A skilled diplomat, humanist, intellectual and the second Czechoslovakian president. That was all Edvard Beneš who was designed as the successor to Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk (who is mainly known as a philosopher in the West).
The major powers already decided the Eastern European Germans must be repatriated (Czechoslovakia had a considerably large German minority (around 3 million)) during the WW2 and Beneš enthusiastically complied. His enthusiasm, however, turned into war crimes.
Imagine that WW2 has had ended de jure and de facto and what our beloved war criminal was doing? He was not only covertly stirring up violence, he was explicitly calling for violence against poor civilians. Mothers lost their husbands in war, children were orphaned, and people lost their whole families.
During the postwar chaos and violence, one teacher uttered: “Don’t do anything you would regret in the future.” Too late!
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