The Austrian Empire: The Fusion of Glory and Tragedy

The geopolitical entity known as the Austrian Empire struggled for its continued existence from the first moment of its inception. Indeed, it was created in an attempt to preserve an endangered imperial status: the Holy Roman Emperor Franz II perceived that the Holy Roman Empire (HRE) was likely either to be destroyed by Napoleon, or to have its throne occupied by Napoleon. Neither of those two probabilities was acceptable to Franz II.

The name “Austrian Empire” is linked to its history: The Austrian Empire is the successor to the HRE. The Austrian Empire began when the HRE ended in 1806. The starting date for the HRE itself is subject to debate, depending on which event one takes to be the origin of the HRE. Commonly, either 800 A.D. or 962 A.D. is listed as the beginning of the HRE.

The term “Habsburg Empire” is also frequently used, and applies both to the Austrian Empire and the HRE — the Habsburgs ruled the HRE for the majority of its existence, although “rule” might not be the right verb: the emperor did not have absolute power, and to the contrary, often had to negotiate and compromise to get a majority of the HRE’s nobles to agree with his plans.

The Austrian Empire ended in 1867, with the creation of the “personal union” of Hungary with the rest of the Habsburg lands. For the present discussion, however, the term “Austrian Empire” will be taken to refer to the totality of 1804 to 1918. More cumbersome, but perhaps more legally accurate, names like “Austria-Hungary” or the “Austro-Hungarian Empire” or the “Austro-Hungarian Monarchy” refer to the phase from 1867 to 1918, but here “Austrian Empire” will be used for the monarchy from 1804 to 1918.

Retaining his title as Holy Roman Emperor, Franz declared into existence the Austrian Empire, which consisted of those parts of the HRE which were his family’s hereditary territories. The other parts of the HRE had their own monarchs and dynasties. Franz provided for the eventuality of his no longer being Holy Roman Emperor: in that case, he would still be able to claim imperial status. The Austrian Empire was his backup empire.

What Franz foresaw came to pass.

The Austrian Empire was created in 1804. By 1806, Franz dissolved the HRE, in order to avoid Napoleon installing himself as Holy Roman Emperor or destroying the empire if he could not claim the imperial title. Franz could make the relatively smooth transition from being Franz II of the HRE to being Franz I of the Austrian Empire.

So, confusingly, Franz II and Franz I are the same man. First he was Franz II of the HRE, meaning that he was the second emperor named Franz; Franz I was not his father, and not even his grandfather, but a much earlier emperor in the lineage. Franz I ruled the HRE from 1515 to 1547; Franz II ruled the HRE from 1792 to 1806. To complicate matters further, the name is also sometimes spelled Francis.

Then Franz II of the HRE became Franz I of the Austrian Empire. He was the first emperor of the Austrian Empire, and therefore the first Austrian Emperor to be named Franz.

Franz not only preserved his own dignity; he preserved the status of the Habsburg dynasty.

The Habsburg family had ruled the HRE almost continuously since 1273. There were a few years when a different family ruled the HRE. After 1806, the Habsburgs ruled the Austrian Empire until its demise in 1918.

This provides a glimpse into the mentality of an era from before the time of the nation-state. The “nation-state” is a geopolitical concept which defined much of the world during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. In the “nation-state” understanding, the world is a collection of nation-states: France, China, Canada, Italy, Germany, etc. A “nation-state” consists of a nation, i.e. a group defined and united by culture and ethnicity, and a state, i.e. a defined territory on the map with a single government to manage it.

There is another way to look at the world. Instead of dividing it into nation-states, it can be organized by dynasties. For people living in the first half of the twenty-first century, it takes effort to understand this outlook. The ordinary citizens of that era viewed themselves not as Englishmen or Spaniards or Frenchmen, but rather as loyal to the Plantagenets, Stuarts, or Tudors, in the case of the Englishman; loyal to the House of Trastámara or the Spanish Habsburgs in the case of the Spaniard; loyal to the Capetian dynasty or the Bourbon dynasty in the case of the Frenchman.

In the minds of the people of that era, they were not loyal to a country — to England, Spain, or France — but rather to the respective royal families which happened to be in power at the time.

