Czechoslovakia in European History

S. Harrison Thomson

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9780429682520
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Historia
• Subtopic: Historia del mundo

First published in 1943, this volume aims to trace the development of several of the more acute problems of Czechoslovak life and history in a country which has been highly sensitive to the disturbances which have shaken the rest of Europe and which has never been far from the tumult and the clash of arms. Only through historical analysis and quiet explanation of the facts can we fairly judge, in the light of past event, the ultimate value of a free Czechoslovakia to a free Europe.

1

Introduction

IN TIMES like the present, international events move at such lightning speed that we are prone to lose what little per-' spective we may have had before this acceleration set in. This bewildering tempo is likely to rob us of the proper realization of the fact that the word “catastrophe” is as old as the Greeks. We too easily forget that peoples and races, ideas and ideals, have for thousands of years survived catastrophes. It is true that they have suffered untold woe and tribulation, but it is no less true that those races and ideas that were fittest to survive usually have managed to live through these periods of grim and menacing trial. Stress and strain, trial and tribulation, are not unmixed evils. But to those who suffer, their good is hard to see. History has the virtue of softening the pain, and bringing the benefit to light. Grandeur in a people as well as in a man is a compound of struggle and rest, tension and release.

Es bildet ein Talent sich in der Stille,

Sich ein Charakter in dem Strom der Welt.

—GOETHE, “TORQUATO TASSO,” III, 2

This is pre-eminently the case of the Czech people, their kinsmen the Slovaks, and not less of the Germans who are their neighbors in the Sudetenlands. They have bowed under many catastrophes, and unless history means nothing at all, they are likely to survive this latest hour of adversity.

The pilgrimage of the Czechoslovak people through history has gone on in a land which touches on no seashore, nor has it ever been far from the tumult and the clash of arms. Rather has it been highly sensitive to the disturbances that have shaken the rest of Europe. Lying at the crossroads of the continent, the paths of conquering armies, from north to south, from east to west, have led through the country, and in the great European struggles this land has been the scene of many a conclusive victory. Not alone in the nineteenth century, but throughout all recorded time, the statement of Bismarck has held true: he who is master of Bohemia is master of Europe.

The last thirty years of Czechoslovak history, with which the western world is fairly well acquainted, is a very short period. It was a time of world-wide disturbance and dislocation, and a small country had no real opportunity to follow its own course independent of the rest of the world. The student who interests himself only in this most recent short period is like a reader who chooses only a single chapter late in a book, losing thereby background and continuity. He misses all connection of any given act with its conditioning antecedents. He cannot possibly understand, for example, the deep significance which the early division of the whole land into two parts has had for the historical development of the Czechoslovak people. The western part developed independently as the Czech state, while the eastern half was incorporated into the Hungarian kingdom as early as the eleventh century. Yet, in spite of this political severance, a common destiny guided both halves. Without taking into account the fact of this early separation, it is impossible to realize fully how so many of the trials with which Czechoslovakia was burdened in the years 1918 to 1938 were brought about. During the Middle Ages the Czechs and Slovaks were unable to develop into one nation. Consequently when the opportunity presented itself they had no background of long-standing union upon which to build together a free republic. This last formidable task demanded a longer period of active co-operation than two short decades.

Without a close study of the past of this land the peculiar importance of the gradual infiltration of foreign influences into the territory occupied by the Czechoslovak people cannot be grasped. Germans came from several directions, Magyars from the south into the living space of the Slovaks. A minority problem was born which in recent times has grown increasingly acute, and has become a determining factor in the fate of Czechoslovakia. If this problem is to be understood, its origins and the course of its development must be carefully studied. If, furthermore, we are to succeed in seeing how vital these matters of past history are to the peoples—both majority and minority-living in these lands, we must appreciate a psychological factor which looms larger to the Central European than it does to us in the English-speaking world, and that is the vital immediacy of the past. The criteria, values and prejudices of the average man and woman in Central Europe are more affected by the events of history than are ours. And as a general rule these peoples are better acquainted with their longer history than we—particularly in the United States—with our much shorter past. The reason for this fundamental psychological difference between Central Europeans and ourselves is outside the province of this short study, but the fact of its presence and its radical importance cannot possibly be overemphasized.

