173-649: Uprising suppressed Slovak National Uprising ( Slovak : Slovenské národné povstanie , abbreviated SNP ; alternatively also Povstanie roku 1944 , English: The Uprising of 1944 ) was organised by the Slovak resistance during the Second World War , directed against the German invasion of Slovakia by the German military , which began on 29 August 1944, and on the other against the Slovak collaborationist regime of
346-446: A "rhythmic law" which forbids two long vowels from following one another within the same word. In such cases the second vowel is shortened. For example, adding the locative plural ending -ách to the root vín- creates vínach , not * vínách . This law also applies to diphthongs; for example, the adjective meaning "white" is biely , not * bielý (compare Czech bílý ). Slovak has final devoicing ; when
519-415: A flight of three Letov Š-328 reconnaissance aircraft was sent to attack the enemy in the area of Ulič , Ubľa and Veľký Bereznyj. The mission failed when pilots could not positively identify the enemy because of fog. It later turned out that they were Hungarians moving from Ubľa to Kolonica . Two more fighter squadrons of three B-534s were then sent on missions. The first discovered Hungarian troops at
692-545: A Hungarian attempt to seize Hill 212.9 opposite Uzhhorod (Ungvár). In this and the subsequent shelling and bombing of the border villages of Nižné Nemecké and Vyšné Nemecké , Slovakia claimed to have suffered 13 dead and promptly petitioned Germany, invoking Hitler's promise of protection. On 17 March, the Hungarian Foreign Ministry told Germany that Hungary wanted to negotiate with the Slovaks over
865-492: A combination of the fog of war, propaganda and confusion between Hungarian captures in Carpatho-Ukraine and eastern Slovakia. Slovak casualties are officially recorded as 22 dead, all named. On 25 March, Hungary announced its own losses as 8 dead and 30 wounded. Two days later it gave a figure of 23 dead and 55 wounded, a total that may include their earlier losses occupying Carpatho-Ukraine . It also reported that it
1038-526: A conspiratorial network in the garrisons. Against this background, Golian was entrusted by President-in-Exile Beneš with the temporary leadership of military actions in Slovakia in March 1944. Immediately after Golian's appointment by Beneš, the illegal Slovak National Council took steps to win him over to its own platform. By contacting the army as well as subordinating Golian's pro-democracy group of officers,
1211-666: A counterattack by the next day. That was largely because of Czech Major Kubíček, who had taken over command from Haššik and begun to get a better grip on the situation. Because they were based on a widely available civilian truck, spares were soon found to repair five of the sabotaged OA vz. 30 armoured cars in Prešov, and they reached Michalovce at 05:30 on 24 March. Their Czech crews had been replaced by scratch teams of Slovak signallers from other technical armed forces. They were immediately sent to reconnoitre Budkovce , some 15 km (9 mi) south of Michalovce, but could not find any trace of
1384-807: A great impression, as it was the first time a satellite state in Southeastern Europe had defected from Germany. On August 27, in Martin , Slovakia, an alliance of partisans under the Soviet partisan leader Velichko and the mutinous local garrison of the Slovak Army, without the knowledge of the military headquarters, held up a train on which the German military commission in Romania was returning to Berlin after Romania's defection from Bucharest. The 22 German officers were arrested and all of them were shot
1557-471: A major counterattack for noon, to be spearheaded by the newly arrived tanks and armoured cars. However, German pressure brought about a ceasefire before it could go in. On 26 March, the rest of the 202nd Mountain Artillery Regiment and parts of the 7th and 17th Infantry Regiments began to arrive. There were now some 15,000 Slovak troops in and around Michalovc, but even with these reinforcements,
1730-628: A marked disadvantage against the prepared and complete Hungarian squadrons. The best Slovak fighter plane of the time was the Czech Avia B-534 . Occupation of Spišská Nová Ves airport at 22 March 1939: Other elements of the 3rd Air Regiment of Milan Rastislav Štefánik were at airfields in Vajnory , Piešťany , Nitra , Žilina and Tri Duby . However, a lack of pilots greatly hampered its effectiveness. Some crews from Piešťany and Žilina were sent to support Spišská Nová Ves. In that state,
1903-512: A one-party dictatorship in which only the political representations of the German and Hungarian minorities remained. The other civic parties were pressured into forced unification with the Hlinka Party, and left-wing and Jewish parties were banned. Press censorship was introduced and a concentration camp for actual or alleged opponents of the regime was set up in Ilava . With its organisations –
SECTION 10
#17327659461062076-510: A panic that for some could not be stopped before Michalovce, 15 km (9.3 mi) to the rear. The armoured cars covered the retreating infantry with their machine guns to forestall any possible Hungarian pursuit. Late on 24 March, four more OA vz.30 armoured cars and three LT vz.35 light tanks and a 37mm antitank cannon arrived in Michalovce from Martin to find total confusion. Early on 25 March they headed eastwards, sometimes steadying
2249-559: A presidential dictatorship. On the international political scene, the Slovak state initially established itself relatively successfully despite its limited sovereignty. Even before the beginning of the Second World War , it obtained de jure or de facto recognition by 18 states, including Great Britain (de facto, 4 May 1939) and France (de facto, 14 July 1939). After the German-Soviet Non-Aggression Pact of 23 August 1939, de facto and de jure recognition by
