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11/23/2006

II.  The Early History of Czechoslovakia   

            Celtic tribes were the earliest known inhabitants of Bohemia, Moravia, and Slovakia.  As early as 500 B.C., the Boii settled in Bohemia and the Cotini, a related tribe, settled farther east, in Moravia and parts of Slovakia.  Semi-nomadic Germanic tribes, the Marcomans in Bohemia and the Quadi in Cotini territory, eventually displaced the Celts.  Invasions and mass population shifts drove the Germans westward; from the fourth century A.D., the area's population became increasingly Slavic.
            The fifth century provides the earliest records of Czech tribes.  They developed an economy based on agriculture and resided in characteristically circular Slavic villages, called okronlice, on the most favorable land in the Elbe (Labe) river valley.  In the sixth century, the Avars, a pastoral people speaking a Ural-Altaic language, moved into the Middle Danube (Dunaj) and the surrounding lands.  They did not penetrate into the Elbe basin, but enslaved the weaker Slav tribes of the Carpathian mountains for about 100 years. 
            Their enslavement ended when Samo, thought to be a Frankish merchant, united the Slavic tribes and led them against the Avars.  In 625, the Empire of Samo, the earliest known Czech political unit, was established near Prague.  Samo died in 658.  His empire did not survive him.
            Moravia was the center of the second Czech polity.  Mojmir, chief of the most powerful tribe in the region, the Holasovici, annexed western Slovakia.  Mojmir built up the Moravian Empire in the center of the Moravian basin in the early ninth century.  The neighboring Franks made repeated attempts to diminish the power and influence of the Moravian Empire, and throughout the ninth century they mounted raids into Czech territory.  German missionaries arrived in Moravia to spread the Roman form of Christianity among the Slavs.  At Regensburg, Germany, Mojmir and his fellow chiefs were baptized.  Rostislav, who led from 850 to 870, succeeded Mojmir.  Rostislav felt the Germanic influence threatened his rule and turned to Byzantium.  Cyril and Methodius, monks sent by Emperor Michael at the request of Rostislav, introduced Eastern rites and liturgy in the Slavic language in the Moravian Empire.  The Cyrillic alphabet was developed.  The Pope invested Methodius as Archbishop of Moravia.  However, Rostislav's successor, Svatopluk, who led from 871 to 894, chose alliance with the German king.  When Methodius died in 885, the Moravian Empire came under the sphere of influence of the Roman Catholic Church.   

The Magyar Invasion and the Bohemian Kingdom

             The Magyar invasion of the Danube basin followed Svatopluk's death.  The Magyars entered the region as semi-nomadic pastoralists, but then settled into agricultural communities and held the territory until the six­teenth century and the Ottoman conquest.  The Moravian Empire collapsed with the arrival of the Magyars.  The chiefs of the Czech tribes in Bohemia broke from the Holasovici, swearing allegiance instead to the Frankish Emperor Arnulf.  Bohemia became the political hub for the Czechs, and the Bohe­mian Kingdom began to develop.
            The Bohemian Kingdom, appeared under the rule of the Premyslid Dynasty.  The Premyslid chiefs were members of the Čechové, a tribe holding lands near the junction of the Vltava and the Elbe rivers.  The Premyslid chiefs unified neighboring tribes in the tenth century and established a form of centralized rule.  The first recorded Premyslid prince, Borivoj, was succeeded by his sons, Spitihnev, and then Vratislav I, who ruled from 916 to 920.  Vratislav I was succeeded in turn by his son, Wenceslas, who ruled from 920 to 929 and became the na­tional saint and hero.  Wenceslas III, the last Premyslid ruler, died in 1306.
            The Bohemian Kingdom was cut off from Byzantium by the Magyar presence and existed in the shadow of the Holy Roman Empire.  In 950, the powerful Emperor Otto I, a Saxon, led an expedition to Bohemia demanding tribute.  In this manner, the Bohemian Kingdom became a fief of the Holy Roman Em­pire, and its king one of the seven secular electors of the emperor.  The German emperors continued to use Roman Catholic clergy to extend German influence.  German priests and monks continued their missions into Czech territory.  The bishopric of Prague was founded in 973 during the reign of Boleslav II, who ruled from 967 to 999.  Significantly, the bishopric was subordinate to the German arch-bishopric of Mainz.  While struggling to retain autonomy in relation to the empire, Premysl rulers used the German alliance to strengthen their rule against a perpetually rebellious regional nobility.
            The most dynamic period of Premysl reign came in the thirteenth cen­tury.  Emperor Frederick II was preoccupied with Mediterranean affairs and the dynastic struggles known as the Great Interregnum, from 1254 to 1273, weakened imperial authority in Central Europe.  This provided the opportu­nity for Premyslid assertiveness, while the Magyars and Poles contended with the Mongol invasion of 1220 to 1242.
            Premysl King Otakar I ruled from 1198 to 1230.  He extracted a Golden Bull, a formal edict, from the emperor in 1212, which confirmed the royal title to Otakar and his descendants.  It revoked the imperial prerogative to ratify each Bohemian king and to appoint the Bishop of Prague.  The Bohemian king's author­ity over Moravia was ensured in the form of a permanent union.
            Otakar II,  who ruled from 1253 to 1278, married Margaret of Babenberg, a German princess, and by so doing became Duke of Austria.  By this means he acquired upper and lower Austria and part of Styria. 
            Otakar and Bela IV of Hungary had a long history of rivalry, which came to a head at Kressenbrunn in 1260.  Despite a shattering defeat at the hands of the Mongols at Mohacs in 1241, Bela had worked valiantly to re­build Hungary.  Unfortunately for the Hungarians, Otakar's kingdom was reaching the height of its power.
            Bela marched up to the east bank of the March river (Morava in Czech) in Moravia, just as Otakar reached the west bank.  Neither army was capable of forcing a crossing in the face of a hostile enemy.  Otakar courteously allowed Bela to cross unhindered.  In the attack that followed, Otakar virtually annihilated the Hungarian army.  Bela was forced to surrender Styria.  Otakar also conquered most of Carinthia and parts of Carniola. 
            Otakar strongly opposed the rule of Rudolf I, the first Habsburg ruler of Germany and the Holy Roman Empire.  Otakar, who also claimed the duchy of Austria, refused to recognize Rudolf.  Beginning in 1273, however, Habsburg Rudolf fought to restore imperial authority.  Otakar lost all of his German possessions in 1276. 
            On 26 August 1278, the armies of the two rulers met in battle at Marchfeld.  In an intense battle of knights, the Bohemians were defeated and Otakar was slain.  His son, Wenceslas II, succeeded to the Bohemian throne under German regency.
            Large-scale German immigration had taken place through the thirteenth century, often at the encouragement of the Premysl kings, who hoped to lessen the influence of the Czech nobility.  The Germans settled in towns and mining districts on the Bohemian frontiers, in some cases establishing German colonies in the Czech interior.  Important German settlements included Stribro, Kutna Hora (Kuttenberg in German), Nemecky Brod (Deutsch Brod), and Jihlava.  The German code of law, the jus teutonicum, was intro­duced and would later form the basis of commercial law in Bohemia and Moravia.  The intermarriage of German and Czech nobles soon became common­place.  During the reign of Wenceslas II, from 1278 to 1305, the Polish territories of Tesin and Krakow were acquired, in 1290 and 1291 respective­ly.  In 1300, Wenceslas II became King of Poland.  His son, Wenceslas III, was elected King of Hungary in 1301, thus uniting the Bohemian, Polish, and Hungarian crowns.  This union was to be short-lived, however.  Wenceslas II died in 1305 and Wenceslas III was murdered in Olomouc in 1306.  Premysl rule ended.
  

Luxemburg Rule

             Confusion and civil war followed the death of Wenceslas III.  John of Luxemburg, son of Emperor Heinrich, married the Premyslid Princess Elizabeth in 1310.  He led his army to Bohemia and claimed the throne, ruling from 1310 to 1342.  His reign was weak and characterized by region­alism and conflict among the native nobility.  The nobles won a charter of privilege, the Domazlice Agreement, in 1318, which assured that all advis­ers and officials in the kingdom would be Czech nobles.  John directed most of his attention to foreign military adventures, and his main contribution to Bohemia consisted of certain territorial acquisitions.
            The reign of the second Luxemburg king, Charles IV, from 1342 to 1378, was a golden age in Czech history.  Charles, who was German, was raised at the French court and spent much of his life abroad.  As a result, his attitude was cosmopolitan, and he supported the Czech element.  The bishop­ric of Prague became an arch-bishopric in 1344, freeing it from the juris­diction of Mainz and the empire, and the archbishop gained the right to crown Bohemian kings.  A judicial separation of the kingdom and the empire resulted from the establishment of a supreme court in Prague.  Charles brought the Czech nobility under control, rationalized Bohemia and Moravia's provincial administrations, and made Brandenburg, Lusatia, and Sile­sia fiefs of the Czech crown.  Charles was elected Holy Roman Emperor in 1347.  He issued a Golden Bull in 1356, specifying the process of elec­tion to the imperial throne and making the Czech king foremost among the seven lay electors.  The Bohemian Kingdom was no longer a fief of the emperor.
            Charles made Prague an imperial city.  He undertook extensive building projects, including founding the New Town (Nove Mesto) south of the old city.  Hradčany, the royal castle and long-time seat of Czechoslovak gov­ernment, was rebuilt.  The Charles Bridge (Karlův Most) was built over the Vltava.  He founded the University of Prague (Charles University - Univerzita Karlova), the first such institution in the empire, in 1348.  The uni­versity, divided into Czech, Polish, Saxon, and Bavarian faculties, each with one controlling vote, would become an international center of higher education.  However, it also would become the center of intense political nationalism.  With Charles' death in 1378, his three sons divided his kingdom.  Wenceslas IV inherited Bohemia, Silesia, and part of Lusatia.

The Hussite Movement

           The Hussite reform movement was both national and religious in nature.  From the aspect of religious reform it challenged papal authority and asserted national autonomy in ecclesiastical affairs.  As a Czech national movement it took on anti-imperial and anti-German implications.  Hussitism began during the reign of Wenceslas IV, from 1378 to 1419.  At this time, many religious leaders were demanding church reforms.  Split by the Great Schism of the West, the church had two rival popes, and would later have three.
            Jan Hus (John Huss) graduated from Charles University and in 1398 began to lecture there.  He became an ordained preacher in 1410.  He served as rector of the university twice, from 1402 to 1403, and from 1409 to 1410.  A religious reformer, Hus adopted the anti-papal and anti-hierarchical teachings of John Wycliffe of England, introduced into Czechoslovakia by Jerome of Prague.  Wycliffe is often called the "Morning Star of the Reformation."  He denounced the morals of the clergy, opposed the sale of indulgences, rejected many church beliefs and practices, and advocated the Bible, not the Church, as the source of final authority in ecclesiastical matters.  He also became a leader of the Bohemian nationalist movement.
            Hussitism was distinguished by its rejection of the Roman Catholic Church.  It advocated Wycliffe's doctrine of clerical purity and poverty.  Hussites also insisted on communion under both kinds, bread and wine, for the laity, while the Roman Catholic Church reserved wine for the cler­gy.  The Utraquists, more moderate followers of Hus, took their name from the Latin sub utraque specie, meaning "under each kind."  The Taborite sect, which took its name from the biblical Tabor, was more radical.   The Taborites rejected Church doctrine, upholding the Bible as sole authority in all matters of belief.  The town of Usti, south of Prague, was a Tabor­ite stronghold, renamed Tabor in 1420.
            Shortly after Hus took office as rector, German theology professors demanded the condemnation of Wycliffe's writings.  Hus protested, and received support from the Czech element at the university.  Since the Germans had two votes in policy decisions, the Saxon and the Bavarian, they defeated Hus and his supporters, and the orthodox position was maintained.  Later, the Czechs demanded a revision of the university's charter, so that the native Czech faculty would receive adequate representation.
            The controversy at the university came to the attention of the Bohemi­an king.  The nationalist sentiments of the Czech nobility, aroused by Wenceslas' insistence to favor Germans in appointments to councilor and administrative positions, caused them to rally to the defense of Hus.  The German faculties, however, were supported by Archbishop Zbynek of Prague and the German clergy.  The supporters of Pope Gregory XII, including Zbynek, challenged the imperial title of Wenceslas, and allied themselves with the reformers.  Wenceslas issued the Kutna Hora Decree on 18 January 1409, giving the Czechs three votes, and the foreigners only one.  The Germans, expelled from administrative positions at the university and replaced by Czechs, left the university en masse.
            Hus' victory was only temporary.  The Council of Pisa met in 1409 to settle the papal controversy; they also confirmed Wenceslas as Holy Roman Emperor.  The anti-Pope, Alexander V, condemned Wycliffe's ideas and ordered Hus to stop preaching in 1410.  Hus refused to obey.  In 1411, Pope John Paul XXIII, of the Avignon line and later regarded as an anti-Pope, excommunicated Hus.  The next year, Pope John Paul imposed the great excommunica­tion, forbidding anyone to give him shelter or aid.  Hus and his follow­ers were suspended from the university and expelled from Prague.  For the next two years the reformers served as itinerant preachers throughout Bohemia.  In 1414, the Council of Constance, which met to end the Great Schism, summoned Hus to defend his views.  Holy Roman Emperor Sigismund granted Hus safe conduct and promised him protection.  The Council of Pisa, however, condem­ned him as a heretic, impris­oned him, and ordered him to recant his views and make an unqualified submission.  Sigismund did nothing to honor his promise.  On 6 July 1415, Hus was burned at the stake.

