Štefánik, Milan Rastislav
Štefánik, Milan Rastislav
Born July 21, 1880, in Košariska, Slovakia; died May 4, 1919. Czechoslovak political and military figure.
The son of an evangelical minister, Štefánik graduated from Charles University. In 1904 he moved to France, where he became a French citizen (1910) and carried out special diplomatic and intelligence assignments for the authorities. During World War I Štefánik was an officer in the French Army; he became a general in the summer of 1918.
In 1916, šStefánik became a member of the Czechoslovak National Council in Paris. He helped form Czechoslovak military units composed of prisoners of war and emigrés in the countries of the Entente and the USA. He became minister of war in the Czechoslovak emigré Provisional Government in October 1918 and helped the Entente carry out its intervention in Soviet Russia. Štefánik died in a plane crash en route from Italy to Czechoslovakia.