16.5.1945 President Beneš returned from exile in London

President Edvard Beneš returned from exile in London as a hero, greeted by crowds of people. He had to go abroad after he gave up his post as head of state in October 1938 because of the Munich Agreement.

At the beginning he could not be politically active because Great Britain was ready to accept Hitler's territorial demands. After three months Benes flew to Chicago, where he worked as a professor interested exclusively in scientific matters, as he kept his promise of political restraint towards the new government for the time being.

But the situation was completely changed by the German occupation of the rest of Czechoslovakia, when Benes on 15. March 1939, he wrote a message to the protest rallies of Czech and Slovak compatriots in Chicago and the following day formulated similar telegrams addressed to to President Delano Roosevelt, Prime Ministers Neville Chamberlain and Édouard Daladier, People's Commissar for Foreign Affairs Maxime Litvinov, and the President of the Council of the League of Nations, Joseph Avenol.

"At a time when the preparation of a possible defence alliance between Britain, France and the Soviet Union has turned into a rare...in which each side pursued only its own interests, Benes no longer had a seat in the U.S. In July 1939, he returned to London, where he remained for the rest of his reign," writes Radka Kubelková in her book Edvard Benes Between London and Moscow.

The president and his wife settled in south-west London. But in early October 1940, a bomb fell on their garden, as the bombing of the city was intensifying. Jan Masaryk therefore took the Benes to Sunningdale in Ascot, a town about 40 kilometres as the crow flies from London. The couple finally left there on 13 November 1940, when they moved to Aston Abbotts, a country estate in Buckingham County, an agricultural area about 56 kilometres as the crow flies north-west of London.

The journey to the offices at 9 Grosvenor Place, near St. James Park, took about an hour and a half by car in those days. "As there have been occasional suggestions that unreasonable sums were spent on the representation of the President and the Government, let us look into Benes' residence. He lived in a one-storey building of a former abbey that had been rebuilt from the ground up. The Czechoslovak government-in-exile rented the estate from the owner, Harold Morton, for £20 a week. From the lee of the entrance one entered a hall with a staircase, and from this there was access to several rooms. To the left was Benes's spacious study, the adjoining rooms were used by his private secretary Eduard Taborsky," Ivan Kazimour describes in his book Edvard Benes Without Adoration.

The house also had a huge living room and dining room. On the first floor was the private apartment of the Beneš family, and the servants and military guards lived in the next wing. A special Czechoslovak unit of 90 to 100 men with 4 to 5 officers provided security.

"The administration of both Beneš and the government-in-exile also grew. So the cost in 1940 was £980,000 and a year later even £1.83 million. This was the cause of frequent criticism by those who realised that we would have to pay for it one day. Czechoslovak ministers in exile were paid a monthly salary of £100, which was only slightly less thanthan British ministers, who had infinitely more responsibility and more work. Members of the Czechoslovak Council of State received £75. For speeches to the radio broadcasts for Czechoslovakia, until 1941, everyone was paid one pound per minute of broadcasting. A skilled worker had to work all day for one pound," Kazimour writes.

Benes could not return to his homeland until 16 May 1945. He and his wife Hana left London on 11 March 1945, accompanied by Foreign Minister Jan Masaryk and Soviet Ambassador Fyodor Tarasevich Gusev. They travelled via Cairo and Moscow, where Benes discussed the form of the new government. He continued his journey after the German surrender.

Sources.