Jan Žižka

             While the anti-Catholic revolt was named after Hus, it was Jan Žižka of Trocnov who brought the movement its most notable victories, and whose military genius influenced the history of Europe from 1420 until his death in 1424.  Though eventually blind, Žižka led the Hussites brilliantly into battle.  After Hus' death, religious warfare raged for decades.  Sigismund, the pro-papal King of Hungary, gained the Bohemian throne after the death of Wenceslas in 1419.  He tried repeatedly to gain control over the kingdom with the aid of Hungarian and German armies, but failed.
            Trocnov was a small holding under the dominion of the Prince of Schwarzenberg.  Žižka, hopelessly in debt after cosigning a pledge to cover the debts of a friend, Jaroslav of Mysletin, chose to turn over his property.  He then left for Prague, seeking employment as a soldier under Wenceslas IV.  By 1329, Žižka earned himself a position as Royal Hunter in the forest of Zahorany, near Prague.  In 1395, Bohemia suf­fered civil strife when Henry of Rosenberg, who opposed the centralization of power under Wenceslas, imprisoned the king in his castle for several months.  While the king was later released, the people split into factions between the king and Rosenberg.  The rebellious nobles were encouraged by Sigismund, but Žižka's loyalty was with Wenceslas.
            For 10 years, bands of burglar-mercenaries called Lapkas plundered Bohemia.  These mercenaries derived their pay as much from looting as from their salary.  Some Lapkas were dispossessed farmers, whose property had been confiscated by the church or by feudal lords.  They took up arms against their oppressors, secreting themselves and their caches in the forests of Bohemia.
            They found a natural forum for the expression of their discontent in Hus.  He spoke out against the greed and corruption of the Church.  Instead of reserving hymns for processions or for after sermons, Hus advocated the singing of hymns throughout his services, and in Czech.  This small devia­tion from the norm became a rallying point for growing Czech nationalism and anti-German sentiment.  While preaching a return to a moral base de­pendent solely on the bible, he also espoused the defense of the interests of God by means of arms.
            Even while the mercenaries fought for the nobles, the dispossessed Lapkas attacked and robbed them and the clergy.  Both sides pillaged the countryside, whether from a sense of moral obligation, revenge, or simple greed.  The knights and churchmen who captured Lapkas executed them, but their numbers continued to grow.
            Žižka was in charge of a band of Lapkas loyal to the king.  After Žižka raided Budejovice in 1409, the king himself pardoned Žižka for his "excesses."  This shows that the king was well aware of the acts committed by his nobility and their mercenaries, and that they were not completely under his control.  Žižka, however, did not lack control over his troops and began to introduce innovations.  By 1410, holding the title of Royal Gatekeeper, Žižka had probably encouraged his peasant auxil­iaries to modify their flails and scythes to serve as weapons.
            Since 1405, hostilities between Wenceslas and his nobles were reduced.  The battle against the roving Lapka took on more intensity.  When war broke out between the Teutonic Knights and the union of Poland and Lithuania, it provided a convenient solution.  Wenceslas and his military chief, Jan Sokol of Lamberg, committed themselves to a foreign war.  West European nobles joined the chivalrous Teutonic "crusade," while Sokol urged Czech warriors to assist the Poles and Lithuanians, as a war of Slavic survival against the hated Germans.  Žižka and his band joined the 3,000 Bohemians who marched under Sokol's Fourth Polish Standard against the Teutonic Knights.
            Žižka took part in the important victory at Grunwald on 15 July 1410.  Afterward, King Jagiello of Poland pursued the remnants of the enemy to Marienburg Castle, which was the Teutonic stronghold from 1309 to 1457.  Being unable to storm Marienburg, Jagiello continued to Rogozna Castle.  The assault on Rogozna was commanded by Captain Hancik, a Czech.  Next to fall was Radzyn Castle, on 23 August, and Žižka was among those left to hold it.  He is recognized in historical accounts for his part in defending it against a Teutonic attempt to regain it.
            Žižka went back to Bohemia with a wealth of experience.  Though Žižka himself remained a horseman, he brought back the innovative use of cannon on the battlefield and the use of war wagons to form mobile field fortifications.¹  This very successful Hussite battle formation brought new prominence to handgunners, halberdiers, and war wagons, but also continued the role of the armored knight as part of a force of combined arms.  It gave the infantry more mobility, as the wagons rolled into battle with masses of infantry wielding crude, but inexpensive and effective, polearms, as they enjoyed the support of handguns and small field pieces.
            Žižka returned with much improved finances, as well, and in 1410 bought a house on Na Prikope in Prague's Nove Mesto, not far from the Royal Palace.  He became an officer in the palace guard and was regarded as an "artful and clever warrior."²
            During this time, Hus was continuing his preaching in Bohemia and spreading his popularity among the lesser nobility and lower classes.  When the Council of Constance condemned Hus as a heretic, leading to his execu­tion, 452 outraged knights and nobles signed a protest against the council's decision.  An independent Church of Bohemia began to take shape.
            Žižka was not among the signatories of the protest.  He was out of Bohemia at the time, fighting for Henry V of England at the Battle of Agincourt on 25 October 1415, where the English, outnumbered more than 3 to 1, won one of the great victories of military history.  By 1419, Žižka had returned to Prague.  He rejoined the Hussite cause, and discovered that a new, more radical, Taborite movement had formed in Bohemia's rural areas, advocating strict adherence to the Bible alone and doing away with religious ritual.
            At this time, Wenceslas suffered a stroke, leaving the throne of Bohemia to his brother Sigismund, the last of the Luxemburg dynasty.  Sigismund, however, was the last man many Czechs wanted to rule the country.
            Sigismund obtained a Papal Bull declaring a crusade against the Hussite "heretics" on 1 March 1420, and began to gather German and Western knights for his campaign.  Phillipo Scolari, better known as Pippo Spano, became one of Sigismund's most capable and notorious commanders.  He had acquired a veteran's hardened brutality and martial skills in frontier fighting against the Turks.
            Pro-Hussite noblemen turned to Žižka for leadership.  He, in turn, went to Tabor, to adapt their religious zeal to the military discipline and training necessary to defeat the Hungarians.  Raids on Catholic castles gave his men experience and captured weapons, but Žižka made his most ingenious innovations within Tabor, where he converted peasant scythes and flails to weapons by reinforcing them with iron bands, nails, and studs.  He also continued to develop the war wagon - it now carried six crossbow­men, four halberdiers, two handgunners, two flailists, two shield-carriers, and two drivers, as well as two each of axes, pickaxes, spades, hoes, and shovels for digging entrenchments.
            Žižka commanded a Taborite force in the winter of 1419-1420 which occupied Plzen.  In March 1420, he was elected overall commander of the Taborite forces.
            Sigismund had entered Moravia, where he linked up with pro-Catholic forces at Kutna Hora, and from there marched to Prague.  Sigismund and Pippo Spano also relieved the besieged garrison of Hradcany before turning toward Prague on 14 July 1420.  Žižka and his Taborites closed the city gates and faced Sigismund outside the city walls.  From entrenched posi­tions on Vitkov Hill, Žižka's 9,000 men faced Sigismund's army of 80,000.
            The attack began with an assault up Vitkov by a few thousand Hungarian and German cavalrymen, and it succeeded in capturing the watchtower.  It was held off at the new Hussite barracks by a garrison of only twenty-six men and three women.  Žižka and his bodyguard rushed to their aid from the southern slope, striking the flank of the imperial horsemen and scattering them down the steep north slope.  Though Sigismund lost only a few hundred men, he refrained from further assaults, and left the hill to the Hussites.  Vitkov Hill was renamed in honor of Žižka.
            Sigismund abandoned the idea of an all-out assault on Prague,  He had himself crowned King of Bohemia at Hradcany, looted its treasury, and left for home.
            Fighting continued, both between Catholic and Hussite, and among moderate and radical Hussite factions.  Through it all, Žižka led his troops to repeated victories.  He left Prague in August 1420 to conduct a guerrilla campaign against Ulrich of Rosenberg.  Žižka forced Ulrich to sign a truce, and turned anew to the Plzen region early in 1421.  Shortly thereafter, Žižka controlled western and northwest Bohemia.
            Eastern Bohemia followed.  Even Sigismund's Catholic stronghold, Kutna Hora, capitulated to Žižka, followed closely by Hradcany.  During the siege of Bor Castle in 1421, Žižka was struck under the right eye by an arrow.  The resulting infection left him sightless.
            In September 1421, the Bohemian crown was offered to Grand Duke Vytautus of Lithuania by a Hussite council of regency at Kutna Hora.  Emperor Sigismund, enraged at these new negotiations, marshaled a new army, giving command to Pippo Spano.  Pippo entered Moravia in October, joined by the forces of Silesia, Lusatia, the Archbishop of Olomouc, Duke Albert of Austria, Ulrich of Rosenberg, and several other Czech lords.  By December, Sigismund's force was 30,000 strong, and marched on Kutna Hora.  The two opposing forces met on 6 January 1422.  Žižka's army of 10,000 Taborites moved to set up a wagon lager in its path.
            Several cavalry assaults struck the right flank of the Taborites, but were beaten back with heavy losses.  Pippo next slipped more horsemen past the lager in darkness into the city itself.  German citizens let them in and then assisted in the slaughter of the Taborites within the city.
            Žižka, blind, isolated in his camp, and without provisions, continued to instill confidence in his men as he rode among them.  In answer to Pippo's raid on the city, he took the offensive.  He moved his war wagons against the Hungarians, halted to fire, and then exploited the breach they created.  The war wagons halted a mile further and formed a square, but Sigismund declined to pursue Žižka.  Instead, he moved his forces into Kutna Hora for the winter.
            Ignoring winter, Žižka gathered reinforcements and assaulted the nearby town of Nebovidy.  Defeat­ing the Hungarian army there, he turned on Kutna Hora.  Pippo Spano advised Sigismund to evacuate and the King ordered his men to set fire to the city.  Žižka's advance cavalry, however, arrived on the heels of the retreating army and put out the fires.
            Sigismund withdrew 15 miles, pursued by Žižka.  On 10 January, after two days of retreat, Sigismund stood to face Žižka at Nemecky Brod (Habry) - against Pippo's advice.  Sigismund's troops formed their battle lines, but Žižka took the offensive with cavalry, mobile artillery, and war wag­ons, and routed the demoralized Hungarians.  Many of the retreating sol­diers died as the ice on the rivers cracked under their weight.  Sigismund, disheartened by his defeat and leaving over 50 percent of his men dead on the field, fled Bohemia, narrowly escaping capture himself.  Žižka, a blind warrior and religious zealot with forces numbering only half the 23,000 Sigismund put into battle, had forced one of the most powerful armies of Central Europe to withdraw from the battlefield.

            The radical Taborites and moderate Hussites split again in the spring of 1423.  Žižka, having grown intolerant of the Taborites, formed a "small Tabor" that rallied townsmen and noblemen of the "Oreb Union," named after a hill near Orebovice.  The Orebites followed a code of near-military discipline com­posed by Žižka.  It required that they remain in their as­signed battle groups, guard their van, flanks, and rear whenever on the march, never light fires without permission, and to kneel in prayer before battle.  The Orebites considered all, noble or peasant, equal before God and therefore subject to identical punishment for crimes or breaches of discipline.  Harsh penalties enforced equal division of booty; hoarders were to be executed.
            Division between Taborite sects brought Žižka and the Prague nobles into conflict.  Prague's citizens attempted to name a governor of their own in Hradec Kralove, Žižka's political center, but he expelled him.
            Prague's citizens then allied themselves with Catholic noblemen and marched against Žižka's encampment.  They outnumbered and cornered Žižka's forces, who escaped across the river on boats and rafts.  Žižka led his men to Malesov, near Kutna Hora, and there made a stand on familiar high ground.  Žižka's men released wagons filled with rocks on their attackers as they moved up the hill, breaking up the enemy formations.  Žižka fol­lowed with a devastating artillery barrage.  Orebite cavalrymen then charged down the hill, routing the enemy and killing 14,000 men.  Žižka regained control of Eastern Bohemia.
            Žižka advanced on Prague in September, and its citizens negotiated an armistice and a new allegiance.  Having reunited the Taborites, he turned to Moravia, which was still outside the Hussite sphere of influence.  During the siege of a Catholic lord's castle en route, Žižka fell ill, possibly with plague.  On 11 October 1424, he died.  Among his last words to his lieutenants were instructions to "continue fighting for the love of God and steadfastly and faithfully defend the truth of God for eternal reward."³  
            Leadership of the Taborites fell to priest Andrew Prokop.  His men, grief stricken, took the name "orphans" and painted Žižka on a white horse on their banners, holding his distinctive fist-shaped mace.  Žižka's influence was felt for more than ten years after his death, but the Hussites finally met defeat at the Battle of Lipany in 1435.
            Žižka was interred at the Church of the Kindred Spirit in Hradec Kralove.  Various legends told of the disappearance of his tomb and his wish that his skin be removed after his death to make a drum to lead his men.  His body did not vanish, however, and was moved to the Church of Peter and Paul in Caslav prior to the demolition of the old church approximately thirty to fifty years after his death.  There, it was rediscovered on 21 November 1910, among those of another man and a woman, during repairs to the church.  The mix-up of bones caused confusion during a reexamination of the remains in 1974, but in 1981 they were examined in Budapest by Dr. Imre Legyela, who was able to positively identify the skull of Žižka.

            Prokop led the Taborites in a continued fight against Sigismund.  Despite urging from the Pope and from Sigismund, the terrified German soldiers refused to resume conflict against the fierce Hussites.  Finally, in 1426, 50,000 Germans made a stand at Usti nad Labem (Aussig on the Labe in German).  Not surprisingly, Sigismund's forces again lost disastrously, suffering losses of more than a third. 
            The Hussites then took the offensive.  They penetrated into Hungary, Austria, Germany.  No army could halt them.  Their defeat came only when another civil war broke out among themselves. 
            After terrorizing Eastern Europe for 14 years, the Taborite-Utraquist struggle began anew.  At Cesky Brod on 30 May 1434, Prokop led the Taborites against an army backed by nobles and conservatives.  The battle left 18,000 dead - including Prokop.  The Hussites themselves accomplished what no foreign army had been able to do. 

            The Hussites penetrated into Slovakia, as well.  Refugees from the fighting in Bohemia, Moravia, and Silesia settled there.  Jiska of Brandys, a Czech noble, controlled most of southern Slovakia between 1438 and 1453 from Zvolen and Kosice.  With the refugees came the doctrines of Hus and the Czech bible, which spread among the Slovaks.  This formed the basis for cultural links between the Czechs and Slovaks.

            Ladislas, the young posthumous son of Albert of Austria, was elected by the Czech Diet to succeed Sigismund after his death in 1437.  Due to his youth, Bohemia was ruled by a regency composed of moderate Czech nobles, who were Utraquists, while some Czech nobles remained loyal to the pope.  The main challenge to the regency was internal dissension among the Czechs.  The Utraquists sent a delegation to the Council of Basle in 1433, who had seemingly achieved a reconciliation with the Catholic Church.  The resulting Compact of Basle accepted the basic tenets of Hus.  These were expressed in the Four Articles of Prague:  communion under both kinds; free preaching of the Gospels; expropriation of Church land; and punishment of ecclesiastical scandals by lay tribunals.  The Compact of Basle was reject­ed by the pope, however, preventing a reconciliation between the Czech Catholics and the Utraquists.
            George of Podebrad, who became the leader of the Utraquist regency and would later reign as the "national" king of Bohemia, achieved this reconciliation.  By installing John of Rokycan, an Utraquist, as the Archbishop of Prague, he united the Czech Church and the more radical Taborites.  The Catholics party was driven out of Prague.  In 1457, Ladislas succumbed to the plague, and the next year George of Podebrad was elected King of Bohemia by the Czech Diet.  His election, however, was not recognized by the pope, and Czech Catholic nobles joined in the League of Zelena Hora, challenging the authority of the king until his death in 1471.
            The Polish Jagellon kings ruled Bohemia from 1471 to 1526, governing as absentee monarchs.  They had minimal influence in the kingdom, and the role of government was assumed by regional nobility.  The Compact of Basle was accepted by the Czech Catholics, effecting reconciliation between them and the Utraquists.  In 1526, the Habsburgs reestablished centralized authority.  After the devastation of the religious wars, the Bohemian Kingdom found shelter under the Holy Roman Emperor with the arrival of the Ottomans. 
 

The Battle of Mohacs   

            The fall of Belgrade to Suleiman I, the Magnificent, in 1521 opened Hungary, Austria, and Germany to the Ottoman Turks.  Suleiman led an army of almost 100,000; he was met at Mohacs on the Danube by Louis II of Hungary and Bohemia with a hastily assembled force of 20,000.  Some help came from Sigismund I of Poland. 
            When the Turks arrived on 29 August, Louis led a rash headlong assault on the Turks.  Suleiman's well-trained troops, with an advantage in artillery, cut Louis' poorly-disciplined forces to pieces.  The next day, a Turkish counter-assault left 10,000 dead, including Louis, seven bishops, and several hundred nobles.
            The defeat broke Hungary's hold on Europe and reduced the territory of the Old Kingdom of Hungary to an area roughly corresponding to Slovakia.  The influx of Magyar aristocrats seeking refuge from the Ottomans greatly increased Slovakia's Magyar population.  The influence and autonomy of the Germans, therefore, declined.

Habsburg Rule

             The remainder of the Kingdom of Hungary, including Slovaks, came under Habsburg rule after the defeat at Mohacs.  Habsburg territory now surround­ed the Czechs on the south and east.  Archduke Ferdinand, the younger brother of Charles V, the Habsburg Emperor, was elected by the Czech Diet to succeed Louis.  In this manner, the crowns of Saint Wenceslas and Saint Stephen came under the Habsburgs in 1526.  While Hungary remained, for the most part, autonomous, Bohemia, due to its location, natural resources, and population, became the most important territory of the Habsburg Empire.
            King Ferdinand, ruling from 1526 to 1564, undertook a policy of cen­tralization in Bohemia.  He sought to concentrate authority in the king and his German councilors and to establish hereditary succession for the Habsburgs.  He tried to eliminate the influence of the Czech Estates (nobles, clergy, and burghers), but met stubborn resistance.  The conflict was delineated by religious lines.  The Reformed Church opposed the Catho­lic Habsburgs, but the Habsburgs were supported by the Czech and German Catholic minority.  The religious struggle broadened.  With the Lutheran Reformation of 1517, much of Bohemia's German burgher population adopted the Reformed Creed, both Lutheran and Calvinist.  The Hussites split, with one faction allying itself with the German Protestants.  Ferdinand made a brief conciliation in 1537 by conced­ing to the Czechs, recognizing the Compact of Basle, and accepting moderate Utraquism.
            In 1546, German Protestants, united in the Schmalkaldic League, warred against Charles V.  Ferdinand wanted to go to the aid of his brother, but the Czech nobility, who were Hussite and pro-Protestant, sympathized with the German Protestant princes.  This rift led to armed conflict between Ferdinand and the Czech Estates in 1547.  The Czechs, however, did not unite against Ferdinand, and were defeated.  Repri­sals were carried out against the rebellious Czech nobles.  Their property was confiscated and their privi­leges repealed.  In the square before the royal palace, two lesser nobles and two burghers were executed.  A Hussite sect, the Unity of the Brethren, which had figured prominently in the rebellion, was bitterly persecuted.  Bishop John Augusta, their leader, was imprisoned for 16 years.
            In 1556, Ferdinand became Holy Roman Emperor, and founded the Jesuit Academy in Prague.  He attempted to use Jesuit missionaries to extend Catholic influence in Bohemia.  Throughout the reigns of the Habsburg successors, Maximilian II from 1564 to 1576 and Rudolf II from 1576 to 1612, conflict between Habsburgs and Czechs and between Catholics and followers of the Reformed Creeds continued.  Eventually, both gave conces­sions to the Czechs.  Rudolf II, in a Letter of Majesty in 1609, promised toleration of the Bohemian Confession and gave control of the University of Prague to the Czech Estates.   

The Battle of the White Mountain   

            Ferdinand of Styria, then regarded as the likely successor as Emperor to Matthias, who reigned from 1612 to 1617, attained the Bohemian throne in 1617.  Ferdinand rigidly advocated Catholicism, and his opposition to Protestantism brought Czech-Habsburg tensions back to the surface.  Two imperial lieutenants, both Catholic Czechs, were thrown from the windows of the royal palace on 28 May 1618.  The Czech nobility rebelled, electing a Calvinist, Frederick V, leader of the Protestant German Palatinate, to the Bohemian throne.
            Ferdinand II became Holy Roman Emperor and ruler of Aus­tria in 1619.  He quickly moved to suppress the Czech rebellion.  Ferdinand was aided by the Catholic League, a union of several Catholic states within the empire, and by Philip III of Habsburg Spain.  Henry Matthias of Thurn led the Czech troops, aided by the armies of Charles Emmanuel of Savoy, against the imperial forces.
            Count Johann Tserklaes von Tilly, also known as Comte de Tilly, a Flemish general who served as a hired military commander for Maximilian I of Bavaria, became chief general of the armies of the Catholic League in 1620.  He led 25,000 men into Bohemia, forcing a 15,000-strong force of Bohemians under Christian of Anhalt to fall back toward Prague. 
            Christian entrenched his men on a chalk rise known as the White Moun­tain, just west of Prague.  Hungary's Bethlen Gabor led a force of Hungar­ians in support.
            On 8 November 1620, Count von Tilly surprised the defenders in the early morning mist.  He sent his troops up the slope under cover of artillery fire.  Christian's troops took heavy casualties, then broke and fled.  Some 5,000 of the defenders became casualties or prisoners.
            After his decisive victory at the Battle of the White Mountain, Tilly entered Prague unopposed and sacked it.  Frederick fled Bohemia with his wife, thus earning the title "Winter King" due to his short reign.  Czech Protestants, who had embarrassed successive Holy Roman Emperors since Hus was burned at the stake, were at the mercy of imperial anger.  The emis­saries of the emperor took control, securing Habsburg authority and rees­tablishing Catholic dominance.  They suppressed the rebellion and abolished Protestant religious liberties.  Many Czech nobles were executed, and most others went into exile, and their properties were confiscated.  Ferdinand also took Frederick's own inheritance, the Rhenish Palatinate, by force of arms, giving it to Maximilian I, leading ruler of the Catholic League.   

