ABSTRACT
Czechoslovakia was liberated from Nazi rule in May 1945 by the Soviet Army, the advancing American force under General Patton having been pulled back by General Eisenhower, in accordance with the division of occupied territory agreed by President Roosevelt and Winston Churchill with Stalin at the Teheran Conference. The hopes of Benes and the Czech people, however, were dashed by the Communist coup d'etat of 1948. The occasion for it was provided by the justifiable, but imprudent resignation from the government of the National-Socialist People's and Slovak Democratic ministers in protest at the Minister of the Interior packing the police force with Communists. The major developments in the history of the Catholic Church in Czechoslovakia since the end of the Second World War to the present parallel the state's political history. The Communists in their drive against Catholicism exploited certain characteristic weaknesses of the Church in Czechoslovakia.
