9 - The February crisis

Summary

THE COMMUNISTS' MOBILISATION

After handing in their resignations, the leaders of the National Socialist, People's and Democratic Parties sat back and waited. It is not clear exactly what they expected to gain: although the action had been discussed beforehand there were strong doubts about it within the leaderships of the three parties and there had been no attempt to gain the prior approval of the Social Democrats or of the non-party Ministers. Although the ideal outcome for the National Socialists would have been exclusion of the KSČ from the government, they probably only expected that the KSČ would give way rather than face a government crisis: apparently Beneš generally encouraged this belief. They could then have hoped for the reversal of the most recent changes in the police and for early elections without any political involvement from the security forces.

This, however, can only have been based on a woefully inaccurate assessment of the Communists' strength, of their intentions and of their willingness to face a final confrontation and of how the mass of the population – especially the working class – would respond to a major political crisis. Far from yielding at once the KSČ took very vigorous and decisive action. Their aim, it very quickly became clear, was not simply to ‘expose’ their political opponents. Instead, they saw and seized upon the opportunity that had suddenly been created to stage the decisive power struggle before the elections.