Counter-Reformation   

            After the defeat at the Battle of the White Mountain, large numbers of Czech and German Protestant burghers emigrated.  The University of Prague and the Jesuit Academy were merged in 1622; the Bohemian Kingdom's entire educational system came under Jesuit control.  A royal decree in 1624 expelled all non-Catholic priests.
            A legal basis for Habsburg absolutism was established by the revised Ordinance of the Land in 1627, declaring Czech lands the hereditary proper­ty of the Habsburgs.  The diets of Bohemia, Moravia, and Silesia lost their powers - legislation would be by royal decree, approved formally by the diets.  The kingdom's officials were chosen from among the local nobility, and were strictly subordinate to the king.
            Catholic Germans from the southern German territories immigrated on a large scale, further securing Habsburg rule.  They received most of the confiscated Czech land, took over commerce and industry, and formed the new Bohemian nobility.  The Czech Catholic nobility that remained in the kingdom gradually lost their national patriotism, becoming loyal servants of the Habsburg Empire.  Czech peasants became serfs in the new order.  The Jesuit conversion of the Czechs was successful in appearance only.  Though "converted" to Catholicism, the Czechs, after losing their native church, tended to become irreligious.
            The defeat of the Czech Protestants did not end the wars that were ravaging Europe.  While the Thirty Years' War, from 1618 to 1648, had its origin in religious issues, it eventually became a struggle for national dominance.  The conflict between the German Protestant princes and the Holy Roman Emperor involved foreign powers and extended beyond German territory, involving Austria and Spain on one side and France on the other.  Czechs fought on all sides.  The rebellious Czech generals fought on the side of the Protestant armies.  Others defected to the imperial forces; the most prominent was Albrecht of Wallenstein.  Battles raged across Bohemia throughout the war, first by German Protestant armies, and later by the Danish and Swiss.  Slovakia and Moravia were ravaged by battles between the imperial armies and Prince Bethlen Gabor's Hungarians, reinforced by Turk­ish mercenaries.  Cities, villages, and fortresses were destroyed.
            During Ferdinand III's reign from 1637 to 1656, the Thirty Years' War ended.  In 1648, the Treaty of Westphalia incorporated the Bohemian Kingdom into the Habsburg imperial system, which established its seat in Vienna.  When Leopold I, who reigned from 1656 to 1705, defeated the Turks, he made it possible for the empire to return to  the original dimensions of the Old Kingdom of Hungary.  Joseph I reigned briefly from 1705 to 1711, followed by Charles VI from 1711 to 1740.  Through a series of treaties concluded by Charles between 1720 and 1725, the various Estates of the Habsburg lands were forced to recognize the unity of the territory under Habsburg rule and accept hereditary Habsburg succession, including the female line.  

Enlightenment   

            Enlightened rule came under the reigns of Maria-Theresa, from 1740 to 1780, and her son Joseph II, from 1780 to 1790.  Maria-Theresa and Joseph were influenced by the ideas of the French philosophes, a group of radical thinkers and writers in France, including Voltaire and Rousseau, who stressed the use of human reason and were critical of the religious and political practices in France.  Maria-Theresa and Joseph sought rational and efficient administration of the Bohemian Kingdom.  Reforms were imple­mented eliminating the repression of the Counter-Reformation and permitting secular social progress.
            The territorial ambitions of the increasingly powerful Hohenzollern dynasty challenged Maria-Theresa's accession to the Habsburg lands.  Bohe­mia was again invaded in 1741 by the Prussian king, Frederick II, and the dukes of Bavaria and Saxony.  Charles Albert, the Duke of Bavaria, was proclaimed king by the Czech nobility.  Maria-Theresa regained Bohemia and was crowned queen in Prague in 1743, but the highly industrialized territo­ry of Silesia, excluding Tesin, Opava, and Krnov, was ceded to Prussia.
            Maria-Theresa instituted a policy of centralization and bureaucratiza­tion to guarantee the security of the Austrian territories and to ensure the steady flow of taxes and soldiers.  The separate chancelleries of Austria and Bohemia were replaced by a joint Austro-Bohemian chancellery, firmly uniting them.  German became the official language.  The Czech diets lost the last of their political power, and imperial servants appointed by the queen took over their functions.  As a small concession, governorship of Bohemia was reserved for a Czech noble.  Czech and Austrian provinces were divided into administrative districts.  Toward the end of the century Joseph II extended centralization to include Hungary.
            Maria-Theresa and Joseph II initiated further reforms, reflecting Enlightenment principles such as the abrogation of feudal social structures and the power of the Catholic Church.  Maria-Theresa eliminated the Jesuit control of the education imposed by the Counter-Reformation, nationalized and Germanized the educational system, and shifted educational emphasis from theology to the sciences.  She modified serfdom, reducing robota (forced labor on the lord’s land) and freeing serfs to leave the land.  Joseph II later abolished serfdom entire­ly.  Joseph's 1781 Edict of Toleration granted Lutherans and Calvinists freedom of worship.
            This period of enlightened rule provided an opportunity for economic progress and social mobility of great consequence for Bohemia.  Under the encouragement of the Czech governor, the Czech nobility turned to industri­al enterprise.  Many nobles sublet their lands, investing their profits in the development of textile, coal, and glass manufacture.  Czech peasants, no longer bound to the land, relocated from the rural areas to the cities and manufacturing centers.  The urban areas of Bohemia, previously populat­ed by Ger­mans, took on an increasingly Czech character.  The sons of Czech peasants were sent to school, and some went on to attend the university, creating a new Czech intelligentsia.  The population of Bohemia nearly quadrupled, with a similar increase in Moravia.
            However, Joseph's successor, Leopold II, who reigned from 1790 to 1792, repealed many of Joseph's edicts in response to pressures from the nobility.  Leopold restored certain feudal obligations, and serfdom would not be completely abolished again until 1848.  Under the rule of Francis II from 1792 to 1835 the aristocratic and clerical reaction grew stronger.  The reactionary movement was temporarily inter­rupted by the war against revolutionary France and the Napoleonic wars.
            Francis II had committed Austria to several unsuccessful coalitions against France.  In 1804, in preparation for the inevitable, he named himself Francis I, first Emperor of Austria.  After the battle of Auster­litz in 1805, Napoleon reorganized Germany and Francis abdicated as Holy Roman Emperor, causing the dissolution of the Holy Roman Empire.  In 1810 Francis had his daughter married to Napoleon.  Later, he played a part in Napoleon's downfall, and regained much territory. 
            The Austrian Empire would play a leading role in the newly established German Confederation.  After Napoleon's defeat in 1815, the reactionary policies of Austria's Prince Clemens von Metternich dominated European affairs.  Through his leadership at the Congress of Vienna and elsewhere, Metternich restored order in Europe, but to the advantage of European kings and princes and at the expense of democratic movements. 

National Revival   

            Central Europe experienced a period of national awakening in the first half of the nineteenth century.  The subject Slavic peoples were inspired toward national revival by Napoleonic expansionism and German nationalism, which was ignited by confrontations with the armies of the French revolu­tionaries.  The intellectual revival resulting from a concept of the "nation" as a people united by language and culture became the foundation of a struggle for autonomy.
            The new intelligentsia formed when Czech peasants moved into the cities and manufacturing centers and sent their sons to become the leaders of the Czech national revival.  Only a small part of the predomi­nantly German nobility lent it support.  The first phase of the national movement was philological.
            The Czech language existed mainly as a provincial dialect used by peasants.  The massive task of transforming the language into a literary medium and establishing formal study of Czech began at the University of Prague in 1791.  The key figures in the revival of the Czech language were Frantisek Martin Pelcl, the first professor of Czech at the University of Prague, Jozef Dobrovsky, often called the "Father of the Czech National Revival,"⁴ who wrote the first Czech grammar - in German, and Jozef Jung­mann, a grammarian and translator who developed Dobrovsky's work and au­thored the first Czech-language diction­ary.  As a result of their efforts, Czech literature flourished and the Czech reading public grew.  The promi­nent authors from this period were: author Pavel Josef Safarik; poets Jan Kollar, F.L. Celakovsky, Karel Jaromir Erben, and Karel Hynek Macha; drama­tists V.K. Klicpera and Josef Kajetan Tyl; historian Fran­tisek Palacky; and journalists Frantisek Brauner and Karel Havlicek Borovsky.
            In 1818, the new Museum of the Bohemian Kingdom provided an institu­tional foundation for the Czech revival.  The museum was an important resource for Czech scholars, and in 1827 began to publish a journal that became the first permanent voice of Czech nationalism.  Continuing in its literary efforts, in 1830 the museum absorbed the Matice Ceska, a Czech intellectual society devoted to the publication of scholarly and popular books.  The patriotic scholars and nobles who composed the museum's member­ship contacted the other Slavic peoples, in an attempt to turn Prague into the intellectual center of the western Slavs.
            Frantisek Palacky, a Czech Protestant from Moravia who studied in Bratislava and did not settle in Prague until 1823, became a major figure of the Czech revival.  A romanticist inspired by the nationalist spirit of the Hussite tradition, Palacky sought to enhance Czech political conscious­ness.  His work stressed the Czech nation's struggle for political freedom and self-determination, and became a cornerstone of con­temporary Czech thought and culture.  His writings and methods, however, remained scholar­ly.  He became the great historian of the Czech people; his exhaustive five-volume work, "The History of the Czech Nation in Bohemia and Moravia, helped Czechs rediscover their national identity.  Paradoxically, the first volume of 1836 was published in German.  The first Czech volume did not appear until March 1848.
            The Slovaks also underwent a similar national revival.  The Kingdom of Hungary, restored to its original dimensions, was ruled by a Magyar aris­tocracy that was also swept by a national awakening.  Magyar replaced Latin as the official language in 1792.  Unlike the Czech nation, both Catholi­cism and Protestantism retained a solid hold among the subject peoples of Hungary.  Slovak revival took place under the leadership of the Slovak clergy, the intellectual elite in this peasant region.
            Anton Bernolak, a Jesuit priest, made the first attempt to develop a Slovak literary language, the Bernolactina, based primarily on Western dialects.  The Catholic clergy adopted it, and disseminated it in religious literature.  This movement, however, remained philological, and never developed nationalist po­litical implications.  Bernolak and his followers remained loyal to the Hungarian kingdom.
            The Slovak Protestant revival was more limited in scope, for the most part confined to the Slovak minority settled in urban centers.  Slovak Protestantism was distinguished by a predilection for Czech culture.  Since the sixteenth century Biblictina, the artificial and archaic language of the Czech Bible, had served as the literary language of the Protestant clergy.  In the early nineteenth century, Jan Kollar and Pavel Safarik, German-educated Protestant theologians, tried to form a more suitable Slovak literary language by combining Czech grammar with elements of the central Slovak dialect.  In 1825 they published a reader, Citanka, and by the 1830s had a wide following among the younger students at Protestant lycees.  Kollar and Safarik viewed Czechs and Slovaks as one nation, but the students broke with the Czechs and pro­claimed the separate identity of the Slovak nation.
            Ludovit Stur, a leading Slovak poet, writer, organizer, and politi­cian, was a student at the Bratislava lycee.  He refined the work of Kollar and Safarik and developed the Sturovcina, which he proposed in 1843 be accepted as the Slovak literary language.  In 1844, a society known as the Tatrin, based on the Matice Ceska, was established, and the Sturovcina spread rapidly in the Protestant community.  

The Revolutions of 1848   

            Palacky, who fancied himself the heir and successor to the Hussite leader Jan Amos Komensky, became the leader of the conservative wing of the Czech nationalist movement.  Like his Hussite predecessor, Palacky developed a political platform based on cultural renaissance.  Among his supporters were Karel Havlicek Borovsky, an important journalist and political publicist, Ladislav Rieger, Palacky's son-in-law, and Frantisek Brauner.  In 1848, the Czech youth formed a more radical wing of Czech politics led by Josef Vaclav Fric and Vaclav Sabina.
            The Paris revolution of February 1848 spawned similar action against autocratic governments across Europe, including the territories of the Habsburg Empire.  In Prague, the expression of nationalist and socialist movements had been prevented by Prince Metternich and his police minister Sedlnicky.  Emperor Ferdinand I, who reigned from 1835 to 1848, ceded to pressure against the Metternich regime, and  moved to establish a new government.
            Metternich resigned in March, and Ferdinand promised to reorganize the empire on a constitutional, parliamentary basis.  He promised the Czechs a separate Constitutional Assembly, a widening of the electorate, the recon­stitution of the supreme offices of the Bohemian Kingdom in Prague, and the recognition of Czech as an official language of equal standing with German.  However, when Ferdinand appointed Prince Windischgraetz as commander of the Prague Garrison, it was perceived as a threat to the revolution­ary move­ment.  Incidents began to occur between students and workers and the rein­forced garrison.  In May, Windischgraetz deployed his troops to the facto­ries on Prague's outskirts.  The resulting tension would affect the course of the Pan-Slav Congress, which was to convene in Prague on 2 June to dis­cuss the pos­sibility of political consolidation of Austrian Slavs, Poles, Ruthenians, Ukrainians, Slovenes, Croats, and Serbs.
            In the Bohemian Kingdom, a national committee had been formed, which included Germans and Czechs.  Bohemian Germans, however, supported the Grossdeutsch position, which favored including Austria and Bohemia in a united, federated Germany, organized on a liberal-democratic basis.  In a continuation of the Czech-German conflict that would plague Czechoslovak history, they withdrew from the committee.  Palacky's conservatives proposed Austro-Slavism as the creed of the Czech national movement, and contin­ued loyalty to Habsburg rule as protection from German and Russian expansion­ism, together with the federalization of the empire on an ethnographic basis, uniting Bohemian Germany with Austria in one province and Czechs and Slovaks in another.  Palacky also proposed that the Slavic peoples of the empire, who formed the majority, unite politically to protect their own interests.
            Palacky's conservatives failed to achieve their goals.  The excitement created by conflicts between the military and demonstrators allowed the radical wing to prevail.  The congress adopted a Manifesto to All European Nations, which protested the oppression of the Slavic nations and demanded freedom for all nations.
            The congress was interrupted by the bloody suppression of a demonstra­tion on present-day Wenceslas Square, where students and factory workers were attacked by the army.  The radicals, to include German revolution­aries, barricaded the streets.  Windischgraetz, whose wife was killed by a stray bullet in their home, ordered his troops to withdraw from Prague.  He then subjected Prague to an artillery siege, and six days later the uprising was broken.
            Stur had also attended the Pan-Slav Conference, and organized politi­cal resistance to the Hungarian kingdom, leading a Slovak National Council in drafting the "Demands of the Slovak Nation." Their demands included establishing separate national legislative assemblies and granting each national group the right to use its native language in the Hungarian Diet, in administration, and in the educational system.  Following rejection of the demands by the Hungarian Diet in May 1848, Stur organized armed resist­ance.  Dissatisfied with the Hungarian response, Slovak patriots requested the imperial government recognize Slovakia as an independent crown land within the empire.  The Sturites, a relatively weak group, sought rap­prochement with the Czechs during 1848, but continued to reject Czech proposals for a Czecho-Slovak political union.
            In March 1849, imperial armies, with Russian help, crushed the revolu­tionary movement, halting all negotiations for liberal, constitutional reform.  Under the new Habsburg emperor, Franz Joseph I, who reigned from 1848 to 1916, absolutism was restored.  In 1851 he revoked the constitution of March 1849.  Prime Minister Alexander Bach, who became known for censor­ship and police rule, concluded a concordat with the Pope, which returned many privileges the Catholic Church had lost under Joseph II.  While the Viennese court prevented change in the political or ideological sphere, they encouraged economic growth.
            The process of reform begun by Maria-Theresa and Joseph II, which was halted by Metternich, gained impetus from the events of 1848.  The emanci­pation of serfs was completed, and industrialization of Bohemia and Moravia began.  Agriculture, the food industry, and mining for iron ore and coal rapidly expanded.  The Trade Act of 1859 terminated the privileges for the guilds and established free enterprise.  Tariffs between the Hungarian and Austro-Czech regions were abolished, a significant benefit to Czech industry.
            Many of the great Czech industrial enterprises were established during this period.  In the 1860s, ownership of the engineering works in Plzen, established by Count Wallenstein, passed to Emil Skoda, and would become the principal heavy engineering and armament supplier to the Habsburg monarchy.  The Ringhoffer and Danek works, which formed the core of the present-day CKD electrical engineering group, were also established in the 1850s and 1860s.  

Dual Monarchy   

            The Habsburg armies were defeated in 1866 by Prussia, and subsequently Austria was expelled from the German Confederation.  To strengthen his empire, Franz Joseph made a compromise with the Magyar liberal gentry.  Austria-Hungary became a dual monarchy joined under the Habsburg crown, with an autonomic Hungarian kingdom and constitutional, parliamentary government in both Austria and Hungary
            Political power in the Austrian parliament was held by German liberals from 1867 to 1879.  The Czech National Party, dominated by the Old Czechs, advocated alliance with the conservative nobility and Bohemian autonomy similar to that granted the Magyars.  In concession to Czech nationalist demands, in 1871 the Hohenwart ministry granted the Fundamental Articles.  The articles recognized the historic rights of the Bohemian Kingdom, but resulted in violent protests from German and Magyar liberals, and were rescinded.
            After the German liberals lost power in 1879, Count Eduard Taafe, supported by the Old Czechs, formed his conservative "Iron Ring" cabinet, which governed until 1897.  In Bohemia, as Czechs gained numerical and political superiority, the conflict between Czechs and Germans intensified, except in the border districts where Germans continued to dominate.  As the developing Czech commercial and industrial bourgeoisie increased its influ­ence, they sought to obtain equal status for the Czech language in adminis­tration and education, and Czech nationalists continued to press for Bohe­mian autonomy.  The Germans opposed these efforts, and German liberals advocated the administrative separation of German and Czech districts.  Georg von Schonerer's nationalist Pan-German Party, based in the Bohemian Egerland, called for Austrian and Bohemian unification with Germany.  Taafe's government failed to resolve the Bohemian conflict, giving the radical Young Czech Party a decisive electoral victory in 1891.
            Parliamentary politics were rendered ineffective by the obstructionist tactics of both Czechs and Germans.  During the last years of the Austro-Hungarian empire, governments rose and fell with great frequency.  The Young Czech Party splintered, and Czech politics changed orientation.  A radical nationalist faction seceded in 1897 and formed the Radical Progres­sive Party.  In 1899, another splinter group formed the Radical Constitu­tion Party, returning to the revivalist program in which the Old Czechs had failed.  Other small parties drew away the political base of the Young Czechs.  The Popular Progressive Party formed under the leadership of Adolf Stransky.  The Czech Popular Party, also known as the "Realistic Party," formed around Tomas G. Masaryk in 1905.  The Young Czechs were reorganized in 1906 by Karel Kramar, who struggled for economic and cultural equality, and after 1918 continued as the National Democratic Party.
            In Hungary, Slovaks faced increasing Magyar nationalism as a result of the Dual Compromise of 1867 and the Nationalities Act of 1868, which estab­lished Magyar as the official language.  Slovak politi­cal participation was reduced by their limited electoral base; only 6.1 percent of the total population was Slovak.  The conservative and Pan-Slav Slovak National Party, which had the support of both Catholics and Protestants, looked to autocratic Russia for national liberation.  The party attempted to further Slovak culture and improve the material welfare of the Slovak nation, but its efforts were thwarted by the Hungari­ans.  In 1875, the Slovak Matica, a cultural center, was closed, and in 1883 all educational institutions above the elementary level were Magyarized.  Many Slovaks emigrated, but most remained peasants or industrial laborers.  Cooperation between Czechs and Slovaks did not reappear until the twentieth century, with the development of the Hlasist movement, named after the review Hlas.  Masaryk encouraged the movement, which was led by young Czech-oriented Slovak intellectuals and soon attracted all Slovak patriots.   

