Sverma asserted unequivocally that we shall build a Slav state, where the Czechs, Slovaks and Ukrainians shall enjoy democratic rights, but not the Germans and the Hungarians."⁵¹ It looked, in fact, as if the main driving force of Slav nationalist radicalism would now come from Moscow. At the time of fighting on the Czechoslovak border at Dukla, Za svobodne Èeskoslovensko, the Communist paper of the Czechoslovak military units formed on Soviet territory, wrote on October 6: we must clean Slovakia of all intruders and traitors. . . the traitors who have been severely punished will never betray -us again! The cleansing of the Republic of all Germans, Hungarians, traitors has begun."⁵²

Indeed, the military situation in October 1944 was such that it seemed likely that the Hungarian minority of Slovakia may flee before the advancing Soviet front the same way the German population had fled from the Baltic regions, from Poland and, also from Northern Slovakia. That the Hungarians, too, would flee, turned Out to be a wrong assumption. South Slovakia's Hungarians, mostly peasants who lived there since time immemorial, never thought of fleeing. Moreover, the failure of the Soviet operations at Dukla, and the defeat of the Slovak national uprising, had changed the military situation. In the late fall of 1944, expulsion of the Hungarian minority from Czechoslovakia was no longer expected by purely military means by the Czechoslovaks themselves. Once again, diplomacy took over the initiative.

On November 23, 1944, the Czechoslovak government in London handed the three Great Powers a memorandum requesting that the measures approved against the Germans should be recognized as legitimate against the Hungarian minority also:

The presence of a Hungarian minority in Czechoslovakia constitutes no less of a danger as the German minority. The Czechoslovak government reserves the right to take the measures described in this memorandum against all those members of the Hungarian minority who have exhibited hostility towards the Republic. . . . It should be noted that the Czechoslovak government has the authority to decide which Germans and Hungarians may or may not remain within the Republic.⁵³

The postwar interpretation of this memorandum maintained that the Czechoslovak government proposed all Germans and Hungarians to be deprived of their citizenship, not merely the compromised individuals and the Fascists.⁵⁴

At any rate, reply of the three powers to the memorandum was negative. The Hungarian questions remained deadlocked. The expectations of "solving" it by military means had not been fulfilled. Also, politically, the Hungarian situation had changed toward the end of 1944. Regent Horthy's attempt in October to overthrow the pro-German government in German-occupied Hungary, and to sue for an armistice, had failed. However, the Hungarians soon improved somewhat their political status. In December, an anti-Fascist government was formed in Russian-occupied eastern Hungary and an armistice was signed. It was no longer possible for the Czechoslovak exiles to resort simply to a policy of fait accompli against the Hungarians.

On Czechoslovak prodding, Soviet Foreign Minister Molotov tried to include the transfer of Hungarians among the Allied armistice conditions with Hungary. The attempt was vetoed by the Western powers. Disappointed, Gottwald sent this message to London:

The Western powers have already rejected the notion of a transfer. During the debate over the armistice to be concluded with Hungary Balfour and Harriman objected to the inclusion of the question of transfer among the armistic conditions, in Spite of Molotov's support. The Red Army may prove very helpful. But everything depends on the military developments . . . There are more Hungarians in Slovakia now than before, because the Red Army had advanced from South to North, and the Hungarians had nowhere to flee. If we cannot send them elsewhere, we will place them in labor camps.⁵⁵

The voice of the exiles, embittered by failures of their expulsion policies, became ever more aggressive against the Hungarians. The Slovak Communist Vladimir Clementis outdid Benes in whipping up anti. Hungarian sentiments in his radio talks to the homeland: "The jackal of Budapest, following in the footsteps of the German tiger, is getting not just bones but large chunks of meat torn from the flesh of the subject nations. "⁵⁶

It is worth noting at this point that the text of ail those notorious post-war Presidential decrees of 1945 depriving the German and Hungarian minorities of their rights as citizens of Czechoslovakia were composed in the atmosphere of the summer optimism of 1944 in London and Moscow, at a time when it looked as if nothing could stop the solving of minority problems by military means.

It is worth mentioning too, that in the last months of the war disagreements arose between Benes and the British Government over the entire problem of population transfer. Before leaving London, Benes's last conversation with British Ambassador Nichols was not exactly friendly on this subject:

We argued for a long time over the question of transfer. I was justified in expecting a clear and final formulation as to the borders and to the matter of transfer, so that we may issue our own laws. Nichols demanded that we not issue such laws without prior consultations with the Allied Great Powers. When I explained to him what would happen at home if we were to refrain from issuing such laws (chaos, fighting, massacre of the Germans) he proposed that these laws be proclaimed as part of the government program, but before executing them, we must reach complete agreement with the Allies over method, scale of operations, etc. , (since they too have a say in the matter, as they will be on the other side of Germany's border, and they will have to receive these Germans) and he stressed again that we may include our objectives as a maximum in our program. I rejected this solution and later, at the time our saying good-byes, I brought up the matter once again with Eden and Churchill, but they have already been briefed by the Foreign Office in the matter and spoke in indefinite terms, without committing themselves, saying that we may deal with the matter only as a program, and in no other way . . . Before my departure I mentioned to Nichols that I will discuss the matter in Moscow and may reach an agreement directly with Moscow, and act accordingly.⁵⁷

The first postwar Czechoslovak government assembled in Moscow in March 1945 respected the British wish. The decrees on depriving the minorities of their rights, signed by President Benes already in London in September 1944, were promulgated in Prague only on August 2,1945, following the joint decisions of the Great Powers on population transfers at the Potsdam Conference. However, since the presidential decrees were written in September 1944 (when hopes ran high that Germans and Hungarians could be treated the same way), the decrees affected the Hungarians as well, even though at Potsdam the Czechoslovaks obtained no Western approval to that effect. How this anti-Hungarian Czechoslovak policy without approval of the Western Allies has boomeranged at the peace conference, will be discussed in another chapter.

