Czechoslovakia

History

Forefather Čech and Princess Libuše's Prophecy of Prague

According to Bohemian legend, Forefather Čech led his Slavic tribe to Mount Říp to settle the fertile basin, and generations later the prophetic princess Libuše stood on a cliff above the Vltava River and envisioned a city 'whose glory will touch the stars'—founding Prague and marrying the plowman Přemysl to begin the first native dynasty. Upon the collapse of Austria-Hungary in 1918, Czechs and Slovaks united under philosopher-president Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk to establish the Czechoslovak Republic.

Central Europe's Industrial Democracy

Throughout the interwar period, Czechoslovakia remained the only functioning parliamentary democracy in Central and Eastern Europe. Inheriting the industrial heartland of the Habsburg monarchy—including the renowned Škoda Works—it became one of the world's leading exporters of tanks and artillery, protected by a formidable ring of border fortifications along the Sudeten mountains.

The Munich Agreement and Allied Resistance

In September 1938, the Munich Agreement signed by Britain, France, Italy, and Nazi Germany - The totalitarian German state ruled by Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party from 1933 to 1945, which initiated World War II in Europe. forced Czechoslovakia to cede its fortified Sudetenland borderlands, leaving the country defenseless when German troops occupied Prague in March 1939. President Edvard Beneš established a government-in-exile in London; Czechoslovak pilots and soldiers distinguished themselves on both the Western and Eastern Fronts, and in 1942 exiled paratroopers carried out Operation Anthropoid in Prague, eliminating Reich Protector Reinhard Heydrich and securing Allied repudiation of the Munich Agreement.