Crisis over Czechoslovakia

Nationalities in inter-war Czechoslovakia

Although formed as a Czechoslovak nation state in 1918, the new republic also contained within its borders several national minorities, the most numerous being the "Sudeten Germans". The Paris Peace Conference at the end of the First World War sanctioned their inclusion for a combination of strategic, economic and historical reasons. Though not free from ethnic tensions, the nationalities lived in relative harmony until the onset of the economic depression and Hitler's consequent coming to power in neighbouring Germany in the early 1930s. Within the Czechoslovak group itself, tensions also became evident as perceptions of Czech domination fuelled the development of Slovak autonomist and separatist tendencies.

Census of 1930:

[Source: V S Mamatey and R Luza (eds.), A History of the Czechoslovak Republic, 1918-1948 (Princeton, 1973), p. 40.]