World War I   

            Conditions in Europe in 1914 made war inevitable.  Intense national­ism, the division of Europe into two armed camps, economic rivalry, and territorial ambitions created a situation in which the slightest provoca­tion would start a war involving the major European powers.
            The provocation was provided in June 1914, when 19-year old student  Gavrilo Princip assassinated Archduke Francis Ferdinand, heir to the throne of Austria-Hungary, in Sarajevo.  Princip, a Serb living in Bosnia, was a member of a revolutionary society seeking to overthrow Austrian rule in Bosnia.
            Austria feared that Serbian nationalism would disrupt its empire.  They held Serbia responsible for the assassination, but made no move for twenty-five days.  Finally, on 23 July, they sent an ultimatum to Serbia, demanding a response in twenty-four hours.  Serbia conceded to eight of ten demands and proposed that the remaining two be put before the Hague Tribu­nal.  Austria refused, and after a week of feverish negotiations, declared war on Serbia on July 28, 1914.
            When Austria went to war on the side of the Central Powers, the Czech national movement mounted an effort to create an independent Czechoslovak state.  Large numbers of Czechs deserted the empire, and many Czech soldiers fought with the Russians.  The Slovaks formed centers of resistance in Vienna, Prague, Budapest, and Bratislava.  Slovak political leader Anton Stefanik joined Masaryk and other political lead­ers in Paris, where they formed the Czech National Council.  Masaryk negotiated with the Allies, both Russia and the West, to gain a commitment for the creation of an independent Czechoslovakia.  Emperor Charles I, who ruled from 1916 to 1918, tried to preserve the integrity of the empire through secret negotia­tions toward a separate peace.  His efforts failed in the spring of 1918, and the Allies gave their support to national revolt.  In the fall they granted formal recognition to the Czech National Council.
            On 29 September 1918, General Ludendorff, who directed Germany's military and political policy in the closing years of the war, urged the chancellor to negotiate an armistice.  In early October, Germany and Aus­tria proposed peace negotiations.  Masaryk issued a declaration of Czecho­slovak independence on October 18.  The new Czechoslovak state needed to regain the easily defensible borders of the historic Bohemian Kingdom, as well as its economic assets, but this was threatened by German and Austrian depu­ties.  On October 21 deputies from the German-dominated Sudetenland joined other German and Austrian deputies in declaring an independent German-Austrian state.  After Emperor Charles I abdicated on November 11, Czech troops occupied the Sudetenland.
            Hungary had withdrawn from the Habsburg Empire on 1 November.  Its new liberal-democratic government, under Count Mihaly Karolyi, sent troops into Slovakia.  The Czechs and the Allies agreed on the Danube (Dunaj) and Ipel rivers as the Slovak-Hungarian border.  A large number of Hungarians occu­pied the fertile plain of the Danube, and thus became part of the new state.
            The Paris Peace Conference convened in January 1919.  Premier Karel Kramar and Foreign Minis­ter Eduard Benes of the new provisional government led the Czech delegation.  The conference approved the formation of a Czechoslovak Republic, encompassing Bohemia, Moravia, and Silesia - the lands of the historic Bohemian Kingdom - together with Slovakia and Ruthe­nia.  The Czechs requested Ruthenia to provide a common frontier with Romania, which with Yugoslavia formed the basis of the future Little Entente.  Tesin, predominantly Polish, was divided between Czechoslovakia and Poland.  The Czech claim to Lusatia, which was part of the Bohemian Kingdom until the Thirty Years War, was rejected.  On 10 Sep­tember 1919, Czechoslo­vakia signed a "minorities" treaty, which extended the protection of the League of Nations to its ethnic minorities. 

Ruthenia   

            The Ruthenians, whose name derives from the Ukrainian "Russin," or Russian, were pastoral no­mads from Galicia who settled the deep, narrow valleys of the Ukraine during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, and integrated with the Hungarian political system.  The Ruthenians were poor peasants, grazers, and lumbermen - vassals and serfs of the Hungarian magnates dominating the plains of the Tisza River.  In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, Ruthenia was part of the Ottoman Empire.  In the mid-seventeenth century most Ruthenians converted from the Greek Orthodox to the Uniate Catholic (Greek Catholic) Church.  The Uniate Church combined spiritual allegiance to Rome with Orthodox rites, and allowed the Hungarian clergy to gain the loyalty of their Eastern-oriented subjects.
            The Ruthenians remained poor, agrarian, and politically apathetic.  Ruthenian delegates did, how­ever, attend the Slavic Congress in 1848 and later appealed to Vienna for autonomy and the right of cultural develop­ment.  But, as in Slovakia, the Dual Compromise all but eliminated the chance of educational pro­gress, with Magyarization of all secondary and most elementary schools in Ruthenia.  Over 50,000 Rutheni­ans emigrated prior to World War I.  Beginning in the latter nineteenth century, Russian Pan-Slav propa­ganda gained influence, and many Ruthenians converted to the Greek Orthodox Church.  Most, though, remained local in orientation, and fought with the Hungarian armies during World War I.
            Political activity on behalf of Ruthenia during World War I was con­ducted by Ruthenian emigrants in the United States.  Groups formed with various political objectives.  These included total independence, semi-autonomy within Hungary, federation with Galicia and Bukovina, inclusion in a Soviet federation, or union with the Czechs.  Largely through the influence of Masaryk and Benes, who negotiated with the American Ruthenian leader, G. Zatkovic, Ruthenia became part of the Czechoslovak Republic. 

The Czech Legion 

            The Czech Legion, which would eventually form the nucleus for the Czechoslovak Army, was created in World War I with the primary goal of eventually winning Czechoslovak independence.  Thou­sands of Czechoslovaks were conscripted by the hated Austro-Hungarian Empire and sent off to serve on the Russian and Italian fronts.  Many took the opportunity to desert and offer their services to the Allies against their rulers. 
            The basis of the Czech Legion was a brigade of Czechs and Slovaks who had fled Austro-Hungarian rule to Russia before the war.  They were highly-trained and performed well alongside the Russian Army, maintaining their discipline when the army began to collapse. 
            In December 1914, the Tsar's Imperial government offered the 50,000 to 60,000 Czech and Slovak prisoners of war a chance to fight against the Germans and Hungarians.  Many declined out of concern that, if recaptured, the Central Powers would consider them traitors and execute them.  By 1916, though, there were enough volunteers for two regiments.  They fought along­side Russian soldiers, who - armed and financed heavily by Britain and France - kept eighty or more German divisions tied to the Eastern Front. 
            Masaryk, heading the Czechoslovak National Council in Paris, decided to use both prisoners of war and civilians living in Russia to form a national army to fight on the Western Front.  However, his negotiations with the Imperial government for evacuation of the Czechoslovaks to France were unsuccessful. 
            He resubmitted his request to the Provisional government, which grant­ed it.  Czechoslovak military units were formed, and by the spring of 1917, 24,000 Czechs and Slovaks served in a corps on the Eastern Front.  This Czechoslovak corps fought with distinction in the June 1917 offensive, winning a brilliant victory at Zborov in Galicia in July.  These troops and the remaining Czechoslovak prisoners of war were to be transferred to the Western Front, but the Bolshevik coup and chaos prevailing throughout the country intervened.
            The Bolsheviks sympathized with the Czech Legion's aim to fight Germa­ny and the Habsburg Empire to free their lands.  The Allies, of course, did not care who controlled Russia or what forces occupied it, as long as they opposed the Germans.  However, the presence of the well-armed force, loyal to neither the country nor to Bolshevism, was a less than desirable situa­tion for the Soviet leadership, as it must also have been for the Czech Legion. 
            In December 1917, the Allies recognized the Czech Legion in Russia as a separate army under the Supreme Allied Council.  In January 1918, Masaryk returned to Russia to negotiate again, now with the Bolsheviks, for their evacuation to France.  This had become a pressing matter, because a pending treaty between the Central Powers and the Ukraine, where most of the Czech­oslovak prisoners of war were held, made it likely that the Germans would soon occupy that region.  The Bolsheviks delayed their decision until after the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk was concluded in March.  Finally, they gave their consent.

            The Treaty of Brest-Litovsk greatly complicated life for the Allies.  General Ludendorff was able to withdraw German divisions from Russia and launch a massive new offensive on the Western Front.  The Ukraine's oil fields and wheat could soon be in German hands.  The Allies could wait no longer.  They desperately needed to keep open the Trans-Siberian Railway and reopen an Eastern Front.
            Masaryk and the Allied command had hoped to move the legion to Archan­gel and Murmansk, vital ports by which the Allies had supplied the Russians against Germany.  On 16 June 1918, a military mission of 570 officers and noncommissioned officers set out from Newcastle to Murmansk with the forces of Major General Sir Charles Maynard.  Their job would have been to train the Czech Legion when it arrived.  They would then assist Major General Maynard's Royal Marines, Royal Engineers, Serbs, and French artillery to defend the port.
            Finnish partisans threatened the railroad lines to Murmansk and Arch­angel and German submarines patrolled the sea lanes around them.  The German Army could have easily seized the ports had the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk not been concluded and Germany had reopened attacks against the Red Army.  The presence of the legion in Murmansk would have helped defend the port until their evacuation.  Instead, the Czech Legion was to leave the Russian Republic, move completely across the Soviet Union through Siberia to Vladivostok, and then on to the United States and, eventually, to West­ern Europe to fight alongside the French. 
            Masaryk ordered the Czech Legion commanders to adopt a policy of "armed neutrality."  They were not to interfere in Russian internal af­fairs.  They were to remain armed, however, since the area they would travel through was dangerously out of control.
            The Czechoslovaks were ready to leave.  Accompanied by Ukrainian Bolsheviks, they fought their way through advancing German forces toward Penza and the Trans-Siberian.  Some were captured and hanged as traitors by the Austrians.  The Legion moved on with strengthened resolve.
            They were to embark in 1,000-man battalions, each on a special train.  When the first battalion reached Penza, they received a telegram in which Stalin listed the conditions for their travel.  They were to go as free citizens, but would have to give up their Tsarist officers and could carry only such arms as needed to protect themselves from counterrevolutionaries (this being defined as 168 rifles and one machine gun per train), and would be accompanied by commissars of the Penza Soviet.  The Czechoslovaks suspected German pressure behind the order, and had no confidence in the Bolsheviks.  They reluctantly surrendered a few weapons, kept some openly, and concealed the rest. 

            At this point, Allied strategy in Russia was in chaos.  The Allies conducted free-wheeling negotiations with any side that showed even a faint hope of reopening the Eastern Front - together and separately.  The French still wanted to ship the Czech Legion around the world to join the Western Front.  The British now regarded the Bolsheviks as traitors - they were supporting a Cossack named Gregori Semenov against the Bolsheviks and wanted legion forces in Siberia to link up with Semenov.  This force, as a new Russian Army, was to open a new front against the Germans.  Those west of the Urals were to meet with British forces at Archangel and protect its  ports.  Eduard Benes agreed to the British proposal, but the French insisted that wherever the Czech Legion went in Russia, its ultimate destination had to be the Western Front.
            Transportation was difficult to arrange and the transfer proceeded slowly.  Only 16,000 of the legion had reached Vladivostok by mid-May 1918.  The rest were spread along the Trans-Siberian railway, with major units still just outside the Russian Republic in the Volga region and the Urals. 
            The Czechoslovaks, though many were socialists, tried to avoid becom­ing entangled in Russia's internal politics as they traveled; they wanted simply to leave.  They ignored the approaches of the Volunteer Army and the Bolsheviks, who often used Czech communists as intermediaries.  They got food and other necessities from farm cooperatives.
            Along the same one-track railway, former German prisoners of war were also being transported, in accordance with the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk.  The Soviet government, not wishing to provoke further conflict, gave prior­ity to the evacuation of the Germans.  At the same time, bands of insur­gents operated along the Trans-Siberian railway, Japanese troops had landed at Vladivostok, and there were military clashes in areas of the Far East and Siberia.  All this slowed the movement of the Czech Legion and gave rise to many rumors, often promulgated by those opposing the Soviet government. 
            The Czechoslovaks found themselves in an untenable situation.  Rumors began to circulate among the legion that the Russians were going to surrender them to the Germans.
            Their eventual involvement in Russian affairs in May was not a deliberate reversal of the policy of armed neutrality.  Germany, displeased that tens of thousands of fresh Czechoslovak troops would wind up on the Western Front, asked Moscow to delay their evacuation.  Moscow agreed, but had no effective way to enforce its will.  The Allies, since it had been agreed in April to form an Allied force on Russian territory, decided it was point­less to transport the Czech Legion halfway around the world when they needed the forces in Russia.  Legion forces west of Omsk were ordered to proceed north to Archangel and Murmansk and await orders.

            In Chelyabinsk in mid-May 1918, a "Congress of the Czechoslovak Revo­lutionary Army" took place.  The congress decided that, whatever the Bolsheviks and Allies did, the legion would not surrender its weapons, would make its way to the Far East by whatever means, and would use force if necessary.  Tensions heightened.
            The "Chelyabinsk incident" brought events to a head.  On 14 May, eastbound Czechoslovaks encountered a westbound train of Hungarian prison­ers of war being repatriated.  The inevitable ethnic insults followed.  One of the prisoners threw a piece of iron, striking and killing a Czech.  His companions threatened to shoot everyone on the train unless the Hungarians turned over the murderer.  The Hungarians agreed to hand over the killer, a Czech renegade named Malik.  The Czechoslovaks lynched their "countryman" on the spot.
            The Bolsheviks detained several Czechs for questioning, and things began to get out of control.  The Czechoslovaks disarmed the Red Guards and set the prisoners free.  The affair was then settled by the Bolsheviks and the Czechs, who had no reason to quarrel. 
            Armed clashes began to spread.  In Omsk, the Czechoslovaks fought with a unit of the Soviet of Workers' Deputies, with some 300 killed or wounded.  

            When news of the clashes reached the Soviet government, it faced a difficult decision.  German reactionaries wanted a renewed offensive into the heart of Russia - further delay in transferring the former prisoners of war could provoke that offensive.  Soviet authorities had to try to curtail the actions of the Czech Legion, but at the same time calm them and move them quickly eastward.   
            The Czech Legion had shown no intent to oppose the Bolsheviks.  They had tried to remain neutral and uninvolved in Russia's civil war and revo­lution.  All that changed when Leon Trotsky sent the following telegram: 

            Order of the People's Commissar of War on the disarming of the Czecho­slovaks:
            From Moscow, May 25, 2300 hours.  Samara, railroad, to all Soviets along the railway from Penza to Omsk.
            All Soviets are ordered, on pain of criminal charges, to immediately disarm the Czechoslovaks.  Every Czechoslovak who is found armed on the railroad is to be shot on the spot.  Every troop train in which even one armed Czechoslovak is found is to be entirely emptied of Czechoslovaks, who are to be detained in a prisoner-of-war camp.  Local military commissars are under obligation to carry out this order immediately, and any delay is equivalent to base treason and will bring severe punishment down upon the guilty.  At the same time reliable forces are to be sent into the rear of the Czechoslovak units with the assignment of teaching a good lesson to those who will not comply.  Honest Czechoslovaks who surrender their weap­ons and submit to Soviet authority are to be treated as brothers and given all possible assistance . . .  The present order is to be read to all troop trains of Czechoslovaks, and all railroad personnel where the Czechoslovaks are located are to be informed of its contents.  All military commissars are to report on the implementation of this order.
            Number 377.  People's Commissar of War Leon Trotsky. ⁵

              Whether Trotsky, second only to Lenin in the Soviet government, had discussed this irresponsible and inflammatory order with other members of the government is debatable.  Regardless, its effect on a soldier in the Czech Legion, who would have to assume it represented the government's official position, can easily be imagined.
            The forces Trotsky could marshal - military units of the local Soviets and the fledgling Red Army - were small and lightly-armed compared to the Czech Legion.  Stranded amid growing revolution and civil war, the soldiers of a legion unit would certainly not have yielded their weapons to an inferior force. 
            The revolt spread to the entire Czech Legion once the text of the telegram became known.  The mood in the legion changed; they were now willing to act as a strike force for the Allies.  But, because the legion was strung out along the Trans-Siberian railway, fighting was localized and restricted mostly to railway towns.
            The military units of the local Soviets and the Red Army could not gain the upper hand on the Czech Legion.  They managed to disarm Czechoslo­vaks only in a few cities and for a short time.  The Czech Legion effec­tively controlled the railway.  They seized Nizhneudinsk on 28 May, Tomsk on 31 May, Omsk on 7 June, Barnaul on 15 June, and Krasnoyarsk on 18 June. 
            On 29 June, they occupied Vladivostok, which had been taken by the Bolsheviks in early May.  The legion arrested Bolshevik leaders, struck the Red Flag from Soviet headquarters, and raised the Tsar's blue and white flag.  The people of Vladivostok celebrated. 
            Allied forces came ashore from waiting naval vessels.  The British occupied the train station, the Japanese the arsenal, and the Americans their consulate.  A week later, Czechoslovak, British, American, Japanese, French, and Chinese representatives proclaimed that Vladivostok was under the temporary protection of Allied forces.

