Word: gottwalds
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...Third Day. At 9:30 a.m. Premier Gottwald called on President Benes at Hradcany Castle to present a list of the new cabinet ministers (twelve Communists, two Socialists and eight miscellaneous "safe" men). Ninety minutes later, the Czech radio triumphantly announced that the President had accepted the new cabinet. The President's office promptly denied this. The fake radio news was enough to frighten Socialist Leader Bohumil Lausman, a middle-of-the-roader, into resigning. Loudspeaker trucks proclaimed that his pro-Communist rival Zdenek Fierlinger had resumed leadership of the Socialist Party. This meant that the Communists could...
...when Premier Gottwald again called on the President...
...Klement Gottwald was a European too, but of a different cast. He had been raised in the iron Kinderstube of the Comintern. In 1929, when he first appeared in Czechoslovakia's Parliament, he said: "You, gentlemen, are asking me what we are here for. My answer is simple. We are here to break your necks...
...heeded the warning. In recent years, Gottwald carefully fostered the illusion that he was a "good Communist," by revealing his jolly personality to the press (he loved Moravian folk songs and played "horsie" with his granddaughter on the living-room carpet). Benes and many other men of good will preferred to believe in the jolly Gottwald of 1948 rather than in the candid Gottwald...
...Gottwald now confronted Benes, his purpose was again clear: to break necks. He led the ailing, frail old man to the study window and pointed at the intricate baroque splendors of the city below. Benes saw thousands of Communist demonstrators in St. Wenceslaus Square. Beyond Prague's gilded spires, Benes could glimpse his country's fertile hills, and beyond them he sensed the inescapable proximity of Russia. Gottwald said bluntly that unless Benes gave in, there would be a general strike and bloodshed...