Thus it was among the people in the Habsburg Empire — which is to say, the Austrian Empire. To modern eyes and ears, the phrase “Austrian Empire” alludes to the modern nation-state of Austria. But in 1804, Austria did not exist as a state. The citizens of the Austrian Empire included Hungarians, Slovaks, Slovenes, Tirolians, Italians, Bohemians, and others. (Bohemians equate approximately to the region and people of the current Czech Republic.) These people thought of themselves politically as subjects of the Habsburg family. They thought of themselves culturally and ethnically as Hungarians, Austrians, Slovaks, etc.

Indeed it was the earliest waves of nationalist which taught the people to think of themselves as Tirolians, Italians, Slovenes, Bohemians, etc., and thereby spread the poison which eventually killed the dynasties.

Before the emergence of nationalism, the HRE and later the Austrian Empire were multi-national, multi-cultural, and multi-lingual. The empire was not united by language, culture, or ethnicity; it was united by the Habsburg dynasty and by allegiance to the reigning member of this dynasty. Indeed, in the final years of the empire, it assumed the structure of a “personal union,” in which different parts of the empire were not united in their laws, constitutions, or legal systems, but rather only by the fact that the same person was the monarch of them.

The end of the HRE and the beginning of the Austrian Empire reveal the weakening of the dynastic imperial concept, although the final decline of it would take more than another century, as historian Benjamin Curtis writes:

This new Austrian Empire did not fare well in fresh hostilities against Napoleon, the War of the Third Coalition (which also included Britain and Russia) that started in 1805. After a crushing victory over Austria at Ulm in October 1805, Napoleon advanced on Vienna and occupied it in November. The royal family fled, and Napoleon made his headquarters at Schönbrunn. Archduke Karl brought round an army from Italy, and linked up with Russian troops under Kutuzov. They met Napoleon in battle at Austerlitz in December 1805, which became one of Austria’s worst defeats. The terms in the subsequent treaty of Pressburg were onerous: Napoleon’s allies Bavaria and Württemberg were raised to the status of kingdoms and received a number of Habsburg possessions such as Tirol and Vorarlberg. Franz also lost Venice and the Adriatic territories he had gained in 1797. Together with the French occupation of Vienna, this was a terrible humiliation. It was compounded in July of 1806 when 16 imperial princes organized into the new Confederation of the Rhine under Napoleon’s protection, and Napoleon demanded that the imperial crown be delivered to him. This for Franz was the writing on the wall; rather than let Napoleon seize the German imperial title, Franz decided to end the Empire altogether. Thus on 1 August Franz declared the Holy Roman Empire dead at the age of 1006. This act demonstrated a streak of realism on Franz’s part. He knew that he could not fulfill his duties to defend the title nor the Empire from Napoleon. He also desperately needed peace, and felt that he had to focus on the interests of his Hereditary Lands. Though he did relinquish the imperial title held by his family for most of the preceding 400 years, he did not relinquish the symbolism: he moved all the old imperial relics and regalia to Vienna, to the seat of the new dynastic empire.

Although the Austrian Empire was created because Franz anticipated the end of the HRE, and although the Austrian Empire flirted with its own demise until 1815, it eventually stabilized enough to raise hopes that it might survive. Yet, even after Napoleon’s final defeat, and after the masterpiece of diplomacy at the Congress of Vienna, the Austrian Empire was not a powerful or geopolitically dominant force.

The geography of the Austrian Empire, as historian Aaron Wess Mitchell notes, left it with no major salt-water harbors or ports — it had intermittent and unsteady access to the Adriatic by means of Dalmatia, Croatia, and Trieste in the Italian parts of Carniola, which were constituent parts of the empire. Carniola corresponds to parts of modern-day Slovenia, and Dalmatia corresponds to the coastal regions of Montenegro and Croatia. Briefly, the empire lacked major access points to the sea, which hampered it commercially and militarily.

By contrast, France, Spain, Italy, England, Prussia, Belgium, Holland, and Scandinavia all had easy and major access points to the sea.

A second topographical hindrance for the Austrian Empire was multiple frontiers with several hostile — or at least not reliably friendly — powers: Russia, Prussia, the Ottoman Empire, parts of Italy, and, at times, France, as Aaron Wess Mitchell notes.

