From The Russo-German Alliance August 1939-June 1941, A. Rossi, 1951
The fact that a country had been occupied by Germany did not cause any radical change in Communist tactics. . . . President Benes, who in his memoirs summed up the Czech Communists’ position at this period, after an interview he had in Paris with J. Sverma, a Communist deputy from Prague, in October, 1939 : “This interview gave me a clearer understanding of the extent to which our Communists, under the influence of their Soviet brothers, differed from me in their attitude to the war. We were both convinced that the U.S.S.R. would have to fight. But the Communists reckoned that their entry into the war could be postponed until the end of hostilities, when both sides would be too exhausted to prevent a social revolution or to keep in under control. . . . And so I was not surprised when I heard from Prague that our resistance movement was being cold-shouldered by the Communists. The decisions of the Central Committee of the Party published in the underground Communist newspaper were reported to us by our friends in Prague. The Communists were counting on the Soviet remaining neutral until the end of the ‘imperialist was,’ after which the world revolution could begin.”1
1 Gazette de Lausanne,14th March, 1948. As a matter of interest, and without being able to guarantee its accuracy, we reprint below a Havas dispatch of 20th February, 1940 : “The Communist groups in the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia which remained faithful to Stalin after the German-Soviet agreement are very active, apparently with German support. Smerald and Gottwald, the Communist leaders who fled to Moscow after the occupation of Czechoslovakia, went through Bohemia on a journey of inspection in December and January, with the approval of the German leaders. It so happens that in places . . .which are known to be centres where the workers were formerly very sympathetic to Communism, only 10, 20, and 60 people attended their meetings . . . In the leaflets which they distribute, the Stalinists assert that National-Socialism is the creed nearest to State Socialism . . . the alliance with Germany is explained by the argument that revolution is easier in a Reich which has already passed through the capitalist stage . . . The German authorities not only tolerate their propaganda but encourage it, since in the tracts the Communists attack MM. Daladier and Chamberlain . . . and . . . Edward Benes.’”Boston : Beacon Press, 1951, pages 101 -103.
From Soviet Union's Aggressions Against the World, Gen. Oleg Sarin & Col. Lev Dvoretsky, 1996
Czechoslovakia as a country was a product of the Treaty of Versailles after World War I, along with other countries and principalities that were member states of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Between that time and the mid-1930s it became a relatively prosperous state, under Tomas Masaryk and Eduard Benes, despite the fact that it was a combination of two separate and different peoples, the Czechs and the Slovaks, with different customs and languages. It also contained a sizable German-Austrian population. Hitler and the infamous Nazi regime took the country over in 1939 after craven appeasement by the Western European powers. . . . Benes and Masaryk fled to Britain and established a refugee provisional government there.During World War II, the German protectorate over the country of Czechoslovakia was a brutal one, replete with executions and deportations . . . to concentration camps. Reprisals were common against the people. The leaders in exile in London and the Czechoslovakian underground looked to the Soviet Union for liberation from the hated Nazis. This occurred gradually in late 1944 and 1945 as the allies swept the German armies from the country. Benes and Jan Masaryk, the son of the late Tomas Masaryk, sought to form a coalition government, uniting the Czechs and Slovaks along with minority Germans, but the majority [?] Communist Party managed to suppress the several other parties. The Communists under Klement Gottwald forced Benes out of office in February 1948. The next month, Foreign Minister Jan Masaryk was found dead in his office. The Communist government announced that it was a suicide, but we have no doubt that he was murdered.
( pages 176-7 )
Alien wars : the Soviet Union's aggressions
against the world, 1919 to 1989 / Oleg Sarin, Lev Dvoretsky
Novato, CA : Presidio, 1996.