Czech Republic is an independent nation in Eastern Europe. With the capital city of Prague, Czech Republic 2020 population is estimated at 10,708,992 according to countryaah. Bohemia and Moravia are among the first populated areas of Europe. The Grand Moorish empire that was formed in the 8th century also included parts of Bohemia. Extensive German immigration took place in the 12th and 13th centuries. From the 16th century until the end of the First World War, the area was part of the Habsburg Empire. In 1918, the independent state of Czechoslovakia was proclaimed, including the present Slovakia. During World War II, Bohemia and the Moravia were occupied by Germany.
AbbreviationFinder.org: Comprehensive guide to and popular abbreviations of Czech Republic, covering history, economy, and social conditions.
Bohemia and Moravia are among the oldest settlements in Europe. At the beginning of our era, Bohemia was populated by Celtic tribes. Then came the Germans, who in turn were succeeded by Slavic people. The Slavs, among them the Czechs, are believed to have immigrated between 500 and 700 AD. For Czech Republic political system, please check computerminus.
During the 800s, the Moravia formed the core of a large West Slavic kingdom, the Stormähriska kingdom, which also included Bohemia and parts of present-day Slovakia, Poland and Hungary. At the same time, Bohemia and Moravia began to become Christians. At the beginning of the 9th century, the kingdom fell apart when the Magyars (Hungarians) streamed in and conquered Slovakia. From this time until 1918, Czechs and Slovaks lived politically and culturally separate.
The Czech prince dynasty, the Přemyslides, formed a duchy in the 9th century with Prague as the center. The Premyslides recognized the German emperor as head. In the 11th century, the Moravians were incorporated into the Bohemian Empire, after which the two territories largely had a common history. Many Germans immigrated in the 12th and 13th centuries. During the German-Roman emperor Charles IV (1346–1378), Prague became the center of a great empire and experienced a cultural flourishing.
In the 15th century, the Hussites (see Religion) fought for increased national and religious independence vis-à-vis the German emperor and the papal church. The Hushitic peasant armies were successful for a long time, but were eventually weakened by internal divisions. After the Hittite wars (1420–1433), the forces of the imperial power no longer met any resistance.
In 1526, Bohemia and the Moravia together with Silesia came under the rule of the Habsburg House. This Central European multinational monarchy, which had its base in Austria, existed for almost four centuries.
In 1618, contradictions between Bohemian Protestants and the Catholic Kingdom led to an uprising that became the beginning of the Thirty Years War. In the battle of the White Mountain outside Prague in 1620, the Bohemian-Moorish army was defeated and the country became Catholic with violence.
At the end of the war, Swedish forces entered the bourgeoisie in Prague, but they never entered the old city. The Swedish war was rich, among other things, the statues were taken from Wallenstein’s palace, which today stands in Drottningholm Palace Park outside Stockholm and the Silver Bible, which is located in the University Library in Uppsala. After the destruction of the Thirty Years War, the Czechs, with the exception of an uprising in Prague in 1848, lived largely peacefully under the rule of the Habsburgs until 1918.
The Bohemian countries (Bohemia, Moravia and Silesia) eventually became the most industrialized part of the Habsburg Empire. During the 18th and 19th centuries, Austria sought to further explore these areas. The counter-reaction came in the form of a growing national movement. But despite the social, economic and cultural upswing of the 19th century, the Czechs remained politically weak.
In connection with the outbreak of the First World War, the nationalist movement was radicalized, and after the collapse of Austria-Hungary in the autumn of 1918, Czechoslovakia was proclaimed October 28 as an independent state. Slovakia joined two days later and the following year, the so-called Carpathian Rutenia in the east was also incorporated. Tomáš Masaryk became the first president of Czechoslovakia.
The interwar period was stable and successful for the new state. Most of the old Habsburg industry was in Czechoslovakian territory. The country had a democratic constitution and a parliamentary system of government. But the Slovaks were dissatisfied with the dominance of the Czechs and the centralized regime. The new state leader had not dared to give autonomy to the Slovaks, because it was feared that the German people of Bohemia would also demand self-government and that the country would then be divided.
After the Nazis seized power in Berlin in 1933, the contradictions to Germany intensified. Several in the German population (Sudanese) collaborated with the Nazis in Germany. In 1938 Hitler demanded that the Sudanese territories be incorporated with Germany. Under pressure from the Germans, Britain and France signed in September 1938 under the Munich Agreement, agreeing to the Czechoslovakia cut. Areas where more than half of the population were Germans came to Germany. Later Poland also took a small land area in the northern Moravia, while Hungary after the same pattern received large parts of southern Slovakia where the majority of the population was of Hungarian origin.
The Germans did not settle for the Sudanese territories: on March 15, 1939 Hitler allowed the rest of Bohemia and the Moravia to be converted into a German protectorate, the Bohemian Moravia. The day before, with Hitler’s support, Slovakia had declared itself an independent state. The leader of the new Slovak state became the priest Jozef Tiso, whose strong nationalist party with fascist-Catholic overtones as early as November 1938 had become the only one allowed in Slovakia.
Shortly after the outbreak of World War II, protests against the occupation power followed by German terror in Bohemia-Moravia occurred. An organized resistance movement arose and in London an exile government was led by Edvard Beneš. He had taken office as president in 1935, but left the country in the fall of 1938. Beneš collaborated with the Czechoslovak Communist leadership located in Moscow. Following an attack on the German national protector in 1942, the Nazis’ reprisals culminated, among other things with the annihilation of the village of Lidice near Prague.
Soviet troops invaded Slovakia in October 1944 and US forces in western Bohemia in April 1945.
