Background
Eduard Benes was born in Koylany, Bohemia, Chech Republic (Austro-Hungary) May 28, 1884.
Eduard Benes was born in Koylany, Bohemia, Chech Republic (Austro-Hungary) May 28, 1884.
Benes received his university education in France, obtaining a doctorate of law at Dijon in 1908. The following year Benes was appointed professor of economics at the Prague Academy of Commerce and in 1912 joined the sociology department at Prague University.
When the Great War broke out, the young Benes was already a recognized leader of the Czechoslovakian nationalist movement, and he joined the anti-Austrian camp of T. G. Masaryk. In 1915 Benes went to Paris to work as a journalist in behalf of Czechoslovakian independence and cooperated while there with Masaryk and General Stefanik in behalf of the Entente cause. That same year Benes was appointed general secretary in the Czechoslovakian national council, the executive body of the national movement which the Entente recognized in 1918 as the provisional government of Czechoslovakia.
On his return to Prague, Benes became foreign minister (1918-1935) and later president (1935) of Czechoslovakia. On October 5, 1938, Benes resigned in the wake of the Munich Agreement; his travels thereafter took him to Chicago and later to London, where he led the Czechoslovakian government in exile. However, Benes soon accepted Soviet leadership in the reconstruction of Czechoslovakia because that country promised greater force in the planned expulsion of 3 million Germans from the Sudetenland. Although reelected president in 1946, Benes was powerless to prevent the Communist coup of February 25, 1948, and on June 7 turned over the government to Klement Gottwald. Benes died in Sezimovo Usti, Bohemia, on September 3,1948.