            The Czech Legion still had to gain control of Irkutsk, a railway hub 2,600 miles from Vladivostok.  Some 40,000 Czechoslovak soldiers were on the other side of Irkutsk.  The Czechs in Vladivostok wanted to seize Irkutsk, and requested Allied help - a 100,000-man expeditionary force and weapons to equip them properly. 
            Winston Churchill, then Minister of Munitions, urged Prime Minister Lloyd George to intervene.  Prime Minister George and French leader Georges Clemenceau jointly called upon President Woodrow Wilson to act in Siberia. 
            At a 6 June meeting in the White House, President Wilson announced that America would go to the Czechs' aid.  A contingent of 7,000 American troops, with an equal force of Japanese, would guard the legion's lines of communication as they moved to Irkutsk.  The American contribution was not immediately available, so Japan would send troops and equipment with the United States sharing the cost until its troops were ready. 

            The Soviets faced other enemies in this battle - the Czech Legion found cooperation among Admiral Alexander Vasilyevich Kolchak's White Russians, Social Revolutionary forces, Siberian Cossack units, and other counterrevolutionary groups.  A large part of the Siberian Red Army re­treated into remote areas or into the taiga (northern coniferous forests) to wage guerrilla war.  The Soviets' defeat meant that European Russia lost its hold on Siberia.
            The Soviets lost other territory, as well. The Czechoslovaks took a large part of the Urals and the Volga region.  Soviet Russia was in a hazardous position, with steadily shrinking territory and spreading famine. 
            Czech General Rudolf Gajda, commanding Kolchak's western army, ad­vanced on Viatka and Kotlas in an attempt to link up with those at Archan­gel.  The last chance to unite the commands failed when Gajda was decisive­ly defeated on 17 June by the Bolsheviks.  He was dismissed by Kolchak a few weeks later.
            Gajda, had been captured by the Russians in 1917 - as a conscripted soldier.  He was one of the leaders of the Czech uprising in Siberia and Kolchak promoted him to Lieutenant General and gave him command of his northern army.  Gajda was furious at his dismissal.  He tried to seize power in Vladivostok in November 1919, but failed, and returned to Czecho­slovakia in 1920.  Gajda was appointed Chief of the General Staff six years later, but was sacked for participating in an attempted fascist coup.  He was exe­cuted in 1945 for collaboration with the Germans. 

            While the United States and Japan prepared their military assistance in July, Tsar Nicholas and his family were murdered by the Cheka in Ekater­inburg.  Ekaterinburg then fell to the Czech Legion, and was occupied by the White Russian forces of Admiral Kolchak.  Kolchak appointed Nicholas Sokolov to investigate the deaths.
            During the year Kolchak's forces occupied Ekaterinburg, Sokolov found evidence that the killers had eradicated the entire Romanov family.  The Bolsheviks could not allow the Tsar - under whom their opposition could unite - to survive.  For additional insurance, all heirs were killed. 
            The rapid advance of the Czech Legion on Ekaterinburg forced the Cheka to act quickly and secretly to destroy the Romanovs, or risk their rescue by the Czechoslovaks. 
            The Allies had different viewpoints on the intervention to assist the legion.  Britain disliked the limits President Wilson set, but were certain that the inevitable pressures of war would result in escalation.  Wilson hoped that by limiting U.S. military presence to 7,000 soldiers, the Japa­nese would feel compelled to do the same.  Japan's generals wanted to send 150,000 men, thus guaranteeing the occupation of Russia and China's mari­time provinces.  Japan's government split the difference, and decided to send one division - 12,000 men.  They promised to send no more troops than necessary to save the Czechoslovaks.  The number of Japanese troops eventu­ally grew to 70,000 - not enough to move east and engage Germany, but enough to occupy the Russian territory Japan coveted. 
            As the other Allies established a presence in Russia, France sent a military mission, but no troops.  General Maurice Janin, who had commanded Czechoslovak troops in France, would take command of the Czech Legion.

            On 3 August, the Americans, British, and French landed at Archangel.  They recruited heavily among the locals, who even were subject to conscrip­tion, but their numbers were never militarily significant as far as Germany was concerned.  As World War I wound to a close, scattered fighting took place near the port cities, but against the Bolsheviks.  In September, the British evacuated Archangel.
            A British contingent from Hong Kong put in at Vladivostok on 4 August.  The troops marched into the city to the accompaniment of the Czech Legion's band.  Half the troops were sent to the front on the Ussuri river, where the Czechs and White Russians were holding the Reds while other troops of the legion tried to fight through Irkutsk to the east.  The troops soon received help from the Japanese, who easily routed the Red Army.  The Czech troops at Irkutsk made their breakthrough with no assistance from the Al­lies sent to "rescue" them.
            On 2 September, the first contingent of the American expeditionary force arrived in Vladivostok.  They were 24 hours late - the Czechs had already broken through. 
            The legion now held the Trans-Siberian from west of the Urals to Vladivostok - a distance of four thousand miles from the western outposts of Kazan and Samara, where they had captured a train bearing Russia's gold and platinum reserves. 
            On 5 September, the legion suffered its first real defeat.  Trotsky himself commanded from the field, leading a reorganized Red Army to drive the Czechs from Kazan.
            On 8 October, the Czech Legion was driven out of Samara.  The Social Revolutionaries had set up a provisional government - yet another "legiti­mate" Russian government - in a loose coalition in Samara, which reemerged in Omsk on 5 November.  The next day, a coup gave Admiral Kolchak, War Minister in the Omsk government, the position of "Supreme Ruler." 
            The Allies had not achieved their goal of a renewed Eastern Front, but found themselves embroiled in a revolution.  As news of the 11 November armistice reached the troops, they faced increasing warfare with the Bolsheviks, disaffection, and open mutiny.  The French, Americans, and British wanted to go home, but the career soldiers among them would go on doing their duty, as ordered.  Of the foreign forces, only the Czechs, Slovaks, and Poles, who had no abiding love of the Russians and were fight­ing for their independ­ence, saw any reason to go on. 
            Winter brought all military activity to a halt.  The troops took their turns at watch and tried to stay warm.  The Czechs along the Trans-Siberian had established an uneasy cease-fire with the Reds, and had even set up commercial enterprises, including a bank and a newspaper.
            General Kolchak arrived in Irkutsk on 14 January 1920 after a long retreat.  He, and some £100 million worth of the Tsar's treasure, were under the protection of the Czech Sixth Regiment.
            The Czechs were in a difficult position.  Most of the Poles, who were acting as rear guard, had laid down their arms.  The Czechs had no desire for renewed conflict with the Bolsheviks; they were close to Vladivostok and wanted simply to leave. 
            On 15 January, Kolchak, his train surrounded by forces of the Politi­cal Center - Social Revolutionaries and Mensheviks - was taken to Irkutsk prison.  When Irkutsk was taken over by the Bolsheviks, Kolchak was tried and executed. 
             With Kolchak and his forces out of action, the Bolsheviks saw no reason to impede the Allies departure.  The Czech Legion could finally leave Vladivostok and return home to their new nation.
  

Czechoslovak Democracy   

            The Czechoslovak Republic was founded on 28 October 1918, with Masaryk as its first president.  Karel Kramar headed the provisional government, which in November 1918 drafted a provisional constitution.  On 14  Novem­ber, a National Assembly was inaugurated, but since territorial boundaries were uncer­tain and elections impossible, it was constituted on the basis of the 1911 election to the Austrian parliament, adding fifty-four representa­tives from Slovakia.  Neither Germans nor Hungarians received representation in the assembly; Sudeten Germans continued to harbor their secession­ist aspirations and Hungarians remained loyal to Hungary.
            The Constitution of 1920 retained the basic features of the provision­al constitution.  The Czechoslo­vak Republic was established as a parliamen­tary democracy, governed primarily by a National Assembly responsible for legislative initiative and with supervisory control over the executive and judiciary as well.  It consisted of a senate and a chamber of deputies, whose members were to be elected on the basis of uni­versal suffrage.  The assembly elected a president for a term of seven years, and confirmed his cabinet appointments.  The president and the cabinet were to share execu­tive power.  The cabinet, responsible to the National Assembly, was to prevail.  However, during the strong presidencies of Masaryk and Eduard Benes, reality differed somewhat from the ideals of the constitution.
            The constitution also established extremely centralized local govern­ment.  Bohemia, Moravia, Slovakia, and Ruthenia were divided into counties, each receiving its own government, but tightly controlled by the central government.  In 1927, provincial governments were restored in Bohemia and Moravia, and introduced in Slovakia and Ruthenia, but with limited authori­ty.  Their jurisdiction extended only to adjusting laws and regulations to local needs.  The central government appointed one-third of the members of the provincial assemblies.  Centralization extended to the district level, as well.  It was only at the lowest level, in local communities, that the local population controlled and elected its government.
            The constitution identified the Czechoslovak nation as the creator and principal constituent of the Czechoslovak state.  While it named Czech and Slovak as the official languages, it also afforded other national minori­ties special protection.  In districts where a minority formed twenty percent of the population, freedom was granted to use its language in everyday life, in schools, and in dealing with authorities.
            Well-organized political parties became the center of power in the new state, giving government operation needed stability.  The Petka, a coalition formed by the Populists, the Agrarians, the Social Democrats, the Socialists, and the National Democrats, formed the backbone of government, except for the period of March 1926 to November 1929.  The Petka was founded by Antonin Svehla, an Agrarian who held the post of premier for most of the 1920s.  Svehla created a pattern of coalition politics that survived to 1938, under the slogan: "We have agreed that we will agree." ⁶  German parties took part in government but were not openly hostile.
            In 1922 the Czech and Slovak Agrarians merged as the Republican Party of Farmers and Peasants, the principal voice for the agrarian population.  Headed by Svehla, and with a democratic outlook, the  party supported progressive legislation and formed the core of all government coalitions between 1922 and 1938.
            The Social Democratic Party, led by reformist Rudolf Bechyne, was considerably weakened when the Communists seceded in 1921, but by 1929 was regaining its strength.  A moderate party, it advocated parliamentary democracy in 1930.  Antonin Hampl was chairman; Ivan Derer was the leader of the Slovak branch.
            The National Socialist Party - until 1926 called the Socialist Party - split from the Social Democrats before World War I.  Led by Vaclav Klofac, it rejected class struggle and advocated nationalism.  Its membership was largely from the lower middle class, civil servants, and the intelligentsia, including Benes.
            The Populist Party was a coalition of several Catholic parties, groups, and labor unions, which had developed separately in Bohemia in 1918 and in the more strongly Catholic Moravia in 1919.  In 1922, Jan Sramek headed a newly-formed common executive committee.  The Populists advocated Christian moral principals and the social encyclicals of Pope Leo XIII.
            The National Democratic Party, led by Karel Kramar and Alois Rasin, resulted from a postwar merger of Young Czechs with other right and center parties.  It was characterized by national radicalism and economic liberalism.  It became the party of big business, banking, and industry, but declined in influence after 1920.
            At this time, the population of the Czechoslovak Republic was over 13.5 million, and it was one of the ten most industrialized states.  It possessed between seventy and eighty percent of the industry of the Austro-Hungarian Empire: china and glass industries; sugar refineries; over forty percent of all distilleries and breweries; the Plzen Skoda works, which produced armaments, locomotives, automobiles, and machin­ery; and the chemi­cal industry of northern Bohemia.  It has also acquired seventeen percent of all Hungarian industry, which had developed in Slovakia in the latter nineteenth century.  Only Ruthenia lacked industry.
            The Czech lands were far more industrialized than Slovakia; in Bohe­mia, Moravia, and Silesia, 39 percent of the population worked in industry, 31 percent in agriculture and forestry, compared to 17.1 and 60.4 percent, respectively, in Slovakia.  Most light and heavy industry was in the German border area, owned and controlled by Germans and German-owned banks.  Only twenty to thirty percent of all industry was controlled by Czechs; just five percent of all industry in Slovakia was in Slovak hands.
            In the agricultural sector, the ownership and distribution of land had become a major source of conflict between political parties shortly after the formation of the republic.  As in Russia, the expropriation of large agricultural estates became the central issue of Czechoslovak domestic politics.  One-third of all agricultural land and forests belonged to a few aristocratic landowners, mostly Germans and Hungarians, and the Roman Catholic Church.  Half of all holdings consisted of dwarf lots of less than two hectares.
            The Social Democrats favored the confiscation of estates over fifty hectares and the formation of large, state-owned farms.  The Agrarian Party proposed the distribution of expropriated land among medium-sized peasant farms.  The National Democrats wanted estates up to 1,000 hectares left intact.  The Czech Catholic Party proposed limits between 300 and 700 hectares, depending on the quality of the land, while the Slovak Catholics opposed expropriation of any Church estates.
            The Social Democrats, pressed by their radical wing, issued an ultima­tum to the other parties de­manding the passage of an agrarian reform law within a fortnight, and that steps be taken to nationalize mines, found­ries, and national enterprises.  Masaryk called Svehla and Bechyne to direct talks that pro­duced an alliance between the Agrarians and the re­formist moderate wing of the Social Democrats.  Svehla agreed to speedy passage of the agrarian reforms, and Bechyne withdrew demands for the nationalization of mines and industry.  This compromise gave the government a safe majority, with support from both the conservative Agrarians and the progressive Social Democrats, resulting in the Land Control Act of 1919.  All estates with over 150 hectares of arable land or 250 hectares of land in general would be expropriated, with 500 hectares to be the absolute maximum.  The redistribution was to be done gradually, with owners to continue in possession in the interim, and compensation was offered.   

Sudetenland   

            More than three million Germans, or twenty-three percent of the total population of the republic, oc­cupied the Sudetenland, a highly industrial­ized region possessing huge chemical works and lignite mines, as well as textile, china, and glass factories.  It extended around the entire western border of Bohemia, and into the northern and southern borders of Moravia.  To the west, Cheb (Eger in German) was surrounded by a strong German en­clave, including the highly nationalistic Egerland.  The Boehmerwald (Bohemian Forest, or Cesky Les) extended along the Bavarian frontier to the poor agricultural areas of southern Bohemia.  More common, though, were the German "language islands," towns inhabited by important German minori­ties surrounded by Czechs.  Extreme nationalism was never typical of these towns.  In the coal mining region of southern Silesia, where the population was 40.5 percent German, nationalism was limited by fear of competition from industry in Germany.
            The German population, the wealthiest element in the Czech lands, was hit hardest by the early reform policies of the republic.  Intended to correct social injustice and redistribute wealth, the policies resulted in tension between the nationalities.  In 1919, one-fifth of each individual's holdings in paper currency was confiscated, and the Land Control Reform Act of that year resulted in the seizure of vast estates.  Expropriated land was primarily reallocated to Czech peasants, often landless, who formed the majority of the agricultural population; by 1937, only 4.5 percent had gone to Sudeten Germans, who protested through numerous petitions.
            Though the constitution protected German minority rights and preserved their educational and cultural institutions in proportion to the popula­tion, policies intended to protect national security and the rights of Czechs led to local hostilities.  Forest land along the border, long inhab­ited by Sudeten Germans, was expropriated for security reasons.  In an attempt to reduce German nationalism, Czechs were settled in areas of German concentration, but this policy often did just the opposite.  The laws protecting minorities were used most often to create new schools in German-dominated districts.  Many subsidized local theaters, owned by Sudeten Germans, were required to provide their facilities to the Czech minority one night a week.
            Sudeten German industry, with its emphasis on foreign trade and close financial ties to Germany, whose banks failed in 1931, was hit harder by the depression than Czech industry, where production was concentrated on essential domestic items.  This, in turn, increased national tensions, especially when Sudeten Germans were forced to turn to the Czechoslovak government and the Central Bank for assistance.  As a condition of receiv­ing aid, the Germans were often required to hire Czechs in proportion to the population.  Czech workmen sent by the government for public works projects in Sudeten German territories were also resented.
            In addition to growing economic and territorial concerns, the politi­cal policies in the early years of the republic contributed to Sudeten German nationalism.  The Constitution of 1920 had been drafted without Sudeten German representation, and they refused to take part in the elec­tion of the president.  Sudeten German political parties took an obstruc­tionist or negativist policies in the Federal Assembly.  Their strat­egy changed, however, in 1926, when German Chancellor Gustav Streseman adopted a policy of rap­prochement with the West and advised Sudeten Germans to actively participate in Czechoslovak govern­ment.  As a consequence, most Sudeten German parties, including Agrarians, Social Democrats, and Chris­tian Socialists, began to pursue a policy of activism, and Sudeten Germans accepted cabinet posts.
            By 1929, the German opposition was reduced to a small number of Sude­ten German deputies, mostly members of the Sudeten Nazi Party, but nation­alism grew among Sudeten German youth.  These youth belonged to a number of organizations, from the older Turnverbrand and Schutzvereine to the newly formed Kameradschaftsbund, the Nazi Volkssport, and the Bereitschaft.
            The activities of the Sudeten German nationalists, in particular the Nazis, expanded during the depression.  On 30 January 1933, Hitler was elected German Chancellor.  The Czechoslovak government made preparations to suppress the Sudeten Nazi Party.  In the fall of 1933 the Sudeten Nazis dissolved, and the German Nationals were pressured to do likewise.  Both parties' members were expelled from govern­ment.  The Sudeten German population was indignant, especially in such nationalist strongholds as the Egerland.

