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Reviews of Books
[1735-1788]), and established the scientific nexus that
encouraged Piedmont's physicians to accept the preventive approach to public health heralded by Edward
Jenner's advocacy of vaccination. Thus, health care
reforms attributed to Napoleonic centralization in
postrevolutionary Paris may be traced as well to indigenous developments in the provinces going back at
least half a century earlier.
RUDOLPH M. BELL
Rutgers University
IGOR LUKES. Czechoslovakia between Stalin and Hitler:
The Diplomacy of Edvard Benes in the 1930s. New
York: Oxford University Press. 1996. Pp. xii, 318.
Cloth $55.00, paper $29.95.
The literature on the crisis leading to the Munich
agreement of 1938 is immense. This book by Igor
Lukes is a useful addition primarily because of the
author's extensive use of archives in Prague, including
some hitherto either closed to research, utilized only
by selected scholars adhering to the Communist Party
line, or not considered at all. Lukes has combed them
all with care.
Lukes shows why the Czechoslovak government
refused to extend de jure recognition to the Soviet
regime until after Adolf Hitler came to power in
Germany but did maintain de facto relations. In this
connection and throughout his account of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia, its relationship with
Moscow, and its internal feuds, Lukes makes effective
use of police files. The major focus on Edvard Benes is
justified by his central role in the handling of the
state's international relations; the author's depiction
of Benes as a hard-working, extremely careful, generally quite determined, but not very inspiring leader
carries conviction. The trip of Benes to Moscow in
1935 symbolized his effort to bring the Soviet Union
into the diplomatic arena as a counterweight to Hitler's Germany.
Lukes argues that the shift of the Comintern line
from its primary emphasis on attacking social democracy to a popular front against fascism was designed in
large part to promote a war between Germany and
others in the expectation that such a war would create
new opportunities for Soviet expansion. He also claims
that the forgeries utilized by Joseph Stalin to launch
the purge of Red Army officers were processed
through both Paris and Prague; French Prime Minister
Edouard Daladier and not Benes passed them on to
Moscow.
Lukes traces the efforts to maintain an alliance
structure anchored in Paris and Moscow and then
recounts the developments of 1938. There is little new
in his account of the impact on Prague of the German
annexation of Austria in March, but he offers important insights about the weekend crisis of May 1938.
Lukes shows that there was evidently an intelligence
agency operation to deceive the Prague authorities
into believing a German move was imminent; he has
AMERICAN HISTORICAL REVIEW
not been able to identify the nationality of those
responsible.
When Lukes covers the summer and fall of 1938, his
almost exclusive concentration on Prague misleads
him. Although a few French documents are cited, the
author has missed the formal French warning of July
1938 that France would not fight, to which Benes
replied with the request that this position be kept
secret. As the public posture of France-that it would
adhere to its treaty commitment to Czechoslovakia but
was held back by Britain-was false but not known to
be so in London, the repercussions in London of the
discovery of the truth should be easier to understand.
This is what was behind Neville Chamberlain's trip to
Berchtesgaden, as Lukes does not see. There is, furthermore, no reference to the impact of the policies of
the British Dominions. How Canadians and Australians were to see their future tied to Czechoslovakia
unless Benes made a far earlier effort to unmask
German diplomatic strategy is never discussed. Neither is the significance of French planning for an
invasion of the Italian colony of Libya from Tunisia as
the only military operation if Germany attacked
Czechoslovakia.
The account of the final days of crisis raises interesting questions. Lukes argues that the Soviet Union
was at no time prepared and willing to provide substantial military assistance; Moscow carefully avoided
prompt and firm replies whenever Benes asked. The
picture of Soviet policy points to a desire for a war
between Germany and the Western Powers, from
which the Soviet Union would stand aside except for
the possibility of seizing portions of Poland and utilizing the general upheaval for more ambitious aims. The
evidence Lukes offers will provoke debate, but he
makes a strong case.
The author's use of the unreliable memoirs of the
German interpreter Paul Schmidt (in an abbreviated
translation) must be regretted. There is no understanding of why Hitler was so angry to hear of Chamberlain's planned trip or why the German leader was
disappointed after Munich by what he considered the
worst mistake of his career. Since the focus is on
Benes, it would have been important to point out that
he had to face the consideration that even if a victorious war had begun in 1938, Czechoslovakia would
not regain the Sudetenland. The subsequent German
policy of fitting populations to previously determined
borders, instead of the prior concept of fitting borders
to populations, would enable Czechoslovakia to get
back the lands lost at Munich.
It is unlikely that the arguments over the diplomacy
of the 1930s will soon fade away. Lukes adds a
significant new dimension and provides a reassessment
of the diplomacy of Benes that those engaged in the
arguments will need to take into account.
GERHARD L. WEINBERG
University of North Carolina,
Chapel Hill
DECEMBER
1998