Liberating the country? Mostly except for when they seized carpathian ruthenia and never gave it back which did affect their popularity with the government
Granted, to some extent. That the Communists were still a leading political group despite this is telling.
The general Czechs hated germans after the German occupation and oppression, but the majority or a very large minority at least was not totalitarian and supported democracy
I'm not entirely sure this can be said to be the case. If you've reached a point where it's acceptable to drive a fifth of your population out of your country because their ethnicity makes them suspect, what will you be willing to do to the remaining four-fifths of the country's population? What will you be ready to justify as being in the common good? For that matter, what will politicians be willing to do to so long as they can justify their actions in terms of the common good? I'm reminded somewhat of Serbia during the Yugoslav wars: yes, Serbia proper was much quieter than Bosnia or Kosovo, but the Serbia that was being run by the cabal promoting fighting was hardly run in a way compatible with democracy or civil rights or the future of the country.
I'm not going to say that the success of the Communist coup in Czechoslovakia was overdetermined. I do think that there had been active in the previous few years very strong currents in Czechoslovak political life that made a totalitarian coup relatively likely.
a strong tradition in Czechoslovakia which was one of the few central European countries to avoid authoritarianism or totalitarianism in the interwar years.
The problem is that Czechoslovakia fell apart entirely when it was stressed, the Sudeten Germans joining Germany and the Slovaks opting for independence and neighbours like Hungary annexing territories to which they laid claim. Czechoslovakia did as well as it could, but it ultimately failed.
The assassination of Jan Masaryk tipped the scales from democracy to Communism. As well as this, the expulsion of the germans was due to WW2 and did not mean Czechs hated the Americans or British in the same way. They might've disliked the government, but they didn't hate the west or their citizens nor did they resent the west too much, they resented them slightly but mostly the pre-war governments who for the most time were no longer in power.
Would they have been willing to accept British and French guarantees as to their security in NATO? Would they have been at all willing to work with West Germany?
I see that it wouldn't be as neutral but neither not fully western and otherwise indeed, I think it'd be a capitalist democracy style after France, but neutral especially with the USSR threat though I think in 2 or so decades, they'd stop blaming the west
I do not know. What, exactly, will the relationship of this country be with western Europe, with the West Germany that was the destination of the expelled Sudeten Germans in particular? A democratic Czechoslovakia that is hostile towards both of its western German-speaking neighbours is going to find it difficult to build productive relationships with these and with the western Europe lying beyond them. How will the Benes Decrees, for instance, be handled or otherwise if both West Germany and Czechoslovakia are outside of the Soviet bloc? Meanwhile, there will always be the possibility of productive ties with the Soviet bloc to the north and east (and south?) of Czechoslovakia. There may well be strong impulses for Czechoslovakia to aim for neutrality, to stay independent of a Western bloc with countries it does not trust and a Soviet bloc that while useful wants too much political control.