The Czechoslovak statesman Eduard Benes (1884-1948) was president of his country from 1935 to 1938 and from 1940 to 1948.

As foreign minister of a small state created from territories of the former Austro-Hungarian Empire after World War I and precariously situated between Germany and the Soviet Union and bordered by hostile Poland and Hungary, Eduard Benes supported the territorial settlements of the Paris Peace Conference of 1919, was a pillar of the French-East European alliance system, and was a zealous proponent of the League of Nations and of the settlement of international disputes through arbitration. The League's failure to maintain peace and France's refusal to honor its commitment to defend Czechoslovakia against German aggression led to the dismemberment of Czechoslovakia in 1938, and Europe's postwar prostration rendered any challenge to the Soviet-backed coup d'etat in 1948 impossible. Thus East Europe's most noted fighter for international cooperation and collective security lived to witness the defeat...