Czechoslovakia in WW2

Czechoslovakia was born at the end of World War I thanks to the tireless efforts of one individual, Thomas Masaryk, who convinced the Allies to accept the unification of Slavic populations at the northern edge of the Austro-Hungarian Empire: Bohemians, Moravians, Slovaks and Ruthenians.

This would prove highly successful in the short term, but catastrophic a few years later, when its more powerful neighbours would shred that country into pieces. While Czechoslovakia remained a democratic state all the way until 1938, its large ethnic minorities, in particular Germans and Hungarians, never fully accepted their fate and conspired with Hitler's Germany and Horty's Hungary to dismantle the country. The Sudeten joined the German Reich, Ruthenia and Southern Slovakia fell under Hungarian control, and Bohemia-Moravia and Slovakia formed two separate entities that were under German domination.

This map shows the complex redistricting of Czechoslovakia during World War II. It would be re-established at the end of the war, without its Ruthenian region, and lasted until 1993, when it was divided into the Czech Republic and Slovakia.

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