he worked on several military and diplomatic positions (military attaché in Hungary and Poland) and intelligence services. In 1933 he was promoted to the position of brigade general and in 1938 to divisional general. He was the first and the only Slovak who reached the position of general in the interwar Czechoslovak Army. After the Munich Agreement in 1938, he disagreed with the radicalization of the political scene in Slovakia and with negative events like the formation of the Hlinka Guard and seditious anti-Czech propaganda. As a Slovak with the highest position in the army, he was delegated by central government for negotiations with Hungary in Komárno led by the new prime minister of autonomous Slovakia Jozef Tiso. Viest warned him about the negative impacts of radicalization to the security of the state. According to Viest's memoir, general Lev Prchala offered him to perform military cataclysm and take power in November 1938, but Viest considered it too dangerous because formation of borders was not finished yet. Slovak Republic Rudolf Viest belonged to a group of anti-Fascist officers and was against the break-up of Czechoslovakia into Slovakia and the protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia. On 14 March 1939, he signed a memorandum against the creation of the Slovak republic delivered to the Slovak Assembly shortly after the declaration of independence. The new regime did not persecute him, but offered him the function of inspector-general of the Slovak Army. He accepted the function after the promise of the minister of defence Ferdinand Čatloš that he would not be in contact with Germans. He was keeping contact with the Czechoslovak government-in-exile in London and he was a member of the resistance movement "Obrana národa" (Defense of Nation). At the same time he contributed a large sum for the economic development of the First Slovak Republic. Hungary, not being satisfied with territorial gains from the First Vienna Award, attacked Slovakia on 23 March 1939. Viest became a member of the common Slovak-Hungarian commission which was responsible for establishing a new border. According to his memoirs, he finally decided to emigrate during escalation of German-Polish conflict in August 1939. He used for this purpose the official meeting of the commission in Budapest (28 August 1939 - 2 September 1939). He got a visa from the Romanian embassy in Budapest and moved to Bucharest where he obtained a false French passport from the French embassy with