ABSTRACT
Czechoslovakia as a political entity did not come into being until 1918, but the lands comprising modern-day Czechoslovakia have a rich history reaching back many centuries. The Kingdom of Hungary that was formally established by the crowning of the Magyar prince István at the beginning of the eleventh century incorporated much of the former Moravian territory, including all of modern-day Slovakia. The Slavic peoples of this territory, the ancestors of the modern Slovaks, were thereby separated politically from those of the western territories, the Czechs, for most of the time between the collapse of Moravia and the formation of Czechoslovakia in 1918. Charles IV founded the first university in central Europe, an institution that bears his name in socialist Czechoslovakia. In 1924 Czechoslovakia signed a mutual defense treaty with France, obviously meant as protection against a resurgent Germany. In Czechoslovakia, pro-Hitler elements among the Sudeten Germans founded the Sudeten German Homeland Front in 1933, renamed the Sudeten German Party.
