On election eve, Czechoslovakia's slightly right-of-center National Socialist Party edified voters with a great protagonist of Western culture, Mickey Mouse; they screened Disney pictures in front of their party building. On the other side of Prague's Wenceslaus Square, the Communists showed newsreels of murder and torture in German concentration camps. Mickey lost.
At the polls next day, the Communists, who had accurately gauged the country's mood, got almost twice as many votes as any other party, won 115 out of 300 Assembly seats.
Remember Munich. Would Czechoslovakia stick to prewar democratic ways, or...