Czechoslovak Republic (1918–1938)

Czechoslovak Republic Československá republika (Czech) Česko-slovenská republika (Slovak)
The flag of Czechoslovakia, from 1920 to 1938.
Capital and largest city	Prague
Official languages	Czechoslovak
Common languages	Czechoslovak (Czech · Slovak), German, Hungarian, Polish, Romani, Rusyn, Yiddish
Dominant mode of production	Capitalism

The (First) Czechoslovak Republic was a binational, multi-ethnic bourgeois democratic state in Central Europe that existed during the Interwar Period. It was proclaimed by the Czechoslovak National Council in 1918 following the dissolution of Austria-Hungary. In 1938, with Britain and France's grace, much of Czechoslovakia's territory was forcibly ceded over to Nazi Germany via the Munich Agreement, with Hungary and Poland also occupying parcels of land. This resulted in a major political crisis in Czechoslovakia and the resignation of then-President Edvard Beneš, thereby ending the First Republic.

History

Throughout the 1930s, sensing that a German invasion was imminent, Czechoslovakia began to militarise, sparking the construction of a line of fortifications along the German border. They built pillboxes, machine gun nests, and anti-tank obstacles. They also began developing their own small arms, tanks, and artillery pieces.

During the early stages of the Second World War, many of these Czechoslovak guns, tanks, artillery pieces, and anti-tank obstacles (e.g. the "Czech hedgehog") were used by Nazi Germany or sold to neighbouring countries such as Romania and the Soviet Union.

Munich Agreement

In May 1938, Nazi Germany concentrated its troops on the Czechoslovak border. On 30 September, after nearly two weeks of an undeclared border war between the Sudeten German Freikorps (a terrorist organisation funded by the German Army) and the Czechoslovak state, British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain and French Prime Minister Édouard Daladier met in Munich with German leader Adolf Hitler. Without any input from Czechoslovakia itself, they agreed that Germany could annex the Sudetenland, a region of Czechoslovakia inhabited primarily by ethnic Germans. The Czechoslovak leadership had no choice but to go along with this decision.

International reaction

In response to the German buildup along the Czechoslovak border, the Soviet Union sent 40 divisions to Czechoslovakia's western border and called up 330,000 reservists. After the Munich Agreement was made, Stalin offered to defend the rest of Czechoslovakia in the event of a German invasion, but Czechoslovakia declined the offer.