Background
Jan Masaryk was born in Prague, Czech Republic on 14th September 1886. His mother, Charlotte Garrigue Masaryk, was an American. Like his father, he oriented himself toward the West more than the E.
Jan Masaryk was born in Prague, Czech Republic on 14th September 1886. His mother, Charlotte Garrigue Masaryk, was an American. Like his father, he oriented himself toward the West more than the E.
After graduating from the University of Prague, Jan Masaryk attended Boston University.
Jan Masaryk worked at a brass foundry in Connecticut, among several other jobs during his decade abroad.
Though he was reportedly fond of gambling and attractive women, Masaryk had a serious side to him as well.
When he worked in the foundry, he held English literacy classes for his co-workers, who came from a variety of European backgrounds.
Masaryk returned to his homeland in time for the onset of World War I.
Relegated to second-class citizens in the Empire, the Czechs and Slovaks also possessed a strong anti-German sentiment.
Many of them resented fighting on behalf of Austria-Hungary's ruling Hapsburg dynasty.
A renewed push for a separate nation gained ground, and Thomas Masaryk played a key role in this movement.
As the son of the president, Masaryk was given a post in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
He was assigned to various posts—charge d'affaires in Washington, D. C. , a member of the Czechoslovak legation in London after 1921, and private secretary to Eduard Benes, another leading figure in the new government.
In 1925, Masaryk was named minister to Great Britain, and his Grosvenor Square chancery and residence became a popular spot for members of the international diplomatic community.
It was said that he also liked to tell somewhat risque stories.
Throughout the 19306 Masaryk continued to shuttle between London and Prague, and made occasional forays to the United States as well.
There, a policy of "appeasement" was decided, and Benes agreed to it.
Hitler was allowed to take the Sudetenland.
The Munich Pact was considered a political betrayal by the West.
The Allies-the United States, Britain, and the Soviet Union-did not grant them full diplomatic recognition until July of 1941.
The change in statuswas an important political triumph for which Masaryk had fought tenaciously.
It would mean, in part, that after the end of present hostilities, leaders of the exiled government would have a voice in their country's future.
As Masaryk pointed out, there were many Czechs who had fled the country with the government and were now fighting on side of the Allies to defeat Germany-he wondered if their deaths were "provisional. "
With characteristic wry humor, he sometimes signed letters to his friends, "Provisionally yours. "
During World War II, Masaryk worked in London and traveled to the United States, arguing, writing, and lecturing on European politics and the right for self-determination in Eastern Europe.
Under Nazi rule, the Czechs and Slovaks suffered tremendous human-rights abuses.
Benes, like some Czech and Slovak leaders, distrusted the Western Allies to a certain extent, especially after the Munich Pact.
Masaryk, who had spent a good deal of his life in London or America, was more pragmatic.
In 1943, the government-in-exile signed a mutual assistance pact with the U. S. S. R.
The following spring, Masaryk spoke in positive terms about the advancing Russian troops, calling them "armies of liberation" in his radio broadcasts.
That same year, Benes's government-in-exile signed a liberation pact with the Soviets.
Instead the Soviet Army entered to the cheers of crowds in May of 1945.
A multiparty government, which included the Czech Communists, was established in 1946, with Benes as its president in the first postwar national elections.
Meanwhile, Masaryk worked for the United Nations Refugee Relief Organization, and headed the Czech delegation to the United Nations itself.
In 1947, an edition of his wartime BBC broadcasts sold out of its first run of 60, 000 copies.
Masaryk moved into the Czernin Palace, part of the massive Hradcany Castle complex and the traditional seat of power in the country.
The terms of the plan, however, stipulated that countries with Communists in their government would be exempt.
Nevertheless, observers and insiders optimistically believed that Czechoslovakia was tiring of its brief experiment with a multi-party system and would eject the Communists from power on its own.
In September 1947, an assassination attempt was made on Masaryk.
It was revealed that the sonin-law of one of the leading Czech communists, Clement Gottwald—a man Masaryk detested—was behind it.
He was widely expected to replace Benes, now in his sixties and suffering from increasingly frail health. During these crucial months, Masaryk traveled to New York and London to drum up support, but was informed by intelligence sources that a return to his homeland would be unwise.
In February 1948, Gottwald and others engineered a coup by putting Communists in top police posts, and then taking over the government itself a few days later.
All non-Communists were purged.
Benes convinced the leaders to retain Masaryk as foreign minister, given his strong and credible ties with the West.
Masaryk agreed, but within weeks realized that the situation was untenable.
He made secret plans to leave and managed to transfer some of his funds out of the country.
He also managed to send word of his plan to a London associate whom he had worked with during the war.
On the morning of March 10, 1948, Masaryk's body was found in the courtyard of the Czernin Palace in Prague, where he appeared to have jumped or been pushed from his bathroom window.
Police, who were holding him in custody at the time of his death, claimed that he committed suicide.
Others who questioned Masaryk's death were sentenced to death or jailed.
Authorities rounded up over 200 Czechs in an attempt to find theculprit.
Questions about the incident arose, however, during what became known as the Prague Spring of 1968, when liberal reforms were put in place briefly.
An investigation was launched, but after Soviet tanks arrived to forcefully end this pro-democracy movement.
Those who had spoken out on the Masaryk matter were jailed.
A few years after the disintegration of the Soviet bloc in 1989, Czech Communists "found" a letter allegedly written by Masaryk to Stalin, which claimed that he was going to commit suicide.
From 1924 until their divorce in 1931, Jan Masaryk was married to Frances Crane Leatherbee (1887-1954). He was married to Mary Lee Logan, younger sister of Joshua Logan, who became one of the co-directors of the University Players in 1931.