Another difficulty was the not-always-enthusiastic participation of some parts of the empire. The Hungarians and the Bohemians were not always eager to follow the lead of the crown.

From its birth, the Austrian Empire was on a downward trajectory. Franz and the Habsburg emperors who followed him struggled to maintain an equilibrium among the various nations which composed the empire. Constitutions were written and rewritten; compromises and balances were brokered. Amidst this continuous struggle for survival, the Austrian Empire slowly lost its clout. It was sliding into a status which was secondary to Prussia, Russia, France, and Britain, with whom it had once been an equal.

It is amazing, given that Austria was gradually becoming a second-tier power, that it managed to do as well as it did for as long as it did. One of the keys to the somewhat unlikely success of the Austrian Empire, and the reason it was able to sustain itself for over a century, was Klemens von Metternich.

The diplomatic brilliance of Metternich, Foreign Minister and later Chancellor of Austria in the service of the Habsburgs, earned him international fame at the Congress of Vienna. This conference, from late 1814 to early 1815, was a gathering of major world leaders. Their goal was to find a diplomatic solution to potential conflicts between countries: they hoped to establish a system which would prevent future wars.

Europe had suffered twenty-five years of nearly uninterrupted warfare: the ten years of the French Revolution and the twenty-five years of Napoleon. There was a strong desire for peace.

Metternich conceived of an arrangement in which Europe would be centered around five major powers: England, France, Prussia, Austria, and Russia. The five major powers were to be of approximately equal strength. This, Metternich reasoned, would prevent any one of them from grasping hegemony; if conflict erupted between any two of them, the remaining three would be strong enough to impose peace and thereby prevent bloodshed. The dozens of smaller countries would find a peaceful existence in the equilibrium created by the big five.

Among the results of the Congress of Vienna, which included the condemnation and end of slave trade, were two outcomes which might have surprised some observers.

The first was the survival of France, which could have been dismembered into a number of small and insignificant kingdoms, given that France had caused the continuous bloodshed of the previous twenty-five years. France was saved at the Congress by the diplomatic skills of Charles Talleyrand, who negotiated to obtain for France a place as one of the big five.

The second was Metternich’s success in persuading Russia, England, and Prussia to view Austria as an equal. Austria was doubtless significant, but also arguably the least of the big five. Metternich managed to place Austria into the role of being the diplomatic hub for Europe, a role which Austria kept, and keeps, long after the demise of both Metternich and the Habsburgs.

It was Austria’s diplomatic, not military, skill which enabled its longevity.

Prior to creation of the Austrian Empire in 1804, prior to the dissolution of the HRE in 1806, and prior to the Congress of Vienna in 1814-1815, Austria denoted merely a region within the HRE, a region which happened to be the home territory of the Habsburgs, but otherwise not a major world power.

Metternich was essential to the Austrian Empire, as historian A.J.P. Taylor writes:

This Austria was personified in Metternich, who became Foreign Minister in 1809 and who represented Austria to Europe for thirty-nine years. For him, as for Europe, Austria was a diplomatic term. He was a German from the Rhineland, western European in upbringing and outlook, a belated rationalist of the Enlightenment, delighting to construct abstract systems of politics and convinced of his infallibility. Metternich’s diplomatic skill carried Austria through the dangerous years between 1809 and 1813, and made Austria the center of the European order which followed the downfall of Napoleon: the Congress of Vienna was the symbol of his achievement. For, since Austria was a European necessity, Europe was an Austrian necessity. Austria could not follow a policy of isolation, or even of independence; she had always to be justifying her existence, to be fulfilling a mission, to be constructing systems of alliance. Metternich’s foreign policy sprang from the hard experiences with which he had entered his office: he dreaded action, sought always to postpone decisions and cared only for repose. Europe, too, in the generation after Napoleon, desired repose; and thus Metternich was in tune with European sentiment. His misfortune was to outlive the war-weary generation and to survive into a Europe which demanded more positive ideals.

The Austrian Empire seemed to tick along nicely for a few decades. A big bump came with the revolutionary sentiment which rolled across nearly every European country in 1848-1849. The revolution failed in Austria, as it did in every other country, yet left its mark and affected thinking for the next few years.

