Prague Winter

by Madeleine Albright

  BENEŠ HAD LEFT London four weeks earlier in the company of Jan Masaryk and representatives from the various factions of the London government in exile. The entourage, large enough to warrant three Royal Air Force bombers, stopped for refueling in Tehran. Waiting to greet them was the government’s double-dealing ambassador to Moscow, Zdenĕk Fierlinger, who informed Beneš that the Communists had decided to put him forward as prime minister of the postwar government. Beneš was surprised because Fierlinger had no domestic policy experience but relieved that the Communists hadn’t chosen one of their own. As sympathetic as the ambassador was to Moscow, he belonged to the Social Democratic Party. The West would be more comfortable with him than it would have been with the Communist leader, Klement Gottwald. Beneš also thought that Fierlinger’s lack of popular support would make him relatively easy to control.

  The presidential party arrived in Moscow on March 17; meetings to organize the government began five days later, chaired by Gottwald. Beneš didn’t attend on the grounds that, under the Constitution, he should stand above the parties and await their recommendations. This was a miscalculation. By far the most popular man in Czechoslovakia, he could have used his political capital—acknowledged even by the Soviets—to mold the state institutions for which he would bear ultimate responsibility. Instead he left it to the democratic party leaders to look after their own interests, which they were poorly prepared to do. For years they had done little without his consent; now they were on their own. They saw their mission as one of restoration, to re-create a pluralist system in which an appointed government would soon be replaced by an elected one. To the party leaders’ way of thinking, the country’s future direction would be determined at the ballot box, not by temporary arrangements decided on in Moscow.

  The Czech and Slovak Communists, by contrast, were intent not on restoration but revolution. They saw the war as a catastrophe brought on by capitalist decadence but also a rare opportunity to create a totalitarian state by democratic means. They were patient enough not to seek victory all at once but determined to set the country on what they intended to be an irreversible course. Stalin advised them to accept Beneš as president but otherwise to increase their leverage at every point. Their thirty-two-page draft program served as the basis for discussion because the opposing parties had neglected to fashion an alternative. The deck was stacked further by an informal alliance between the Communists and Social Democrats, the party of the moderate Left led by Fierlinger—a man whose heart and marrow, the Communists knew, belonged to them.

  Gottwald also sought to take advantage of the perpetual tension between Slovaks and Czechs. He promised the Slovak representatives that their region would have full autonomy. Beneš and the Czech democrats saw no alternative but to accept this, albeit with much regret. Beneš in particular believed that Slovak nationalism had no racial or linguistic basis and that the country could not prosper without a robust central authority. He had tried to enlist Stalin’s support for these arguments, but the dictator had no interest. This meant that the Slovak national dream would survive—but to what end?

  THE WARTIME EXPERIENCE of independent Slovakia had failed the vision of its champions. In place of its junior partnership with Prague, the nation had chosen a disgraceful subservience to the Reich, although in fairness many Slovaks resented German domination and struggled to lessen its hold. The country’s Communists opposed Nazism ideologically; many Protestants were still drawn to the Czechs; and a fair number of Roman Catholics took offense at Hitler’s perverted view of scripture. One U.S. diplomat compared the relationship between Bratislava and Berlin to that of a puppy on its master’s leash, pulling always in one direction or another, unable to shake itself loose. The Slovak leadership, unforgivably, made little attempt to break free.

  Father Tiso, the jowly, crew-cut president, was an enthusiastic collaborator. He had sent his country’s boys to fight and die alongside German soldiers on the eastern front and was generous in funneling food and mineral resources to the Nazi war machine. More damning still, his government had hastened to rid its homeland of Jews. This was not because Tiso and his advisers agreed with Nazi racial theories—as Slavs, they couldn’t have done so without betraying their own ethnic heritage. Instead, their policy was poisoned by a witch’s brew of greed, revenge, and bigotry: greed because Jewish properties were a tempting target for plunder; revenge because many Slovak Jews were of Hungarian extraction; bigotry because, in the words of one Catholic publication, “The source of the tragedy of the Jewish people is that they did not recognize the Messiah and prepared for him a horrible and infamous death on the cross.”

