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Shortly before World War II, Czechoslovakia ceased to exist. Its territory was divided into the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia, the newly declared Slovak State and the short-lived Republic of Carpathian Ukraine. While much of former Czechoslovakia came under the control of Nazi Germany, Hungarian forces swiftly overran the Carpathian Ukraine.
The Munich Agreement [a] was an agreement reached in Munich on 30 September 1938, by Nazi Germany, the United Kingdom, the French Republic, and Fascist Italy.The agreement provided for the German annexation of part of Czechoslovakia called the Sudetenland, where more than three million people, mainly ethnic Germans, lived. [1]
The territory of Germany before 1938 is shown in blue. There were many areas annexed by Nazi Germany both immediately before and throughout the course of World War II. Territories that were part of Germany before the annexations were known as the "Altreich" (Old Reich). [1]
During World War II (1939–1945), the well-trained Czech workforce and developed industry were forced to make a major contribution to the German war economy. Since the Protectorate was just out of the reach of Allied bombers based in Britain, the Czech economy was able to work almost undisturbed until the end of the war.
The Munich Agreement had resulted in Bohemia and Moravia losing about 38 percent of their combined area to Germany, with some 3.2 million German and 750,000 Czech inhabitants. Lacking its natural frontier and having lost its costly system of border fortification , the new state was militarily indefensible.
The rise of Adolf Hitler and Nazi Germany in 1933, the German annexation of Austria in 1938, the resulting revival of revisionism in Hungary, the agitation for autonomy in Slovakia and the appeasement policy of the Western powers of France and the United Kingdom left Czechoslovakia without effective allies.
Refugees moving westwards in 1945. During the later stages of World War II and the post-war period, Germans and Volksdeutsche fled and were expelled from various Eastern and Central European countries, including Czechoslovakia, and from the former German provinces of Lower and Upper Silesia, East Prussia, and the eastern parts of Brandenburg and Pomerania (Hinterpommern), which were annexed by ...
Form of state. 1918–1937: A democratic republic championed by Tomáš Masaryk. [9]1938–1939: After the annexation of Sudetenland by Nazi Germany in 1938, the region gradually turned into a state with loosened connections among the Czech, Slovak, and Ruthenian parts.