2422-629: A result of the German advance. After 60 days of fighting, the uprising ended on 28 October 1944. With the fall of Banská Bystrica, the military leadership of the insurgents gave up fighting openly against the Wehrmacht. Without surrendering, the insurgents switched to pure partisan fighting, which they continued until the Red Army occupied Slovakia in April 1945. As a result of the uprising, both conflicting parties also committed numerous war crimes . In
2595-414: A result, the share of communists and partisans in the uprising was exaggerated by official Czechoslovak historiography. The civic resistance and the significance of the insurgent army, whose representatives were persecuted by the communist leadership after 1948, were neglected. With the fall of communism in 1989, a process of re-evaluation began in Slovakia, through which the role of the civic resistance and
2768-631: A revenge air strike on Budapest, but the war ended before that could be carried out. Slovakia had signed a protection treaty with Germany, which violated the treaty by refusing to help the country. Germany did not support Slovakia during the Slovak-Hungarian negotiations in early April either. As a result, by a treaty signed on 4 April in Budapest, Slovakia was forced to cede to Hungary a strip of eastern Slovak territory (1,697 km , 69,930 inhabitants, 78 municipalities), corresponding today to
2941-481: A second counterattack had little better prospect of success than the first because the more numerous and cohesive Hungarians were well dug in and had more than enough 37 mm antitank cannons to deal effectively with the three modern light tanks that represented the only slight advantage possessed by the Slovaks. After the division of Czechoslovakia, the six regiments of the former Czechoslovak Air Force were also divided. The core of this air force on Slovak territory
3114-514: A thorough aerial reconnaissance of eastern Slovakia. The next day, Hungarian squadrons were moved to airfields closer to the borders of Slovakia and put on alert. On the morning of 23 March, two Slovak patrol squadrons operating from Spišská Nová Ves searched for the enemy, but the missions were not yet coordinated with ground units. Later that day, Slovak headquarters gave orders for a complete aerial reconnaissance of all areas. Patrols spotted wide movement of Hungarians on Slovak territory. At 13:00,
3287-415: A voiced consonant ( b, d, ď, g, dz, dž, z, ž, h ) is at the end of a word before a pause, it is devoiced to its voiceless counterpart ( p, t, ť, k, c, č, s, š, ch , respectively). For example, pohyb is pronounced /pɔɦip/ and prípad is pronounced /priːpat/ . Consonant clusters containing both voiced and voiceless elements are entirely voiced if the last consonant is a voiced one, or voiceless if
3460-493: Is /x/ . Slovak uses the Latin script with small modifications that include the four diacritics ( ˇ, ´, ¨, ˆ ) placed above certain letters ( a-á,ä; c-č; d-ď; dz-dž; e-é; i-í; l-ľ,ĺ; n-ň; o-ó,ô; r-ŕ; s-š; t-ť; u-ú; y-ý; z-ž ) Italic letters are used in loanwords and foreign names. The primary principle of Slovak spelling is the phonemic principle. The secondary principle is the morphological principle: forms derived from
3633-536: Is a fusional language with a complex system of morphology and relatively flexible word order . Its vocabulary has been extensively influenced by Latin and German , as well as other Slavic languages . The Czech–Slovak group developed within West Slavic in the high medieval period, and the standardization of Czech and Slovak within the Czech–Slovak dialect continuum emerged in the early modern period. In
SECTION 20
#17327659461063806-410: Is associated with one or more grammatical cases. The noun governed by a preposition must agree with the preposition in the given context. The preposition od always calls for the genitive case, but some prepositions such as po can call for different cases depending on the intended sense of the preposition. Slovak is a descendant of Proto-Slavic , itself a descendant of Proto-Indo-European . It
3979-620: Is closely related to the other West Slavic languages , primarily to Czech and Polish . Czech also influenced the language in its later development. The highest number of borrowings in the old Slovak vocabulary come from Latin , German , Czech, Hungarian , Polish and Greek (in that order). Recently, it is also influenced by English. Although most dialects of Czech and Slovak are mutually intelligible (see Comparison of Slovak and Czech ), eastern Slovak dialects are less intelligible to speakers of Czech and closer to Polish and East Slavic , and contact between speakers of Czech and speakers of
4152-463: Is currently undergoing changes due to contact with surrounding languages (Serbo-Croatian, Romanian, and Hungarian) and long-time geographical separation from Slovakia (see the studies in Zborník Spolku vojvodinských slovakistov , e.g. Dudok, 1993). The dialect groups differ mostly in phonology, vocabulary, and tonal inflection. Syntactic differences are minor. Central Slovak forms the basis of
4325-554: Is one of the Slavic languages , which are part of the larger Balto-Slavic branch . Spoken by approximately 5 million people as a native language, primarily ethnic Slovaks , it serves as the official language of Slovakia and one of the 24 official languages of the European Union . Slovak is closely related to Czech , to the point of very high mutual intelligibility , as well as Polish . Like other Slavic languages, Slovak
4498-771: Is present when, for example, the basic singular form and plural form of masculine adjectives are written differently with no difference in pronunciation (e.g. pekný = nice – singular versus pekní = nice – plural). Such spellings are most often remnants of differences in pronunciation that were present in Proto-Slavic (in Polish, where the vowel merger did not occur, piękny and piękni and in Czech pěkný and pěkní are pronounced differently). Most loanwords from foreign languages are respelt using Slovak principles either immediately or later. For example, "weekend"
