Fedor Hodža

Who was Fedor Hodža?

Fedor Hodža was a Slovak politician and lawyer, the son of Milan Hodža.

He was a graduate of the Faculty of Law of the Charles University in Prague. He worked at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Prague.

During the World War II he lived in France and the UK, where he was Minister of Foreign Affairs and Agriculture of the Czechoslovak government in exile from 1940 to 1945. He participated, along with his father, in the creation of the Slovak National Council in Paris, which was supposed to be an opposition body to the exile policy of Edvard Beneš. After his father had left for the U.S., Fedor established close relationships with Beneš and even became a member of the Czechoslovak pseudo-parliament in exile in London in 1944.

In 1945, he was a member of the Slovak National Council. After WWII, from 1945 to 1948, he was a member of the Czechoslovak parliament and Secretary General of the Democratic Party.

In 1948, when the communists took power in Czechoslovakia, he emigrated to the U.S. There, as a member of the Council for a Free Czecho-Slovakia and of the Permanent Council of Slovak Democratic Exiles, he tried to achieve a re-establishment of democracy in Czechoslovakia, ruled by communists at that time.