Benes Regime

Criticism of Benes Post War "Population Transfer" Plans

MARCH 1943

SOME SHIFTING

DR. EDWARD BENES has
overreached himself. Of all the peace plans produced until now, his is
certainly the most remarkable. It appeared in the \u201cNew York Times\u201d of February
19 and we recommend it to every one who wants to know why the new order of 1919
was so extremely short-lived. Here is the answer. The same man acted as the
Allies' chief European adviser in the First War and for many years after it.

Dr. Benes' new plan
can be summarized in three sentences: Federations in Europe will work only if
their members are racially uniform states. Hence we must first create these
states. This must be achieved by a large-scale transfer of the so-called
minorities to the countries of their ethnic origin.

How excellent. Your Excellency! How incomparably simpler
than the clumsy grind of divine providence! dWe feel ashamed that we have not
thought of it ourselves. But now we have got the formula, so let us start
applying it without delay, here, in the American hemisphere. There are still
Frenchmen in Canada, so we are told. What an impertinence, they dare to speak
French although Canada's majority speaks English? An untenable situation, an
intolerable outrage. Kill them? Not necessary, thanks to Benes benign prescription.
Let us take ships and Transfer them to the country of their ethnic origin.
France is occupied just now? Doesn\u2019t matter, there is still French Africa. Away
with this brood!

Now to Europe! There is Belgium. Dr. Benes will help us to
decide who has to be transferred, the French or the Flemish. We could send the
latter to Holland and the first to France. The best solution would be to
transfer both of them. Switzerland, that\u2019s a problem too. The majority is
German. A public scandal that Geneva is still French and Locarno still Italian. Away with them! Let us
transport the French to France and the Italians to Italy. The Alsatians of
France speak a German dialect. Away with them to Germany! And Switzerland,
purified of its French and Italian ingredients, need not stay independent.
We\u2019ll ask Dr. Benes.

Follows Italy. The Germans who have remained in South Tyrol
in spite of Hitler\u2019s deal with Mussolini, , must be removed at once. So must
the Slovenes in Italy s North-Eastern corner. Follows Yugoslavia. This is
especially complicated. But with Benes\u2019 help we shall master every difficulty.
Croats and Slovenes have refused to become Serbs. Away with them! There is
plenty of space in Asia, their country of ethnic origin. Follows Rumania. Let
us ship the Magyars of Transylvania to Hungary. Then there is Poland, millions
of Ukrainians. What a mess! Transfei them to Russia. Not all the Jews of Poland
have been exterminated by Hitler. Away with them to Palestine!

Now, still further to the East, things begin to be somewhat
confused. Dr. Benes eye falls on the name Soviet Union. What\u2019s that? Not yet homogeneous,
still a union of several races? Well, he is concerned with Europe only. But
there is European Russia. Very simple, the Ukrainians go to Siberia. Or perhaps
the Russians. Certainly the Latvians, Lithuanians, and Esthonians. By not
becoming Russians proper they have long exhausted Dr. Benes patience.

All this sounds like
a bad joke but in reality, it is nothing but the outpourings of a brain
perverted by pathological nationalism. This politician thinks he is cunning
like the devil. Since every Anglo-Saxon would recognize the foolishness of this
con conception if proposed as a general solution, Dr. Benes sets himself a
regional limit. He wants to apply his plan neither to Canada nor to Western
Europe but quite modestly only to Central and Eastern Europe. He thinks these
waters are so troubled that Anglo Saxons will not want*to fathom them. He
thinks they will gladly accept him as their experienced pilot. To make the idea
more palatable he speaks alternatively of "transfer\u201d and
"exchange" of populations. "Exchange" sounds more
democratic. And anticipating practical objections, he admits the possibility of
\u201cremaining minorities" to whom he offers very generously "not
national rights but all human, democratic rights."

No one will blame us
if, in the face of this plan, we resort to some plain speaking- The Czechs in
Europe, groaning under the heel of a cruel conqueror, deserve all our sympathy.
Owing to their history and geography, which placed them in the heart of Europe,
they are what one would call the most advanced of the Slavic peoples. Austrians
feel connected with them by strong sentimental ties and affinities which the
separation of 1918 has not severed. But all this cannot oblige us to accept in silence
the provocation by which Dr. Benes challenges not only his country\u2019s neighbors
but quite generally the intelligence and ethics of all his contemporaries.

It is easy to understand what lies behind his smoke-screen
of absurdities. In 1919 Central Europe was tailored to meet all the willful
moods of one of its smallest nations, of 7 million Czechs, who had been able to
make themselves accepted by the Western Powers as the stalwarts of the new
order. This was one of the most surprising cases of national megalomania. The
suit did not fit. Now Dr. Benes orders another one, sold as he is on the idea
that the Czechs are Europe's selected people. Let us see what is his real plan.

Czecho-Slovakia of
1919 was based on a fiction. Mr. Vojta Benes, the president\u2019s brother, says in
his lectures in North America that it was a Slavic country of I 5 million
inhabitants. In fact only two- thirds were Slavs. The Czechs with 7 million
people were a minority and could claim the part of majority only by identifying
Czechs and Slovaks as "Czechoslovaks." Today the second half of this
word figures on the list of our enemies. The scientific periodical
\u201cIstorichesky Zhurnal\u201d (Historical Journal) edited in Moscow by M. Yaroslavsky,
a well- known man in Soviet politics, published in its issue no. 7/8 of 1942 an
article by Professor Zdneek Nejedly in which it was said that

\u201cit was not permissible to humiliate the
Slovaks by considering them a second-rate nation and even a part of another
nation, the Czech one. Czech circles who attempted to do this committed a grave
political blunder.\u201d

The Slovaks had at
least the advantage of being regarded as a part of the ruling
"Czechoslovak" state-nation. Much worse was the fate of the 3J/2
million Sudeten Germans, of more than a million Magyars and of some hundred
thousand Poles and Ukrainians. In Paris and Washington Benes had promised to
treat them in a Swiss spirit but it started with imposing the new centralistic
constitution upon them.

The propaganda legend
has it that Benes capitulated at Munich because the British and French asked
\u2019him not to fight. First, he had asked them whether they would like him to
fight. He needed their negative advice as an historical alibi because in fact,
his army was paralyzed by the Sudeten Germans\u2019, Slovaks\u2019, Poles\u2019 and Magyars\u2019
unwillingness to die for a state that had treated them as second- class
citizens. How different was the attitude of the Poles! They did not ask whether
it was permissible to fight. They told the British bluntly that they would
fight even if the Western Powers did not help them.

Violating the
principle of national self-determination, Dr. Benes had included in his new
state large \u201cminorities\u201d because the Czechs alone, restricted to their national
territory, would have made a very poor community indeed. Now everyone can under
understand d stand understand Benes\u2019 newest device. He wants to keep alien
territory but without alien populations. He feels entirely unable to resume the
still-born experiment of 1919.

The trick in all this
planning is to regard the arbitrary and unhistorical frontiers of 1 9 1 9 as
holy, sacrosanct, immutable. Otherwise it would be logical for a man, who wants
\u201chomogeneous\u201d states, to pro propose d pose propose the drawing of new
frontiers according to linguistic demarcations. It would be absurd to do this
but certainly much less absurd than Dr. Benes\u2019 glorious transfer plan. To speak
of \u201cexchange of populations is a fraud, quite especially in the case of
Czecho-Slovakia, because there are no Czechs in Germany or Hungary or Poland
who could take the place of the expelled Sudeten Germans Magyars, and Poles. Obviously,
he wants to keep the Slovaks. With them Czecho-Slovakia would have

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