Slovak Republic (1939–1945)

The Slovak Republic of 1939 to 1945 was a client state of Nazi Germany, created on 14 March 1939 when the Slovak half of Czechoslovakia declared independence a day before German troops occupied Bohemia and Moravia. It was formally called the Slovak State until July 1939, when the name Slovak Republic was adopted. Bratislava became the capital, and the state was run as a one-party system by Hlinka's Slovak People's Party under Jozef Tiso. Its territory covered most of present-day Slovakia but excluded the southern strip ceded to Hungary after the Vienna Award of 1938. Slovakia joined the Axis by signing the Tripartite Pact in 1940, and its army took part in the invasions of Poland in 1939 and the Soviet Union in 1941. The regime is chiefly remembered for the persecution of its Jewish citizens: some 58,000 were deported in 1942, and about 69,000 of the 89,000 Slovak Jews were killed. Domestic opposition culminated in the Slovak National Uprising of 1944, which was crushed, but partisan resistance continued. The republic collapsed when Soviet forces took the country in April 1945, and its territory was reabsorbed into the restored Czechoslovak Republic.