In the wake of the revolutionary outburst, the Habsburg emperors partially and sporadically yielded to popular demands for a written constitution and for the recognition of national sentiments among the constituent nations of the Austrian Empire: Hungary, Slovakia, Bohemia, etc. But the dynasty also partially and sporadically reasserted its monarchical power and authority.

Each of those constituent territories demanded acknowledgement of their languages and cultures. Among the populace, a significant percentage began to think of themselves, not as subjects of the Habsburg dynasty, but rather as Poles, Tirolian, Slovenes, etc. The emergence of these patriotic emotions undermined the stability and power of the imperial throne.

Language was one theater in which these tensions played out: The Hungarians wanted to operate their schools and bureaucracies in Hungarian, the Bohemians wanted to operate in Czech, etc.

These constituent regions, which retained in bits and pieces their own hereditary aristocracies and representative bodies, wanted those local governmental institutions to have increased sovereignty. The after-echoes of the failed revolutions lingered, and by 1867, Hungary obtained its status as an independent nation, not a part of the Austrian Empire. In return, Hungary acknowledged the reigning Habsburg, at the time Franz-Josef, to be its king. In a political arrangement known as a “personal union,” Franz-Josef was King of Hungary and Emperor of the Austrian Empire. Hungary was a sovereign state, which was in no way bound to the Austrian Empire, but which happened to have a king who was also the emperor of the Austrian Empire.

Some historians regard this as the end of the Austrian Empire, others merely see it as a reconfiguration of the Austrian Empire. In any case, the Habsburg hold on Hungary was weakened.

The Austrian Empire seemed to be losing influence. Yet it had tried to strengthen itself and grow. Between 1861 and 1867, a Habsburg sat on the throne in Mexico. Habsburg memories recalled times, decades earlier, in which they claimed territories in South America and the Philippines.

By the end of the nineteenth century, the empire was bargaining and negotiating for bits of territory, losing more than it gained. The Habsburgs, over their years as leaders of the HRE and as leaders of the Austrian Empire, ruled massive amounts of land. Their holdings in Europe peaked in the Middle Ages, when they controlled much of what would later be Germany, Italy, Belgium, and Holland, as well as parts of Switzerland and France. In the early modern era, the Habsburgs oversaw a far-flung collection of territories, including Spain, Mexico, much of Central America and South America, and the Philippines.

By the end of the 1890s, however, it was losing its territories in Italy and in southern Germany, had already lost its territories in Switzerland, and had little land left on the Adriatic coast. Its ownership of territories in Hungary and in the Balkans was precarious, as were its claims to parts of Poland and Hungary. The overseas possessions were long-gone.

By 1918, several empires ended, either directly or indirectly as a result of WW1: the Prussian, the Russian, the Ottoman, and the Austrian empires all ceased. Although the Austrian Empire’s demise was tragic, in as much as it signaled the end of the empire’s contribution to the world’s cultural and diplomatic functioning, it was also a noteworthy achievement to have kept the empire alive for so long. The empire lasted over a thousand years, and the Habsburgs had been at the helm of it for over six hundred years.

The End of WW2 and the Beginning of Soviet Domination in Czechoslovakia: Madeleine Albright Explains Eisenhower

At some point during the first half of 1945, the actions of the United States Army, and several other armies, in Europe ceased to be dictated by military strategies and tactics, and were instead determined, at least in part, by diplomatic thinking. The victory of the Allies against the Nazis was certain. The advances of the Allied armies were steady, continuous, and accelerating. Given that the war would last only a few more months, and that the outcome was manifest, the political leaders of the Allies were at leisure to direct their military commanders to act not in ways which were primarily designed to achieve victory, but rather in ways which were designed to shape the geopolitical landscape of the postwar world.

So it was then that the American military instead of doing what would liberate as many people as possible as quickly as possible, and doing what would bring a quick and decisive end to the war, ended up simply sitting in selected locations when it could have easily gained more ground. This was in part the result of agreements made at the Tehran and Yalta conferences, and in part the result of ongoing diplomatic communications between and after those conferences. The Western Allies, in this case the United States and Great Britain, had agreed to slow down their advances in order to allow the Soviets to “liberate” and eventually colonize regions of Eastern Europe.

