ABSTRACT
At the time of its establishment on 14 March 1939, it had been clear for several months that the Slovak State would be neither democratic nor independent. On the contrary, following the Munich conference at the end of September 1938, an authoritarian regime with increasingly strong fascist elements started to form in the Czech lands and particularly in Slovakia, where—following the declaration of autonomy on 6 October 1938—power was seized by Hlinka’s Slovak People’s Party (Hlinkova slovenská ľudová strana – HSĽS). 2 The accession of new power in Slovakia was accompanied by an almost immediate ban on left-wing and Jewish parties. The other political parties gradually had to unite, or rather merge, with the HSĽS. The elimination of democratic “holdovers” from the interwar First Czechoslovak Republic (1918–1938) continued. In the first election to the Slovak autonomous assembly, taking place on 18 December 1938, voters could vote only for or against a single list of candidates put forth by Hlinka’s Slovak People’s Party, which presented itself as the sole lawful representative of the Slovak nation. During the regime’s fascistization (in what is called “an era of Slovak National Socialism”) starting in the summer of 1940, the role of the parliament was gradually downgraded, political and public pluralism completely eliminated, and finally, in October 1942, the leadership (“Führer”) system was introduced. Initially, this process was accompanied merely by a verbal pillorying of the former Czechoslovak governing parties and their political agendas; anti-Jewish, anti-Czechoslovak (anti-Czech), and generally anti-democratic propaganda; the forced eviction of most Czechs from Slovakia; and the regime also took measures to suppress the anti-regime sentiment in the Evangelical (Lutheran) Church, which had a reserved, even oppositional attitude to the Catholic HSĽS. In Slovakia, the anti-fascist public politics from the era of the First Czechoslovak Republic was replaced with an almost unlimited collaboration with Nazi Germany, including Slovakia’s participation in a campaign against Slavic Poland and, in particular, against the Soviet Union.