4671-438: Is spelled víkend , "software" – softvér , "gay" – gej (both not exclusively) , and "quality" is spelled kvalita . Personal and geographical names from other languages using Latin alphabets keep their original spelling unless a fully Slovak form of the name exists (e.g. Londýn for " London "). Slovak features some heterophonic homographs (words with identical spelling but different pronunciation and meaning),
4844-594: Is the plural genitive (e.g. päť domov = five houses or stodva žien = one hundred two women), while the plural form of the noun when counting the amounts of 2–4, etc., is usually the nominative form without counting (e.g. dva domy = two houses or dve ženy = two women) but gender rules do apply in many cases. Verbs have three major conjugations. Three persons and two numbers (singular and plural) are distinguished. Subject personal pronouns are omitted unless they are emphatic. Several conjugation paradigms exist as follows: Adverbs are formed by replacing
5017-626: Is used to create numerals 20, 30 and 40; for numerals 50, 60, 70, 80 and 90, desiat is used. Compound numerals (21, 1054) are combinations of these words formed in the same order as their mathematical symbol is written (e.g. 21 = dvadsaťjeden , literally "twenty-one"). The numerals are as follows: Some higher numbers: (200) dv e sto , (300) tristo , (900) deväťsto , (1,000) tisíc , (1,100) tisícsto , (2,000) dv e tisíc , (100,000) stotisíc , (200,000) dv e stotisíc , (1,000,000) milión , (1,000,000,000) miliarda . Counted nouns have two forms. The most common form
5190-617: Is why the Slovak government could rely on broad tolerance or even approval of its measures by the population for years. However, the representatives and members of the Protestant Church in particular were dissatisfied with the government. They made up about 17% of the Slovak population, were traditionally Czechoslovak-oriented and felt treated as second-class citizens by the Catholic-dominated Ludak regime. Since December 1938, only four Lutherans were represented in
5363-660: The Kampfgruppen Ohlen and Junck on 29 August, which had about 3900 men and were combined into the 178th Tatra Division on 5 September. Since 1 September, the Kampfgruppe Schill, over 2000 strong, had been fighting in Slovakia; in addition, Major Otto Volkmann's Kampfgruppe and the Kampfgruppen Wildner and Wittenmeyer from the 14th Waffen-Grenadier Division of the SS operated on Slovak soil in
Slovak National Uprising - Misplaced Pages Continue
5536-614: The Communist Party of Slovakia (KSS) was formed. The leadership of the Czechoslovak communists defected to Moscow. From the beginning, the Slovak communists were the main force of resistance in Slovakia and, as such, were the most fiercely persecuted. They initially became active by publishing illegal writings and coordinating strikes. Their attitude towards Slovak independence and Czechoslovakia went through several transformations and depended on Moscow's official policy. Until
5709-669: The Czech protectorate , Slovakia had been spared a German occupation, and in terms of domestic and cultural policy it remained largely autonomous. The restriction of civil liberties was considered tolerable (the regime's brutality was concentrated against the Jewish population) and the economy profited greatly from the war. Education, science and culture also experienced a boost. Until late summer of 1944, conditions in Slovakia were better than in neighbouring countries in Central Europe. That
5882-553: The Hlinka Guard and the Hlinka Youth – it strove to dominate all life in Slovakia. The emergence of the Slovak state was seen by many Ludaks – despite its shortcomings and limitations under constitutional law – as the completion of Slovak national-emancipatory aspirations. The majority of the Slovak population also took a decidedly positive view of its new state, at least in the first years of its existence. In contrast to
6055-644: The Ludaks under Jozef Tiso . Along with the Warsaw Uprising , it was the largest uprising against Nazism and its allies in Europe . Carried by parts of the Slovak army, the main area of the uprising was in central Slovakia, with the town of Banská Bystrica as its centre. The Slovak insurgent army (officially the 1st Czechoslovak Army in Slovakia) was under the overall command of a military headquarters of
6228-509: The United Kingdom , Australia , Austria , Ukraine , Norway , and other countries to a lesser extent. Slovak language is one of the official languages of Autonomous Province of Vojvodina . There are many Slovak dialects, which are divided into the following four basic groups: The fourth group of dialects is often not considered a separate group, but a subgroup of Central and Western Slovak dialects (see e.g. Štolc, 1968), but it
6401-595: The extermination of the Jews in Slovakia , which resulted in the deportation or murder of more than 14,000 Jews on Slovak territory by the end of the war. A total of about 30,000 Slovak citizens were deported to German prison, labour, internment and concentration camps . After the communist takeover in Czechoslovakia in 1948, the Slovak National Uprising underwent strong reinterpretations. As
6574-577: The invasion of Poland , not least because the expected that this would prevent further cessions of territory to Hungary and, in addition, that they would be able to regain the territories lost to Poland as a result of the Munich Agreement of 1938. However, since Slovaks of all political camps found it repugnant to attack the closely related Polish people together with the Germans, there were mutinies by Slovak soldiers in many Slovak towns. After
6747-663: The "Military Labour Corps", were concentrated around the High Command of the Land Forces under General Turanec. Last, in Eastern Slovakia, the Eastern Slovak Army took up position, comprising the two active infantry divisions No. 1 and No. 2 with 24,000 men. These men – equipped with weapons and equipment of the latest German production – could be considered the elite of the Slovak armed forces. It
