"Beneš Was Right - The Czechoslovakia Mistake"
21th of April, 1941
The artillery could already be heart. It wasn't too close yet, maybe still a few kilometers away, but from time to time one of the shells found its way into the outskirts of Prague, a city that had by now been deserted by whoever was able to. The President for Life, Jan Syrový, had given order that the city was to be defended to the last man, but by now, order had disintegrated and any form of coordinated defense had ceased to exist. Scattered divisions were still making their last stand, some maybe around Venice, others somewhere in the provinces formerly known as Hungary -nobody knew exactly where- but overall, order had broken down in the last days of the war.
What had happened?
It had all started exactly five years earlier, on the 1th of April 1936. Except that back then, nobody would have expected Czechoslovakia to have become but a relict of the past, destined to be buried under the rising tide that was to become the destiny for large parts of Europe: Communism.
In what was later to be known as the Beneš approach, Czechoslovakia began a silent and slow shift towards a system strongly dominated by the president. Already the constitution did provide for considerable powers of the President, these where however informally even expanded upon.
The new governing style proved to be welcomed by a population concerned by the rise of Nazism in neighboring Germany as well an increasingly hostile environment around Czechoslovakia at large - Czechoslovakia was indeed a beacon of democracy in a sea of tyrannies. It is generally believed that this circumstance massively contributed to the failure of Czechoslovakian democracy. Nevertheless, the path for the future was not set in stone. In recent years, the Allied governments have increasingly come under scrutiny for their failure to support the Czechoslovakian government during crucial pathways - more on this later, however.
Due to the popularity of the Beneš approach, the standing government was elected for another term. The political continuity and the feeling of security that came with it were followed by a phrase of economic prosperity unprecedented in Eastern Europe since the beginning of the Great Depression.
On the 18th of July, tensions following the election of the Popular Front government Spain led to a coup attempt by nationalist and carlist elements. The new government of National Spain received recognition by the fascist powers of Italy and Germany, while the Soviet Union under Stalin, hoping for a possible expansion of the proletarian revolution to the West of Europe, supported the Republican side. Other sides refrained from intervening in the conflict except by giving their verbal support to one of the sides. The Beneš government did not get involved into the conflict in any way, continued to uphold its trade links to the Republican administration however and decided not to establish economic ties to the nationalist side.
The Prague Funds Scandal in September '36 caused a minor uproar in the country and could indeed be described as the only phase during the term of the Beneš government where something even close to popular opposition to the administration was surfacing in the general public. The anger did not last for long however, and in a few months the event was already forgotten again.
With the research on more modern artillery equipment and the modernization of the armed forces, the Czechoslovakian government intended to boost its defensive capabilities in light of the increasingly belligerent rhetorics of Berlin. It was well known that in the case of conflict Czechoslovakia could merely hope to delay the enemy assault but not prevent it - the intention was to give other democratic countries in Europe the time to mobilize their armed forces and then eventually liberate Czechoslovakia.
The election of the anti-isolationist Republican Candidate Alf Landon was well received in Czechoslovakia, as it was hoped that this would usher in a new era of American involvement in Europe, providing additional stability.
Democracy further boosted its international position with the Republican victory in the Spanish Civil War. Bloody and bruised the forces of fascism retreated while the Soviet troops that had fought alongside the Republican government had gained valuable experience that would later on benefit the development of new Soviet war gear. Remarkably, despite the Soviet intervention, Spain stayed on the path of democracy, with the pre-war Popular Front government remaining in power.
The new government of the USA began to criticize the imperialist moves of the Empire of Japan in Asia but failed to sway the international opinion. Calls for a conference for a common condemnation of Japanese Imperialism failed to materialize in any results.
As much as Nazism was an enemy of the exterior, Communism was one of the interior. The Beneš administration resolved to ban the seditious acts of Communism to further stabilize Czechoslovakia under democracy and prevent it from falling to autocracy like its neighbors - this move however only certified the fact that Czechoslovakia itself was slowly but steadily on the way to adopt a paternalist style of governance.
