WI: Prevent the Czech Communist Coup in 1948?

In 1948 a soviet-backed coup by the KSC (Czech Communists) succeeded in forcefully taking over the leftist coalition government in Prague. The move shocked the world, forced the US' hand in enforcing the Marshall Plan and the formation of NATO, leading to the rise of the Iron Curtain that would blanket eastern Europe for forty years.

How might have this coup been averted? What would have happened had the coup failed? Would Stalin have still tried to have his way?
 
With the Red Army in the place I fear it was only a matter of time before Staline had its way and manage to turn the place communist. The best way to prevent it is to have Patton get to Prague before the Red Army, the biggest share of the population of the country inside US occupied territories the better.

The US army certainly had the means to do it, you just have to get the political will. On the top of my head having FDR dying early (the guy is pretty much my political hero and is conciliatory attitude with the soviets was probably a necessity during most of WWII but at this point his disease probably clouded his judgement), therefore bringing the anti-communists Truman in charge could do allot in that direction, add that to the allies not buying the fortress-Bavaria bluff unlike OTL and you might be on to something.
 
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Western Allies occupy the Czech half of the country while the Soviets occupy Slovakia? It should be doable, after all the Czechs were completely under German control while the Slovaks were for a time German allies fighting the Soviets. Some western backbone is required when drawing up post war lines of control though.
 
To quote an old soc.history.what-if post of mine:

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Would Soviet military intervention even be necessary, regardless of what
Benes did? (BTW, one should remember that Benes was in poor health at the
time, and did not have long to live--a fact which no doubt had some
influence on his failure to resist.) The Communists were determined to
take the battle to the streets, and they had all the advantages there.
Besides being the largest single party, they had puppets in other
parties--e.g., the "Social Democrat" Fierlinger. [1] They had control of
the factory committees, of the security forces, and (through the "non-
partisan" Minister of Defense, Ludvik Svoboda) of the armed forces.

Benes lived long enough to justify his conduct:

"They blame me that I let them down, and I blame them, because they let me
down at a decisive moment. I was powerless without the action they
promised. When Gottwald filled the Old Town Square with bloodthirsty
militia, armed to their teeth, I waited for the rest of them to assemble
in Wenceslas Square. But I could not imagine that they so much lacked
organization, as well as decisiveness, when they should have acted. I
believed that the demonstration of unarmed students would be a signal for
a general uprising. But when no one moved, I could not allow Gottwald's
militant hordes to carry out mass massacres on the defenseless people of
Prague. Their threats had no limits."

Quoted by Zbynek Zeman and Antonin Klimek, *The Life of Edvard Benes 1884-
1948: Czechoslovakia in Peace and War* (Oxford: Clarendon Press 1997),
p. 268.

And if anyone thinks that Benes was exaggerating the ineffectiveness of
the non-Communist leaders during the crisis, Zeman and Klimek note that
"At different points in the February crisis, they were not available in
Prague. Mgr Hala and other leaders of the People's Party attended a
congress of Catholic women; Petr Zenkl, one of the ministers who had
resigned, left for a provincial town in Moravia where he was to receive
honorary citizenship. The general secretary of the National Socialist
Party, Krajina, also left for Moravia on a lecture tour; and his party
comrade, Hubert Ripka, left Prague to visit his parents. The chairman of
the Sokol organization went to the Tatra mountians in Slovakia for the
opening of the Sokol skiing championships. Jan Masaryk, stil a member of
the government, was in bed with a cold throughout the crisis, available
to no one with the exception of Mr. Zorin [the fomrer Soviet ambassador
and now Molotov's deputy]." p. 269.

Sorry, no matter what Benes does or doesn't do, this bunch is not going to
prevail against the Communists--even without a Red Army invasion.

[1] Known to his critics as "Quislinger."

https://groups.google.com/d/msg/soc.history.what-if/89i8DcHfkFA/rYZVvQvOBsoJ

***

(Just to clarify one thing about that post: the "National Socialist" party was Benes' party; it of course had nothing to do with Nazis.)

Incidentally, it was once believed that Stalin had wanted to use Soviet troops, but that Gottwald had assured him that it would not be necessary: "Stalin, he [Zorin] told Gottwald, insisted that the Communists should take advantage of the current crisis to stage the final confrontation. He also pointedly suggested that Gottwald should ask the Soviet government for military assistance; Soviet troops were already massed on the Hungarian border...Gottwald declined to invite in the foreign troops, making this the one instance in his entire life when he disobeyed the Soviet leader. When Zorin reminded him of the consequences of such disobedience, Gottwald explained that the presence of Soviet troops was completely unnecessary because the party was in full command of the situation, with control over the armed forces, and that Soviet intervention would significantly complicate the power confrontation both domestically and internationally." Karel Kaplan, *The Short March: The Communist Takeover in Czechoslovakia 1945-1948* (New York: St. Martin's Press 1988), p. 175. It now appears that this has it exactly reversed--it was Gottwald who wanted to use Soviet troops (at least for a demonstration on the borders) and the Soviets who turned him down!:

"The newly released documents argue against the currently widespread version, which claims that the Kremlin considered it appropriate for the Soviet Army in Hungary to move towards the frontier with Czechoslovakia or even to enter Czechoslovak territory. It is clear from the telegrams, that the Soviet leadership considered the Soviet demonstration of military might at the frontier with Czechoslovakia, which according to Zorin Premier Gottwald and General Secretary Slansky were demanding, to be inappropriate. Molotov also thought it inappropriate for Moscow to give Gottwald any orders 'along Party lines' and warned against Zorin visiting Benes without direct orders from Moscow. The Soviet Communist Party publicly expressed its position on the events in Czechoslovakia with only a commentary in Pravda, remarking on the international 'reactionnaries' and emphasis on the inadmissibility of any compromise.

