How did Czechoslovakia become independent in 1918? Well that happened towards the end
of October when the Austro-Hungarian Empire, where Czechoslovakia was part of before, was crumbling
and a key figure in this was Tomáš Masaryk. How did this all happen is what you will learn today!
Hey good to have you back on the channel. If you're new: I'm Stefan; I'm a Dutch history teacher. I
like to cover history on location as I'm now in Prague, Czech Republic. If you find this on
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Czech Republic (or Czechia) and Slovakia was for centuries under Habsburg rule. When
World War One broke out the Habsburg monarchy, the Austro-Hungarian Empire was together with Germany
fighting against the Entente: Russia, France and Britain. Now initially the war started as a
local conflict on the Balkan, although so it seemed... however due to the alliances the conflict widened
and global powers were pitted against each other. An expected quick victory was not achieved and a
drawn-out trench war it became. Germans that were living in the Czech lands supported the war but
Czech and Slovaks opposed it since they did not want to fight against fellow Slavs: Serbians and
later Russians. “Starting with the provocation of singing Czech patriotic songs, efforts to
avoid mobilization, these expressions went as far as desertion from the front-line and the formation of military units fighting on the side of the Entente against the Central Powers.
At first it was only a few individuals, but from April, 1915, larger units comprised largely of Czech soldiers began to surrender, especially to Russian forces.”
As the war progressed essential
goods became scars for the population due to the war blockade. The Dual Monarchy had to rely on its
own agricultural production and this production was declining as many men were sent to the front
line. In the spring of 1915 a rationing system of food coal and textile was put in place; on
a political level political rights and freedom of citizens were limited. Many Czech politicians were
subject to persecution; a military bureaucratic dictatorship within the making. Voices in Vienna
were raised to incorporate the Czech lands into a unified German Central Europe. This was published
in the 1915 Eastern program; this caused much resentment among the Czech population and as
for the Slovaks there was not much enthusiasm either: they too faced censorship, arrest and
physical violence on occasion. Members of the Slovak League already decided in 1914 that a
union with the Czechs was the best option for them. As the Austro-Hungarian Empire was crumbling the
establishment of an independent Czechoslovakia seemed to be a viable option. A key person in
this was Tomáš Masaryk. In the decades before the war he wrote about Czech autonomy and the future of
the Czechs in the Austro-Hungarian Empire. In the mid-1890s he had addressed the political
and historical status of the Czech lands in his work named the Czech Question. A defining element
was a cultural struggle against German influences. “Masaryk also questioned the pan-Slavic and Slavophile
traditions that led many of his predecessors and colleagues to view czarist Russia as a desirable
alternative to the Germans and Austrians. It was Masaryk’s belief that in a very realistic sense,
Czech links to the Russians and other Slavonic peoples were far less substantial than those
to the peoples of the West, especially the French and the Germans, from whom the Czechs had learned so much over the centuries.”
In the years leading up to the WW1 Masaryk believed that
there was no future for the Czechs within the Austro-Hungarian Empire but for many
Czechs it was an Impossible dream: even if the Austro-Hungarian Empire would somehow collapse
they expected that their lands would be part of the German Empire. Eventually Masaryk in 1915
he left for Britain and from there he strived for an independent Czechoslovakia. Early 1915 he and
his colleagues shifted their focus on a future independent state of Czechs and Slovaks. By the
time he went to Geneva and met his colleague Edvard Benes. Benes returned to Prague to establish
a secret resistance committee. In the summer of 1915 Masaryk held a speech in Geneva denouncing
Austro-Hungary advocating an independent Czech state; a few months later Benes managed to leave Prague
for Paris passing information and documents to the French Ministry of War. There he worked
together with Slovak Milan Rastislav Štefánik who had left his homeland back in 1904 and later
volunteered for the French Air Force. The trio (Masaryk, Benes and Štefánik) they set out their
activity and they set up committees that were active in North America, in France, Britain and
Russia. Late 1915 the members of such organizations in the US signed the Cleveland Agreement in support
of the establishment of a federal state comprising Bohemia, Moravia, Czech Silesia and Slovakia; they
found common cause with American President Woodrow Wilson. Wilson would later present his 14-point
plan in which the people of Austria-Hungary should get autonomous development. In May 1917 Masaryk and
Štefánik arrived in Petrograd (Russia). By this time the Russian tsardom was no more. After the February
Revolution the Provisional Government had taken office. This government was led by Alexander
Kerensky. Czechoslovak delegates they convinced them to set up a Czechoslovak Legion. Because
the Russians held many Czechs and Slovaks as POWs who had previously fought in the Austro-Hungarian Army
and were taken prisoner by the Russians and they convinced him to set up a Czechoslovak Legion. So
soldiers of this legion would see action during the Kerensky Offensive against Austro-Hungarian
and German troops. Then the October Revolution occurred where the Bolsheviks led by Vladimir
Lenin seized power in Petrograd, Lenin saw the way out of the war and eventually he signed
a peace treaty with the Central Powers in March 1918 known as the peace treaty of Brest-Litovsk.
The Czechoslovak legionnaires they rebelled against the Bolsheviks and they wanted to get out
of Russia but they couldn't travel to the west because there were enemies there so
they traveled all the way to the east and they fought their way to Vladivostok. The evacuation
of the legion stretched from January 1919 to November 30th 1920. It's a story of its own.
Also there were American Czechs and Slovaks that has volunteered to serve in Czechoslovak
units in France, Russia and Italy prior to the US entry into the war. Early 1918 Czech and
Slovak representatives came together in Prague and signed the Epiphany Declaration which called
for a Czechoslovak state. Austro-Hungary did not fare well by this point. There were strikes there
was even a mutiny in the Bay of Kotor. In May members of the Czech and Slovak organizations
in the US joined Masaryk in signing the Pittsburgh Agreement endorsing a common and
independent state comprising the lands of Czechs and Slovaks. Masaryk got support from the US,
France and Britain. Mid-October Benes announced that the Czechoslovak National Council in Paris
had become the provisional government of a future Czechoslovakia. While the Austro-Hungarian emperor
Karl I did an attempt to federalize the Austrian part the Washington declaration and
Declaration of Independence for the Czechoslovak nation in Washington DC on the October 18th was de
facto independence declaration of Czechoslovakia. Early November 1918 Austro-Hungary sued for peace
and eventually signed an armistice with the Allies.