This led to situations which caused millions of people in Eastern Europe to be eventually placed under the rule of the Soviet Socialists and the various puppet governments which they instituted.

After the Yalta conference, during those last few months of the war, some of the Allied political leaders had misgivings about having arranged to give Eastern Europe to the Soviets. In April 1945, Anthony Eden, prompted by Churchill, wrote to the Americans, suggesting that the Allies, in particular the Americans, could and should liberate “western Czechoslovakia” and Prague, rather than leave that territory open for the Soviet Socialists to pillage. The western Allies faced this choice: abide by the previously-made agreement with the Soviets, or act humanely to rescue the Czechoslovakians from brutal Soviet troops.

The U.S. forces were acting according to plan: from the west, they advanced to Bavaria, and then split, part going northeast toward the Elbe, and part going southeast into Austria. Czechoslovakia formed a salient between the two, as historian Michael Korda writes:

By April 12 the U.S. Third Army was near the prewar Czechoslovakian border and the U.S. First Army was close to the Elbe. Ike drove forward to meet with George Patton (to whom Ike had given specific and repeated orders not to take Prague before the Russians did), and saw sporadic but stubborn fighting going on throughout the day.

The original agreement with the Soviets called for U.S. forces not to cross the border into Czechoslovakia at all. The British were proposing that this arrangement be abandoned. Madeleine Albright reports about the reception of Eden’s proposal:

The State Department was persuaded by the argument and recommended that the U.S. forces proceed to the Vltava Valley. However, Truman, just starting out his presidency, was loath to meddle in arrangements previously agreed to by Allied military leaders. The situation changed only slightly when General Patton’s Third Army, moving into Austria, required protection on its northern flank. The supreme allied commander, Dwight D. Eisenhower, asked the Soviets for clearance to send troops into southern Bohemia. This was granted, and a new understanding was reached: U.S. forces could penetrate as far east as Plzen, some fifty miles from Prague. They did so without enemy opposition during the first week of May, setting off a wild celebration and causing impatience to build through the Czech lands.

Given Truman’s hesitation, the Americans didn’t do what Eden wanted, but they did a small part of it. Part of the U.S. Army was north of the Austrian border, in Czechoslovakian territory. By this point in the war, the German military was more interested in surrendering to the Americans than in fighting them. The Germans, finally freed from the Nazis who forced them to fight, sought to avoid being captured by the Soviets.

The Americans moved in and faced no real opposition. They were welcomed by the civilians. The situation raised hopes that the Czechs, or some of them, might not fall into the hands of the Soviets.

The Americans set up temporarily in Plzen. Given that the German military was offering little resistance, the Americans could have easily liberated Prague. The Czechs were eager to see U.S. soldiers in Prague, and worried that the Soviets would end up in Prague, as Madeleine Albright explains:

The Czechs broadcast repeated pleas for help. Churchill cabled Washington, urging that the Third Army move. Briefed by Lieutenant Fodor, Patton was eager to march into Wenceslas Square. Eisenhower informed the Soviet high command of his readiness to send his fighters east. The Russians replied: do not proceed beyond Plzen, lest a possible confusion of forces be created. At that decisive moment, the American general acquiesced, adding only that he presumed that “the Soviet forces [would] advance rapidly for the purpose of clearing up the situation in the center of the country.”

As the Germans held on to Prague, with the Soviet closing in, the Czechs had begun what became known as the ‘Prague Uprising’ in early May 1945. The Czechs hoped to free themselves from the Germans, be liberated by the Americans, and avoid a Soviet occupation: hence the ‘repeated pleas’ which the Czechs ‘broadcast’ to the Americans. The situation was one more tragic aspect to a sad situation.

There would have been behind-the-scenes pressure from the Truman administration on Ike to let the Soviets take Prague, and eventually all of Czechoslovakia. This was a tragedy in the making: The Soviets would enslave not only Czechoslovakia, but other eastern European countries as well.