  The parliament approved anti-Semitic laws comparable to those in the Reich but with more power for the president to grant exceptions—which Tiso routinely did for Christian converts and the wealthy. Despite those reprieves, 60,000 Slovaks (about three-fourths of the Jewish population) were deported, supposedly to labor camps. In July 1942, the Vatican alerted the government that the deportees were in fact being systematically murdered. When the Slovaks asked Germany for permission to visit the sites where the exiles were allegedly working, they were turned down. The cabinet and parliament put pressure on Tiso to suspend the transports; so too did Monsignor Angelo Roncalli, the papal representative in Constantinople, known later as Pope John XXIII. In time, the president gave in.

  Slovakia’s partnership with Nazi Germany was purely a marriage of convenience. The Germans exploited the Slovaks; the Slovaks gained the right, within certain constraints, to govern themselves and were initially convinced that they had backed a winner. Hitler, the bully, seemed sure to remain the dominant force in Europe. After German fortunes soured, Slovak attitudes began to change, and those who had never been comfortable with the Nazis grew more assertive.

  Toward the end of August 1944, four weeks after the start of the antifascist uprising in Warsaw, the Slovak resistance mounted its own attack. There, as in Poland, the organizers hoped that the approach of the Red Army, coupled with setbacks elsewhere, would cause the Nazis and their collaborators to give ground. Instead, German forces poured into Slovakia and, in two months, suppressed the rebellion. A major reason for the coalition’s collapse was the lack of coordination among its eclectic components, which included pro-Beneš democrats, nationalists, liberated Jewish prisoners, Communists, and renegade units of the Slovak military. Again, as in Poland, the Red Army was of little help, either because Stalin didn’t want the uprising to succeed (as anti-Communists later insisted) or because he had other legitimate priorities (as argued by apologists for Moscow). In victory, the Germans were typically ruthless, executing thousands of rebels and sending a last trainload of Jews to Auschwitz.

  With the war winding down, the Slovaks found themselves in a unique position. The Allies had demanded Germany’s unconditional surrender, but they had also been persuaded by Beneš to reject Slovakia’s claim to independence. This meant that in the eyes of the West, the country was still part of a unified Czechoslovakia—and therefore on the winning, not the losing, side of the war. That considerable piece of luck did not dampen the Slovaks’ desire for separation. When they gathered to celebrate the war’s end, they filled the air with Slovak flags and a scattering of Communist banners; the emblem of a united Czechoslovakia was almost nowhere to be seen.

  THE OUTCOME OF the talks in Moscow was made public in Košice on April 4, 1945. The interim government would consist of three representatives from each of the four major Czech parties and the two Slovak ones. There were six appointees without party affiliation, plus Beneš. Although superficially equitable, the distribution of power gave the Communists virtually everything they had sought. Directly or indirectly, they controlled the prime minister and most of the key ministries. A new position of state secretary for foreign affairs was also created, to be filled by Vlado Clementis, a friend of my father’s but a Communist nonetheless. His assignment would be to keep a close eye on his nominal boss, the foreign min
ister, Jan Masaryk.

  In Moscow, Masaryk met Gottwald for the first time. The two men had in common a deep love for Czech folk songs and an instant distaste for each other. They talked for an entire afternoon without agreeing on much. Gottwald complained that the foreign policy advocated by the London-based exiles had been insufficiently pro-Soviet. This, he insisted, must change; total cooperation would be required. Gottwald said that he doubted Masaryk understood, to which Jan replied that indeed he did but would not promise to acquiesce. Summarizing the exchange in a memo to Beneš, Masaryk pointed out that when his father had been president, no one dared attack him, preferring instead to lambaste Beneš, the foreign minister. Now that Beneš was president, he, Masaryk, was in the post—and had a target on his back.

