Word: czechs
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...futile gesture. Indeed, its preliminary success probably forced the Kremlin strategists to move in Czechoslovakia and Finland while the moving was still easy. The Marshall Plan was, however, an incomplete gesture. Greece won't be won by canned pineapples nor China by made-in-Washington land reforms. The Czech coup might not have been tried if the U.S. had not looked helpless in Greece, helpless in China, and silly -or worse-in Palestine...
Last week the hand-wringers were pointing out that the U.S. could not have acted in the Czech crisis because Prague was so much nearer to Russia than to the U.S. That was all too true. Austria, Italy, Germany, the Middle East, China, Korea and Japan were also nearer to Russia. The point was that their fall would bring Russia much nearer to the U.S. not only in geography but, more importantly, in degree of power...
...Western nations had scores of possible answers to the Czech move. Instead of getting France to join last week in the kind of protest note that helped Hitler to power, France might have been induced to stop stalling on the question of Western German industry. Two U.S. Army divisions to Greece-with orders to clean up that mess-might have convinced the Italians that the U.S. was a friend worth having. People who live in threatened nations (and who doesn't?) need more than food; they need to have some assurance that the U.S. intends to win the peace...
...occupation, when BBC broadcasts brought Czechoslovakia's only hope of freedom.) Mass arrests continued. Premier Gottwald's "action committees" seized most factories not yet nationalized; they occupied all the ministries not yet in charge of Communists. President Benes wrote a letter to the Central Committee of the Czech Communist party: "I have been thinking ... I am trying to see clearly. ... I feel the people's will is to achieve a progressive and really socialist life through peaceful and orderly means. . . . You know my sincerely democratic creed. I cannot but stay faithful to this creed even at this...
...Third Day. At 9:30 a.m. Premier Gottwald called on President Benes at Hradcany Castle to present a list of the new cabinet ministers (twelve Communists, two Socialists and eight miscellaneous "safe" men). Ninety minutes later, the Czech radio triumphantly announced that the President had accepted the new cabinet. The President's office promptly denied this. The fake radio news was enough to frighten Socialist Leader Bohumil Lausman, a middle-of-the-roader, into resigning. Loudspeaker trucks proclaimed that his pro-Communist rival Zdenek Fierlinger had resumed leadership of the Socialist Party. This meant that the Communists could...