This happened because the civilian governments of the western Allies, unlike the military leaders, were afraid to be decisive. Eisenhower was diplomatic, and kept his misgivings to himself about surrendering Czechoslovakia. Patton was more explicit, allegedly saying:

We promised the Europeans freedom. It would be worse than dishonorable not to see that they have it. This might mean war with the Russians, but what of it? They have no air force, and their gasoline and ammunition supplies are low. I’ve seen their miserable supply trains; mostly wagons drawn by beaten up old horses or oxen.

The sad phenomena which raised false hopes continued. The western Allies had no intention of liberating the Czech area (Slovakia was already largely under Soviet occupation), but unintentionally misleading actions caused the Czechs to hope otherwise, as Madeleine Albright narrates:

Four U.S. tanks entered Prague on May 7, but this was to convey news of the German surrender in Berlin to local Nazi officials. The Americans said that U.S. troops would not be liberating the capital. That disappointed the Germans (who were terrified of the Soviets) as much as it did the Czechs.

The knowledge that U.S. soldiers stood on Wenceslas Square in May 1945 would haunt both military and civilian leaders for the next forty-five years. The brutality of the Soviet Socialist dictatorship caused the deaths of thousands of Czechoslovaks. They died in prison camps, in mass executions, while trying to leave the country, and when the Soviet army put down the 1968 ‘Prague Spring’ reform movement. The Soviet dictatorship was neither inevitable or necessary.

It is tempting to blame the enslavement of eastern Europe on the faint-heartedness of the western Allied civilian governments. But they were only one part of the problem. A small but effective group of pro-Soviet communists within Czechoslovakia played a significant role as well. Edvard Benes was a leader in the civilian government of Czechoslovakia, yet had dined with Stalin in Moscow.

Benes and his network betrayed their own country, failed to press for American troops to liberate Czechoslovakia, and welcomed Stalin’s armies. Benes and Stalin, and their networks, were in turn connected to a network of Soviet espionage agents inside the United States government: individuals like Alger Hiss, Harry Dexter White, Lauchlin Currie, Theodore Hall, Nathan Silvermaster, William Ullmann, Duncan Lee, and Laurence Duggan.

Eastern Europe handed over to the Soviet Socialist dictatorship not only because of some timid western diplomats, but also because of a well-organized international Soviet network of espionage agents, as Madeleine Albright notes:

In later years, many writers, including my father, cited Eisenhower’s failure to send U.S. troops into Prague as a sign of the Western indifference. This is not entirely fair. Benes had never advocated liberation by the Americans and, on the contrary, had made clear his warm relationship with Stalin. Further, the Allies had no role in planning or encouraging the last-minute outbreak of violence. Eisenhower was in the middle of orchestrating the surrender of Germany — this to relieve everyone’s suffering, including Prague’s. Victory was imminent only because the Soviet army, which had two million men committed to the battle, had prevented Hitler from sending more of his troops to fight in the West. The Allied effort had proceeded smoothly, moreover, because all the participants, including the USSR, had abided by their agreements. With the war in the Pacific still undecided, a decision to break faith with the Kremlin at that critical juncture would have carried extraordinary risks.

The military leaders — in this case, Eisenhower and Patton — were on the ground and understood the situation all too well. The Soviet troops rampaged through Slovakia into the Czech lands. They brutally raped any woman or girl they found, stole and looted from the civilian inhabitants, occupied houses, and left the local populations homeless. The anticipations of the Czechoslovakians were confirmed: life under the occupational troops of the USSR was in many cases worse than the German occupation had been.

Ike and Patton had seen that there was a chance to save the Czechoslovakians from the Soviet Socialists, and they watched as that chance was wasted. Madeleine Albright writes:

In any case, the responsibility for making policy was not Eisenhower’s. The general had been ordered to destroy the German military and bring the war to an early and victorious end, not to concern himself with the postwar political balance. Still, the record is clear that Ike was prepared to unleash Patton and would have done so had the Soviets not objected. The blame for what happened in Prague rests properly with Moscow.

While Eisenhower and Patton were the ones who clearly saw the suffering which was descending on Czechoslovakia, and the ones who wanted to stop it and could have stopped it, they became — ironically and unfairly — the symbols of the Allies who let it happen. In the Czechoslovakian folk narratives, Ike and Patton were guilty and lazy, having taken a vacation in Plzen while the Soviet soldiers molested the civilian population.

