Czechia, formerly known as the Czech Republic, is a landlocked country in Central Europe that united with Slovakia after the fall of the Austro-Hungarian Empire during the First World War. After France stabbed Czechoslovakia in the back with the signing of the Munich Agreement in 1938, the Nazis swiftly invaded Czech territory and annexed the Sudetenland, a region with a high ethnic German population, while Slovakia was turned into a puppet state.
.The Germans felt that the Czechs were suitable for Germanization because they were generally viewed as belonging to the Aryan race. During the six-year Nazi occupation, living standards in the country were comparable and in some cases even higher than in Germany. But, the Nazis were still fascists and strictly suppressed freedom of speech and expression and banned the Czech language altogether. 20,000 civilians were systematically executed, thousands more perished in concentration camps, and 400,000 were forced into hard labor. Even though persecution was relatively mild compared to the other countries affected by the war, German resentment remained high and reached a tipping point near the end of the war in May 1945 with the Prague Uprising.
As the United States and other Allied powers chose to observe rather than intervene, the insurgents engaged in brutal urban warfare with the Nazis for three days until Soviet forces arrived and fully liberated the city. When news spread to exiled Czechoslovak president Edvard Beneš in London, citizens were encouraged to discriminate and commit acts of violence against ethnic Germans because, according to them, future deportations would be a much more difficult task. A wave of terror was unleashed, with many killed and others placed in internment camps.
The State Security (ŠtB) was formed after the Second World War and allowed the government to function as a totalitarian state and operated one of the most effective espionage and record-keeping systems compared to the others in the Iron Curtain. Leaving the country was criminalized in 1948 when the Communists gained total control of the government. Even though an estimated 200,000 thousand people escaped, many more were caught and severely punished with harsh prison sentences.
From 1948 - 1989, there were 200,000 people who successfully escaped. According to the Communist Museum, 285 confirmed deaths along the country’s border with Austria, 145 of whom were shot by border guards (who received a new watch and a vacation), and 100 more electrocuted.
The Communist Party of Czechoslovakia (KSČ) reached peak popularity in 1946 but lost major support the next year after party leader Klement Gottwald was ordered by Stalin to reject the Marshall Plan aid that was scheduled to arrive in 1948. Realizing that the elections were not going to work out in Stalin’s favor, he ordered Gottwald to stage a coup against Beneš, who died from existing health problems a few months later.
Stalin’s orders significantly altered the course of history. The Iron Curtain was solidified. Dwindling diplomatic relations between the West and the Soviets were shut down completely. Not only did it accelerate the signing of the Marshall Plan, but it gave the Pentagon reasons to lobby Congress for an increased military budget that Truman originally pledged to keep at $15 billion. The Western Union Defense Organization was formed two months later and, because of the Truman Doctrine, asked the United States to form a military alliance that would eventually form NATO in 1949.
The Communists began the de-Stalinization reforms after his death in 1953 and liberalization reforms started gaining popularity over the next fifteen years. Alexander Dubček was elected First Secretary in January 1968 and began e a series of liberal culture and economic reforms as protestors demanded rights such as freedom of the press, the freedom to travel, a restructuring of the KSČ, and steps towards a more market-based economy by opening up trade with the West. The Soviets condemned the reforms, perceiving them as threats against the communist ideology. For eight months, the KSČ underwent a series of negotiation attempts, but no agreements could be made and the Kremlin ordered Warsaw Pact troops from the USSR, Bulgaria, Poland, and Hungary to be deployed. The Czech borders were inundated by 250,000 troops, with another 250,000 arriving later. The Czechoslovak People’s Army was outmanned and had no clear chain of command. Dubček called on his people to resist. 137 Czechoslovak citizens were killed while most chose forms of passive resistance and attempted to win over the invading troops by engaging in discourse over the importance of liberal reformation.
Dubček and several of his colleagues were arrested, flown to Moscow, and forced to sign legislation repealing the reforms. Even though he remained in power, paranoia, and discontent grew amongst politicians who were hard critics of the Soviets. The aftermath of the invasion resulted in global condemnation and the withdrawal of Romania and Albania from the Warsaw Pact, which both refused orders to invade. Emigration to the West and Yugoslavia surged as the authoritarian wing of the KSČ was strengthened and emboldened.
Twenty-one years later, over the course of eleven days in November 1989, mass protests organized by students began in Prague and Bratislava and word quickly spread around the country in what became known as the Velvet Revolution. The protests were to express discontent over the authoritarian regime on the 50th anniversary of International Students Day, commemorating when Nazis stormed universities in Prague in 1939 and either killed or sent many students to concentration camps. Approximately half a million protestors took to the streets the next day, demanding liberal reforms. Protests and worker strikes eventually galvanized the government to accept the demands and transition to a market economy under a multiparty parliamentary republic.
Czechoslovakia came to an amicable split on December 31, 1992. Today, the capital city of Prague is a major hotspot for tourism and nightlife, receiving almost nine million tourists annually. The country has a strong economy and ranks much higher in terms of press freedom compared to the United States. The two most popular cities are Prague, of course, and Brno to the south.