Sudeten German Party   

            A new political organization, the Sudeten German Home Front (Sudeten­deutsche Heimatfront - SHF) was formed on 1 October 1933,  by Konrad Henlein⁷ and other members of the Kameradschaftsbund, a youth organization of romantic mystical orientation.  The SHF professed to be loyal to the Czechoslovak state, but advocated decentralization.  Most of the former German Nationals and Sudeten Nazis joined its ranks.  In 1935, it became the Sudeten German Party (Sudetendeutsche Partei, or SdP) and launched an active propaganda campaign.  It attracted a large following, receiving over sixty percent of the Sudeten German vote in May's elections; the other German political parties, the Agrarians, Christian Socialists, and Social Democrats, suffered the loss of one-half of their following.
            The SdP focused German nationalist forces.  The party claimed to be working for the settlement of just Sudeten German grievances within the framework of Czechoslovak democracy, but Henlein received guidance and material aid from Berlin.  The SdP embraced the "Fuehrer Principle" and copied Nazi methods with banners, slogans, and uniformed troops.  The Czechoslovak government offered concessions, such as the transfer of Sude­ten German officials to Sudeten German areas and possible participation of the SdP in the cabinet, but these were rejected.  By 1937, the leadership of the SdP supported pan-Germanism.
            Hitler's Anschluss forcibly integrated Austria into the Third Reich on March 13, 1938.  Immediately afterward Henlein gained the support of the overwhelming majority of the Sudeten German activist movement.  On 22 March, Gustav Hacker's German Agrarian Party merged with the SdP; two days later the German Christian Socialists suspended their activities and their deputies and senators entered the SdP parliamentary club.  The Social Democrats maintained their advocacy of democratic freedom, but the masses gave their support to the SdP.   

Benes' Foreign Policy   

            Eduard Benes served as Foreign Minister from 1918 to 1935 and forged the system of alliances that determined Czechoslovakia's international position in 1938.  Benes' foreign policy was western-oriented, and he relied on the largely ineffectual League of Nations to protect the sover­eignty of the new republic.  He sought treaties with the West to secure assistance in the case of aggression against the young democracy, but Britain pursued an isolationist policy, and Benes concluded a separate alliance with France in 1924.
            Earlier, in 1920, Czechoslovakia had concluded a series of treaties which did much to guide Central Europe out of its first post-war crisis, but which would not survive the forces building toward a second world war.  In January 1920, a treaty between Czechoslovakia and Austria, endangered by internal and external forces favoring Anschluss, reinforced its independ­ence and effecting a rapprochement between the two countries.  In response to a growing threat of Hungarian aggression against Slovakia, Czechoslova­kia concluded treaties of mutual assistance with Romania and Yugoslavia, similarly threatened because they also possessed territory previously belonging to Hungary.  This defensive alliance resulted in the Little Entente, which served to keep Hungary at bay and provided for the collec­tive defense of the new frontiers in Central Europe.  A proposal was made in January 1937 for a pact between the Little Entente and France, but Romania and Yugoslavia, noting the increasing isolationist tendencies of France and Britain, rejected the proposal.
            Benes' policies received a serious blow as early as 1925, with the Treaties of Locarno.  The Locarno settlement, a series of seven interna­tional treaties drawn up in Locarno, Switzerland, and signed in London in 1925, were designed to preserve the existing French-German and Belgian- German borders and to strengthen the shaky international security provided by the League of Nations.  In March, Britain's Sir Austen Chamberlain had proposed that Britain, France, Belgium, Italy, and Germany sign a pact of mutual security.  The pact, concluded in October and signed in December, paved the way for Germany's admission to the League of Nations, guaranteed Germany's western border, and established a neutral, demilitarized territo­ry in the Rhineland.  In addition, the treaty stipulated that Germany's eastern frontier would remain subject to negotiation.  Germany agreed to respect the rule of non-aggression with regard to France, Belgium, Poland, and Czechoslovakia.  France agreed to come to the aid of Poland and Czecho­slovakia, but French troops were left immobilized on the Rhine, making French intervention difficult.  When Hitler came to power in 1933, he began to press for return of the Rhineland.  In 1936, Hitler's troops occupied the Rhineland, effectively negating the treaties.
            With Hitler's rise to power, fear of German aggression spread through­out Eastern and Central Europe.  Benes remained faithful to his Western policy; attempts in January 1935 to strengthen the Little En­tente with a Danube pact proposed by France and Italy failed.  Benes, despite his earli­er attitude of caution toward the Soviet regime, sought to involve the Soviet Union in an alliance with France.  In May, two bilateral treaties, Franco-Soviet and Czechoslovak-Soviet, provided that the Soviet Union would come to Czechoslovakia's aid, but only if France did first.
            In 1935, Benes became Czechoslovakia's second president when Masaryk resigned, and Premier Milan Hodza, a Slovak Agrarian, took over the Minis­try of Foreign Affairs.  With British support, Hodza attempted to form a new alliance with Austria and Hungary, but his efforts came too late.  He also tried to reach agreement with the German minority, but by this time they were already strongly influenced by Hitler.  In February 1936, Kamil Krofta, an adherent of Benes' line, became Foreign Minister. 

The Munich Agreement   

            After the Austrian Anschluss, the next target of Hitler's Lebensraum policy was Czechoslovakia.   Hitler's plan was to use the Sudeten German minority problem as a pretext for further annexation, with Henlein and the SdP serving as his agents within the Czechoslovak Republic.  On March 28, 1938, Henlein met with Hitler in Berlin and received instructions to present demands unacceptable to the Czechoslovak government.  On April 24, the SdP issued the Karlsbad (Karlovy Vary in Czech) Decrees, demanding autonomy for the Sudetenland and freedom to profess Nazi ideology.  If the government granted Henlein's demands, the Sudetenland would be in a posi­tion to align itself with Nazi Germany; if it denied them, it would aggravate the existing problem.
            Through 1937 and into 1938, any hope of Western assistance for Czechoslovakia faded.  Britain feared that France would pull them into war, and France's weakness had already prevented attempts to strengthen Czechoslovakia's system of alliances, which pivoted on France.  Under British pressure, France began to turn away from Czechoslovakia and adopt the British policy of non-intervention.  British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain, who believed the claims of the Sudeten Germans were just and Hitler's intentions limited, emerged as the West's major spokesman.  Both Britain and France advised the Czechoslovak government to concede to Henlein's demands, but Benes resisted pressure to move toward autonomy or federalism.
            On May 20, 1938, upon hearing rumors of German troop movements, Czech­oslovakia partially mobilized.  Ten days later Hitler signed the secret directive which called for war against Czechoslovakia to begin by 1 Octo­ber.  Britain demanded that Benes request a mediator.  He reluctantly agreed, fearing that to do otherwise would sever his ties with the West.  Walter Runciman was appointed by Britain to mediate and directed to force Benes to agree to a solution acceptable to the Sudeten Germans.  The re­sulting Fourth Plan, submitted by Benes on 2 September, granted almost all of the demands of the Karlsbad Decrees.  The SdP, however, sought to ob­struct the conciliation; a 7 September demonstration at Moravska Ostrava provoked police action.  Negotiations with the Sudetens ended on September 13.  Violence and chaos followed, and Czechoslovak troops intervened to restore order.  Henlein, who had left for Germany, issued a proclamation on September 15 demanding the Sudetenland's return to Germany.
            That day, Hitler and Chamberlain met in Berchtesgaden.  Hitler, claim­ing Czechoslovaks were slaughtering Sudetens, threatened war unless the Sudetenland was immediately returned.  Chamberlain referred Hitler's demand to the British and French governments, who accepted.  The Czechoslovak government argued to no avail that the demand would ruin the nation's economy and lead ultimately to German control of all of Czechoslovakia.  Britain and France issued an ultimatum, making Czechoslovak acceptance of the demands a prerequisite to France's security commitment, and Czechoslo­vakia capitulated on Septem­ber 21.  The next day, however, Hitler increased his demands, adding Polish and Hungarian claims for their minorities.
            National indignation following Czechoslovakia's capitulation was voiced in demonstrations and rallies calling for a strong military govern­ment to defend the sovereignty and integrity of the state.  These were organized primarily by the Communists, but non-Communist patriots also took part.  On 22 September, Hodza's government was replaced by an administra­tion of top civil servants led by General Jan Syrovy,⁸ a hero of the Czech Legions of 1914 to 1918.
            The next day the new government ordered a general mobilization.  The mobilization was completed during the night of 23 to 24 September, at a speed which surprised outside observers; both Czech and German reservists were keen to man their posts.  Henlein's attempt to sabotage the mobiliza­tion failed, delineating the extent of Nazi support within Czechoslovakia.  The modernized Czechoslovak Army, with an extensive system of frontier fortifications, was prepared to fight.  The Soviet Union indicated it would come to Czechoslovakia's assistance, but Benes refused to go to war without Western support - a war, he argued, which would come soon enough.
            On September 28, Chamberlain sought a conference with Hitler, who at Mussolini's suggestion agreed to meet the next day in Munich with Chamber­lain and Daladier, the French premier.  The Czechoslovak government was not invited to participate or consulted over the matters which decided its fate.  The next day Hitler, Daladier, and Chamberlain agreed that the Germans could invade Czechoslovakia on 1 October to seize the Sudetenland.  Czech diplomats summoned to hear the decision were arrested upon arrival by the Gestapo.  On 30 September 1938, the Munich Agreement was signed by Germany, Italy, France, and Britain.  At 12:30 P.M. the Czechoslovak government surrendered.
            The Munich Agreement forced Czechoslovakia to cede the Sudetenland to Germany, and the Germans completed their occupation of the forfeited terri­tories by 10 October.  The new border was to be determined by a plebiscite supervised by an international commission, with German, British, French, Italian, and Czechoslovak representation.  Britain and France promised an international guarantee of the new frontiers against unprovoked aggression, but Germany and Italy would not join in the guarantee until Polish and Hungarian minority problems were settled.
            The Munich Agreement cost Czechoslovakia dearly in territory, popula­tion, and industry.  The young republic lost thirty-eight percent of the combined area of Bohemia and Moravia, some 2.8 million Germans and approxi­mately 750,000 Czechs, and irreplaceable manufacturing assets to Germany.  To the south, 11,882 square kilometers in southern Slovakia and southern Ruthenia, only fifty-three percent Magyar, were lost to Hungary.  To the north, Tesin and two minor border areas in northern Slovakia were lost to Poland.
            A few days after the agreement, Benes abdicated, and on 22 October left for Britain.  According to Benes' memoirs, the matter was decided for him on 21 September, when Britain and France informed him that they would consider that Czechoslovakia had provoked war if she resisted Hitler alone.  He knew that a European war was inevitable, and if he did not resist, the West would lose the help of what was probably the best trained and equipped, and certainly the most determined army opposing Hitler in the heart of Europe.  But he believed that even in the unlikely event of effec­tive help from the Soviet Union, France, and Britain would, in the end, join with Germany to establish a barrier against Bolshevism.   

Slovak Autonomism   

            Slovak politics from 1918 to 1938, during the First Republic, centered on the debate of centralism versus autonomism.  Masaryk had promised auton­omy to the Slovaks in 1918, but the provisional National Assembly felt the need to temporarily centralize government, hoping to ensure the stability of the new republic.  The dominant political force in Slovakia, the Hla­sists, supported centralization.  Andrej Hlinka, a Catholic priest who had formed the Slovak Populist Party in December 1918, argued for Slovak auton­omy in 1919, both in the National Assembly and at the Paris Peace Confer­ence.  Hlinka continued to fight for Slovak autonomy until his death in August 1938.
            Hlinka's religious-oriented Populist Party found its support among Slovak Catholics, who were growing increasingly alarmed over the anti- clerical nature of Czech politics, the progressive attitude of the Castle, and the Protestant elements of its ideology.  These conflicts fueled exist­ing tensions.  A lack of qualified personnel among the Slovak population required that Czechs fill positions in education, administration, and the judiciary formerly held by Hungarians.  During the economic readjustments following the dissolution of the Habsburg Empire, Slovak peasants suffered badly.  But despite these political, economic, and religious tensions, the Populist Party received only thirty-two percent of the Slovak vote at the height of its popularity in 1925, even though eighty percent of the popula­tion was Catholic.  Later, in 1927, Slovak Populists, including Monsignor Jozef Tiso⁹ and Marko Gazlik, joined the Czechoslovak government in ex­change for an administrative reorganization establishing Slovakia as a separate province.
            Hlinka's goal was Slovak autonomy within a democratic Czechoslovak state, but a splinter group within his party, led by Vojtech Tuka, took a more radical tack.  Tuka had kept secretly in contact with Austria, Hun­gary, and Hitler's National Socialists since the early 1920s, set up semi-military units, the Rodobrana, and published subversive materials.  Tuka's support was found in the youth of the Slovak Populist Party, who called themselves Nastupists, after the review Nastup.
            Tuka was arrested and tried in 1929, and sentenced for espionage and subversion.  His trial gave the Nastupists the opportunity to gain control of the party.  The Slovak Populist Party reoriented in a totalitarian direction and Slovak Populists resigned from government.  In the years thereafter, the party lost some popularity, but by 1935 polled thirty percent of the vote and again refused to join the government.  In 1936 Slovak Populists demanded that Czechoslovakia align itself with Germany and Italy.  In September 1938, the Slovak Populist Party, like the SdP before it, received direction from Hitler to press its demands for autonomy.
            Following the Munich Agreement, the party's executive committee met at Zilina on 5 October 1938, and, with the consent of all Slovak parties except the Social Democrats, formed an autonomous Slovak government under Tiso.  The Czech lands and Slovakia, so recently united, were again divided. 

Subcarpathian Ruthenia   

            As a result of the Paris Peace Conference, Subcarpathian Ruthenia had been promised full autonomy and a diet with legislative power in all mat­ters of local administration.  The Constitution of 1920, however, estab­lished limits to the provision for autonomy, citing the need to ensure the unity of the state.  The president of the republic had final approval of all Ruthenian legislation and nominated its governor, but even this limited autonomy was never fully implemented.  No Ruthenian diet was ever convened.  Discon­tent in the region, like elsewhere in the republic, grew.  Apart from autonomy, issues included the western boundary, which left 150,000 Ruthenians in Slovakia, and the numbers of Czechs moved into Ruthenia to take positions as administrators and educators.
            Following World War I, Ruthenia diversified culturally and political­ly.  Indigenous political parties emerged alongside the established Czecho­slovak parties; the most significant were the Ukrainophiles, Russophiles, Hungarians, and the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia.
            The large number of émigrés after the war strengthened the Ukraino­phile and Russophile elements.  The Ukrainophiles were Uniate and pro-Czech, and represented by Augustin Volosin's Ruthenian National Christian Party.  The Russophiles were Greek Orthodox and autonomist, and represented by Andrej Brody's Agricultural Federation and the fascist-style Fencik Party.
            The Hungarian population was concentrated in a small area in southern Ruthenia.  Their Unified Magyar Party consistently received ten percent of the Ruthenian vote and constantly opposed the government.
            The Communist Party of Czechoslovakia was strong in the backward and economically devastated area of Ruthenia, finding support in Ukrainian elements which wanted to unite with the Soviet Ukraine.  In the elections of 1935 the Communist Party received twenty-five percent of the Ruthenian vote.  Only 37 percent of the Ruthenian vote went to parties supporting the Czechoslovak Republic; the remaining 38 percent went to the Unified Magyars and autonomist groups.
            After Munich, the two traditional factions, the Russophiles and Ukrai­nophiles, agreed to establish an autonomous government.  It was constituted 11 October 1938, and headed by Brody, a Russophile.  Brody, however, was soon found to be a Hungarian agent, and the Ukrainians under by Volosin gained control.  Subcarpathian Ruthenia was renamed the Carpatho-Ukraine.   

Second Republic, 1938-39   

            In November 1938 Emil Hacha succeeded Benes, who abdicated on left for Britain on 22 October, as president of a federated Second Republic consist­ing of Bohemia-Moravia, Slovakia, and the Carpatho-Ukraine.  Having lost its natural border and its already-established system of costly fortifica­tions, the republic was militarily indefensible.  In January 1939, German- Polish negotiations broke down.  Hitler's plan for war against Poland required first the elimination of Czechoslovakia.
            Hitler scheduled his invasion of Bohemia and Moravia for the morning of 15 March, and negotiated with Slovak Populists and Hungary to split the republic prior to the invasion.  On March 14 the Slovak Diet convened and unanimously declared Slovak independence.  The same day, Hungarian troops entered the Carpatho-Ukraine, occupying it and eastern Slovakia.  Hitler summoned Hacha to Berlin.
            Early the next morning, Hitler informed Hacha of the impending Wehr­macht invasion.  Under threat of a Luftwaffe attack on Prague, Hacha reluc­tantly agreed to order the Czechoslovak Army to capitulate.  On 15 March, German troops entered Bohemia and Moravia unopposed.  On 16 March, Hitler proclaimed Bohemia and Moravia a German Protectorate and an integral part of Greater Germany, with Hacha as its president¹⁰.
 