6920-526: The "Protection Treaty" concluded on 23 March 1939, Slovakia strived to conduct its foreign policy and the building of its army "in close agreement" with the German Reich and to make a "protection zone" in the western part of the country available to the Wehrmacht for the establishment of military installations and garrisons. In the additionally concluded "Confidential Protocol on Economic and Financial Cooperation", Germany also secured its interests vis-à-vis
7093-594: The Axis powers in the winter of 1942/43, unrest within Slovakia increased. In 1943, major news of German defeats ( Stalingrad , Kursk , Italy's exit from the war ) and the looming overall German defeat reached the country. Under the impression of the victories of the Red Army, but also of the spreading news of Nazi war crimes in the Soviet Union, a wave of Russophilia and Slavophilia grew in Slovak society. Thus, in
Slovak National Uprising - Misplaced Pages Continue
7266-510: The Bank of Banská Bystrica. After the fiasco in the attempted coordination of the insurrection plan with Moscow, the situation in Slovakia itself also became more complicated. This was due to the Soviets and the partisans they sent. The partisan movement in Slovakia took two forms – domestic and imported, the latter being clearly more significant. The first domestic attempts to form armed groups in
7439-565: The Czech language fulfills the requirement of fundamental intelligibility with the state language"; the state language is Slovak and the Minority Language Act basically refers to municipalities with more than 20% ethnic minority population (no such Czech municipalities are found in Slovakia). Since 1 September 2009 (due to an amendment to the State Language Act 270/1995 Z.z.) a language "fundamentally intelligible with
7612-590: The Czechoslovak Ministry of Defence in London since July 1944, Čatloš's subversion plan, on the other hand, was not politically tied to the government-in-exile (which Čatloš did not recognise) and only to a narrow circle of insiders were privy to it until the end of July 1944. Apart from the two so-called front-line units (1st Infantry Division in Romania and Construction Brigade in Italy), the Slovak army
7785-504: The German Reich." The Slovak state was governed by a one-party regime of the dictatorial Ludaks . Historians sometimes classify it as fascist or – with reference to the close ties between the government and the Catholic clergy – This as clerical-fascist , but also simply as totalitarian or authoritarian . The Slovak constitution of July 1939 was modelled more on the constitutions of Salazar's Portugal and Dollfuss' Austria than on
7958-476: The Germans. Forty-five minutes later, the military headquarters in Banská Bystrica informed all garrisons scattered throughout Slovakia via telephone to resist the Germans. The Slovak National Uprising thus began as a response to the invasion of the German occupation units. In the first days of the uprising, the insurgents' territory covered about 22,000 km², more than half of Slovakia's territory at
8131-601: The Hungarian Air Force that day. In the first day, the Slovak Air Force suffered two B-534s destroyed, another four heavily damaged, and two pilots killed. But it had helped slow the Hungarian advance and inflicted significant damage. The next day, the situation rapidly changed. On the morning of 24 March, one squadron of three B-534s took off to support Slovak units at Vyšné Remety. After reaching
8304-612: The Hungarians. The Slovaks decided to counterattack eastwards, where the most advanced Hungarian outpost was known to be some 10 km (6 mi) away at Závadka. The road-bound armoured cars engaged the Hungarian pocket from the front whilst Slovak infantry worked round their flanks. Soon, they forced the heavily outnumbered Hungarians to fall back from Závadka towards their main line on the River Okna/Akna, just in front of Nižná Rybnica . The armoured cars continued down
8477-499: The Italian points of view, this would be premature and so they pressured the Czechoslovak government to accept their joint Arbitration of Vienna . On 2 November 1938, it found largely in favour of Hungary and obliged Czechoslovakia to cede to Hungary 11,833 km of the south part of Slovakia, which was mostly Hungarian-populated (according to the 1910 census ). The partition also cost Košice , Slovakia's second largest city, and left
8650-558: The KSS accept the restoration of Czechoslovakia, but demanded its federalisation. The civic and social-democratic resistance was in contact with the Czechoslovak foreign movement and established contacts with the Czech resistance in the Protectorate. From the emergence of independent Slovakia in March 1939, civil servants and politicians who remained loyal to Czechoslovakia and Beneš formed resistance groups. They gathered intellectuals from
8823-456: The Košice – Prešov front (on which Hungary maintained an infantry brigade,) Major Šivica assembled a third Slovak concentration. To the rear, a cavalry group and some tanks were thrown together at Martin , and artillery detachments readied at Banská Bystrica , Trenčin and Bratislava . However, German interference disrupted or paralysed their movement, especially in the V Corps. The Slovak defence
SECTION 50
#17327659461068996-726: The Ministry of Culture publishes a document that specifies authoritative reference books for standard Slovak usage, which is called the codification handbook ( kodifikačná príručka ). The current regulations were published on 15 March 2021. There are four such publications: Slovak speakers are also found in the Slovak diaspora in the United States , the Czech Republic , Argentina , Serbia , Ireland , Romania , Poland , Canada , Hungary , Germany , Croatia , Israel ,
9169-473: The Polish border. The Hungarian claim partly relied on the 1910 census, which stated that Hungarians and Ruthenians , not Slovaks , formed the majority in northeastern Slovakia. In addition to the demographic issue, Hungary also had another purpose in mind: protecting Uzhhorod and the key railway to Poland up the Uzh River , which was within view of the current Slovak border. Therefore, it resolved to push
