Jan Masaryk

Jan Garrigue Masaryk (14 September 1886 – 10 March 1948) was a Czech diplomat and politician who served as the Foreign Minister of Czechoslovakia from 1940 to 1948. American journalist John Gunther described Masaryk as "a brave, honest, turbulent, and impulsive man".

Born in Prague, he was the son of professor and politician Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk (who became the first president of Czechoslovakia in 1918) and Charlotte Garrigue, Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk's American wife. Masaryk was educated in Prague and also in the United States, where he lived for a time as a drifter before finding employment as a steelworker. Because of his youth in the United States, Masaryk always spoke both Czech and English with a strong American accent. He returned home in 1913 and served in the Austro-Hungarian Army during the First World War. Masaryk served in Galicia and learned Polish during his wartime career. The fact that his father was in exile, working for Czech independence from the Austrian empire, made him the subject of bullying and hazing during his military service as the son of a "traitor". His unhappy military service made him unwilling to speak very much of his time as a soldier after the war as it held too many painful memories.

He then joined the diplomatic service and became chargé d'affaires to the US in 1919 and then as counselor to the legation in London. In 1922, he became secretary to the Czechoslovak foreign minister Edvard Beneš. In 1925, he was made minister-plenipotentiary to Britain. The British scholar Robert Powell described Masaryk as "the most unconventional of diplomats. None was less tied to protocol. Witty, shrewd, with an abundance of common sense, he often triumphed over circumstances, which baffled others more intellectually cleverer, but lacking his psychological insight... He could be disconcertingly direct in his conversation and he considerably embarrassed certain types of English people. His manner was American rather than English, his racy language often shocking to people who had not the wit or patience to look beyond the actual expressions used." By contrast, the Czech historian Zbyněk Zeman and the German historian Rainer Karlsch described Masaryk as a weak man who drifted during his time in the United States, was psychologically unstable, and needed someone to guide him through life. His father resigned as president in 1935 and died two years later. He was succeeded by Edvard Beneš. Masaryk had been dominated by his father, and afterward by Beneš, who played the role of a surrogate father.

Right from his arrival in London, Masaryk in his reports to Prague warned that many officials in the United Kingdom's Foreign Office were in the grip of nostalgia for the Austrian empire, haunted by what he called the "ghost of the Habsburg empire". Masaryk expressed concern that many in the Foreign Office were openly hostile towards Czechoslovakia and considered the nation a mistake that should never have been allowed to happen.

On 21 June 1927, under the influence of his Hungarian mistress, Princess Stephanie von Hohenlohe, the British press baron Lord Rothermere published a leader (editorial) in The Daily Mail newspaper calling for Hungary to regain lands lost under the Treaty of Trianon. Rothermere deemed it unjust that Hungary—a nation dominated by what he admiringly called a "chivalrous and warlike aristocracy"—should have its borders truncated and that Magyars should be placed under the rule of the peoples of Romania, Czechoslovakia, and Yugoslavia, whom Rothermere described as "cruder and more barbaric races". Through primarily concerned about what he called "justice for Hungary", Rothermere also argued that the Sudetenland should go to Germany. Rothermere's leader caused much worry in Prague and Beneš rushed to London to inquire if Rothermere was acting on behalf of the British government.

To counter the pro-Hungarian articles in The Daily Mail, the hostility of the Foreign Office, and the indifference of the British people to Czechoslovakia, Masaryk had money given to British journalists who wrote pro-Czechoslovak articles to make these articles widely available in a bid to influence British public opinion. The two most important British intellectuals whom Masaryk supported were the journalist Wickham Steed and the historian Robert Seton-Watson, both of whom were staunch supporters of Czechoslovakia and longtime friends of his father, President Masaryk. Masaryk provided the funds to make the writings of Steed and Seton-Watson available to the widest possible audience. The faculty and students at the School of East European and Slavonic Studies at King's College London tended to be very sympathetic towards Czechoslovakia, which was seen as a model democracy, and Masaryk often provided the funds to publicise their work. In 1930, when Steed's journal The Review of Reviews went bankrupt, Masaryk granted him enough money to keep his journal afloat. As part of his cultural diplomacy, Masaryk sometimes worked with Yugoslav diplomats to provide the money for journalists willing to challenge the pro-Hungarian slant of The Daily Mail, which was just as alarming to Belgrade as it was to Prague.

When Joachim von Ribbentrop arrived in London in October 1936 as the new German ambassador to the Court of St. James, he sent out invitations to the other ambassadors to attend a ball to introduce himself as was the normal practice at the time. Instead of using French (the language of diplomacy) in his invitations, which was the standard protocol, Ribbentrop insisted on using German as way to show the superiority of Germany. Masaryk responded to this gross violation of diplomatic protocol by giving his reply to Ribbentrop's letter in Czech, instead of German as Ribbentrop had expected. The other ambassadors did likewise with the Japanese ambassador responding in Japanese and the Turkish ambassador responding in Turkish, which caused chaos at the German embassy as nobody was certain who was attending the ball, as the German embassy lacked people able to translate the various replies. During the Abdication crisis, Masaryk was hostile to the new king Edward VIII, whom he described as a Nazi sympathizer, writing in a dispatch to Prague that the king "felt closer to fascism and Nazism than democracy, which he found slow and boring." Masaryk was equally hostile towards the king's mistress, Mrs. Wallis Simpson, whom he reported has stated she felt at home in Vienna and Budapest while loathing Prague. When Edward abdicated to marry Mrs. Simpson, Masaryk was relieved, writing that Ribbentrop had "lost in Mrs. Simpson a dangerous ally".

Unlike Beneš, Masaryk understood that the pro-Hungarian slant of The Daily Mail was caused by the influence on Lord Rothermere of Princess von Hohenlohe, whom Masaryk also knew was the mistress of Fritz Wiedemann, the adjunct to Adolf Hitler. Masaryk described Rothermere as dominated by Hohenlohe, writing that he would do anything to please her. In a dispatch to Prague, Masaryk wrote: "Is there any decency left in the world? A great scandal will erupt one day when the role which Steffi von Hohenlohe, née Richter, played during the visit of Wiedemann is revealed. This world-famous secret agent, spy, and swindler, who is a full Jewess, constitutes today the centre of Hitler's propaganda in London. Wiedemann stayed at her place. She keeps Hitler's photograph on her desk, inscribed "To my dear Princess Hohenlohe-Adolf Hitler", and next to it a photograph of Horthy, dedicated to the 'great stateswoman'."