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Czechoslovakia World War I
At the outbreak of World War I, the Czechs and Slovaks showed
little enthusiasm for fighting for their respective enemies, the
Germans and the Hungarians, against fellow Slavs, the Russians
and the Serbs. Large numbers of Czechs and Slovaks defected on
the Russian front and formed the Czechoslovak Legion. Masaryk
went to western Europe and began propagating the idea that the
Austro-Hungarian Empire should be dismembered and that
Czechoslovakia should be an independent state. In 1916, together
with Eduard Benes and Milan Stefanik (a Slovak war hero), Masaryk
created the Czechoslovak National Council. Masaryk in the United
States and Benes in France and Britain worked tirelessly to gain
Allied recognition. When secret talks between the Allies and
Austrian emperor Charles I (1916-18) collapsed, the Allies
recognized, in the summer of 1918, the Czechoslovak National
Council as the supreme organ of a future Czechoslovak government.
In early October 1918, Germany and Austria proposed peace
negotiations. On October 18, while in the United States, Masaryk
issued a declaration of Czechoslovak independence. Masaryk
insisted that the new Czechoslovak state include the historic
Bohemian Kingdom, containing the German-populated Sudetenland. On
October 21, however, German deputies from the Sudetenland joined
other German and Austrian deputies in the Austrian parliament in
declaring an independent German-Austrian state. Following the
abdication of Emperor Charles on November 11, Czech troops
occupied the Sudetenland.
Hungary withdrew from the Hapsburg Empire on November 1. The
new liberal-democratic government of Hungary under Count Michael
Karolyi attempted to retain Slovakia. With Allied approval, the
Czechs occupied Slovakia, and the Hungarians were forced to
withdraw. The Czechs and Allies agreed on the Danube and Ipel'
rivers as the boundary between Hungary and Slovakia; a large
Hungarian minority, occupying the fertile plain of the Danube,
would be included in the new state
(see
fig. 6).
Data as of August 1987
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