In point of fact, Patton’s troops stayed in the small area which the Americans had liberated — Plzen and its environs — longer than expected, until late November 1945. When the civilian political leaders eventually forced the U.S. troops to leave Czechoslovakia entirely, the native population justifiably felt abandoned to a grim fate. The American soldiers, not the fickle diplomats, became the symbol of this betrayal, as Madeleine Albright explains:

There is, however, little fair about the creation of national myths. Symbols matter, and some quests — however quixotic — cannot be ignored without paying a price. The Prague uprising made little sense tactically but possessed its own rationale as an expression of bottled rage, coming as it did from a people denied earlier opportunities to fight. The rebellion was not about logic but about courage and honor, or what my father referred to in the context of Munich as “national ethos.” So the legend was born that the United States had turned away from the Czechs at their moment of greatest need. For years to come, Communists would exploit the perception that Americans had “sat in Plzen drinking Pilsener” while the people’s quest for freedom was drowned in blood.

The chaos in the immediate days and weeks after the end of the war were filled with as much confusion and disorder as during the actual war. Conflicting and competing narratives circulated wildly and changed daily. Rumors and legends eventually solidify when the chaos subsides, but those tales are the products of swirling rumor, not of verified reports, as Albright recalls:

That perception lingers. When anniversaries of the uprising are marked, politicians still refer to Eisenhower’s failure. This is true even in Plzen, where, as I can bear witness, the local population has preserved many of the U.S. jeeps and trucks that Patton’s men left behind. In 2010, Vaclav Havel told me that an American liberation of Prague would have made “all the difference.” Havel, whose family spent the war in the countryside, remembered the end of the conflict as a time of uncertainty. The Germans were being driven out; Soviet troops were running around with half a dozen stolen watches on each forearm; and people were popping out of the forest claiming to be resistance fighters when, in some cases, they were brigands. A Czech pilot returning from England landed his plane in a meadow not far from Havel’s house. The whole town threw him a celebration; they had deviled eggs with ketchup and salad.

Albright’s father, Josef Korbel, was a civil servant and diplomat who circulated in high circles. He worked with Vladimír Clementis, who was named State Secretary for Foreign Affairs in the hastily-formed postwar government of Czechoslovakia. This government was so quickly created that the Soviets and the Germans were still battling each other in the country when it came into being. Vladimír Clementis had been a dedicated communist from 1925 onwards, but that was not enough to save him from the Soviets, who eventually executed him in 1950.

Josef Korbel also worked with Jan Masaryk, who was the Foreign Minister of Czechoslovakia. He had obtained that office as part of the government-in-exile formed in England in 1940, and that government was mostly relocated to Czechoslovakia in early 1945. Masaryk and Benes met with Stalin, who promised them that Czechoslovakia would retain its independence and democracy under a Soviet military occupation. Masaryk was not a communist, and his situation became ever more precarious as a growing number of leaders Czechoslovakian government either became communists or were replaced by communists. The danger for Masaryk also increased as it became clear that Stalin had no intention of granting either independence or democracy to Czechoslovakia. Eventually, Masaryk was found dead in 1948 under mysterious circumstances.

The events of Masaryk and Clementis reveal that nobody was safe in a country controlled by the Soviet Socialists. Communists and non-communists alike were killed as soon as there was the slightest suspicion about their loyalty to the USSR. Josef Korbal may have found some safety in being one level lower in the bureaucracy than Masaryk and Clementis. The more prominent a leader was, the more attention he got from the Soviet political organization, and attention from that organization was never a good thing. Albright recalls the start of her father’s postwar career:

My father’s duties included the organization of what would become a rapidly growing Foreign Ministry and the oversight of day-to-day political activities, a heavy burden given that Masaryk spent much of his time abroad. Dealing with important visitors also consumed considerable energy; among the guests that busy summer were the two military icons of the West: General Eisenhower and Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery. My father was entrusted with these responsibilities in part because he was one of the few who enjoyed a good relationship with both Masaryk and Clementis. The two diplomats, though thrust together professionally, were barely of the same species. Unlike the informal Masaryk, Clementis was habitually serious and businesslike, with an intellectual and ideological commitment to communism. Masaryk disliked ideology of all kinds, thinking that it made people forget their humanity in the vain pursuit of foolish goals. As a child, I knew both of them: Masaryk with his round face, big belly, and joking manner, Clementis with his stern eyes and deep voice.

