After World War I, he was sent to Slovakia to fight against the Hungarian and the Slovak Soviet Republic. After 1919, Moravec served as an army officer in Plzeň and in 1928 he joined the military intelligence service and moved to Prague.[2]
From 1937 to 1938, Moravec was deputy head of the service and head of its operations department, from January 1939 acting head of the service.
In the evening of 14 March 1939, he and 10 of his fellow intelligence officers secretly managed to fly away with the most valuable intelligence files and archives from Prague Ruzyně Airport to London Croydon Airport with a stopover in Rotterdam on ad hoc chartered KLMDouglas DC-3, as they knew in advance from their secret agents operating in Nazi Germany that the invasion leading to German occupation of Czechoslovakia was to be on 15 March 1939, at 6 a.m. Rescued files and archives were handed over to the British MI6 to be used against Germany.
Moravec maintained secret radio contact with the Czech anti-Nazi Resistance group known as Three Kings Group from 1939 to 1942. He co-ordinated the Czechoslovak co-operation with SOE. He participated in planning and preparation of Operation Anthropoid resulting in the assassination of Reinhard Heydrich. He also planned the assassination of his namesake Emanuel Moravec, a traitor and Nazi collaborator who was also known as the "Czech Quisling".
František Moravec returned to Czechoslovakia in 1945 after the Nazi Germany defeat but left secretly again in 1948, shortly after the communist coup d'état. He settled in the United States, where he worked until his death as an intelligence advisor in the US Department of Defense.
The Old Guard Casket Team holds the remains of Moravec during his dignified transfer, April 2022.
