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| History of Slovakia |
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 Slovakiaportal |
During World War II, Slovakia was a client state of Nazi Germany and a member of the Axis powers. It participated in the war against the Soviet Union and deported most of its Jewish population.
The desire for autonomy was one of the great causes for Slovaks in Czechoslovakia. Monsignor Jozef Tiso and nationalists of the Slovak People's Party pushed for Slovak independence and aligned themselves with the Nazi Party in Germany. On March 13, 1939, German Chancellor Adolf Hitler invited Tiso to Berlin. Hitler told Tiso that he would support him if he separated Slovakia from Czecho-Slovakia; otherwise, the Slovak lands would be divided between Hungary, Poland and the rest of Czecho-Slovakia. On March 14, 1939 Slovakia declared independence, calling itself the Slovak Republic. German troops soon occupied the Czech lands, and established the German Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia there. [1]
On November 2, 1938, the First Vienna Award transferred the territories of southern Slovakia and southern Ruthenia to Hungary. Hungary was granted an area of 11,927 km2 with a population of 869,299. According to the 1941 Census, 86.5% of these were ethnic Hungarians. Hitler even promised to transfer all of Slovakia to Hungary in exchange for military support from Budapest in the war soon to be unleashed against the Soviet Union, but the Hungarians were reluctant to engage in warfare. Instead, they agreed to a territorial revision along ethnic separation lines.[ citation needed ]
Hungary recognized the Slovak Republic led by Tiso. In 1939, from March 23 to March 31, a border war was fought between Slovakia and Hungary. [2] Although Slovakia had signed a "Protection Treaty" with Nazi Germany, Germany refused to help Slovakia, in direct violation of that treaty. The Slovak-Hungarian War (also called the "Little War") resulted in the Hungarian occupation of a narrow strip along the border which had previously been Slovak.[ citation needed ]
On September 1, 1939, Nazi Germany invaded Poland. Slovakia's Field Army Bernolák, consisting of three infantry divisions and a mobile group, participated in the invasion and was subordinate to Germany's Army Group South.[ citation needed ]
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The Tripartite Pact (also called the Three-Power Pact, the Axis Pact, the Three-way Pact or the Tripartite Treaty), an agreement signed in Berlin on September 27, 1940, linked Germany, Italy and Japan as the Axis powers of World War II. On November 24, 1940, Slovakia also signed the Tripartite Pact. Hitler asked the newly formed Slovak Republic (independent from March 1939) to join the invasion of Poland.
Slovakia did not participate in the start of the Axis invasion of the Soviet Union, which began on June 22, 1941. Hitler and other Nazi leaders distrusted the Slovaks against participating in Eastern European campaigns because they were Slavs. [3] Although Hitler did not ask for help from Slovakia, the Slovaks decided to send an expeditionary force.
The Slovak Army group attached to the 17th German Army attacked the Soviet 12th Army. Along with the 17th Aramta German and Hungarian army, the group directed the Slovak army deep into southern Russia. During the Battle of Uman (3 to 8 August 1941), a mechanized body of the Carpathian Group formed double wings encircling the 6th and 12th Soviet units. During this struggle, 20 Soviet divisions were destroyed or surrendered.
From 1942 to 1944 only the Slovak 1st Division was kept on the front line, fighting in the Caucasus area and later in southern Ukraine.
4,000 Slovak soldiers were casualties in the fighting on the Eastern Front. There was also a high rate of desertion, at first individuals but later large groups of soldiers disillusioned with the war. [4]
On August 29, 1944, the Slovak National Uprising broke out after German troops invaded Slovakia. The German occupation troops resumed the pursuit of the Final Solution by deporting Slovak Jews to mass death-camps in Germany and occupied Poland.
Slovakia soon became a theater of war. On September 19, 1944, the German command replaced SS-Obergruppenführer Berger, who had previously commanded the troops fighting the Uprising, with SS-General Höfle. By that time the Germans had 48,000 soldiers in Slovakia: eight German divisions (including four of the Waffen-SS) and one pro-Nazi Slovak formation.[ citation needed ]
On October 1 the resistance army renamed itself as the "1st Czechoslovak Army in Slovakia" in order to symbolize the beginning of a Czech-Slovak reunification that the allied forces would recognize.
