Prague Winter

by Madeleine Albright

  The cultural and political dynamism of the capital owed much to the intellectual energy of a man born in an earlier era whose impending departure few were ready to accept. Since the republic’s founding, residents had grown accustomed to the sight of T. G. Masaryk riding on a stallion through the streets, nothing separating him from the crowds. In the winter of 1936, my father met the patriarch for the only time when the Foreign Ministry asked him to accompany a group of Yugoslav scholars who had sought an audience. To my father, it was like meeting George Washington: “There he was, Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk, 86 years old, tall and slim in a dark suit, in a simply furnished room, surrounded by his library, a bouquet of roses over the mantelpiece.” On his desk two books stood like opposing duelists: Faust, by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, and Adolf Hitler’s Mein Kampf.

  WHEN MY FATHER joined its ranks, the Czechoslovak Foreign Ministry was not the sprawling bureaucracy one might imagine. It consisted instead of a small cadre of officials who served as ambassadors to foreign countries and about a hundred more employees providing staff support. The budget was far from lavish; several months elapsed before my father was even paid. The unchallenged leader and chief strategist of the operation was Eduard Beneš, Masaryk’s closest adviser and foreign minister since the republic’s founding.

  Born in 1884, Beneš was the tenth and youngest child of a peasant family with roots in the northwest corner of Bohemia. Animated from the start by nationalism, the precocious lad wrote an ode to Hus while still in knee pants and frequently traded punches with German children. He was also a systematic and ambitious thinker. An altar boy at ten, he was agnostic by twelve. The following year, he smoked his last cigarette, and a year later swore off liquor. At sixteen, he was “captivated by radicalism and socialism and was celebrating the first of May with a red flower in his buttonhole.” By eighteen, he had moved on from radical ideology to seeking truth through science. At twenty-one, he vowed to prepare for a career in politics and, to that end, enrolled in three universities simultaneously. In Paris to study, he met and kept company with Anna Vlčeková, the daughter of a Czech railway man. Through a friend, he learned that the young woman had fallen for him, a frightening prospect; also impractical. The next day, he invited her for a walk and explained that because further romance would be a hindrance to his career, they should go their separate ways. She agreed. He went to London, she to Prague, but love eventually won out. Four years later, Eduard and Anna (now Hana)* embarked on a marriage that, although frequently surrounded by turmoil, would remain solid for the rest of their lives.

  While at university, Beneš came to the attention of Charlotte Masaryk, who prevailed upon her husband to employ the impecunious student as a German-Czech translator. The young man attended Masaryk’s lectures and soon became a disciple. When World War I broke out, the two agreed to work together. Although not imposing physically, Beneš had been a gifted schoolboy soccer player and was no coward. Throughout the war, he traveled by train from one European capital to the next, transmitting messages to agents of the Czech underground and carrying coded books in double-bottomed suitcases. This was no game. If apprehended, he would have been hanged or shot. Ironically, Beneš was arrested three times by the British and twice by the French on suspicion of spying—not for the Czechs but for Austria.

  Among fellow diplomats, Masaryk’s protégé was known for his intelligence, strategic vision, absence of humor, and enthusiasm for debating even minor issues. He also possessed an aptitude for organization and was incorruptible. At the Paris Peace Conference, he was approached by a longtime friend who proposed creating a special fund from which the foreign minister might make discretionary withdrawals. Such a practice, though of questionable ethics, would hardly have been unusual. Beneš was careful to obtain his friend’s room number and promptly had him arrested.

  In designing his country’s foreign policy, Beneš began by accepting the inescapable: because Czechoslovakia was small and therefore dependent for help on others, it could thrive only within a climate of regional peace. Thus he built a network of alliances beginning with the Little Entente, a partnership with Yugoslavia and Romania to provide a barrier against Hungary. For more powerful friends, he turned to the West, completing in 1925 a mutual defense treaty with France. Ten years later he balanced this with a similar but more limited agreement with the Soviet Union. Under the arrangement, Czechoslovakia and the USSR would be obliged to assist each other in the event of an attack only if France were already fighting on the same side. That sounds complicated, but it made sense to Beneš, who did not want his country dragged into a war between Germany and Russia.

