Dangerous Relations: Beneš and Stalin in Hitler’s Shadow, 1933-1935

Abstract Edvard Benes had no illusion that his country could rely on its own strength alone. He fully shared Masaryk’s view that Czechoslovakia needed an ally on which it could always depend. That role was to belong to Paris. In the early 1920s France was the most important, and the mightiest, European power, and policymakers in Prague should have been delighted by clear signals that the French were ready to sign a diplomatic treaty with Czechoslovakia that would contain a firm military component. Others would have gladly seized the opportunity to tie their fate to that of the French superpower. But Masaryk and Benes saw that there were problems. They wanted French protection, but they were not at all eager for Czechoslovakia to become a pawn in a French militaristic scheme against Germany; they feared that Paris intended for Prague to play the role of a needle that was to cause discomfort, if not pain, in Berlin. This made no sense to them. After all, Czechoslovakia enjoyed good political relations with Weimar Germany in the early 1920s, and the two countries had strong economic ties as well. Masaryk and Benes saw no reason to sacrifice this situation in order to diminish French fears of German revenge. Moreover, Prague was worried that an agreement with Paris directed against Germany would only drive Berlin closer to Hungary, the source, from Prague’s perspective, of real danger. Although Germany had no claim on Czechoslovak territory, Hungary did.