  AFTER ANNOUNCING THE government program, Beneš remained in Košice, waiting for the final stages of the fighting to play out. Although the nation’s acknowledged leader and back on his own soil, he was hardly in a position of command. The Soviets took charge of his security, sticking him in a house surrounded by guards and preventing him from communicating directly with London or Prague. Citing safety concerns, Moscow refused to allow British or U.S. diplomats to accompany him on his journey from London or to join him in Košice. If Beneš wanted news, he had to appeal to the Russian ambassador, who passed along only what he deemed prudent. To his aides, the Czechoslovak leader complained about this degrading treatment; with the Soviets, he held his tongue.

  Earlier in Moscow, Stalin had treated Beneš to a victory dinner enlivened by traditional music, storytelling, folk dances, and toasts. In his remarks, he had emphasized the two countries’ shared interest in thwarting German ambition and disclaimed any desire to promote Soviet-style communism across Europe. Stalin could make a visitor feel like a king simply by telling him what he wanted to hear. That evening, he also tried to prepare Beneš for what was to come. “Our soldiers will be going into your country,” he said. “Do not judge them too harshly; they are tired by a long war and have become a little uncontrolled. Anyway, Red Army men are no angels.”

  Indeed. Like a Carpathian storm, the army marched through Slovakia and westward into Moravia, greeting happy throngs with a hearty “Hitler kaput!” and giving the retreating Germans a firm shove. The Soviets, welcome as they were, often failed to heed the distinction between liberation and conquest. Relatively few were professional soldiers; most were half-trained farm boys who, having gone through hell with poor equipment and worse food, were now eager to indulge their appetites. As liberators, they were given as much to eat and drink as the hard-pressed citizenry could spare. The Russians found this arrangement to their liking and urged their hosts to dig a little deeper. The men were particularly fond of watches, fabrics, carpets, and clothes—especially boots. They drank vodka, of course, but also wine, beer, medicinal alcohol, and, in one notorious incident, methylated spirits that had been used by a museum to preserve animal specimens.

  Their officers were little better. They requisitioned houses for their own use and upon departure carried off all the valuables they could. They also tried their hand at pilfering cars, making two attempts to hijack that of the British ambassador, once from the driver alone and once with the envoy, mightily distressed, sitting in the backseat. In September 1945, the Russian military broke into some sugar refineries and began stealing the contents. This was too much for Beneš, who, without consulting the cabinet, ordered his own army to intervene, causing the Soviets to back down.

  Far worse, in Czechoslovakia as elsewhere in Eastern and Central Europe, the men of the Red Army raped thousands of women and girls without the least sign of disapproval from senior officers. The Czechs and Slovaks who encountered such behavior were disgusted but also afraid. Not everyone reacted as my father did: “They have liberated us from lice and set onto us leeches.” Instead, some sought protection by turning for help to members of the local Communist Party or by signing on themselves. In that way, Russian brutality became something of a boon to party organizers. More significantly, the Communists benefited from the fact that it was the Soviet Union—not the United States—that had liberated Prague.

  AS EARLY AS the 1943 Tehran conference, it was understood by the Allied leadership that the Soviets would be responsible for securing Central Europe, including Czechoslovakia. Military planning was done on that basis. The Americans had no objections to this, and neither—at the time—did the British.

  Circumstances change, however, and Churchill concluded that it might indeed make a difference which Allied army marched where. His faith in Stalin’s intentions had vanished abruptly after the Big Three’s brief flirtation on the shores of the Black Sea. In mid-April 1945, the British urged the United States to dispatch its forces to Prague. Having received no response after two weeks, Eden sent a second note:

  In our view the liberation of Prague and as much as possible of the territory of western Czechoslovakia by US troops might make the whole difference to the postwar situation. . . . On the other hand, if the western Allies play no significant part in Czechoslovakia’s liberation that country may well go the way of Yugoslavia.