The defense industry meanwhile was ordered to focus on the research of heavy tank weaponry - Czechoslovakian engineering was very advanced even in the worldwide comparison and as such it was a logical approach to expand upon the strengths of the country's knowledge instead of going uncertain ways.
In June 1937, Japan made another step in its bid for Asian domination by renewing its Chinese operations.
A major strike in June was faced with a military parade a few months later - an approach that was also employed by the authoritarian nationalist neighbors of Czechoslovakia. There was minor resistance to the move in the cabinet, however the by now infamous Beneš approach left no space for dissent. The parade was well-received by the national public but was generally looked upon with a suspicion by foreign governments and the press.
The Austrian national socialists removed the Austrofascist Ständestaat regime on the night of the 6th of January 1938. During the Vienna Blood Night, hundreds of policemen, politicians and other figures of public life where murdered by the Austrian national socialists and, so some rumor, SA troops who entered the country at night at the Bavarian border. In any case, while in power, Gauführer Seyss-Inquart generally did not achieve much except preparing the country for the incorporation into the Greater German Reich two months later, a move that further destabilized the European political scenery and increasingly worried the Czechoslovakian government as Czechoslovakia with its Sudetengerman minority looked like a prime target for Nazi expansionism itself.
In the light of heating tensions in Europe, Beneš formulated his "German Opposition" thesis, which stated that any and all association with the German people or state was to be rejected. As a result, several restrictive laws especially concerning the German language were passed in Czechoslovakia intended to combat the political lobbying of Sudeten nationalist factions, which sparked a huge crisis within the cabinet. Renewed opposition to the Beneš approach was quickly dismissed as "unpatriotic" and "irrelevant".
On the 30th of May 1938 the signing of a defense treaty with France and the United Kingdom was therefor seen as the logical consequence of an opposition course against Nazi Germany. This entrance into the Allies was especially shunned upon by Hungary, which feared that Czechoslovakia would use this shift in power to consolidate its claims on Hungarian areas that were disputed ever since the dissolution of the Empire of Austria-Hungary. As a result, troops were amassed at the Czechoslovakian border to deter the Czechoslovakian government from any such rash action. Instead, this only increased tensions however, leading Beneš to believe that only a first strike would be a fitting response to the issue.
The war was swift and brutal and showed the superiority of Czechoslovakian armor. Hungary became a Czechoslovakian protectorate with autonomy only in name, resulting in a massive expansion of the Czechoslovakian industrial assets. The careful bond of trust that was forged with the western powers was however forever smashed, and it is generally seen that the Hungarian War was the turning point that forced Czechoslovakian to extremism and thus into the Second World War.
The fascist-influenced government of Japan was couped by moderate conservative elements of the Imperial Army, fearing that Japan would take the route of Germany. As a result, the United States decided not to increase its efforts in support of China. A relaxation of Japanese-American tensions over Japanese Imperialism was the result.
Beneš was right as German demands for Sudeten autonomy indeed materialized in an ultimatum. The Western Allies however, still upset by the Hungarian disaster, were not willing to sacrifice the carefully maintained European peace due to what they considered to be a rather insignificant European player such as Czechoslovakia. When the French ambassador submitted a formal note to the Presidential Office indicating that in the case of a military German incursion upon Czechoslovakian soil France would not react in anything but a "strongly disapproving" diplomatic fashion, the future of Czechoslovakia was sealed.
---
This will be part 1 of a very short "AAR" consisting of two posts. Originally I did not intend to post this due to the lacking length of the campaign, which you might notice due to a lack of pictures especially from the Hungarian war (When I started the game I did want to make a longer AAR about a Czechoslovakia game, but considering the way things turned out...:rofl
. As this will not be a "real" AAR the posts will only be rudimentary as well, but I guess you will nevertheless get an idea of what happened. The next part will come within the next days and who knows, maybe I will do a proper AAR after that.
Last edited:
