Czechoslovakia 1918-1938. Czechoslovakia 1918 – solid BOURGEOISIE – moderate, democratic –...
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Transcript of Czechoslovakia 1918-1938. Czechoslovakia 1918 – solid BOURGEOISIE – moderate, democratic –...
• 1918 – solid BOURGEOISIE – moderate, democratic–Political leaders ANTICLERICAL
• Problem: delineation of borders + minorities• Liberal democracy• Industrialised Bohemia and Moravia + less
developped Slovakia and Ruthenia (Subcarpathian Rus)
• 3 milion German minority – Sudetenland
1st Czechoslovak Republic
Historical Context: Czech Jews
• 1867 Jews emancipated– Acculturation, urbanization, bourgeoisie
• Czech and Moravian Jews reformed or secular, quit Yiddish – fruits of Haskalah
• Max Brod: „In the Prague of my youth there were only a few families that were completely faithful to the Jewish tradition.“
• Jews had to choose Czech or German – language of high culture
Historical Context: Czech Jews
• 1890´s – 1918 – increasing influence of Czech– 1918 – Czech as mother tongue for majority of
Jews– Jewish inteligentsia - German
Zionism in the Czech Lands
• Between the nations situation Zionism• 1893 – Prague group Makabee : „The Jews are
neither Germans nor Slavs, they are a people in their own right.“
• 1899 – Bar Kochba – Prague Zionist group– Search for the Jewish roots– Established a Jewish Party – entered the Parliament
during the 1st Republic• Poland, Hungary – political parties with antisemitic
programs x not in the Czech Lands
• Tomáš Garrique Masaryk – 1st president–Western-oriented, liberal, and moderate
nationalist– „If I accept Christ, I can not be antisemitic.“
1st Czechoslovak Republic
Czech Lands
• Hilsner affaire – Masaryk defended the Jewish
victim of a false accusation from a blood libel (Polná in Moravia)
– The only country with a succesful campaign against anti-Semitism
– Masaryk supported Zionism and the Jewish national rights
Slovakia• Part of Hungarian Jewry: • E: Hasidic influences from Galicia• Bratislava (Poszony, Pressburg) –
famous center of Ortodox Judaism– Great Yeshiva– Hatam Sofer – one of the most
renowned sages of the early 19th century
• Less acculturation• Yiddish
– small towns of eastern Slovakia (influence of Galicia)
• Since 1867 general magyarisation– In many Jewish families the
parents conversed in German while the children, who attended Hungarian schools, spoke to each other in Magyar.
• Slovak nationalists + catholic church
• Small Slovak bourgeoisie x highly visible Jewish middle class
Ruthenia (Subcarpathi
an Rus)
• Peasant Rusyns (Ruthenians) – like Galicia but less modernization
• Hungarian landowners• East Orthodox Jewish communities• Small magyarised Jewish elite + majority yiddish speaking Jews• Hassidism extremely influential
Czechoslovakia
• 1930: 357 000 Jews – 2,5 % of the population– The highest proportion in Subcarpathian Rus
• Bohemia – nearly 50% of all Jews lived in Prague• Subcarpathian Rus – 80% lived in shtetlekh and
villages– The largest Jewish peasantry, the poorest and the
most involved in physical labor of all European Jewries – Munkacs 43% Jewish– Uzgorod 28% Jewish
Czechoslovak State and its Jewish Citizens
• WWI CZ nationalists needed Jewish support for the creation of CZ state - multinational
• Jews loyal and supportive to Czechoslovakia– Jan Masaryk, 1943, UK: „relations between the
Jews and the Czechs were, in fact, excellent. We knew that when time were hard the Jewish minority would always stand by us. It never let us down.“
1st Czechoslovak Republic
• A wave of anti-Jewish feeling swept over East Central Europe immediately after the WWI– felt more seriously in Slovakia
• 1930´s growing antisemitism in Sudetenland• Jews accused from support of CZ government
by Slovak separatists
Politics
• Bohemia and Moravia – Jewish (Zionist) party– Main languages of young Jews were Czech and Slovak– 1929, 1935 entered Parliament
• Slovakia – anti-Zionist Orthodox party „League of Israel“
• Hasidic Munkacs (Mukačevo) rebbe in Ruthenia was hostile to Zionism and to secularizing tendencies– Collaborated with the CZ Agrarian Party (antisemitic)
The Collapse of Czechoslovakia
• 1930´s – Great Depression mass strikes• 1934 – rise of bolshevism – Gottwald: „Not Masaryk but Lenin“
escaped to Russia• 1935 – Konrad Henlein´s Sudeten German party won elections• Slovakia
– strong influence of Horthy´s propaganda– Radical movements associated with the Catholic church supported from the
Nazi Germany– Tiso – the Prime Minister of autonomous Slovakia, a priest
• The neighbours of Czechoslovakia : antidemocratic regimes– Beck in Poland– Horthy in Hungary– Dolfuss in Austria– Hitler in the Nazi Germany
The Collapse of Czechoslovakia• 1935 – Masaryk abdicated and
recommended Beneš for President• 1937 – Germany added Austria
(„anschluss“)• 1938 – Sudeten German Party was
preparing a military attack of Czechoslovakia Czechoslovak army partially mobilized Hitler spoke of protecting Germans
living out of the Reich Henlein : „We must make impossible
demands that can not be satisfied“ and provoke Czechoslovak crackdown while avoiding a final agreement
Munich
• 1938 – Hitler, Mussolini, Chamberlain and Daladier met in Munich and fully accepted German claims Czechoslovakia was forced to cede Sudeten to Germany, a part of the territory to Poland and a part of Slovakia to Hungary
The Collapse of Czechoslovakia
• March 1939 Protectorate Bohemia and Moravia and a separate Slovak fascist state (a Nazi protectorate)