9342-487: The Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia and informed Prague about his decision. He departed by train that day to Prague, but the train was slowed down on purpose by the Germans to make sure Hitler got to Prague before Hácha did. Slovakia was surprised when Hungary recognized its new state as early as 15 March. However, Hungary was not satisfied with the border with Slovakia and, according to Slovak sources, weak elements of their 20th Infantry Regiment and frontier guard repulsed
9515-531: The Slovak Air Force had to support ground units in combat and interfere with Hungarian supplies. To do so, they had to fly low and, as they had no armour, become an easy target for Hungarian artillery or even ground unit soldiers. Hungary concentrated its aerial assets on targets in eastern Slovakia: The best plane in the Royal Hungarian Air Force was the Fiat CR.32 fighter. Its engine
9688-636: The Slovak Insurgent Army assumed that the Soviet invasion would take place in the summer or early autumn of 1944. Only on the occasion of the political and military changes in Slovakia did the Red Army correct its operational planning. Although it continued its successful campaign in Romania and on the Balkan Peninsula, it opened its offensive on the Beskid front earlier than intended. However, the attack organised at short notice came at
9861-531: The Slovak National Council and military headquarters that the Slovak army was preparing for a major uprising and needed all functioning communication routes for this, the partisans continued to destroy roads, railways and bridges. They also attacked Germans living in Slovakia, as well as people who were active in the party and state apparatus of the Ludaks. The increasing partisan actions disrupted
10034-529: The Slovak National Council and the military headquarters were not aware of the changes in Soviet strategic plans, according to which the Red Army was not to advance from the north across the Carpathians into the middle Danube basin, but from the south through Romania and the Danube valley. Thus, while in Soviet war planning the liberation of Slovakia was postponed to the last months of the war, the leadership of
10207-508: The Slovak National Council finally prevailed over other oppositional political groups. On 27 April 1944, after a meeting in Bratislava, two institutions central to the uprising were created: a "Military Council" at the Slovak National Council, to which Golian and another Slovak officer belonged, and a "Military Headquarters" as the supreme commanding body of an illegal insurgent army, of which Lieutenant Colonel Golian became commander. After
10380-427: The Slovak army not only to sympathise with the liberation organisation but also to defect to it. Although the new commander-in-chief of the army, General Turanec, attempted to restore the government's authority with repressive measures on 26 August, the step was taken too late, as the political leadership in Bratislava had long since lost the loyalty of the army. The activities of the partisans, who were often supported by
10553-524: The Slovak defences, Kampfverband Mathias was able to advance successfully to the north and north-east towards Ružomberok and threatened the important central Slovak industrial centre with its weapons factories. Kampfgruppe Schill also operated successfully in the Nitra Valley, taking Baťovany north of the district town of Topoľčany as early as 5 September, before Slovak resistance made further advance impossible. The battlegroup of Army Group North Ukraine succeeded in capturing Ružomberok one day later, so that
SECTION 60
#173276594610610726-581: The Slovak economy. In return, the German Reich strived to "protect the political independence of the Slovak state and the integrity of its territory." Nevertheless, at the time of the state's founding, Slovakia's independence was still far from being secured. The flexibility of the German Reich in its protective obligations became apparent shortly after independence, when Slovakia was invaded by Hungarian troops and subsequently had to cede eastern Slovak territories to Horthy's Hungary. Berlin did not grant Slovakia any protection in this conflict, but merely assumed
10899-465: The Slovak government to give its official consent to the German invasion. Ludin then met (again) with President Tiso and more or less categorically demanded his approval of the German occupation, to which Tiso agreed after much hesitation. Steps toward intervention in Slovakia, however, had already been taken by the Wehrmacht before the Slovak leadership had asked Berlin for military support. The intervention of German troops in Slovakia, already considered in
11072-445: The Slovak parliament, and only one Protestant, Defence Minister Ferdinand Čatloš , made it into the government and the continued presidency of the Hlinka party. Contributing to the disgruntlement of the Slovak population were the very unpopular wars against the Slavic states of Poland and the Soviet Union, in which Slovakia participated with its own troops, as well as the establishment of German advisory positions in Slovak ministries,
11245-418: The Slovak regime, and the armed groups were isolated from the population. A genuine partisan movement did not develop in Slovakia until August 1944. In May 1944, Klement Gottwald , the chairman of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia in Moscow, concluded an agreement with Nikita Khrushchev , then general secretary of the Ukrainian Communists, whereby the partisan movement of Czechoslovakia was subordinated to
11418-401: The Soviet Union also soon followed. In total, the Slovak state was recognised by 27 states over the course of its existence. As a result of the Salzburg Conference of 1940, Slovakia became even more closely tied to the German Reich. In November 1940, Slovakia joined the Axis powers , which led to Slovakia's declaration of war against the Soviet Union in June 1941 and against Great Britain and
