Leopold Klátil, a native of Zlín, was born into the family of an employee of the Bata factory. Klátil's father, his siblings, his siblings' partners, and Klátil's future wife Justina Štíhlová, originally from Staříč u Místku, whom Klátil married in September 1931 (three children were born to them in 1931 and 1934), all worked for Bata. Klátil attended the general, burgher and continuation school in Zlín, where he also trained as a shoemaker at the local Shoemakers' Association in Zlín (1921-1923). In August 1923, he became an employee of the Bata factories in Zlín and remained in the service of the Bata company until October 1945, with the exception of his compulsory military service in Šumperk (1926-1927). In 1923-1936, he worked as a handler, paymaster and accountant at the shoe factories in Zlín. Subsequently, he held the post of chief accountant of the shoe workshops (1936-1939) and administrator of the shoe workshop group (17 March - 23 June 1939). In the middle of 1939 he was sent as a manager of a branch plant to the concern in Zruč nad Sázavou - Bat'a (1939-1945).

Klátil was only thirty-three years old when he became the head of the newly built concern. He led the company during the difficult times of the Second World War, when as manager of a plant important for the war effort he had the difficult task of balancing between the Czech and German company management in Zlín, the Protectorate administration and the local employees, whom he did not always treat tactfully, according to repeated complaints. He ended his tenure as the company's director on 5 May 1945, during dramatic events, when he was allegedly taken out of the factory on a cart by employees. He lived in Zruč nad Sázavou - Bat'a until the spring of the following year. However, he was temporarily detained by the National Security Corps (from mid-May to mid-July 1945), followed by the termination of his employment at the Bata company under national administration on 2 October 1945, and finally eviction from the company flat in the director's villa in Zruč (November 1945).

He was accused of having or forcing employees to sign condolence papers after Heydrich's death on the orders of the German director Miesbach in Zlín. Already after the war, Klátil's contemporaries doubted Klátil's possible personal involvement in the case and the manipulative space in which he could have moved at all as a director during the occupation. However, the factory council of the Bata company, Zruč nad Sázavou, was clear about the reasons for Klátil's dismissal: "Public distrust of the entire factory staff, anti-social behaviour during the German occupation, secured by the MNV." Officially, he was dismissed under Section 34 of Act No. 154/1934 Coll., on private employees (improper and disloyal behaviour towards the employer).