Quote:
Originally Posted by cavszabo
If I may throw a spanner in the works...
Czecho-Slovakia was a country made up by the victorious Entente Powers, the USA, Britain and France, under the strong influence of Czech intellectuals. The same is true for Yugoslavia.
The Slovaks had been living within the Kingdom of Hungary for 1000 years while the Czechs had been independent as Bohemia, the "land of Wenceslas". Also, in 1938, Czechoslovakia was emphatically not "dismembered", only shrunk. Parts of Slovakia (which belonged to Hungary only 18 years earlier) were returned to Hungay, parts of Poland and of Germany were returned to their respective countries. That's all.
Czechoslovakia was actually broken up in 1939, when Slovakia declared its independence from Czech-land.
I am not impressed by the "do-it-yourself" creations of the Great Powers, as the results in the Middle East show, and their creation of Yugoslavia also showed. Neither Czechoslovakia nor Yugo have stood the test of time, and the African nations as well as the Mideast are an ongoing disaster.
What should they have done? In my opinion, they should have done what they refused, they should have asked the local people what they wanted.
A famous French politician, whose name I can't recall, said, "We either have a plebiscite, or we have Czechoslovakia."
So, another lesson of Versailles is to give the people what they want, not what the Great Powers want, methinks.
Chris
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Chris,
You are entitled to your opinions of course, but the above does not exactly represent the "facts" of what happened. Bohemia and Moravia were both part of the Austrian Empire until the creation of Czechoslovakia in 1918 (the Royal Bohemian Chancellery was merged with the Austrian Chancellery in 1749 under the "indivisible Habsburg Empire"). Involved in the creation of the Czechoslovak state was, among others, a famous Slovak astronomer and war hero, Milan Štefánik. To say that only Czechs wanted this union is incorrect. The state was proclaimed on October 28, 1918 and the Slovaks voluntarily committed to it two days later. Slovaks and Czechs had been working together for independence from the Austro-Hungarian Empire since at least the 1890's.
In 1938, Germany, Hungary, and Poland all took pieces of what was Czechoslovakia. If that isn't "dismemberment" then we simply have a disagreement on the definition of the term. Maybe "partitioned" is a better term. After that "partition" if you prefer, the country was renamed Czecho-Slovakia. In March of 1939, pretty much simultaneously, Slovakia was formed as an "independent" state and what was left of Bohemia and Moravia were absorbed into the Third Reich as a "protectorate". At the same time Hungary invaded and annexed more of Slovakia's territory. "Slovakia" remained a Nazi puppet ("client state" if you prefer) throughout the war. That was a further dismemberment.
During the events of 1938 Czechs were driven from their homes if they happened to be on the wrong side of the new border. Call it what you like, the term is irrelevant. But the factual history is what it is. It's never so one sided as to say only one party wanted it. Bohemia was the the most industrialized region in Austria-Hungary. Slovakia was the most industrialized portion of the Kingdom of Hungary, such as it was. They spoke similar, mutually intelligible languages. Many people thought it was a good fit. Problems arose when it was obvious that the Czech provinces, Bohemia and Moravia, were more economically advanced than were the Slovak lands. It may have been a case of wishing they hadn't gotten what they had asked for.
A similar case in point occurred in Yugoslavia. More than anything, the Slovenes, Croats, and Bosniaks wanted independence from Austria-Hungary. They threw their lot in with the Serbs for several reasons that seemed to make sense at the time. The idea had been around among the Croats to join with the Serbs in a "Southern Slav" state since at least the 17th century. If you recall the Illyrian movement, that took place in the early to mid-1800's. Most of Slovenia, Croatia, and Bosnia-Herzogovina had declared its independence from the Habsburg crown in 1918 and formed the State of Slovenes, Croats, and Serbs in those lands. Part had directly joined the Kingdom of Serbia. The State of Slovenes, Croats, and Serbs then joined the Kingdom of Serbia to form the Kingdom of Yugoslavia (Southern Slavs). Montenegro had joined just prior to that but I don't recall the exact circumstances of that decision. I believe it was when Austro-Hungarian occupation forces retreated.
So the fact is that these "well intentioned" unions didn't work out. Why was that? The simple answer is nationalism. Each of these nationalities wanted their own nation-state. There are of course more complex answers. But at the early part of the twentieth century Europe was a dangerous place, especially for small states. Safety may have been seen in numbers. After World War II (where safety in numbers was shown to be irrelevant) and with a long period of relative peace these nationalistic feelings began to re-emerge. The peaceful divorce of Slovakia from the Czech republic was only slightly less predictable than was the violent dissolution of Yugoslavia.