11591-426: The Soviet Union were rejected, and the Communist Party had practically no influence on the army, police and gendarmerie. The Slovak army was formally independent, but the Slovak regime had had to give up important areas of organisation, especially with the Military Economic Treaty of 1939 and the installation of the German Industrial Commission in 1943. Slovak politicians had given in to German pressure to participate in
11764-472: The Soviet Union, and the Slovak army, which was increasingly judged to be unreliable, made Slovakia an unstable variable within the German hegemonic sphere. The precautions taken by the Slovak government against the partisans not only remained ineffective, but the resistance groups even increased their actions against the German minority and the armed forces of the German Reich. Therefore, the German envoy in Bratislava, Hanns Ludin , saw himself forced to request
11937-400: The Soviets about their attitude toward the plans for a Slovak national uprising during more than three weeks that had elapsed since the Šmidke delegation arrived in the USSR. Moscow remained silent. Golian's efforts to delay the day of the uprising until he had news from the Soviet Union and could coordinate his military measures with the Red Army were now all doomed to failure. Added to this was
12110-413: The Soviets and Ukrainian partisans in October 1943, the Slovak units proved to be useless for further combat operations on the German Eastern Front. The example of the Slovak soldiers on the Eastern Front, but above all the entire military-political situation and the situation in Slovakia led to a deep differentiation among the cadre officers of the Slovak army. Outwardly, the Slovak army was still loyal to
12283-468: The Soviets through the delegation. They were escorted to the headquarters of the commander of the 4th Ukrainian Front , General Ivan Yefimovich Petrov , where they were first interrogated and then sent to Moscow for further interrogation. On 5 September they were allowed to return to Slovakia, but without having received any indication of Soviet operational plans or a commitment to support the uprising. The military headquarters continued its preparations for
12456-594: The State Language of the Slovak Republic (language law). According to this law, the Ministry of Culture approves and publishes the codified form of Slovak based on the judgment of specialised Slovak linguistic institutes and specialists in the area of the state language. This is traditionally the Ľudovít Štúr Institute of Linguistics , which is part of the Slovak Academy of Sciences. In practice,
12629-528: The Third Reich, it was Tiso's endeavour to shield Slovak society from German influence. In return, however, Tiso was prepared to cooperate in the economic sphere, in military participation in the wars against Poland and the Soviet Union, and in the deportation of Slovak Jews. In 1942, by introducing the Führerprinzip , Tiso was able to oust Tuka and his radical party wing and subsequently establish
12802-613: The Tiso government, but it was riddled with discontented officers and soldiers. The most active and influential resistance group within the army was formed by four officers, including Lieutenant Colonel Ján Golian , who was transferred in January 1944 to the field army command in Banská Bystrica , where he held the exposed position of Chief of Staff. This position within the Slovak army opened up great opportunities for Golian to form
12975-532: The Treaty of Protection in Berlin. At dawn on 23 March 1939, Hungary suddenly attacked Slovakia from Carpatho-Ukraine , with instructions being to "proceed as far to the west as possible" . Hungary attacked Slovakia without any declaration of war, catching the Slovak army unprepared because many Slovak soldiers were in transit from the Czech region and had not yet reached their Slovak units. Czech soldiers were leaving
13148-700: The Ukrainian partisan movement, which was directed from Kiev. Groups trained by the Soviets were dropped as paratroopers over Slovakia and some partisans also entered the country via eastern Poland. The first Soviet parachute unit was sent to Slovakia by the Ukrainian Partisan Command on the night of 25–26 July 1944 under Lieutenant Piotr A. Velichko to take command of the Slovak partisan movement and bring reinforcements to its cadres with experienced Soviet partisan fighters. With increasing activity, namely acts of sabotage and raids on police stations,
13321-578: The United States in December 1941. Through its support of the Third Reich, Slovakia fell into ever greater international isolation and reduced its chances of a possible post-war existence, especially when the Allies adopted the restoration of Czechoslovakia as one of their wartime objectives in 1941. Since it had become apparent that the Allies would not recognise an independent Slovakia after the war,
13494-399: The adjectival ending with the ending - o or - e / - y . Sometimes both - o and - e are possible. Examples include the following: The comparative of adverbs is formed by replacing the adjectival ending with a comparative/superlative ending - (ej)ší or - (ej)šie , whence the superlative is formed with the prefix naj-. Examples include the following: Each preposition
13667-545: The area around the towns of Stakčín and Sobrance . The war killed 36 Slovak citizens. The two sides' claims were contradictory. At the time, Hungary announced the capture of four light tanks and an armoured car, but no Slovak light tanks ever entered action and a medal was awarded to the man who recovered the one knocked-out armoured car from no man's land in the night. On the other hand, the Hungarians certainly captured at least one LT vz.35 light tank and one OA vz.27 armoured car in March. The contradictions are attributable to