  The 1935 treaty with Moscow would turn out to be less useful than Beneš hoped, but he considered its negotiation a highlight of his career, in part because of the warm welcome he received in the Soviet capital. At the train station, there had been a red carpet and many more flags than had been present for earlier visits by dignitaries from Great Britain and France. Beneš enjoyed the full VIP tour of Russian treasures, including the opera, the new subway system, and the Lenin Mausoleum. At the farewell reception, he had to fend off numerous attempts to make him drink, a show of discipline not matched by Kliment Voroshilov, the Kremlin’s commissar for defense. Voroshilov assured Beneš that his country, in the event of a German attack, would fight back, or, as he phrased it, “rip the enemy apart.” He also promised that the Soviet Union would not leave the Czechoslovaks to fight alone. This pledge prompted the question “But how will you do that? After all, our countries are not neighbors. Would you really cross the territory of other nations in order to come to our aid?” “Of course,” replied Voroshilov. “We take it for granted.”

  WHEN, AT THE age of nine, my father had joined his fourth-grade class in planting a linden tree in honor of the new Czechoslovakia, his teacher had predicted that the tree would grow tall and strong—“able to withstand high winds.” As the 1930s began, the gales buffeting the new republic promised to put that forecast to the test. The Great Depression tossed hundreds of thousands of workers onto the unemployment rolls; by 1933, one in six was without a job. Export-dependent industries in the predominantly German Sudetenland, especially the textile sector, were badly damaged. Suddenly it seemed that skills and discipline were not enough; a strong work ethic mattered little if there was no employment to be had. Such economic frustrations have a way of fueling unrest. In Czechoslovakia’s neighborhood, this posed a particular danger.

  On January 30, 1933, Adolf Hitler ascended the steps of the Presidential Palace in Berlin to receive from President Paul von Hindenburg a formal invitation to become chancellor of Germany. Rarely has a transfer of power been more plainly a handoff from one generation to the next. The brittle-boned Hindenburg had begun his military career an epoch earlier—during the Austro-Prussian War in 1866. He was the standard-bearer of German military tradition and only a few months previously had contemptuously dismissed the forty-three-year-old Hitler. “That man for chancellor?” he fumed. “I’ll make him a postmaster and he can lick stamps with my head on them.”

  The Austrian-born führer had prevailed nonetheless, and from the moment he took office, Germany’s military rise and moral descent became the central story in Europe. With startling swiftness, he transformed his country from a tottering democracy into a tightly organized dictatorship with a skyrocketing military budget and an aggressive international agenda. During the peace conference at the end of the Great War, the dominant image in world affairs had been that of old men in starched collars holding polite conversations in ornate rooms. The new image was that of a brown-shirted mob breaking bank and shop windows while screaming, “Judah perish!” To foreign observers, Hitler seemed an ill-bred nuisance, spawned by the Depression, giving shrill voice to resentments flowing from the Treaty of Versailles. That pact had included steep financial penalties that could not be paid and were never collected. The defaults irritated the Allies; the penalties reminded the Germans of their humiliati
on.

  The French had insisted after the war that German power be checked at the Rhine, thinking that the river would become a moat behind which they could mount their fortifications. The area within Germany that was west of the river (known as the Rhineland) was to remain demilitarized and under international supervision. In March 1936, Hitler ordered his army to reoccupy the region. The French were powerful enough at the time to drive the Germans back and had a legal right, under the treaty, to do so. Instead they consulted with the British, who deferred to them; resolute statements were issued, and nothing happened. The Rhineland, it seemed, was a small amount to pay for peace. The Nazis, however, soon began to fortify their new front line—closer to France and further from Berlin. A German invasion of France, unthinkable until then, could now be thought of. The price of peace would grow.

