Differences in the British Perceptions of the Slovaks and Czechs during Their Struggle to Re estabilish Czechoslovakia in Exile Between 1939 and 1941

The political activities of the Czech and Slovak exiles who fled to Britain at the beginning of WWII to re-establish Czechoslovakia have been researched ever since the end of the war. The interest in the subject intensified after the fall of Communism in 1989, when Czech and Slovak historians in Central Europe gained access to archives in the West. Their work so far has focused on the challenges the exiled politicians faced when dealing with the British government and the differences the Czech and Slovak leaders had among themselves when it came to postwar constitutional settlement between the Czech lands and Slovakia. The aim of this study is to investigate the British government’s perceptions of the two nations during the process of Britain’s diplomatic recognition of the Czechoslovak government-in-exile between 1939 and 1941. It focuses on how the British Foreign Office and its diplomatic service perceived the Slovaks and their political culture, in contrast to their views of the Czechs. The main object of the author’s analysis were the primary documents of the Foreign Office, deposited in the collections of the British National Archives at Kew, London. These included diplomatic dispatches, reports and minutes by the Foreign Office’s political and legal advisers which informed British foreign policy towards the Czechs and Slovaks during and immediately after WWII. It argues that that the British view of the Czechoslovak political leadership on the eve of WWII was very negative. As the war progressed and the military situation in Western Europe worsened, the perceptions of the Czechs at the Foreign Office and among its diplomats improved, whereas the Slovaks continued to be treated with condescension as a politically immature people, lacking political leadership to run their political affairs on a par with the Czechs.