13840-521: The area, they were surprised by three Hungarian Fiat CR.32s, and two of the Slovak planes were shot down, with one pilot killed. At 07:00, six B-534s from Piešťany landed in Spišská Nová Ves; three of them then took off to support infantry near Sobrance. Two were shot down, and one Slovak pilot was captured. Near Michalovce, nine Hungarian fighters shot down three B-534s, which were covering three Letov Š-328s as they bombed Hungarian infantry. One Š-328
14013-412: The areas controlled by the insurgents, up to 1,500 people were murdered (mostly members of the German minority ). The German occupation regime, for its part, claimed up to 5,000 lives (about 2,000 of them being Jews ), especially after the suppression of the uprising with targeted "punitive measures" against the civilian population. The German leadership also used the uprising as an opportunity to complete
14186-430: The army and the partisans led to a crisis during the uprising, which the Slovak National Council tried to resolve on 12 September by setting up a "war council" to coordinate all the activities of the army and the partisans. However, the council, which included leading democrats and communists, was never able to completely resolve the conflict because of constant communist harassment. In the second phase of operations, which
14359-516: The army on August 25. On the evening of August 29 – only a few hours after the first German advance units had crossed Slovakia's northeastern border – Defense Minister Čatloš, on President Tiso's orders, read his proclamation to the army and population on Bratislava radio, according to which the Slovak government had called the German Wehrmacht into the country to fight the partisans and that the Slovak army should not offer any resistance to
14532-531: The army was played by Ferdinand Čatloš , who became general, defence minister and commander-in-chief in one person after the establishment of an independent Slovakia. However, the Slovak army did not become a reliable pillar of power for the Ludak regime. In general, the Slovak military was Western-oriented, and the former Czechoslovak officers had been educated in the spirit of the democratic traditions of Masaryk Czechoslovakia . Communism and an orientation towards
14705-462: The attack. Because Slovakia lacked an early-warning system, the Hungarians found the airfield's defences unprepared. Anti-aircraft guns were without crews and ammunition. Most of the Hungarian bombs missed the air operations base, but several hit the airfield, a storage facility, a hangar, a brickworks and a barracks yard. Many of the bombs landed in mud and failed to explode. Although the bombers damaged six planes and several buildings, their mission
14878-585: The basis of the lowland dialects (see above). The western dialects contain features common with the Moravian dialects in the Czech Republic, the southern central dialects contain a few features common with South Slavic languages, and the eastern dialects a few features common with Polish and the East Slavonic languages (cf. Štolc, 1994). Lowland dialects share some words and areal features with
15051-541: The border, take even more land. On the evening of 13 March 1939, Tiso and Ferdinand Ďurčanský met Hitler, Ribbentrop and Generals Walther von Brauchitsch and Wilhelm Keitel in Berlin . Meanwhile, aware of the German position, Hungary was preparing for action on the adjacent Ruthenian border. During the afternoon and the night of 14 March, the Slovak Parliament proclaimed independence from Czechoslovakia. Hácha
15224-549: The capital, Bratislava , vulnerable to further Hungarian pressure. The First Vienna Award did not fully satisfy Hungary, which carried out 22 border clashes between 2 November 1938 and 12 January 1939. In March 1939, a new crisis hit the political scene in Czechoslovakia. President Emil Hácha dismissed the Slovak government of Jozef Tiso and appointed a new Slovak prime minister, Karol Sidor . Slovakia declared independence and requested that Germany provide protection from Hungary, whose forces were, Ribbentrop stated, gathering on
15397-495: The changed war situation, Čatloš had already been considering a change of front since 1943, but he did not involve head of state Tiso in his plans. In early 1944, Čatloš proposed the formation of an Eastern Slovak Army that would act as one of the pillars of the future overthrow. Čatloš's proposal was approved by both the State Defence Council and the German leadership. By securing the north-eastern Slovak border with
15570-403: The conditions for a national uprising were in place. As in several other countries, there were two main lines of political resistance in Slovakia – This one communist and one non-communist. The Communist Party of Czechoslovakia (KSČ) was the first party ever to be banned in 1938 and thus forced into illegality. After the emergence of the Slovak state, the Slovak communists became independent and
15743-437: The coup preparations and drew the attention of the Slovak and German services to the centre of the conspiracy in central Slovakia. Warnings from the Slovak National Council that such actions could lead to a German occupation of Slovakia and thus to a premature outbreak of the uprising were not heeded by the partisans. In addition to the partisan problem, from mid-August onwards there was also a tendency for ever larger sections of
15916-611: The declaration of war against the Soviet Union in 1941, an army of 60,000 men was sent to the Eastern Front. Until the spring of 1943, the reliability of the Slovak units had been satisfactory in German eyes; in 1942, no more than 210 Slovak soldiers had defected to the Soviet Army or the partisans. From the beginning of 1943, however, after the catastrophe of Stalingrad , the number of Slovak defectors increased by leaps and bounds. After two mass desertions of Slovak troops to
16089-476: The dictatorship of the National Socialists. The domestic political situation in Slovakia from 1939 to 1942 was determined by a power struggle between the state president and party leader Jozef Tiso on the one hand and the prime minister and foreign minister Vojtech Tuka on the other. While Tuka, out of his admiration for National Socialism, entered into a voluntary relationship of instruction with
