Word: czechs
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Dates: during 1930-1939
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...Czechs enjoyed independence under their own rulers from the tenth to the early 16th Century. At that time they gradually were subjected to Habsburg domination and in 1620, the Czech nobles were wiped out at the Battle of the White Mountain. Over a thousand years ago the Slovaks had been beaten into submission by the Hungarian Magyars. Through the centuries these peoples, like the Poles and the Irish, kept alive their national culture, agitated for liberation. The World War and Woodrow Wilson gave them their chance. Three Czech patriots actually achieved the nation's independence: gaunt, bearded Philosophy Professor...
Masaryk, Czechoslovakia's No. 1 George Washington, dreamed, wrote and taught a Czech national state during his university careers in Vienna and Prague. When the World War broke out, with a death sentence over his head, he shuttled between London, Paris. Russia, raising money and sympathy for his unborn nation. His assistant, Eduard Benes, meanwhile, faked passports, forged visas for Czech conspirators, escaped to Switzerland, then Paris where he and Masaryk set up a pre-natal National Council. The Allies were more than willing to foster a separatist movement in the heart of the Central Powers...
...Treaty of St. Germain, set the boundaries for the new nation. To give Czecho-Slovakia a natural barrier which would serve to halt a German push to the east, the Allies, pressed by France and England, forwent strict interpretation of the principle of self-determination and recognized the Czech claim to the Sudeten region, largely populated by Germans. Also included within the frontiers was a small Polish minority in Silesia, a larger Hungarian minority in south Slovakia and the inhabitants of Carpathian Ruthenia, formerly under Hungarian rule, who requested union with the new nation. Thus, Czechoslovakia today (see map) includes...
...most concrete, practical form, this was the democracy the Allies had said they were fighting for. It was also an ethnological and linguistic hodgepodge and to make it work was the job of the Czech majority and its leaders. The leaders tackled it with enthusiasm and ability. For 18 years the republic was headed...
...University he became a pupil of Masaryk, drank in his ideas for a Czech state. Later, as professor of sociology, he continued his master's teachings through a secret nationalist society. Soon after the outbreak of the War, his underground activities were discovered, and he fled to join Masaryk in Switzerland. There pupil and master drafted their sales-talks to the Allies...