Abstract
The following article analyzes the early years of the Council of Free Czechoslovakia based mainly upon primary sources from American and British archives. The Council was founded in 1949 in Washington, D.C. on the first anniversary of the Communist takeover of Czechoslovakia.
This organization, consisting of non-Communist Czechoslovak politicians and diplomats in exile, was the first exile body of its type established in the early Cold War years and the financing of its activities was provided by the United States Central Intelligence Agency through the National Committee for Free Europe. Among matters discussed in the paper are the background to the formation of the Council, its goals, the activities of its most important representatives, and its participation in international organizations like the European Movement and the Assembly of Captive European Nations.
It was unfortunate that, from the outset, personal squabbles among the Council leadership over issues such as term limits for Council functionaries and Czech-Slovak relations (among others) hindered the effectiveness of the Council's activities and ultimately resulted in the termination of American government sponsorship of the Council in 1957 The author concludes that, given the difficult Cold War realities, the actors in the political Czechoslovak exile struggle for freedom could not have performed much better than they actually did.