First Czechoslovak Republic

The First Czechoslovak Republic, the First Republic for short, was the democratic state of Czechs and Slovaks, a compound of Czech and Slovak that lived from 1918 to 1938 between Germany, Austria, Hungary, Romania, Poland and the Soviet shadow. Out of Austria-Hungary's wreckage Masaryk, Beneš and Štefánik pieced Bohemia, Moravia, a corner of Silesia, Upper Hungary's Slovakia and Carpathian Ruthenia into one parliamentary roof on 28 October 1918 in Prague, Czech industry paying for Slovak fields and the Danube carrying both. Three million Sudeten Germans, a Hungarian south and Ruthenian highlanders strained a constitution that nonetheless held while every neighbour fell to dictators: after 1933 Prague alone in Central Europe voted freely. Hitler worked the Sudeten minority through Henlein, Chamberlain and Daladier signed them away at Munich on 30 September 1938, Hungary took the Slovak south, Poland the Trans-Olza corner, and the First Republic died of amputation; the Second lasted to March 1939.