"The Editors of Soudobe dejiny have included with Murasko's article the comments of Russian historian Leonid Gibiansky and Czech historian Karel Kaplan. Both scholars point out that even after the publication of part of the documents connected with the Zorin mission a number of open questions remain concerning the evaluation of the Soviet role in the February takeover. The Communists' opponents, including President Benes, had no idea of what decisions had been taken in the Kremlin, and so the CPCz leadership could use the Soviet threat as an instrument of political and psychological pressure. And, Kaplan argues, Moscow had no need to give Gottwald instructions emphasizing a tough, uncompromising approach, as Zorin had originally said about him, when in the meantime it became apparent that the CPCz had become master of the situation." http://web.archive.org/web/20030709111152/http://www.usd.cas.cz/usdeng/zorin.html
 
With the Red Army in the place I fear it was only a matter of time before Staline had its way and manage to turn the place communist. The best way to prevent it is to have Patton get to Prague before the Red Army, the biggest share of the population of the country inside US occupied territories the better.

The US army certainly had the means to do it, you just have to get the political will. On the top of my head having FDR dying early (the guy is pretty much my political hero and is conciliatory attitude with the soviets was probably a necessity during most of WWII but at this point his disease probably clouded his judgement), therefore bringing the anti-communists Truman in charge could do allot in that direction, add that to the allies not buying the fortress-Bavaria bluff unlike OTL and you might be on to something.
Last Soviets troops retreated from Czechoslovakia sometimes in late 1945 - mostly seriosly wounded in need of long time recovery. Communist party hold so called power ministries after 1945 and that helped them a lot.
 
Could've Truman convinced FDR to let Patton make a beeline towards Prague before the Soviets got there first?
 
Could've Truman convinced FDR to let Patton make a beeline towards Prague before the Soviets got there first?

I'll recycle a post of mine from a few months ago:

***

I doubt whether Patton liberating Prague would ultimately have made a difference. Benes had already made up his mind well before the liberation in favor of the policies which ultimately led to February 1948: a Soviet-friendly foreign policy, giving up Capatho-Ruthenia to the USSR, expulsion of the Sudeten Germans, a temporary government with representatives both from the London government-in-exile and from Communists who had been in Moscow, etc. The government he formed in March-April 1945 seems to have been on quite favorable terms for the Communists--they got the very important Interior Ministry (i.e., the police), the pro-Soviet General Swoboda got the Defense Ministry, and the pro-Communist nominal Social Democrat Fierlinger got the Premiership, etc. All this was decided on before the question of whether Patton should liberate Prague. Moreover, even if the Americans liberated Prague, the Red Army would still be in some parts of Czechoslovakia, and Benes would still want to preserve good relations with the USSR to get them out.

The 1946 elections, one should remember, were held *after* Soviet troops had withdrawn from Czechoslovakia. It is by no means clear to me that the Communists would have done much worse in them if Prague had been liberated by the Americans. IMO the key to the Communist victory was the widespread belief that only the Soviet Union could safeguard Czechoslovakia against German and Hungarian revanchism. It is interesting that the non-Communist parties were surprised that the Communists did so well in the 1946 elections. They thought that the left-wing wave in Central Europe in 1945 had already started to recede, pointing to the recent Communist setbacks in the Austrian and Hungarian elections. (In Hungary, the free elections which for some reason the Soviet Union decided to allow in late 1945 were a disaster for the Communists--the decidedly pro-private-property Smallholders Party won 57 percent of the vote. Or rather the elections *would have been* a disaster for the Communists if not for the fact that the Red Army was in Hungary and was the real power there, so in spite of the elections it insisted on a Cabinet where the Communists and their allies held key positions, again including the Interior Ministry.) As Karel Kaplan notes: "These calculations neglected to take into account one crucial fact: the Czechoslovak Communists based their position not on the momentum of the European revolutionary wave, but rather on nationalist--that is, anti-German and anti-Hungarian--sentiment, which was intensely held in all quarters. It had its sources in domestic tensions, and the Communists considered the elections and Parliament as one front of the political power struggle but not the only one and not even the main one..." *The Short March: The Communist Takeover in Czechoslovakia*, p. 55.

Now you might say that if the Americans had liberated Prague, more Czech voters would have trusted America, rather than the USSR, to be the guarantor against future German aggression. But it was widely thought that just as after World War I the Americans would before long withdraw their troops from Europe--whereas the Red Army would always be nearby. Just how nearby was brought home when on May 22, 1946--four days before the election--it was announced (rather than requested) that Soviet troops would cross Czechoslovakia from Hungary and Austria to the Soviet zone of Germany. The intervention of Jan Masaryk stopped this from happening, but the point had been made...

One thing that *might* have made a difference in the 1946 election results would have been fewer people being disfranchised for "collaboration." According to Benjamin Frommer, in *National Cleansing: Retribution Against Nazi Collaborators in Postwar Czechoslovakia,* p. 216, "The Communists' political competitors retrospectively blamed disfranchisement for their election debacle. They claimed that machinations by partisan national committees unfairly prevented as many as 250,000 to 300,000 alleged collaborators from casting ballots. Although claims that disfranchisement cost the 'democratic' parties at least ten parliamentary mandates are probably exaggerated, had a mere three seats (approximately 72,000 votes) changed hands, the Communists and their thus-far obedient Social Democratic allies would have lost their majority in the new Constituent National Assembly." But Frommer adds that "Even if the numbers are accurate, there is still no reason to assume that all of those denied the vote would have supported non-Marxist parties." http://books.google.com/books?id=gU-dZ5Zk2-YC&pg=PA216&sig=HsHIYZXGkhQFWJ7jWkhY8kCXMSQ
 
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