But the Marshall Plan was to work as intended only for two years — 1948-9 and 1949-50, when the bulk of the $13.5bn was spent. The $10bn had more or less sufficed to deal with the European deficit and quite soon the Europeans were exporting again. The further $4bn that had been intended was diverted because the Plan, if not derailed, was greatly changed in emphasis, partly because of its own logic, and partly because of international crises. By the end of 1947, the USSR had turned its satellites into fully Communist countries, without any but a formal vestige of opposition.
There was a final decisive moment in February 1948, when Czechoslovakia fell under total Communist control, the ‘Czech coup’, as it was known. This was not at all easy, because the vital ingredients were missing: there was no Red Army occupation, and there was a functioning democratic state — and not only that, but one unlike the others in the Soviet bloc. The Czechs had serious heavy industry, and there were world-class firms such as Bat’a for shoes and Škoda for machinery; there was a substantial middle class, and, uniquely in the bloc, a large and organized working class. Czechoslovakia before the war had been roughly on the same level as Belgium, and even the capitals’ architecture had points in common, especially the ingenious twenties additions. In ordinary circumstances, the trade unions and the Social Democrats would no doubt have co-operated with some farmers’ party, whatever its name, to profit from the Marshall Plan and leave Czechoslovakia associated with the West — a sort of Austria or Finland. Such a solution to the Soviet problem was clearly in the mind of the Czech leader in exile, Edvard Beneš. He did not go down the Polish path, to challenge Moscow; instead, he went out of his way to reassure Stalin, and made no trouble when, at the end of the war, the Soviet Union annexed a strip of land on the Carpathians that had a Ukrainian population. He maintained good relations with the Czech Communists who had chosen exile in Moscow, and his ambassador there even turned out to be a Communist agent. A Czech force, again commanded by a man who turned out to be an agent, operated on the Eastern Front — all of this in absolute contrast to the behaviour of the Poles. The counterpoint was of course that the Red Army would not occupy Czechoslovakia, and in due course it did indeed depart. In May 1945 a five-party coalition took over the government, and a year later there was a free election. Prague, undamaged by war, struck a Polish journalist, Stefan Kisielewski, as a miracle: quite unlike grim Warsaw, its shops were full, the lights were working, the hotels were functioning, and even the old aristocracy could be seen making their way through the cobbled medieval streets in black tie, to this or that dinner party in some Schönborn or Lobkowitz Palace. ‘Our Communists are not like the others’ was a line that foreign diplomats or journalists often heard, and some of them were quite impressed by the fluent and knowledgeable minister of culture, Václav Kopecký, who could talk about film and much else. When the British historian A. J. P. Taylor visited Prague, his old London acquaintance, Beneš, showed him the undamaged Prague skyline with pride: ‘all my doing’. He had even sent a ‘plane-load of senior non-Communists to Moscow to negotiate terms with the Communists there, and Stalin, at a farewell banquet, had assured them, “We will never interfere in the internal affairs of our allies.” ’
But circumstances would prevent Czechoslovakia’s becoming Austria or Finland, let alone Belgium. In 1945 there was indeed a sort of Popular Front regime, as the Communists understood it — an alliance with the Social Democrats and with the ‘progressive’ elements of the middle class (for historical reasons, one element was called ‘National Socialist’, essentially anti-clerical and anti-German). But the two chief political parties had been knocked out because of their behaviour during the war. Hitler had taken over the rump of the Czech lands, as a ‘Protectorate’, and there had been a collaborationist government run by the old Agrarian Party, the chief Czech party before the war. Collaboration had gone so far that the Czech lands, along with Belgium, were the only parts of Nazi-occupied Europe in which industrial production had gone up, not down. Its chiefs were put on trial and the party was banned. Slovakia had been even more heavily involved in collaboration. She had been given independence, and a nationalist or even Fascist regime had followed in 1939, under a priest, Mgr Jozef Tiso. With the blessing of the Yalta conferees, only ‘anti-Fascist’ parties were now allowed into parliaments, such that the two largest elements in Czech and Slovak politics were banned. Slovakia might, as today, otherwise have remained independent, and it was really only Soviet support for the integrity of Czechoslovakia that kept the country together.
On the face of things, restored Czechoslovakia was a functioning democracy, complete with cabinet and parliament and debates. However, the real centre of power lay in the ‘National Front’, a body on which were represented, by appointment, the five permitted political parties, and the administration consisted of ‘national committees’, again not elected. Not only this: the party members in the supposed parliament were under orders to vote as they were told by the National Front. In its regional and local committees, there was not much opposition to the Communists and they had a vast prize to offer. With Stalin’s support, the 3 million German inhabitants of the country were expelled in 1945-6, with a suitcase each. In German-inhabited towns (in Slovakia, to a limited extent, the same happened with Hungarians), placards went up, couched in the same insulting language that had been used by the Nazis as regards the Jews: ‘All Germans, regardless of age or sex’, were to collect in the town square and be marched off or in some cases moved by train, and dumped in shattered Germany. Unknown numbers died, and their property was free for the taking. However, since the Communists controlled the relevant administration, anyone aspiring to take over these lands and houses, including many gypsies, would have to register with the Communist Party (as happened in Poland). The non-Communist elements in the National Front did not object to this — quite the contrary, they were even more vociferous about the process than the Communists themselves, and one of the chief ‘National Socialists’ (or ‘Radicals’, a more suitable translation), Peter Zenkl, argued for the abolition of ‘capitalism’, by which he meant foreign-owned plants and farms. A land reform took over 5m hectares, one fifth of them forest, and three fifths of industrial output was taken over by the State, again with the blessing of the non-Communists. Even the Communists argued for a slower speed of change and put themselves forward as protectors of ‘the small man’. Meanwhile, on any national issue, including irritating little territorial claims against Poland, the five parties were glued together. This mattered very greatly in anything to do with Slovakia. Where the Czech lands were prosperous and modern, Slovakia was in many ways backward: still heavily peasant and Catholic, the educated element often Hungarian and Jewish or, where Slovak, part of the small Lutheran minority. When Slovakia had declared independence in March 1939, it had been a vast blow to the Czechs, hitherto the dominant people, and there was still much resentment at the Slovaks’ behaviour during the war, when they had been pampered favourites of the Third Reich. Since it was Stalin and the Communists who in effect kept the country together, they received Czech support.