Prime Minister Winston Churchill Meets With Leaders of the Provisional Czechoslovak Government, Forced Into Exile By Hitler, and Decides to Give Them Full Diplomatic Recognition

A symbol of the growing alliance against the Nazis

The Munich Conference of 1938 led to the surrender of part of Czechoslovakia called the Sudetenland in the name of appeasement. Many in Britain were jubilant at the thought of having avoided war, but Winston Churchill felt the Czechs had been betrayed and told Parliament that the British people “should know that there has been gross neglect and deficiency in our defenses; they should know that we have sustained a defeat without a war, the consequences of which will travel far with us along our road; they should know that we have passed an awful milestone in our history, when the whole equilibrium of Europe has been deranged…”

The annexation of the Sudetenland, completed according to the Munich timetable, was not the end of Czechoslovakia’s suffering. On March 15, 1939, all Czech areas were occupied by the Nazis and proclaimed a protectorate of the Third Reich. In exile in Chicago, the former Czechoslovak president Edvard Beneš appealed to the Great Powers and the League of Nations to denounce German aggression and the breach of the Munich agreement. France, Britain, and the United States raised formal protests against Hitler’s takeover of the Czech Lands (often referred to as the “rape of Prague”). When World War II broke out in September 1939, Czech exiles, including the main leaders, formed the Czech National Liberation Committee and immediately began to seek international recognition as the exiled government of Czechoslovakia. By the end of 1939, though, France and Britain had only extended it the right to conclude international treaties, but not in the name of the Czechoslovak Republic.

Winston Churchill became Prime Minister in May 1940 and he was a friend of Czechoslovakia. The fall of France and the perilous military situation prompted the British Government to rally all possible anti-Nazi strength, and on July 21, 1940, the Benes Committee was recognized by Churchill as a provisional Czechoslovak Government. By this formal step, taken by Lord Halifax as Foreign Minister, the Allied powers were now able to negotiate with the Provisional Czechoslovak Government, and six months later a financial agreement was signed between the British and the Czechs providing for credits to the Beneš government. While Beneš was still the head of a provisional government in exile, he created the concept of Czechoslovak legal and political continuity. On this basis he claimed that everything that had followed the Munich Conference had been illegal.

Nevertheless, the Committee still felt somewhat insecure about Britain’s recognition, because it specifically mentioned Beneš as president, but did not explicitly link Beneš to the previously-existing government. They pressed the British in April 1941 for even greater clarity. On the 18th of that month, they sent a letter to the British requesting that their agreements “be concluded, as before September, 1938, in the name of the Czechoslovak Republic”. In other words, they wanted unqualified recognition and a declaration of legal continuity.

Not all the appeasers of 1938 were gone from the Conservative Party, and Jan Smuts, South Africa’s leader, was also hostile to the idea of granting full recognition to Benes. A British change of heart came when Churchill paid a visit to a Czech military unit on April 19, 1941, and Benes gave him a summary of the Czech arguments for full recognition. Churchill was already pleased with the spirit shown by the Czech soldiers and was moved to tears when they sang ‘Rule Britannia’ at the end of his visit. He was struck above all by their desire to serve Britain after being betrayed at Munich. A few days later Churchill gave Benes’ statement to Eden, who was already pro-Czech, with the remark: “I do not understand why the Czechs could not have the same status as the other allies. They deserve it.” The final official recognition was issued by Britain and the USSR on July 18 and by the USA on July 31, 1941.

This album leaf, April 19, 1941, contains the names of many involved in gaining full recognition for the Czechoslovak Government-in-Exile. There is Churchill himself, who has dated the leaf April 1941, plus his wife Clementine Churchill.

On the Czech side, there are the main players: Edvard Benes, Czechoslovak President-in-Exile; Czech Foreign Minister Jan Masaryk; and Jan Sramek, Prime Minister of the Czechoslovak Government-in-Exile. Also signing are W. Averell Harriman, then serving as President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s special envoy to Europe, and Harley “Hap” Arnold, the new chief of the U.S. Army Air Corps, clearly there as an observer.  Affixed to a light board.