The anti-Hungarian intentions of the Czechoslovak exile government were made public before Benes's departure from London for Moscow, In his radio address on February 16, 1945, Benes for the first time publicly hinted that not only the German but the Hungarian minority as well would be liquidated:

All provinces inhabited by Germans or Hungarians will be from the beginning administered by government agencies until such time as the wartime and minority problems are solved. These agencies will be backed up, of course, by adequate military forces. Any kind of resistance will be ruthlessly smashed. This will be our guideline for the future . . . we are preparing the final solution of the question of our Germans and Hungarians since the new republic will be a Czechoslovak nation-state.⁵⁸

After Benes's arrival in Moscow, the Eastern and Western Czechoslovak exiles deliberated from March 22 to March 29, 1945. Also a delegation of the Slovak National Council from the home front joined them. They coordinated their views and put together a National Front Government which worked out a government program - or rather, approved one since the program had already been put together by Klement Gottwald on the basis of prior negotiations and agreements.

As a Communist Party chronicler, Václav Kopecky, put it: "Comrade Gottwald asked if any of the parties present had worked out a proposal for the government program, and it turned out that, except for our own -party, none had ready such a proposal. Then Comrade Gottwald announced that our party did draft such a program, and that he will introduce it -as a basis for negotiations. The proposal then became the program of the -National Front Government of the Czechs and Slovaks. "⁵⁹

Kopecky's account is not complete. A postwar collection of wartime documents does speak of another proposal: the Social Democrats from London brought along their statement of principles, approved at their conference of February 18, 1945. This however, was not accepted as a basis for negotiations."⁶⁰ The Social Democratic party was more moderate than Benes and his Communist allies regarding reprisals against the minorities. This becomes obvious from the amendment they proposed to the government's program:

We demand that that portion of the German and Hungarian population which had been unfaithful to the Czechoslovak Republic, and which became a military prop of reaction and Nazism, should be expelled. The status of those Germans and Hungarian citizens, however, who had remained faithful to the Republic and its democratic ideals, should be settled in the spirit of complete political, social, civil, and economic equallly.⁶¹

The proposal of the Social Democrats conflicted with the principle of a purely Czechoslovak nation-state. Essentially it presumed minority rights, hence, it could not form the basis for discussions in the then prevailing chauvinist atmosphere. Furthermore, the leadership was already in the hands of Kiement Gottwald: "The fact that the deliberations began on the basis of the proposal presented by the Communist Party has explicate proved that the Communist Party had become the leading political force of the National Front. "⁶²

Benes's dictatorial powers practically ceased with the formation of the new government headed by Zdenek Fierlinger on the one hand, and with the acceptance of the government program on the other. As one eyewitness in Moscow, the Slovak Communist Dr. Gustav Husik, recorded the scene: "He [Benes] behaved as a constitutional president and took cognizance of the announcement with a cold expression. His dictatorial Status in exile had come to an end. Anyhow, he had to leave quite a few of his illusions behind in London. "⁶³

One of the illusions Benes had to part with was his concept of the Czechoslovak nation. He had always shied away from recognizing Slovak national sovereignty. He was an advocate not only of the continuity of the Czechoslovak state, but also of the continuity of the Czechoslovak nation. He did not recognize the existence of a separate Slovak nation. He considered the Slovak language merely as a variant, or a dialect of the Czech. Benes held onto these views to the very end. In his own words, recorded by a Slovak Communist:

I will never be persuaded to accept the existence of a Slovak nation. This is my scientific conviction, and I am not willing to depart from it. You as Communists may defend your own stand, I have no objections, but I will persist in believing and claiming that the Slovaks are Czechs, and that the Slovak language is but a dialect of the Czech in the same way as the Hanák language, or any other dialect. ⁶⁴

As an exile during the Second World War, Benes had fought relentlessly not merely for the restoration of Czechoslovakia in its prewar size but also for making it into a purely Slav state of the Czechoslovaks by expelling the Germans and Hungarians. He returned home at the war's end by way of Moscow victoriously. But he had to give up territory, by ceding Subcarpathia to the Soviet Ukraine, and he had to face the fact that the Slovaks are not one nation with the Czechs but a separate nation. He still could hope, however, to be able with Soviet help to carry out the plans worked out in exile for the expulsion of the non-Slav national minorities. The government program promulgated in Kosice on April 5, 1945, known as the Kosice Program became the constitutional source of his Presidential decrees which deprived the German and Hungarian minorities of all their rights as citizens of the restored Czechoslovak state.

Janics: Czechoslovak Policy and the Hungarian Minority