  5

  A Favorable Impression

  Tomáš Masaryk’s body was wearing down. In May 1934, he suffered a stroke that impaired his eyesight. In December 1935, he resigned the presidency and was succeeded by Beneš. In September 1937, at the age of eighty-seven, he died.

  Mourners came from across the country and throughout Europe. For hours they shuffled past the casket on display outside the castle entrance. On the day of the funeral, the cortege retraced the route that had brought the new president from the train station nineteen years earlier. Twenty-five thousand veterans of the Czechoslovak Legion were among the marchers. A million people formed jagged lines along the streets, standing on chairs and perched on shoulders, each straining to glimpse the flag-covered coffin; eventually it passed, flanked by soldiers from each of the country’s major nationalities: a Czech, a Slovak, a German, a Hungarian, a Ruthenian, a Pole. Peter Demetz, aged fifteen, recalled, “You heard only the muffled sound of the horses’ hooves, the clink of the wheels and weapons, the infantry boots on cobbled streets, and quiet sobbing.” In Beneš’s farewell tribute, he called Masaryk “the awakener” and urged his countrymen to put aside their conflicts in order to build a democracy in which all citizens could find their rightful place. The great leader’s body was transported to a small cemetery in the village of Lány; there it was laid to rest in a leafy plot near the family’s country home.

  Interviewed shortly before his death, Masaryk marveled that, in all his time as president, he had never found it necessary to sacrifice his principles. He said that he had been guided in office by the same beliefs that had steered him as a student, teacher, and apprentice politician. Further, he felt that his faith in democracy had been validated. “My satisfaction,” he explained, comes “from having seen the . . . ideals I professed prove themselves and stand firm through trial after trial.” One can but wonder if Masaryk would have retained his sense of satisfaction had he been granted a single more year of life.

  FOUR MONTHS BEFORE Masaryk died, I was born on a warm spring day in Prague. The date was May 15, 1937; I was named Marie Jana out of respect for my mother’s sister, but that appellation didn’t stick. Grandmother Růžena dubbed me “Madla” after a character in a popular stage drama, Madla from the Brick Factory. My mother, with her unique pronunciation, modified the name to “Madlen.” From there it was a short hop to “Madlenka,” which is what I was called growing up. For several weeks, I was agreeably fussed over in Prague, then went on my initial foreign trip—to Yugoslavia, where my father had been appointed press attaché to the Czechoslovak legation. I spent most of my first year in Belgrade.

  The author flanked by grandmothers Růžena Spiegelová (left) and Olga Körbelová

  My parents were enthralled by the Yugoslav capital and worked diligently to add Serbo-Croatian to the list of languages in which they were fluent. Although the black clouds hanging over Europe could not be ignored, it was human nature to hope that the worst might be avoided. The memory of the Great War was still fresh—surely the world’s leaders could prevent a repetition? The Czechoslovaks had placed their faith in the League of Nations, an alliance with France, a partnership with Soviet Russia, and measures to accommodate the demands of their restive German minority. Yes, Hitler was appalling, and yes, his swagger was having an unnerving effect throughout Europe, but for my parents and for their generation, the full reality of Nazism was, in the local expression, “still behind the mountains.”

  As a representative of Czechoslovak democracy, my father was intrigued by Yugoslavia’s democratic opposition, which was at odds with the country’s conservative monarchy. He met with his freedom-loving friends frequently and sometimes secretly, while also arranging events that publicized Czechoslovak history and culture. He soon learned that democratic enthusiasm and professional diplomacy could make for an awkward fit. In April 1937, he was preparing for a visit to Belgrade by President Beneš when a group of prodemocracy students came to the legation. “We love Beneš,” they exclaimed. “Please tell us when he is coming so that we can put him on our shoulders and carry him through the streets.” My father replied as a diplomat is trained to do, cordially and at considerable length, saying nothing. Word of the visitor’s itinerary still escaped, and the students, possessing more courage than common sense, rushed Beneš’s car. Fortunately or not, they were pushed back by a cordon of police. At the insistence of the Yugoslav government, all public events were removed from the president’s schedule.