A major German counteroffensive began on October 17−18, 1944, when 35,000 German soldiers entered Slovakia from Hungary (which the German military had occupied on March 19, 1944). Stalin demanded that the advance of the 2nd Ukrainian Front led by General Rodion Malinovsky immediately divert towards Budapest. By the end of October 1944, the Axis forces (six German divisions and the pro-Nazi Slovak unit) took back most of the territory which the resistance army had occupied, and surrounded the battle groups. The fighting cost at least 10,000 casualties on both sides.
The resistance had to evacuate Banská Bystrica on October 27 just before the German takeover. SOE and OSS agents retreated to the mountains, with thousands of others fleeing the German advance. On October 28, General Viest, the commander of the 1st Czechoslovak Army in Slovakia, informed London that the resistance would move towards guerilla warfare. On October 30, General President Hoffa[ citation needed ] and Tiso celebrated in Banská Bystrica, with medals for German soldiers for their part in suppressing the revolt.
However, the remnants of the forces of the National Uprising continued their efforts in the mountains. In retaliation, the Germans executed several hundred suspected resistance members[ clarification needed ] and Jews, and destroyed 93 villages for suspected collaboration. A later estimated death toll was 5,304; and the authorities have discovered 211 mass graves that resulted from these atrocities. Most executions took place in Kremnička and Nemecká. On 3 November the Germans captured Viest and Golian in Bukovec Pohronský; Nazi authorities later interrogated and executed the two captured commanders.
Special Operations Executive and Office of Strategic Services teams eventually joined[ clarification needed ] and sent a message requesting immediate assistance. The Germans surrounded both groups from December 25 and they were captured. Some men were summarily executed. The Germans took the rest to Mauthausen-Gusen concentration camp, where they were tortured and executed.
The German victory in Slovakia only delayed the final fall of Tiso's pro-National Socialist regime. Six months later, the Red Army attacked the Axis forces in Slovakia. As early as December 1944, Romanian and Soviet troops confronted German troops in southern Slovakia as part of the Battle of Budapest (26 December to 13 February). On January 19, 1945, the Red Army occupied Bardejov, Svidník, Prešov and Košice in eastern Slovakia. On March 3–5 they took northwestern Slovakia. Soviet and Romanian troops liberated Banská Bystrica on 26 March 1945. Malinovsky's forces marched into Bratislava on 4 April 1945.[ clarification needed ]
The Slovak National Uprising did not achieve its main military objectives due to the timing of the uprising and the actions of Soviet partisans, who often undermined the plans and objectives of the Slovak armed insurrection. If the uprising had occurred later, when Slovak preparations were complete, the Slovak resistance could theoretically have co-ordinated with the Allies and allowed the Red Army to move quickly through Slovakia (although it is questionable whether the Soviet leadership would have preferred such an option, as this would have significantly empowered democratic forces in Slovakia). Nevertheless, the activity of the guerrilla forces required Germany to deploy troops that could have otherwise strengthened the eastern front lines against the advancing fronts of Ukraine to the north and south of Slovakia.
Slovakia became target of Allied bombers towards the end of World War II. The major targets of strategic bombing included oil refineries in Bratislava and Dubová (Banská Bystrica Region), arms factories in Dubnica nad Váhom and Považská Bystrica, railroad hubs like Nové Zámky. During the liberation months tactical bombing was executed, strongest hit were Prešov and Nitra. [5]
Major air raid included the bombing of Bratislava and its refinery Apollo on June 16, 1944 by American B-24 bombers of the Fifteenth Air Force with 181 victims [6] and bombing of Nitra on March 26, 1945 by Soviet A-20 bombers with 345 victims. [7]
Approximately 60,000 of the 95,000 Slovak Jews were deported by the Nazis and sent to death camps in German-occupied Poland before 1942. [8] Then the Slovak government made a deal with Germany for the Jews to be "delivered" in exchange for workers needed for the Slovak Nazi war economy. After the Wannsee Conference of 20 January 1942 the Germans agreed with the Slovaks' proposal, and the two parties agreed that the Slovak Republic would pay a fixed amount for each Jew deported. In return, Germany promised that the Jews would never return to Slovakia.[ clarification needed ]
After signing the Peace Treaty of Paris, Slovakia lost its so-called independence and was reunified with the Czech Republic. Hungarian and Czechoslovak authorities (under Soviet influence) forced an exchange of population.
