Since 1526, the Czechoslovak lands of Bohemia, Moravia, and Slovakia were all under Hapsburg rule until 1918.  The Slovak population was mostly under serfdom, were not considered members of a political nation, and had no political influence.  The Moravians had a poorly developed national consciousness, made few demands, and were left to live in tranquility.  Finally, the Bohemian Kingdom proved to cause the most trouble for the Hapsburgs, as they were ready to fight for their liberties.  The conflict between the Bohemians and the Hapsburg rule was laced with ethnic and religious differences and the struggle for the preservation of Czech institutions.  Czechoslovak nationalism slowly began to spur and found an institutional foundation with the creation of the Museum of the Bohemian Kingdom in 1818.  The Museum served as a Czech cultural center, and began publication of a nationalist journal in 1827.  The major figure of the Czech nationalist revival was a Moravian named Frantisek Palacky, who wrote an extensive History of the Czech People, focusing on the struggles of the Czechoslovaks under Hapsburg rule.  Palacky soon became a political leader, basing his platform on Czech nationalism, during the revolutionary struggle of 1848.
    On October 28th, 1918, Czechoslovakia declared its independence from centuries of control under the Hapsburg Empire.  During World War I, it became obvious the Empire would not be able to continue the war and that its loss meant a real opportunity for Czech independence.  At the end of the war, before the Bolshevik government took power in November 1917, a Czech Army Corps (known as the Czechoslovak Legion) was still settled in Russia and battled against the Bolsheviks.  The Allies were thus forced to acknowledge the Corps as an Allied army and to give recognition to the Czechoslovak political representatives.  By 1918, Czech independence was no longer a dream: the National Committee in Prague proclaimed the independence, which the Allies immediately recognized as legitimate, and the new state of Czechs and Slovaks was established.
     The interwar period in Czechoslovakia is characterized by a need to establish a legitimate government and indisputable frontiers.  The constitution of 1920 conceived the Czechoslovak state as a parliamentary democracy with a National Assembly consisting of the Senate and the Chamber of Deputies, which in turn elect a president every 7 years.  Czechoslovakia's first president, Masaryk, was responsible for holding the nation's new democratic system.  The constitution also established universal suffrage, provided for a central government with high control of local government, established Czech and Slovak as official languages, and assured special protection to national minorities.  The party system remained relatively stable throughout the interwar period: a coalition between five Czechoslovak parties became the backbone of the government.  The coalition, called the Petka ("The Five"), was headed by Antonin Svehla and consisted of the Republican Party of Farmers and Peasants, the Czechoslovak Social Democratic Party, the Czechoslovak National Socialist Party, the Czechoslovak Populist Party, and the Czechoslovak National Democratic Party.  Svehla's party, the Republican Party of Farmers and Peasants, was the primary voice for peasants and was the core of all coalitions between 1922 and 1938.  Concerning the formation of indisputable frontiers, first was the case of the German districts of Bohemia and Moravia, which proclaimed their independence and called themselves Deutschböhmen (German Bohemia) and Sudetenland.  The Czech government had but to send some troops to both districts and re-annex the regions.  Second, Hungary tried to invade and annex Slovakia, yet this invasion was hastily blocked and Slovakia was completely incorporated in the Republic.  Finally, Polish forces occupied the Tesin in area of Moravia in November 1918.  By January 1919, the Czech army drove the Poles out and in 1920 both sides accepted Allied arbitration and the area was divided between the new states.
     Czechoslovakia's was in relative political stability throughout the 1920’s and early 1930’s, in part due to the solid administration and tradition long established from the Hapsburg Monarchy.  The main cause of conflict in the new Republic was the national minority problem, especially concerning the German population in the Sudetenland.  Although the constitution of 1920 guaranteed their rights, the conflict with Sudeten Germans escalated as a result of the economic hardships of the Sudeten industry as a result of the Great Depression, especially in 1931 when the banks in Germany failed.  Czechs who concentrated on consumer goods suffered less from the depression, thus creating tension between both populations.  During the depression years, German nationalists joined either the German National Party or the Sudeten Nazi Party, yet after Hitler was elected Chancellor of Germany on January, 1933, the Czechoslovak government was prompt in suppressing both parties.  On October, 1933, Konrad Henlein created a new political organization called the Sudeten German Party (SdP)  and embarked on a propaganda campaign to spread German nationalism.  Henlein maintained contact with Nazi Germany and by 1937 most SdP leaders supported Hitler's pan-German objectives, which in turn made the separation of the Sudetenland from Czechoslovakia easier for Hitler to accomplish.  On September 29th, 1938, in Munich, the Great Powers agreed to Hitler's demands of annexing Czech territory and the Sudeten districts were separated from Czechoslovakia.  After this treaty, Hungary and Poland took the initiative and annexed their desired territories from the Czechs and the Slovaks.  Thus, Czechoslovakia lost significant territory and resources to Germany, Poland, and Hungary before World War II.
     Shortly after this, in October 1938, President Edvard Beneš resigned and went into exile in Britain, where he established the Czechoslovak National Committee and struggled to achieve Allied recognition.  Finally, on July 24th, 1940 the Czechoslovak government-in-exile was internationally recognized.  Back in Czechoslovakia, the Nazis upheld the puppet government of Emil Hácha and declared Slovak independence.  They extended military occupation and established a German Protectorate by 1939, led first by Protector Baron von Neurath and later, in 1941, by S.S. Reinhard Heydrich.  Under Heydrich, more repressive measures were taken against potential resistors: the Czech government was periodically and thoroughly purged; the constitution was abolished, the party system was suspended, and communists were barred; some 36,000 to 55,000 professionals and intellectuals were executed or died in concentration camps; Czech Jews were deported east to extermination camps in Poland; censorship was heavily imposed.
     On May 27th, 1942, Heydrich was ambushed and severely wounded by Czech assassins, and died on June 4th.  Later in the year, Beneš convinced the British government to repudiate the Munich agreement, thus promising a return of the Sudeten districts and, consequently, of the territories annexed by Hungary and Poland.  On November 1943, the so-called “Christmas Program” hoped to reunite the (then independent) Czech and Slovak states under the guidance of the Soviet Union.  The Treaty of Friendship, Mutual Aid, and Postwar Cooperation was signed between the Soviet Union and Czechoslovakia on December of the same year.
     By the end of World War II, Czechoslovakia suffered about 400 thousand casualties, including civilians and troops.  The territory involved in the Munich Agreement of 1938 was returned to its prewar boundaries and the only territory lost was the easternmost part of the country (the Carpatho-Ukraine), which the Soviet Union annexed in 1944.  On April 3rd, 1945, President Beneš arrived in Košice, accompanied by influential Communists from Moscow, to form the new government of the liberated Republic.

RESOURCES
Bradley, J.F.N.  Czechoslovakia: A Short History.  Edinburgh:  Edinburgh University Press, 1971.
Hermann, A.H.  A History of the Czechs.  London:  Penguin Books Ltd, 1975.
Rothschild, Joseph., Nancy M. Wingfield.  Return to Diversity: A Political History of East Central Europe Since World War II.  New York:  Oxford University Press, 2000.