World War II 

Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia   

            The Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia was legally subordinate to the Third Reich under the supervision of Baron Konstantin von Neurath, the Reichsprotektor.  Departments were created and staffed by Germans to ful­fill roles similar to cabinet ministries, and smaller local German control offices were established.  Of course, police authority and the task of state security transferred to the Gestapo (Geheime Staatspolizei or State Secret Police).  Jews were removed from civil service and placed in an extralegal status.  Communism was banned; many Czech Communists fled.
            The population was mobilized as a source of labor supporting the German war effort: special offices were organized to oversee essential industries; Czechs were drafted to work in coal mines, the iron and steel industry, and armaments production; some workers were sent to work in Germany.  The production of consumer goods continued, but at a much reduced level, to supply the German armed forces.  The authorities imposed strict rationing on the Protectorate.
            In the first months of the occupation, German rule was moderate; the Czech government and political system, reorganized by Hacha, continued to exist.  An underground press was established, but only one title has re­mained preserved - V Boj (In the Struggle) - which was led by Joseph Skalpe, who died defending it.  The Gestapo directed its activities mainly against Czech politicians and the intelligentsia.  This came to an end, however, as Czech protests began.  Demonstrations took place on September 3, 1939, when the Allies entered the war, and again on October 28, the anniversary of Czechoslovak independence.  On 15 Novem­ber, Jan Opletal, a previously wounded medical student, died, sparking widespread student demonstrations.  Germany's reaction was to send in Reinhard Heydrich, Himmler's assistant and head of the RSHA (Reichssicherheitshauptamt, or Reich Security Office).  Mass arrests of politicians as well as an estimat­ed 1,800 students and teachers took place.  On November 17 all universities and colleges in the Protectorate were closed, 1,200 students were deported, and the rest sent to work.
            German pressure on the protectorate increased because of the demon­strations and Britain's recognition of Benes' government in exile on 21 July 1940. On September 17, 1941, Heydrich replaced von Neurath as Reichs­protektor.  After his appointment, repressive measures increased, with many arrests, executions, and deportations in the protectorate.  Slovakia was forced to declare war, first on the Soviet Union and then on Britain and France.  Under Heydrich's authority, Premier Alois Elias was arrested, the Czech government dissolved, and all Czech cultural organizations closed.
            At about this time, the deportation of Jews was organized, first to a special ghetto established in Terezin, and from there to extermination camps in Poland.  Similar transports of Jews began in Slovakia in March 1942.
            On 27 May, 1942, five Czech parachutists, trained by the Special Operations Executive and flown in from England, ambushed Heydrich's car in Prague.  Heydrich died of his injuries on June 4.  His successor, Colonel-General Kurt Daluege, of the Nazi Security Police (Schutzstaffel - SS), revenged his death by ordering the arrest of 10,000 Czech hostages, of which 2,300 were executed.  He also ordered the destruc­tion of the mining villages of Lidice and Lezaky.  Daluege was executed as a war criminal in Prague in 1946.
            Lidice, near Kladno, became a symbol of the criminal acts of retribu­tion committed by the Nazis.  It was burned to the ground on 10 June 1942.  All males over the age of sixteen were shot, the children were deported to a concentration camp, and the women were imprisoned at Ravensbrueck.  Lezaky was the victim of similar treatment.  The Czech population never recovered from the shock of the massacres, and it contributed much to their intransigence toward the Germans after the war.
            As the German war effort accelerated in 1943, Karl Hermann Frank, German minister of state for Bohemia and Moravia sent approximately 30,000 Czech laborers to the Reich.  All non-war-related industry was banned within the Protectorate.  The Czech population, subdued by the atrocities of Lidice and Lezaky, obeyed quiescently until the final months preceding the liberation.
            An estimated 36,000 to 55,000 Czech deaths resulted from the political persecution and deaths in concentration camps, relatively minor compared with those of other nations.  But the Jewish population was virtually annihilated; of the 150,000 Jews living in Czechoslovakia in 1938, only about 5,000 survived.
            In all, some 360,000 Czechs and Slovaks fell victim to the Third Reich from 1938 to 1945, either from execution, in concentration camps, or in battle.   

Government-in-Exile   

            Benes, having abdicated on October 5, 1938, at German insistence, left for Britain on 22 October.  Emil Hacha assumed the presidency in November.  Benes found asylum in London and began to represent the occupied republic as its president-in-exile.  Together with other displaced Czechoslovaks, he organized a government-in-exile and sought international recognition for the government and a renunciation of the Munich agreement.  Benes hoped for a restoration of the Czechoslovak state to its pre-Munich form after the anticipated Allied victory.  On 21 July 1940, the government was formally recognized by Britain, and by the Allies one year later.  In 1942 the Allies repudiated the Munich agreement and established the political and legal continuity of the First Republic and Benes' presidency.
            Benes appointed Frantisek Sramek, a leading Catholic politician, as Premier.  As Foreign Minister, he chose the former Ambassador in London, Jan Masaryk, son of the late president.  The two most important Slovaks, Milan Hodza, the last Premier before Munich, and Stefan Osusky, did not agree with Benes and spent the war in the United States.
            As Allied victory became inevitable, Benes worked to resolve the German minority problem which had caused the subversive activities of the Sudeten Germans and resulted in the dissolution of the republic.  Benes gained Allied consent for a plan to transfer the Sudeten German population after the war.
            The First Republic's commitment to a Western policy in foreign affairs resulted in the Munich agreement.  To provide a wider and firmer security base against future aggression, Benes sought alliances with Poland and the Soviet Union.  The Soviet Union, however, objected to a tripartite Czecho­slovak-Polish-Soviet commitment.  A bilateral Czechoslovak-Soviet treaty was concluded in December 1943. 
            This treaty of friendship was followed in May 1944 by an agreement establishing the relationship between Czechoslovak authorities and the Soviet Army in the event it occupied the republic.  These pacts helped to seal the unity, at least outwardly, of Czechoslovak resistance at home and abroad.
            By maintaining friendly relations with the Soviets, Benes hoped also to prevent Soviet encouragement of a postwar communist coup in the reunited republic.  Toward this end, Benes sought to actively involve Czechoslovak communist exiles in Britain with his government.  He offered extensive concessions, including economic collectivization, the creation of local people's committees, and, in March 1945, he promised key cabinet positions to Czechoslovak communist exiles in Moscow.   

Czech Resistance 

            The Czech contribution to the resistance effort took many forms.  Before leaving for London in October 1938, Benes had prepared for a resist­ance network at home and abroad.  Hacha, Premier Elias, and the Czech resistance all acknowledged Benes' leadership.  Overseas, a government-in-exile formed in London under Benes and Czechs formed national units of conventional types, most notably in Britain, where Czech fliers distin­guished themselves in the Battle of Britain.  Within Czechoslovakia, re­sistance groups formed and a well-established prewar intelligence network continued to operate.
            The Czechoslovak intelligence service before the war was a first-rate operation with notable successes.  After 1936, Paul Thuemmel, an important member of the German Abwehr (Amt Auslandsnachrichten und Abwehr) intelli­gence service, was in its service, providing Czechoslovakia, and therefore the Western nations, with valuable intelligence.
            As the first German troops entered Czechoslovakia on 15 March 1939, a KLM plane transported 11 Czechoslovak intelligence officers and several cases of documents to England.  The mission was planned and executed by Major Harold Gibson of the Special Intelligence Service, who was a connois­seur of Czech intelligence, techniques, and sources.  Throughout the war the Czech espionage center in London worked with secret networks in the occupied republic.
            The first political organization of refugees, the Czechoslovak Nation­al Committee, was formed in France around the Ambassador, Osusky, who was more politically acceptable to the French than Benes.  This committee formed the first Czechoslovak army unit of about 9,000 men and 1,000 air­men, financed by assets which the Brno Armaments Works had in the West.  When France fell, 3,780 Czech soldiers and airmen, plus the National Com­mittee, were evacuated to Britain.  They formed the core of  a unit which served with the British Army.  Once in Britain the communists in the unit, following Stalin's policy, declared that they would have no part of a Western imperialist conflict.  Most served briefly in the British Pioneer Corps, but rejoined the Czechoslovak Army in Britain after Hitler attacked the Soviet Union.
            The Czechoslovak Army's professional officer corps in Britain helped Benes to earn recognition for his government-in-exile, especially the Czech airmen, 560 of whom lost their lives in the Battle of Britain.
            Active collaboration between London and the home front continued throughout the war years.  The Czech resistance consisted of four main groups.  The army command, coordinating with numerous spontane­ous group­ings, formed the Defense of the Nation (Obrana Naroda - ON), with branches established in Britain and France.  Benes' collaborators, headed by Prokop Drtina, created the Political Center (Politicke Ustredi - PU), which was almost destroyed by arrests in November 1939, after which younger politi­cians took control.  Social Democrats and leftist intellectuals, working with groups such as trade unions and educational institutions, constituted the "Committee of the Petition `We Remain Faithful'" (Peticni Vybor Verni Zustaneme - PVVZ).  The fourth group was the Communist Party of Czechoslo­vakia (Komunisticka Strana Ceskoslovenska -  KSC).
            The democratic groups - the ON, PU, and PVVZ - came together in early 1940 to form the Central Committee of the Home Resistance (Ustredni Vybor Odboje Domaciho - UVOD).  The UVOD published its own journal and secretly distributed a brochure describing its program, but was primarily involved in intelligence gathering, and cooperated with Soviet intelligence organs in Prague.  After Germany invaded the Soviet Union in June 1941, efforts were initiated to create a united front that would include the KSC.  These efforts failed when Heydrich became Reichsprotektor in the fall.  By mid- 1942 the Nazis had ex­terminated the most experienced elements of the Czech resistance.
            The Czech espionage network by this time had developed superior tech­niques.  Before 1942, the network had used whatever radio operators chance had provided, but now the British began to air-drop experienced operators to them.  Between 1940 and 1942 the network sent an estimated 20,000 mes­sages, and received 6.000 from outside the country.  The Czech network supplied London with economic data, information about Seeloewe - the planned Nazi invasion of England, the date of the Russian invasion - which Stalin refused to believe, and the German work on the V-1 and V-2 rockets at Peenemunde.
            Czech forces regrouped in 1942 and 1943.  The Council of the Three (Rada Tri - R3), which included a strong communist underground element, emerged as the focal point of the resistance.  The R3 made preparations to assist the liberating armies of the United States and the Soviet Union.  A guerrilla structure was developed in cooperation with Red Army partisan units, and in the fall of 1944 guerrilla warfare spread through the Czech countryside.
            Guerrilla activity intensified after a provisional Czechoslovak gov­ernment was formed in Kosice on 4 April 1945.  As the Germans withdrew from Czech cities and towns, their administration was assumed by National com­mittees.  The Czech National Council (Ceska Narodni Rada - CNR) was formed.  On 5 May, a national uprising took place in Prague.  Throughout the streets of the city over 1,600 barricades were erected, and approximately 30,000 Czech men and women fought for three days against 37,000-40,000 German troops backed by tanks and artillery.  On 8 May, the German Wehrmacht surrendered, and Red Army troops occupied the city on 9 May.   

Slovak Republic   

            In 1939, Tiso was elected president of the new Slovak Republic.  Tiso was a clerical conservative who opposed the Nazification of Slovakia.  His aim was to establish a Christian corporative state in Slovakia.  Tiso's goal, however, conflicted with that of the Slovak radicals, who formed the paramilitary Hlinka Guards, led by Alexander Mach.  The Hlinka Guards and the Nazi-oriented German minority, which was led by Franz Karmasin, cooper­ated closely.  The radicals gained control in the Slovak government.  Vojtech Tuka, recently released from his prison term for his radical activ­ities with the Nastupists, was named Premier.  Ferdinand Durcansky, an associate of Tuka, received the post of Foreign Minister.  Mach was ap­pointed Propaganda Minister.  All of the Slovak ministries received German "advisory missions."  From 15 March 1939, German troops were stationed in Slovakia.
            The Slovak Republic also contributed troops to the German war effort.  In September 1939, Slovakia sent three divisions to take part in the as­sault on Poland.  On 24 June 1941, two more divisions were sent to assist the attack on the Soviet Union.  These troops, however, were not suffi­ciently equipped.  After losing two-thirds of their strength, they reorgan­ized into two smaller units: a fully motorized "light" division and a "safety" division.
            The Salzburg Compromise, concluded between Slovakia and the Third Reich in July 1940, was an attempt to resolve the conflict between the Christian conservatives and the radicals.  The compromise established a dual command between the Christian conservative Slovak Populist Party and the Hlinka Guards.  Stormtrooper (Sturmabteilung - SA) leader Manfred von Killinger was appointed German minister.  Tiso successfully reorganized the Populist Party along corporative lines, while Tuka and Macha were radical­izing Slovak policy toward Jews.  A Jewish code was enacted in September 1941, which established a legal basis for property expropriation, intern­ment, and extermination.  It affected 56,000 Jews between March and August 1942 alone.
            Tiso gained more power in October 1942, when he was named Fuehrer of the state and party by the Slovak Diet.  This gave him the right of inter­vention in all affairs of state.  The Hlinka Guards were brought under party control and Jewish deportations ceased.  Hans Elard Ludin, the newly appointed German minister, focused on war production.  German investment in Slovak industry increased as the Reich's banks gained a controlling inter­est.  With financial aid came technical advice, and Slovakia experienced a consid­erable economic boom.  This was especially true in the armaments industry, under German control since December 1939.  When the Slovak Upris­ing failed in August 1944, Germany occupied all of Slovakia.  Stefan Tiso headed the new government appointed on September 5.   

Slovak Resistance

             Slovak Hlasist politicians - Agrarians, Social Democrats, and Nation­als - began to organize a resistance movement after Munich.  The movement established individual underground cells in towns and vil­lages throughout Slovakia.  To awaken the acquiescent Slovak population to the nature of the Tiso regime, the resistance launched a campaign of "whispering" propaganda.  The goals of the individual elements of the resistance, however, were not identical.  The democratic resistance aimed to restore the Czechoslovak republic, but with greater equality for Slovakia.  The remaining Communists in Slovakia formed an under­ground Slovak Communist Party, which until 1943 sought the creation of an independent Soviet Slovakia.  Cooperation between the Czech and Slovak resistance movements began in the spring of 1939.  In Bratis­lava, the "Zeta" headquarters was established with the mission of coordinating with its Czech counterparts and transmitting intelligence to the liberation movement abroad.
            Members of the resistance were able to exploit a shortage of qualified personnel to infiltrate all levels of Tiso's administration, where they promoted economic sabotage.  Within the Slovak army, raised by the Axis powers for combat against Poland and, later, the Soviet Union, mutiny was encouraged and became commonplace.  On September 15, 1939, some 3,500 Slovak soldiers abandoned their transport trains at Kremnica and marched into the city.  As older, professional members of the resistance worked from within to undermine the establishment, Slovak youth increasingly turned against the regime.  The underground Slovak Revolutionary Youth took a direct, partisan approach.  They set fire to machinery in factories, emptied the fuel tanks of locomotives, and exploded munitions in warehouses.
            During his 1942 Christmas broadcast, Benes urged Slovak resistance groups to increase their activity in preparation for a seizure of power.  Democratic and communist resistance leaders worked to unify, and their negotiations resulted in the Christmas Agreement of 1943.  In accordance with the agreement, a Slovak National Council (Slovenska Narodna Rada - SNR) would represent the political will of the Slovak nation, and would act in concert with the Czechoslovak government-in-exile and liberation move­ment abroad.  Other provisions of the agreement called for the postwar Czechoslovak state to be democratic and organized on the basis of national equality, and for close association with the Soviet Union in foreign policy and military affairs.  On March 27, 1944, Benes gave his endorsement to the agreement.
            In 1943, Slovak units reinforcing Germany's eastern front began to desert en masse.  An entire division went over to the Red Army in October.  Another, faced with the mission of wiping out Slovak partisans, joined them.
            The Allies agreed that Slovakia would be liberated by Soviet armies.  With Benes' approval, the SNR authorized preparations for a national coup to be coordinated with the anticipated arrival of Soviet troops.  In March 1944, Lieutenant Colonel Jan Golian established a secret military center at Banska Bystrica.  He formed Slovak partisan units, whose members were escaped prisoners of war and army deserters, including French and Belgian prisoners of war.  In July 1944, the Red Army parachuted in twenty-four groups of cadre officers to the insurgents.  The Slovak Uprising of August 29, however, was premature.  The Soviet Union, to whom the Slovak resist­ance was politically suspect, did not inform the Slovaks of a change in Soviet strategy.  Despite American efforts to assist the uprising, the German Wehrmacht occupied Slovakia, and Banska Bystrica fell on 27 October.  Despite this severe setback, local parti­san warfare continued up until the liberation.   

The Role of the Church   

            Throughout World War II the Church played a significant role in both the active and passive resistance efforts, as well as in the political arena.  The Church contributed to a determined and dedicated resis­tance which was vehemently opposed to Nazi racism.  Catholic priests became governmental figures, as Monsignor Josef Tiso headed the Slovak government and Monsignor Jan Sramek presided over the government-in-exile, which met first in Paris, and then London.
            In Slovakia, where Roman Catholicism has traditionally been the domi­nant faith, the lower clergy shared the public's resentment against Hungary's Magyarization policy and the subsequent Czech domination.  De­spite this, negotiations between the Vatican and the Slovak government aimed at reaching a concor­dat were unsuccessful.  When anti-Semitic legis­lation was forced on Slovakia in 1941, Monsignor Tiso was able to soften its blow by threatening resignation.
            In the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia, the oppression of the Roman Catholic Church was as harsh as that of the Czech National Church and the Church of the Friars (The Czech Brethren).  Catholic priests actively participated in the resistance, but paid dearly.  At war's end, one-tenth of the clergy had been killed or imprisoned.  A notable exception to this was Monsignor Beran, the rector of the seminary in Prague and the future archbishop.  At least 155 priests died at the hands of Nazi torturers and executioners. 

Soviet Annexation of Subcarpathian Ruthenia   

            According to an agreement reached between Benes and the Soviet Union on May 18, 1944, Czechoslovak territory liberated by the Soviets would come under Czechoslovak civilian control.  Despite this, Soviet forces, includ­ing the Soviet IV Ukrainian Army, which occupied Subcarpathian Ruthenia in October 1944, eventually seized control of the region.
            The Czechoslovak delegation, under Frantisek Nemec, sent to assume control of the area was blocked from their task by the Soviets.  The delegation's mission was two-fold: to raise a Czechoslovak army from the liberated population; and, together with the recently established National Committees, to prepare for elections.
            Ruthenian citizens loyal to Czechoslovakia, however, amounted to one- third or less of the population.  Former collaborationist Germans, Hungar­ians, followers of Brody, and the Fencik Party - one-third of the popula­tion - were excluded from political participation by Benes' proclamation of April 1944.  The final one-third was communist.
            When they arrived, the Czechoslovak delegation was confined to eastern Slovakia, where Nemec established his headquarters in Chust.  The Soviet command justified their confinement with the argument that western Slovakia was still a combat zone.  Though Nemec ordered mobilization on October 30, Soviet military forces prevented both the printing and the posting of the Czechoslovak proclamation.  The Soviet army instead began to recruit the local population.  Benes protested, to no effect, and the Soviet recruitment merely convinced much of the Ruthenian population that Soviet annexa­tion would follow.
            The Soviets also prevented cooperation between the Czechoslovak dele­gation and the National Committees by installing their own Soviet- sympathetic delegates in the committees.  As a result, negotiations between Nemec and the National Committees proved impossible.  Ruthenian communists met in Mukacevo on 19 November, and drafted a resolution requesting Ruthe­nian secession from Czechoslovakia and incorporation into the Ukrainian Soviet Republic.  On 26 November, exactly one week later, a Con­gress of the largely Soviet-controlled National Committees convened.  The Congress of National Commit­tees unanimously accepted the communist resolution, elected a National Council, and directed that a dele­gation be sent to Moscow to discuss the union.  The Czechoslovak delegation was asked to leave Ruthe­nia.
            As negotiations between the Czechoslovak government and Moscow began, Czech and Slovak Communists encouraged Benes to agree to the Ruthenian secession.  In order to avoid compromising Benes' policy based on pre- Munich borders, the Soviets agreed to postpone annexation until after the war.  Ac­cordingly, the treaty ceding Ruthenia, based on its pre-Munich western boundary, was not signed until June 1945.  The treaty provided Czechs and Slovaks living in Ruthenia, and Ruthenians living in Czechoslovakia, the choice of Czechoslovak or Soviet citizenship.   