Korbel was soon sent to Yugoslavia to represent Czechoslovakia there. After serving in this role, he also worked for a United Nations committee, and then eventually brought his family to the United States, where he was granted political asylum in 1949. He likely would have been killed had he returned to Czechoslovakia.

By mid-1945, the fighting was over, and both the society and the government were trying to work their ways toward some kind of stability. In July, Laurence Steinhardt became the U.S. ambassador to Czechoslovakia.

It was an open secret that the USSR funded and controlled the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia, but for the sake of appearances, the fiction was maintained that it was an independent political party, created and operated by the Czechoslovakians. For some time after the war, the party participated alongside other parties in elections. The Soviets hoped that they could take power in a way which preserved the illusion of democracy: if the Communist Party won an election, it could be claimed that the people wanted Soviet control. But because it was clear that the party was a Soviet puppet, and because of its thuggish behavior, it became clear that it would not win an election, and that it would be humiliated in the May 1948 elections.

Although they did not control the government, Communist Party had enough elected and appointed officials to cause trouble. The Czechoslovakian delegation to the United Nations consistently voted against the United States, and under pressure from Stalin, Czechoslovakia was not inclined to accept the aid offered by the Marshall Plan.

Critics of Ambassador Steinhardt, like Madeleine Albright, argue that he responded suboptimally to the situation. She writes that he did little in the way of “aid, cultural exchanges, and propaganda to compete with the Soviets for popular affections.” On the contrary, Steinhardt was “primarily concerned with curbing anti-American press coverage and securing compensation for U.S. investors who had a financial stake in nationalized properties. The ambassador opposed economic assistance.”

Steinhardt acknowledged Czechoslovakia’s vulnerability to a long list of Soviet pressure points, including control of strategic ports, media dominance, influence within the trade unions, and the fact that the country was almost surrounded by Communist regimes. But instead of developing a plan to bolster the moderates, the embassy was content to sit on the sidelines and snipe.

The ‘moderates’ were afraid of the USSR and disappointed with the United States. Czechoslovakia was in serious danger, but the U.S. was underresponding, doing too little and doing it too slowly, as Albright explains:

This lack of initiative was doubly regrettable because Steinhardt had considerable clout in Washington. Once a successful Wall Street lawyer, his generous financial contributions had paved the way to a second career as a diplomat, where he had acquired a reputation as a hard-driving troubleshooter. His attitude toward the Czechoslovaks, however, was condescending; he described them as “little people, inclined to double-talk [and] more adept in opposition than when … in charge.” To his credit, he made two useful suggestions: that the United States — like the USSR — establish a consulate in Bratislava; and that it publish the messages between Eisenhower and Soviet military leaders prior to Prague’s liberation, thus showing that it was at Russian insistence that U.S. troops remained in Plzen. The Truman administration responded to these ideas with inexcusable tardiness. The Bratislava consulate did not begin operating until March 1948, after the Communist coup. The exculpatory military documents released in May 1949 — far too late to make a difference.

In February 1948, the Soviets orchestrated a coup, and over the next few months assembled a communist government. By the time the elections occurred in May, the voters had no meaningful choices: only communist candidates were on the ballot.

By mid-1949, Czechoslovakia was solidly in the grip of the Soviet Socialists, and would remain imprisoned for another forty years.

The western Allies had failed repeatedly to take advantage of opportunities to help the Czechoslovakians remain free. Eisenhower and Patton were not to blame; they had seen the danger clearly, knew how to respond, and were prevented from responding. Perhaps it is no mere coincidence that it was also in 1949 that China permanently lost its freedom to communism. There was plenty of blame to go around: both the diplomats and the politicians in the civilian government of the U.S., but also spinelessness of the United Nations, and the ubiquitous network of Soviet espionage agents in various nations.