The Axis powers, originally called the Rome–Berlin Axis and also Rome–Berlin–Tokyo Axis, was a military coalition that initiated World War II and fought against the Allies. Its principal members were Nazi Germany, the Kingdom of Italy and the Empire of Japan. The Axis were united in their far-right positions and general opposition to the Allies, but otherwise lacked comparable coordination and ideological cohesion.
Jozef Gašpar Tiso was a Slovak politician and Catholic priest who served as president of the First Slovak Republic, a client state of Nazi Germany during World War II, from 1939 to 1945. In 1947, after the war, he was executed for treason in Bratislava.
The European theatre of World War II was one of the two main theatres of combat during World War II. It saw heavy fighting across Europe for almost six years, starting with Germany's invasion of Poland on 1 September 1939 and ending with the Western Allies conquering most of Western Europe, the Soviet Union conquering most of Eastern Europe including the German capital Berlin, and Germany's unconditional surrender on 8 May 1945 although fighting continued elsewhere in Europe until 25 May. On 5 June 1945, the Berlin Declaration proclaiming the unconditional surrender of Germany to the four victorious powers was signed. The Allied powers fought the Axis powers on two major fronts, but there were other fronts varying in scale from the Italian campaign, to the Polish Campaign, as well as in a strategic bombing offensive and in the adjoining Mediterranean and Middle East theatre.
The military occupation of Czechoslovakia by Nazi Germany began with the German annexation of the Sudetenland in 1938, continued with the creation of the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia, and by the end of 1944 extended to all parts of Czechoslovakia.
With the collapse of the Habsburg monarchy at the end of World War I, the independent country of Czechoslovakia was formed as a result of the critical intervention of U.S. President Woodrow Wilson, among others.
The Eastern Front was a theatre of World War II fought between the European Axis powers and Allies, including the Soviet Union (USSR) and Poland. It encompassed Central Europe, Eastern Europe, Northeast Europe (Baltics), and Southeast Europe (Balkans), and lasted from 22 June 1941 to 9 May 1945. Of the estimated 70–85 million deaths attributed to World War II, around 30 million occurred on the Eastern Front, including 9 million children. The Eastern Front was decisive in determining the outcome in the European theatre of operations in World War II, eventually serving as the main reason for the defeat of Nazi Germany and the Axis nations. It is noted by historian Geoffrey Roberts that "More than 80 per cent of all combat during the Second World War took place on the Eastern Front".
The First Vienna Award was a treaty signed on 2 November 1938 pursuant to the Vienna Arbitration, which took place at Vienna's Belvedere Palace. The arbitration and award were direct consequences of the previous month's Munich Agreement, which resulted in the partitioning of Czechoslovakia.
The (First) Slovak Republic, otherwise known as the Slovak State, was a partially-recognized client state of Nazi Germany which existed between 14 March 1939 and 4 April 1945. The Slovak part of Czechoslovakia declared independence with German support one day before the German occupation of Bohemia and Moravia. It controlled most of the territory of present day Slovakia, without its current southern parts, which were ceded by Czechoslovakia to Hungary in 1938. It was the first time in history that Slovakia had been a formally independent state.
Ján Golian was a Slovak Brigade General who became famous as one of the main organizers and the commander of the resistance 1st Czechoslovak Army in Slovakia during the Slovak National Uprising.
Haviva Reik was one of 32 or 33 parachutists sent by the Jewish Agency and Britain's MI9 on military missions in Nazi-occupied Europe. Reik went to Slovakia in fall 1944 and worked with local Jewish people to resist the German occupation there. She established a camp for Russian prisoners of war who had escaped, and helped organize a Jewish resistance unit. The Germans organized forces to put down the Jewish resistance, and Reik and the other parachutists escaped with about 40 local Jews into the mountains. In November 1944, however, Reik and the other parachutists were captured, killed, and buried in a mass grave.
The Slovak–Hungarian War, or Little War, was a war fought from 23 March to 31 March 1939 between the First Slovak Republic and Hungary in eastern Slovakia.
Vojtech Lázar "Béla" Tuka was a Slovak politician who served as prime minister and minister of Foreign Affairs of the First Slovak Republic between 1939 and 1945. Tuka was one of the main forces behind the deportation of Slovak Jews to Nazi concentration camps in German occupied Poland. He was the leader of the radical wing of the Slovak People's Party.