Settlement of the Minorities Problem   

            The Czechoslovak National Front coalition government, formed at Kosice in April 1944, faced the problem of resolving or eliminating the minorities problem which had again led Czechoslovakia into conflict.  The new govern­ment chose to expel all Sudeten Germans except those who had demonstrated loyalty to the republic.  German property was to be confiscated without compensation.  All officials of the Nazi Party, or SdP, and all members of the SS were to be prosecuted.
            In May 1945, the Sudetenland was occupied by Czechoslovak troops and an all-Czech administrative commission was established.  In the aftermath of the Nazi occupation, Sudeten Germans faced harsh treatment.  Subject to restrictive measures and to compulsory labor to repair war damages, they also suf­fered individual acts of retaliation, and could be hastily expelled under severe conditions.  Benes, however, moved to put a halt to such abuses and rein in the administrative commission on 15 June.  In July, at the Potsdam Conference of the United States, Britain, and the Soviet Union, representatives of Benes' govern­ment presented plans for the "humane and orderly" transfer of the Sudeten German population.
            The Potsdam Agreement concerned only the Germans, and the question of the Magyar minority reverted to the Czechoslovak government.  Though the resettlement of about 700,000 Hungarians was intended, Budapest opposed such a unilateral transfer.  The Hungarian government agreed in February 1946 that Czechoslovakia could expatriate Hungarians on a one-for-one basis with Slovaks residing in Hungary who wanted to return to Czechoslovakia.  By the spring of 1948 only 160,000 Magyars had been resettled.
            Slovak territory ceded to Poland was returned after the Nazi invasion of Poland, in agreement with the German-Slovak treaty of 21 November 1939, and thus became part of the restored Czechoslovak repub­lic in 1945.  The Polish minority in the region, of about 100,000, received full civil liberties.   

Communist Czechoslovakia   

            After the war, Czechoslovakia began to face the terms of the many negotiations, compromises, and agreements between Benes' government-in-exile, Moscow and the KSC exiles living there, and the rest of the Allied nations.  The government, originally installed in Kosice on April 4, 1945, was organized politically and economically along socialist lines.  In May the seat of government returned to Prague.
            The new government consisted of a National Front coalition dominated by Communists, Social Democrats, and National Socialists.  Rightist parties such as the Agrarians and Slovak Populists were banned.  Some non-socialist parties were deemed acceptable and included in the National Front, includ­ing the Catholic People's Party of Moravia and the Slovak Democrats.  Communists held eight of twenty-five cabinet posts, including the interior, agriculture, and information.  The communist hold was strengthened after the elections of May 1946, when the leader of the KSC, Klement Gottwald, became Premier.
            The government seized the land, industries, and properties of Nazi collaborators.  Land holdings confiscated from the collaborators were redistributed among the peasants.  Industrial holdings, representing 16.4 percent of the total Czechoslovak industries and employing 61.2 percent of the industrial labor force, were nationalized.
            Benes had hoped his compromises and negotiations would prevent a postwar communist coup, and allow time for Czechoslovakia to stabilize relations with both the Soviet Union and the West.  He hoped that, given time, the democratic process would restore a more equitable balance of power, and Czechoslovakia could become a diplomatic bridge between East and West.  His machinations, however, were not sufficient to prevent the even­tual communist seizure of power.
            Gottwald and the KSC claimed to be committed to an assumption of power by democratic means.  The liberation of the largest portion of Czechoslova­kia by Soviet armies, though politically engineered, created popular en­thusiasm for the Soviet Union which was beneficial to the KSC.  Czechoslo­vaks were bitter about the West's lack of support and its role in the Munich agreement.  This popular support translated into strong communist representation in the generally elected National Committees.  The KSC sought to expand its membership and influence among all sectors of society.  By organizing and centralizing the trade union movement, the KSC gained ninety-four of 120 representatives to the central council as members.  By the elections of May 1946, the KSC had grown in one year from 27,000 mem­bers to 1,159,164, and had won a plurality of thirty-eight percent of the vote.
            During the next year, the KSC continued to proclaim its "national" and "democratic" orientation.  This ceased in July 1947, when the KSC approved a Czechoslovak government decision to accept an Anglo-French invitation to attend preliminary discussions of the Marshall Plan.  The Soviet Union responded immediately to the Czechoslovak move to continue its Western alliance, and tightened its control on the KSC.  Gottwald was summoned to Moscow by Stalin, and, when he returned to Prague, he withdrew KSC approv­al.  Subsequent KSC tactics became much more radical.
            Under the pretense of an impending counterrevolutionary coup, the KSC intensified its activity.  Gottwald announced this "reactionary plot" at the KSC Central Committee meeting in November 1947, after which the "news" was disseminated throughout the country by communist agitators and the communist press.  In January 1948, the KSC began more active measures.  The communist-controlled Interior Ministry purged the Czechoslovak security police of non-Communists, replacing them with party members.  On the polit­ical front, the KSC began a campaign for increased nationalization and for a new land reform limiting landhold­ings to fifty hectares.
            A cabinet crisis caused by a poorly planned and prepared political strategy provided impetus for the February coup.  National Socialist minis­ters, with the backing of the noncommunist parties, demanded a halt to security police purges.  Discussion of the issue was repeatedly delayed by Premier Gottwald, however, and on February 20 the National Socialist cabi­net members resigned in protest, followed by the Catholic People's Party and the Slovak Democratic Party.
            The intention of the National Socialists had been to use a simple parliamentary tactic to force Benes to call for early elections.  In a January poll, a ten percent decline in communist electoral support was found, as a result of public disapproval of recent KSC tactics.  Any possi­ble chance of success for the move was negated, however, by the failure of the National Socialists to consult with Benes before acting on their plan, and the lack of efforts by the democratic parties to rally popular support.
            Benes, uninformed of the plan, rejected the cabinet resignations.  He failed to call for the elections that might have reduced or negated the KSC's influence.  He thereafter avoided democratic ministers, in the hope of avoiding accusations of collusion, but at the same time he prevented their support of the tactic.  Instead, he spent long hours conferring with Gottwald and his followers.  The conservative and Western-oriented Czecho­slovak army was not mobilized.
            The KSC used this time of confusion to prepare its forces.  As commu­nist-loyal police regiments were deployed to sensitive areas by the Interi­or Ministry, it also raised an armed worker's militia, the progenitor of the People's Militia.  The Ministry of Information, also communist-con­trolled, denied broadcasting time to noncommunist officials.  Communist action committees seized ministries held by democratic parties, and purged all governmental and political party organs of unreliable elements.
            The coup was completed on 25 February, when Benes, perhaps under threat of Soviet intervention, capitulated.  He belatedly accepted the resignations of the dissident ministers.  In their place he appointed a new cabinet dictated by Gottwald, and the communists took power.  Czechoslova­kia became a "people's democracy," well on its way to socialism and, inevi­tably, communism.   

Stalinization   

            Stalinization, a process of bureaucratic centralization under commu­nist direction, began as dissident elements were identified, and then purged, from all levels of society.  Its effects extended into  the Catho­lic Church and the entire educational system, at enormous cost to the intellectual community.  Cultural and intellectual life were dominated by Marxist-Leninism and "socialist realism." 
            The main tenets of Marxist-Leninism were:  all human history since the October Revolution was characterized by class struggle; the Communist Party was the vanguard of the working class; the Soviet Union was the cradle of socialism and the protector of all the oppressed peoples in the world; the imperialists, led by the United States, exploited workers and supported all anti-socialist, counter-revolutionary forces in the world; and the socialist economy was the only scientific system that had eliminated exploitation of workers.
            The state took control of the economy as private ownership and entrepreneurism were rejected in favor of comprehensive central plan­ning.  As ties with the Soviet Union increased, so did Soviet control over Czechoslovak foreign and do­mestic affairs, and it became a Soviet satellite.  Czechoslovakia was a founding member of the Council for Mutual Economic Assistance (COMECON) in 1949, and of the Warsaw Pact in 1955.  The new government openly sought Soviet-style "socialism."
            After Benes refused to sign the Ninth-of-May Constitution of 1948, he resigned the presidency, and it was Gottwald who succeeded him.  Official­ly, the "people's democracy" retained a multi-party system, but the Social Democratic Party united with the KSC, giving it control over the smaller parties of the National Front.  Participation in the political process became subject to KSC approval, and the KSC limited the percentage repre­sentation of the non-Marxist parties, eliminating the Communists' opposi­tion.  The National Assembly became no more than a rubber stamp for the party.  A Presidium, composed of KSC leaders, was created in 1953 to set party and government policies.  Party and government power was centralized, and the Regional, District, and Local National Committees were subordinated to the Ministry of Interior.  The last vestiges of Slovak autonomy were removed, and the Slovak National Council was reduced to administrating ten areas of minor significance.  The Slovak Communist Party merged with the KSC, while retaining a separate identity.   

Stalinist Purges and Show Trials   

            From 1949 to 1954, as the young "People's Democracy" eliminated dissi­dents and opponents among the general population, there was a "Great Purge" within the KSC.  By accusing their opposition of such crimes as "conspiracy against the people's democratic order" and "high treason," the Stalinists in the party were able to oust them from positions of power.  The Interior Ministry conducted large-scale arrests of "international" or "intellectual" communists, such as those with a wartime connection with the West, veter­ans of the Spanish Civil War, Jews, and Slovak "bourgeois nationalists."
            Doctor Vladimir Clementis, the Foreign Minister and head of the United Nations delegation, and the highest-ranking Slovak in the government, was in New York in 1949.  He received reports that the regime accused him of being too "independent-minded" and of being a Slovak nationalist.  Clemen­tis resisted re­turning to Czechoslovakia, but Gottwald then sent Mrs. Clementis to New York with a message that the family had nothing to fear.  Clementis' resignation was announced on 14 March 1950, "at his own re­quest."¹¹ 
            His successor, Viliam Siroky, also a Slovak, condemned Clementis two months later, together with an entire group of Slovak intellectuals, in­cluding Gustav Husak, chairman of the Slovak government, and Ladislav Novomesky, Slovakia's Commissioner of Education.  Clementis was arrested in early 1951.
            Rudolf Slansky, the KSC First Secretary from 1945 to 1951, had gone far in the party, and had been considered one of Moscow's most loyal serv­ants.  In 1951, six months after Clementis was jailed, the KSC Central Committee congratulated him on his fiftieth birthday, and he received the Order of Socialism.  Then, without prior warning, Slansky was removed as First Secretary.  Slansky was then named Deputy Premier and listed fourth in the party hierarchy.  Less than two weeks later, Slansky was arrested for "anti-state activities." 
            After long imprisonment, interrogations, and torture, Slansky, Clemen­tis, and twelve other defendants were tried in November 1959.  All pleaded guilty.  The trials, well-orchestrated for maximum propaganda value, fea­tured staged "confessions."  Even the family members of the accused played their roles through "testimony" and condemnation of the defendants. 
            Slansky¹², Clementis, and nine other defendants were sentenced to death.  On the morning of 3 December 1952, they were executed at the Pank­rac Prison in Prague.  The other three - Deputy Foreign Ministers Arthur London and Vavro Hajdu, and Deputy Foreign Trade Minister Eugen Loebl, received life imprisonment.   
            Many trials followed throughout 1953 and 1954.  Husak, Novomesky, and others confessed as required, and were lucky to receive prison sentences only.  Some would go on to play later parts in Czechoslovak government.  After the KSC's general membership was subjected to such scrutiny, it went from approximately 2.5 million in March 1948, to 1,379,441 by 1960.
            Antonin Novotny profited from his role in orchestrating Slansky's downfall.  Novotny, a poorly-educated mechanic who had risen slowly in the party, succeeded to Slansky's posts in the Secretariat and the Presidium. 
            A cold man, hardly an intellectual, Novotny was a party man, and used the party apparatus to manipulate others.  When Gottwald died in 1953, and was succeeded by Antonin Zapotocky as president, Novotny became party boss.  In 1957, when Zapotocky died, he added the title of president as well.  

Nationalization   

            The Ninth-of-May Constitution called for massive nationalization of economic assets.  It applied to all commercial and industrial enterprises with over fifty employees.  The nonagricultural private sector was decimat­ed.  Private ownership of land was limited to fifty hectares.  A few, small independent farms and private enterprises were allowed to continue, but this was only a temporary concession to the petite bourgeoisie and peasant­ry.  The Czechoslovak economy, which through history had been blessed with strong entrepreneurism, diversity, and international trade, was then faced with a challenge it could not overcome - a succession of Five-Year-Plans.
            Czechoslovak industry before World War II was healthy, productive, and profitable.  Known for its consumer goods, such as glassware, crystal, porcelain, textiles, and shoes, it escaped the intensive bombing most other European countries were subjected to during the war.  Starting late and having had a stronger industrial base to start with, the impact of nation­alization was somewhat lessened.
            The Communists reoriented the industrial sector from its previously profitable, but ideologically "useless," foundations to an emphasis on metallurgy, heavy machinery, and coal mining.  The government invested heavily in steel, machinery, and chemical plants, processing raw materials from the Soviet Union.  Production followed the Soviet pattern, being concentrated in large units.  By 1958, the 350,427 manufacturing units of the prewar period were reduced to only 1,689. 
            The reported increase in industrial output from 1948 to 1959 was 233 percent; the increase in industrial employment was forty-four percent.  Industrialization had the most impact in Slovakia, where production report­edly increased 347 percent, and employment seventy percent.  While, at face value, these numbers seem impressive, they must be compared to the indus­trial growth of other nations during that period.  When figures from 1948 to 1957 are compared, Czechoslovakia's growth of 170 percent fell far short of Japan's and West Germany's approximate 300 percent, nor did it equal that of Austria and Greece.  From 1954 to 1959, France and Italy equaled Czechoslovakia's growth figures.
            To achieve these figures, substantial amounts of additional labor and raw materials had to be imported from the Soviet Union, increasing Czechoslovakia's dependence on its "fraternal" neighbor.  Longer hours and workweeks were implemented to meet rising production quotas.  Students and white collar workers were required to perform part-time "volunteer" labor.  These techniques, however, did not have the desired effect.  The increase in productivity was insignificant, the desired reduction in production costs did not materialize, and Czechoslovak products came to be of general­ly poor quality.
            Collectivization of agriculture, provided for by the Ninth-of-May Constitution, began in February 1949, with the adoption of the Unified Agricultural Cooperatives Act.  The formation of cooperative farms was to have been on a voluntary basis, with formal title to the land remaining with the original owners.  In reality, however, high quotas forced the peasants to collectivize - their only means of increasing efficiency and making mechanization practical.  When the kulaks (wealthy peasants) refused and opposed collectivization, discriminatory policies were enacted which ruined them.  By 1960, collectivization was nearly complete, and sixteen percent of all farmland obtained from collaborators and kulaks now formed belonged to state farms.
            Just as in the industrial sector, the new policies failed to produce the predicted increase in production.  Though poor land was removed from cultivation and the use of tractors and fertilizers was increased massively, agricultural output dropped precipitously.  Mechanization and chemicals could not overcome the disadvantages of the new policies.  As labor was diverted to industry, the number of agricultural workers decreased from approximately 2.2 million in 1948 to only 1.5 million in 1960.  The new policies discriminated against and eventually ruined the kulaks, the most experienced and productive farmers.  The peasantry, opposed to collectivization, turned to sabotage.  By 1959, production had dropped below prewar levels.
            Salaries were gradually equalized, with raises for the poorest-paid workers and limits on the better-paid professions.  The quotas, five-year-plans, and pay inequities had a predictable impact.  Incentive, motivation, and the work ethic rapidly  declined.  There was little return for efforts applied to higher learning, to raising productivity, or to improving quality.  A popular saying summed up the results:  Socialism had its disadvantages, but it was better than having to go to work.
            The government, of course, proclaimed all this a success.  Under the Constitution of 1960, the victory of socialism was declared and the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic was established.  Under the enigmatic principle of "democratic centralism" the power of the people was centralized in the higher organs of government, giving them authority over the people through constitutional law.  The National Assembly was given authority over the president, cabinet, SNR, and local governments, but in reality continued to "rubber stamp" the policies of the KSC.  The constitution banned private ownership involving employees, and reaffirmed comprehensive and centralized economic planning.  The Bill of Rights emphasized economic and social rights such as the right to work, leisure, health care, and education over civil rights.  The judiciary and prosecuting branches were combined, with the result that all judges were committed to protect the socialist state and educate citizens in loyalty to socialism. 

1 Richard Holmes, The World Atlas of Warfare:  Military Inno­vations that Changed the Course of History.  (London:  Mitchell Beazley, 1988) 39-41.

2, 3 Radko Vasicek, "A Widely Traveled Warrior," Military History  April 1990: 60.

4  A. H. Hermann, A History of the Czechs (Grosvenor Gardens, London: Penguin Books, Ltd., 1975) 92-93.      

5 Roy Medvedev, The October Revolution (New York: Columbia University Press, 1979) 171-172.

6 Richard F. Nyrop and Eugene K. Keefe, Czechoslovakia:  A country study.  Foreign Area Studies, The American University.  Washington, D.C.:  GPO, 1982.

7  Henlein committed suicide after his arrest in 1945.

 8  Interestingly, General Jan Syrovy, like early Hussite mili­tary leader Jan Zizka of Trocnov, was one-eyed.

 9  Tiso was condemned to death in a people's court and hanged in Bratislava.

 10  After the defeat of the Axis powers, Hacha died in prison in Prague.

 11  Harry Schwartz, Prague's 200 Days: The struggle for Democra­cy in Czechoslovakia (New York:  Frederick A. Praeger, 1969)

 12  Rudolf Slansky's son, of the same name, would later replace the hardline Czechoslovak Ambassador to the Soviet Union on 19 February, 1990, following the Velvet Revolution.

Chapter 3