Read Next
When the new country of Czechoslovakia was proclaimed on Oct. 28, 1918, its leaders were still in exile. Masaryk was chosen as president on November 14, while he was still in the United States; he did not arrive in Prague until December. Beneš, the country’s foreign minister, was in Paris for the upcoming peace conference, as was Karel Kramář, who had become Czechoslovakia’s first prime minister. (The Slovak leader and first war minister Štefánik died in an airplane crash in May 1919.) Masaryk and Beneš remained in charge of foreign relations, and the leaders of five major parties dealt with ...(100 of 22138 words)