  A few months later, the French foreign minister came to Belgrade. Again, demonstrators took to the streets to express their prodemocracy yearnings. My father, startled by the noise outside his office, ventured to the balcony for a look. Below him were about five hundred people chanting and holding signs that condemned Yugoslavia’s reactionary regime. He hesitated, wanting neither to discourage the idealistic gathering by turning away nor to signal support for the downfall of the government to which he was accredited. Pondering these alternatives, he stood there unmoving for several minutes, until finally the police rolled up and dispersed the crowd. My father’s restraint was not sufficient, however, to overcome the hostility of Yugoslavia’s ruling elite. In 1938, he was accused by the foreign minister of writing articles for the Czechoslovak press regarding internal developments in Belgrade and of having Bolshevik sympathies, neither of which was true. With support from his own government, he continued doing his job the way he thought it should be done.

  To my parents, the social aspects of diplomatic life came naturally. My mother was not the only one who was talkative. My father chatted with people on all sides of every issue, and learned firsthand about the ethnic rivalries that would resurface so tragically in the Balkans when I was secretary of state. Among the friendships my parents forged were with Vladimir Ribnikar, a Serb newspaper publisher, and his wife, Jara, a Czech. The couple had small children, with whom I was now old enough to play such exciting games as standing up, then falling down. Our families met weekly for dinner, and my father and Mr. Ribnikar exchanged phone calls daily. The Ribnikars were among the last people to whom we said good-bye upon leaving Belgrade—and the first we would try to greet, under harrowing conditions, upon our return.

  TO BUILD AN empire, Germany needed an industrial base that extended well beyond its traditional borders. Even before seizing power, the führer confided to his advisers:

  We shall never be able to make grand politics without a steel-hard power center of 80 or 100 million Germans living in an enclosed area! My first duty therefore will be to create this center which will not only make us invincible but ensure for us once and for all the decisive ascendancy over European nations. . . . In these areas there is today a large majority of alien tribes, and if we want to put our Great Power on a permanent basis, it will be our duty to remove them. . . . The Bohemian-Moravian Basin . . . will be colonized by German farmers. The Czechs will be . . . expelled from Central Europe.

  Small countries can survive hostile neighbors, but the odds lengthen when a significant national minority identifies with the enemy. This happened in Czechoslovakia not as an inevitable consequence of ethnic diversit
y but because of a tragic convergence of events: Hitler’s rise, the Depression, Tomáš Masaryk’s declining health, and the failure of governments in and outside Central Europe to comprehend the scope of the danger they faced.

  During the republic’s first decade, the majority of its German population was reconciled to life within the state. Nationalist feelings, though present, were expressed peacefully. In the elections of 1920, 1925, and 1929, parties advocating separatism received at most 26 percent of the German vote. International conditions were also favorable, as relations between Prague and the Weimar Republic were cordial. A leader of the Czechoslovak German Agrarian party declared in middecade:

  We have lived with the Czech[s] for a thousand years, and through economic, social, cultural and even racial ties, we are so closely connected with them that we really form one people. To use a homely metaphor: we form different strands in the same carpet.

  Clearly, coexistence was possible, but Hitler quickly changed the psychology on both sides of the border. The Germany that had been demoralized after World War I was now a resurgent land with a grossly inflated view of its rights and few internal constraints on what it would do to secure them. The renewed promise of a powerful Germany fed the desire of Sudeten nationalists to recapture their past primacy. The Nazi party was banned in Czechoslovakia, but members of the Sudeten German Heimat Front, a party founded by Konrad Henlein in 1933, were Nazis by another name. They professed loyalty to Prague, but their ambitions were linked to those of the Third Reich. The interaction of economic insecurity and Teutonic solidarity inflamed political attitudes. Henlein’s party outpolled all others in the 1935 parliamentary election—a shocking upset.