During World War II, the Kingdom of Hungary was a member of the Axis powers. In the 1930s, the Kingdom of Hungary relied on increased trade with Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany to pull itself out of the Great Depression. Hungarian politics and foreign policy had become more stridently nationalistic by 1938, and Hungary adopted an irredentist policy similar to Germany's, attempting to incorporate ethnic Hungarian areas in neighboring countries into Hungary. Hungary benefited territorially from its relationship with the Axis. Settlements were negotiated regarding territorial disputes with the Czechoslovak Republic, the Slovak Republic, and the Kingdom of Romania. On November 20, 1940, Hungary became the fourth member to join the Axis powers when it signed the Tripartite Pact. The following year, Hungarian forces participated in the invasion of Yugoslavia and the invasion of the Soviet Union. Their participation was noted by German observers for its particular cruelty, with occupied peoples subjected to arbitrary violence. Hungarian volunteers were sometimes referred to as engaging in "murder tourism."
Rudolf Viest was a Slovak military leader, member of the Czechoslovak government in exile, member of the Slovak National Council and the commander of the 1st Czechoslovak army during the Slovak National Uprising. He was the Slovak with the highest military function and the only Slovak general during the interwar period in the First Czechoslovak Republic.
The Slovak National Uprising was a military uprising organized by the Slovak resistance movement during World War II in central Slovakia. This resistance movement was represented mainly by members of the Democratic Party, social democrats, and communists. It was launched on 29 August 1944 from Banská Bystrica in an attempt to resist German troops that had occupied Slovak territory and to overthrow the collaborationist government of Jozef Tiso. Although the resistance was largely defeated by German forces, guerrilla operations continued until the Red Army, Czechoslovak Army and Romanian Army occupied the Slovak Republic in 1945.
The Holocaust in Slovakia was the systematic dispossession, deportation, and murder of Jews in the Slovak State, a client state of Nazi Germany, during World War II. Out of 89,000 Jews in the country in 1940, an estimated 69,000 were murdered in the Holocaust.
Abraham Armin Frieder was a Slovak Neolog rabbi. After attending several yeshivas, he was ordained in 1932 and became the leader of Slovak Neolog communities before Slovakia declared independence in 1939 and began to oppress its Jewish population. Frieder joined the Working Group, a Jewish resistance organization, and delivered a petition to President Jozef Tiso begging him to halt deportations of Jews to Poland. Frieder was involved in efforts to send relief to deportees and interview escapees to learn about the progress of the Holocaust in Poland. After the German invasion of Slovakia during the Slovak National Uprising, deportations from Slovakia resumed; Frieder was captured but managed to avoid deportation from Sereď concentration camp. After the war, he was appointed Chief Rabbi of Slovakia and attempted to smooth tensions between Neolog and Orthodox Jews. He died after surgery in 1946.
The Hlinka Guard Emergency Divisions or Flying Squads of the Hlinka Guard were Slovak paramilitary formations set up to counter the August 1944 Slovak National Uprising. They are best known for the role they played in murdering Jews, Romani people, and actual or suspected Slovak partisans in conjunction with Einsatzgruppe H, especially for their participation in the Kremnička massacre.
Museum of the Slovak National Uprising is a museum in Banská Bystrica that commemorates the Slovak National Uprising, an antifascist revolt during World War II. The museum documents the history of the Slovak state 1939-1945 and the Slovak National Uprising aimed against the Slovak government which collaborated with Nazi Germany. The Slovak National Uprising was not an insurgency but an organized military effort by the Allied recognised resistance army - The 1st Czechoslovak army in Slovakia. The Slovak National Uprising was a military uprising organized by the Slovak resistance movement during World War II. This resistance movement was represented mainly by the members of the Democratic Party, but also by social democrats and Communists, albeit on a smaller scale. It was launched on 29 August 1944 from Banská Bystrica in an attempt to resist German troops that had occupied Slovak territory and to overthrow the collaborationist government of Jozef Tiso. Although the resistance was largely defeated by German forces, guerrilla operations continued until the Red Army, Czechoslovak Army and Romanian Army occupied the Slovak Republic in 1945.
The First Czechoslovak Army in Slovakia was an ad-hoc military formation formed by the insurgents of the Slovak National Uprising against Nazi Germany. It was destroyed by German and pro-German Slovak forces as part of the successful crackdown against the Slovak National Uprising.