The Czechoslovak question, again brought so vividly to our attention by the events from 1938 to 1948, makes it necessary to explain a few of the most important subjects which are the object of continual interest and discussion. From the many and varied phases of the history of these peoples we have chosen to treat only a few, but to treat them rather thoroughly. It is hoped that the reader will be led toward an understanding of the complexity of the problems, and enabled to distinguish truth from falsehood in the arguments which in recent years have been mustered against Czechoslovak independence. A scientific exposé of the problems of national existence and their projection into the past, which is the proper function of the historian, leads to more reliable conclusions than a journalistic essay, written in the heat of battle. Only through historical analysis and quiet explanation of the facts can we fairly judge, in the light of past events, the ultimate value of a free Czechoslovakia to a free Europe.

2

The Czech State and the Holy Roman Empire to 1306

FOR more than a thousand years Czechs and Slovaks have made their home in a land snugly set in the middle of Europe. Since the first World War we have come to know this territory by the name of Czechoslovakia. These Slavic peoples came into this land during the period of the shifting of population in the early Middle Ages commonly designated as the Wanderings of the Nations. The land of their origin, lying between the Volga and the Dnieper rivers, was apparently inadequate for their rapidly growing numbers. Pushed westward and southward by other expanding peoples settled to the eastward of them, they gradually moved, in groups of varying sizes, into the lands which they have since inhabited. These lands had been previously peopled by Celtic tribes (Boii) and, after them, from the first century B.C. to the fifth century of the Christian era, by Germanic tribes (Marcomanni, Quadi and Hermunduri). So far as we can ascertain, until their disappearance from history about the middle of the fifth century these Germanic tribes must be regarded as largely nomadic or at least transient inhabitants. They left no tangible evidences of their stay, or so it seemed to Cosmas of Prague, who, writing in 1125, expressed the belief that the land had been completely uninhabited before the arrival of the Czechs, and that the Creator had reserved this land by an eternal decree for the Slavic people: no other people had any right there at all. The Slavic tribes, filtering into the land toward the end of the fifth century in small groups, gradually came to join into larger tribes soon distinguishable as Czechs, Moravians and Slovaks. Under these larger groupings these peoples have lived in this territory ever since.

The land of Czechoslovakia has a unique conformation. It stretches across Central Europe for about six hundred miles. It consists of three distinct sections, the easternmost and the westernmost parts joined by a slender neck. The western part is Bohemia, called by the native Slavs Czechy (Čechy), forming as it were the head of the body. Almost all the waters of Bohemia drain northwards into the watershed of the Moldau-Elbe, thence through Germany into the North Sea. On three sides Bohemia is cut off from Germany by a wall of well forested mountains at whose height even Cosmas wondered. The line of demarcation on the south, west and north is, for most of its length, drawn so sharply that the Czech-German border may be regarded as one of the oldest and most natural boundaries of the western world. But on the fourth side of Bohemia, that to the east, there are no real mountain barriers. On that side Bohemia merges smoothly into the second component part of the whole, Moravia, which, almost from the earliest period of their recorded contacts, has had a population closely related to the Czechs by blood, language and political organization. Like Bohemia, Moravia’s northern boundary is a mountain range, but to the south its boundary lies east and west across the gently rolling hill country north of the Danube. Most of the drainage of Moravia is into the Danube, thence into the Black Sea. Moravia forms a natural nexus between Bohemia and Slovakia, the eastern component of the whole. Slovakia lies between the banks of the middle Danube on the south and the eastern curve of the Carpathian range on the north. Here again these high mountains, majestic and rugged, form an almost insurmountable natural barrier between Slovakia and Poland. The southern slopes of these mountains reach down into the fertile Hungarian plains, inhabited since the ninth century by the Magyars, a race of Turco-Ugrian origin.

In this long and narrow territory, protected in part by the natural fortifications of high mountains, in part by their own racial consciousness, the Czechs and Slovaks have worked out their destinies. The beginnings of their story are lost in the dim dawn of antiquity, but today’s tragic chapter lies clear and vivid before our eyes.

In spite of their favorable position, however, these Slavic peoples were not completely free from the danger of invasion. Not long after their arrival they were exposed to such violent attacks that they were unable to stop them before the very center of their land had been reached. At such times the disadvantages of their division into small tribal groups was more evident than in times of peace. We hear of early efforts, on the part of some of the leaders of the better established tribes, to bring about some kind of unification in times of peace. Their motives may in all likelihood have been those of personal ambition and a desire to enhance their own power. But the Slav was an individualist, and it was a long time before there came into being any political organism which remotely resembled the modern state, or which was widely enough accepted to outlive the energy and sagacity of a single conquering founder.

The movement of these Slavic peoples as they expanded over the lands of Czechoslovakia was gradual. Those who came first seem to have been slowly pushed south and west from the mountain passes through the Carpathians. Those that went farther south and west, therefore, would appear to have been the longer in the land, and at the same time, the most venturesome. It is not surprising, then, that we find that life in the southern and less mountainous regions, along the Middle Danube, was more advanced and complicated than in the northern and more mountainous sections, where the primitive cultivation of the soil and the care of their herds was all that concerned the late Slavic arrivals from beyond the Carpathians.

In the gently rolling country along the Middle Danube there began, about a.d. 800, two perceptible movements toward unification of a considerable portion of the population and the creation of a political entity similar to surrounding states. One focal point of this process was Nitra in Slovakia, the seat of the Prince Pribina. The other was at soine unidentified place west of Nitra, where the Moravian prince Mojmir had his capital. In the struggles which are but inadequately explained by the scanty contemporary records, Mojmir succeeded in gaining the ascendancy. He was undoubtedly a person of great force and executive ability. His conquest has been given the name of the Great Moravian Empire, but it was a state which had neither clearly defined boundaries nor a sound internal organization. It was more like the vast so-called empires which, during the migration of the peoples, grew up only to collapse, than even the most loosely organized feudal state of Western Europe as we are accustomed to think of them. The territory of the Moravian Empire did not coincide exactly with that of modern Czechoslovakia. Czechy (Bohemia) was connected only very loosely and for a short time with Moravia, which looked rather to the south and east than to the north and west. Under the rule of the successors of Mojmir (d. 846), Rostislav (d. 870) and Svatopluk (d. 894)» Greater Moravia strengthened its internal organization and secured its position among the embryonic nations of Europe.

This growth in prestige was due not only to the powerful position of the princes but also to the Christianization of Moravia which took place under these princes. Though there had been German missionaries in the land, they had had almost no success, and Latin Christianity was destined to come to these western Slavs from Byzantium. Rostislav requested of the Byzantine emperor that Christian missionaries who knew the Slavic tongue might be sent. Two brothers, Cyril and Methodius, natives of Salonika, were sent in response to this request in 863, and later were to receive the support of the Roman papacy.

In the Moravian Empire tribes related by blood and language had gradually coalesced into some sort of unit, and there is no evidence which would justify us in distinguishing between Czechs and Slovaks at this early date. This empire was a noteworthy effort to create a Slavic state in Central Europe. Its significance is certainly not lessened by the fact that it was built up and maintained for more than a century by native Slavic initiative, unaided by external pressure or guidance. The death of Svatopluk in 894 came at a time when the Magyars had become somewhat settled in their new home, south and east of the Moravian domain. Until that time the Moravian Empire had easily defended itself against the sporadic incursions of the Frankish rulers, and there were periods when the relations between the Germanic Franks and the Moravian princes were amicable.

But a combination of circumstances made the turn of the century fateful for this Slav empire. The Magyars had occupied the fertile valleys of the Theiss and the Middle Danube. Svatopluk’s death was followed by a period of dissension in the ruling family, and the Frankish king Arnulf, an energetic and ambitious prince, sought Magyar help against Moravia. The southeastern borders of Moravia were not protected against Magyar invasion by any natural barriers such as the mountains to the north and west, and the task of defending both its southeastern and northwestern borders against superior forces put such strain upon the imperfect organization of the empire that it fell apart into its component parts. The Pfemyslid princes of Bohemia profited by the disintegration of the Moravian Empire to regain their independence and, as well, some territory that had been directly under the Moravian princes. To the east of Moravia, those Slavic peoples inhabiting what we have come since to call Slovakia, came under the dominance of the Magyars. The Slavic peoples of the western and southern branch were thus separated by a wedge of an alien non- Slavic, non-Indo-European race.

Those who have regarded Czechoslovakia as an entirely new state which arose unexpectedly out of the chaos into which the last world war threw all of Europe, may not realize that Europe's concern with the destiny of the Czechs and Slovaks was not completely novel in 1918, but that events which befell these two small peoples over one thousand years ago were of immense importance for the political development of all of Europe since that time. No sooner had Greater Moravia collapsed than there was a pressing need for these Slavs to build new foundations for the maintenance and development of their national life. Europe was then just recovering from the chaos into which it had been thrown by the disintegration of the Roman Empire and the inundation of romanized Europe by barbarian peoples. By the end of the first Christian millennium social and political patterns and national boundaries began to have some recognizable character. A new system of boundaries, in course of development for a long time, had by now assumed such fixity that the inhabitants had to adjust themselves to it or face destruction.

Three facts had particular and indeed determinative significance for the future of the Czechs and Slovaks. The first was the severance of their connection with the other Slavic peoples, later called South Slavs, who, after migrating from their northern habitat, gravitated by various routes to the south of the Danube into the mountains and valleys of the Balkan peninsula. Between these South Slavs on the one hand and the Slavic inhabitants of Czechoslovakia on the other, there was a two-fold barrier. In the first place, beginning with the seventh and eighth centuries, there were the German migrants who pushed from southern Germany down the Danube and thence, both north and south, into the mountainous regions, thus creating conditions leading to the establishment of the eastern marches (variously and with some confusion Ostmark, Steiermark and Pannonia), later and mo...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Original Half Title
• Original Title Page
• Original Copyright Page
• Note to the Second Edition
• Foreword
• Contents
• CHAPTER 1. INTRODUCTION
• CHAPTER 2. THE CZECH STATE AND THE HOLY ROMAN EMPIRE TO 1306
• CHAPTER 3. THE CZECH STATE, THE HOLY ROMAN AND THE AUSTRIAN EMPIRES: FROM THE LUXEMBURGERS TO 1867
• CHAPTER 4. THE CZECHOSLOVAKS AND THE HAPSBURGS TO THE WHITE MOUNTAIN
• CHAPTER 5. THE CZECH REFORMATION
• CHAPTER 6. THE CZECHOSLOVAKS AND THE HAPSBURGS AFTER THE WHITE MOUNTAIN
• CHAPTER 7. CZECH AND GERMAN: ACTION, REACTION AND INTERACTION
• CHAPTER 8. THE GERMANS IN BOHEMIA FROM MARIA THERESA TO 1918
• CHAPTER 9. THE RENAISSANCE OF THE CZECH PEOPLE: TO 1867
• CHAPTER 10. CZECH NATIONALISM IN THE PRE-WAR YEARS: 1867 TO 1914
• CHAPTER 11. THE SLOVAKS
• CHAPTER 12. THE STRUGGLE FOR CZECH AND SLOVAK INDEPENDENCE: 1914-1918. THE BEGINNINGS
• CHAPTER 13. THE STRUGGLE FOR CZECH AND SLOVAK INDEPENDENCE: 1914-1918. FINAL PHASES
• CHAPTER 14. BUILDING A STATE: INTERNAL AFFAIRS 1918-1938
• CHAPTER 15. FOREIGN RELATIONS: 1918-1935
• CHAPTER 16. MUNICH TO THE IDES OF MARCH
• CHAPTER 17. OCCUPATION, LIBERATION AND THE COUP, 1939-1948
• RULERS OF THE LANDS OF CZECHOSLOVAKIA
• GENERAL BIBLIOGRAPHY
• INDEX