  The State Department was persuaded by the argument and recommended that U.S. forces proceed to the Vltava Valley. However, Truman, just starting out in his presidency, was loath to meddle in arrangements previously agreed to by Allied military leaders. The situation changed only slightly when General Patton’s Third Army, moving into Austria, required protection on its northern flank. The supreme allied commander, Dwight D. Eisenhower, asked the Soviets for clearance to send troops to southern Bohemia. This was granted, and a new understanding was reached: U.S. forces could penetrate as far east as Plzeň, some fifty miles from Prague. They did so without enemy opposition during the first week of May, setting off a wild celebration and causing impatience to build throughout the Czech lands.

  From one direction, Soviet troops were heading toward the capital; from the other, U.S. forces were crossing the border. Victory was within sight, yet the ignominy of foreign rule went on. German soldiers were still standing on Prague street corners. Insulting the führer remained a crime. The Gestapo continued to round up and shoot partisans while political prisoners sat in jail, at risk of execution. It was little wonder that, in cellars and attics, people monitored the radio nonstop, hoping for word that the Germans had quit. According to the newspapers, Hitler had killed himself; his top advisers were dead or in flight; the Third Reich was collapsing; so why wasn’t the enemy going home?

  In the early days of May, the people of Prague and other urban centers decided to wait no longer. Acting spontaneously, they began to take back their country, ripping down German signs and replacing swastikas with Czech banners. Shopkeepers and tram conductors refused to accept reichsmarks, while German soldiers were harassed and, when possible, disarmed. On the morning of May 5, the main radio station broadcast a plea: “Come help us everyone! We are fighting the Germans!” When Nazi troops rushed the station, the previously docile city police challenged them. All afternoon, the two sides fought. Reinforced by a detachment of guards who had crossed to the radio station on rooftops, the Czechs cornered the Nazi unit and forced its surrender. Rebels also seized the loudspeaker system and telephone exchange. Late that afternoon, a U.S. intelligence team arrived in jeeps. The commander, a Lieutenant Fodor, agreed to return to Plzeň and convey a request for assistance.

  That night, the local SS commander wired his superiors that half of Prague was in the hands of insurgents, who “are fighting unexpectedly well.” Tragically, the Germans were not about to put down their weapons; they needed to control the capital to protect their overall retreat. Possessing both firepower and troops, they struck back, using incendiary bombs to destroy apartment buildings and armor to break through barriers and kill as many people as possible. The rebels, expecting U.S. help to arrive at any minute, would not yield. Whole families joined in erecting barricades made of trash barrels, sandbags, torn-up cobbleston
es, pieces of timber, and mattresses. To retain control of the streets, they retrieved munitions that had been concealed in floors, gardens, even coffins. Women disguised as Red Cross nurses went to the railway station, where a cache of arms had sat undetected since the occupation had begun; there the women picked up baskets that were labeled “bandages” but that required, in the carrying, every ounce of their strength.

  The Czechs broadcast repeated pleas for help. Churchill cabled Washington, urging that the Third Army move. Briefed by Lieutenant Fodor, Patton was eager to march into Wenceslas Square. Eisenhower informed the Soviet high command of his readiness to send his fighters east. The Russians replied: do not proceed beyond Plzeň, lest a possible confusion of forces be created. At that decisive moment, the American general acquiesced, adding only that he presumed that “the Soviet forces [would] advance rapidly for the purpose of clearing up the situation in the center of the country.”

  This exchange meant that the Third Army would not be going to Prague; the Russians, meanwhile, were not there yet.* The Czechs stayed on the barricades, fighting desperately. On May 7, the rebel leadership exhorted their followers to “stand firm and strike still harder. Let every shot find a target, let every blow avenge the death of your brother, sister, father, or mother. Tonight let all men, women, boys and girls build still more and bigger barricades which no tank can penetrate, no shell can pierce.”

  At the barricades

  Jan Kaplan Archive

  For a full twenty-four hours after the Nazi capitulation in Berlin, the battle raged; streets were torn apart and buildings damaged, including the Old Town Hall, where a decade earlier my parents had been wed. Before the uprising was over, some 1,700 Czechs lost their lives. Finally a cease-fire was negotiated, allowing the Germans a secure retreat. On May 9, the first units of the Red Army appeared; one witness recorded the scene: