Benes & Masaryk: Czechoslovakia

Erscheinungsjahr 2011
ISBN: 978-1-905791-72-9
Verlag: Haus Pub.

Buch, Englisch, 210 Seiten, Format (B × H): 134 mm x 205 mm, Gewicht: 428 g

Reihe: Makers of the Modern World

Toma Masaryk, a Czech professor of philosophy and a future leader of his people, was hard at work within a month of the outbreak of first world war lobbying in Paris and London for an independent Bohemia, still a major component of the Austrian Empire within the Austro-Hungarian monarchy, which would incorporate the predominantly Slovak regions of northern Hungary. Masaryk was assisted in his efforts by Eduard Bene, a bitter enemy of the Habsburgs. Thus the new state was effectively shaped before the Paris Peace Conference. But the Conference laid down the seeds of Czechoslovakia's later destruction. Only nine million Czechoslovaks lived in the state out of a population of fourteen million. A large discontented Hungarian minority lived in Slovakia, and the Polish majority area of Teschen poisoned Czech-Polish relations. Yet the greatest challenge came from the rise of the Nazis in Germany in the 1930s: Masaryk always claimed that he did not want three and half million ethnic Germans, but he and Bene accepted them nonetheless. Masaryk died in 1937, and Britain and France would not support the Czechs over the Sudetenland, the infamous deal struck in Munich by Neville Chamberlain and Adolf Hitler.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Neville, Peter

Über Autor(innen)

Neville, Peter
Peter Neville is a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society. He has a special research interest in Vietnamese History and British Appeasement policy in the 1930s.

Peter Neville is a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society. He has a special research interest in Vietnamese History and British Appeasement policy in the 1930s.