16262-418: The dispatch of Wehrmacht units to fight the partisans. However, the military situation in all theatres of war did not permit any intervention by the Wehrmacht for the time being, and after a temporary calming of the situation Ludin also withdrew his request for the dispatch of German troops on 27 August, as the political situation no longer seemed to justify such a measure. As a result, an incident occurred during
16435-400: The eastern Slovak boundary on the pretext that the existing line was only an internal Czechoslovak administrative division, not a recognized international boundary, and so needed defining now that Carpatho-Ukraine had passed to Hungary. It enclosed a map of their proposal that shifted the frontier about 10 km (6 mi) west of Uzhhorod, beyond Sobrance , and then ran almost due north to
16608-456: The eastern dialects is limited. Since the dissolution of Czechoslovakia it has been permitted to use Czech in TV broadcasting and during court proceedings (Administration Procedure Act 99/1963 Zb.). From 1999 to August 2009, the Minority Language Act 184/1999 Z.z., in its section (§) 6, contained the variously interpreted unclear provision saying that "When applying this act, it holds that the use of
16781-550: The eastern part of the country the Army Group North Ukraine led the implementation of the action, the command over the rest of the country lay with the "German General in Slovakia", who from 1 September 1944 was provided by the SS in the person of Gottlob Berger , since the action fell into the area of "partisan combat". Berger initially had just under 9,000 men at his disposal, combined in combat groups newly set up for this operation. The first units to arrive were
16954-426: The establishment of the illegal military headquarters on 27 April 1944, the initiative in the preparations for the uprising moved completely from the Slovak National Council to the Slovak Army. Since Golian had been tied to Banská Bystrica since January 1944, the command of the field army in Banská Bystrica came to the fore in the subsequent preparations for the uprising. The military headquarters now set about making all
17127-399: The expense of military strength. The Red Army's Eastern Carpathian Operation lasted from 8 September to 28 October 1944, and although the Red Army was only 40 km from the Slovak border when the military action began, by the end of October 1944 it had only managed to conquer Carpathian Ukraine and parts of eastern Slovakia, suffering casualties of 21,000 soldiers killed and 89,000 wounded in
17300-544: The fact that, on Hitler's orders, because of the acute danger of the Soviet advance, the Eastern Slovak Army had already been assigned to the German Army Group North Ukraine on August 1, 1944. This was a scenario that had not been anticipated at all in the original planning of the uprising. For Defense Minister Čatloš, too, the realization of the uprising according to his plans had become unrealistic since he had been deposed as commander-in-chief of
17473-427: The first days of September as well. With the completion of the deployment, a ring of German troops had formed around the central Slovak insurrectionary area. The Turčiansky Svätý Martin incident not only had the effect of triggering the confrontation between the opponents too early, thus nullifying any calculation on the part of the conspirators, but above all it had the effect of putting the German side in possession of
17646-443: The forests took place as early as 1942, and was called for mainly by the Slovak communists. The partisan units formed in the mountainous areas of central and northern Slovakia. They were composed of deserters from the Slovak army, escaped prisoners of war, persecuted Jews, as well as Slovak and Carpathian German opponents of the government. However, partisanship did not take on a mass form in the first, "victorious" period for Germany and
17819-545: The front to the east. Slovak language [REDACTED] Croatia Slovak ( / ˈ s l oʊ v æ k , - v ɑː k / SLOH -va(h)k ; endonym : slovenčina [ˈslɔʋent͡ʂina] or slovenský jazyk [ˈslɔʋenskiː ˈjazik] ), is a West Slavic language of the Czech–Slovak group , written in Latin script . It is part of the Indo-European language family , and
17992-566: The frontier back a safe distance beyond the western watershed of the Uzh Valley. Germany let Hungary and Slovakia know that it would acquiesce to such a border revision. On 18 March, the Slovak leaders, in Vienna for the signing of the Treaty of Protection, were forced to accept that, and Bratislava ordered Slovak civil and military authorities to pull back. All other potential Hungarian requests were supposed to be illegal in Slovakia. Hungary
18165-484: The future status of Slovakia only after the war. Both the insurrection plan of the military headquarters and Čatloš's overthrow plan relied in principle on the exploitation of the Eastern Slovak Army to open the borders in the Carpathians and the passage of the Red Army into Slovak territory. The insurgency plan of the Military Headquarters had been the subject of continued attention and expert support from
18338-597: The government in September 1941 completed the transition from the hitherto customary religious to the racial assessment of the Jewish question and was among the harshest anti-Semitic laws in Europe. On Tuka's initiative, two-thirds of the Slovak Jews (about 58,000) were then deported to German extermination camps between March and October 1942; of these, only a few hundred survived. After the war situation turned against
18511-421: The home army, Čatloš wanted to pre-empt an occupation of this area by German units over which he would have had no influence and which would have blocked the passage of the Red Army in the Carpathians. Čatloš planned to overthrow the Tiso government at the appropriate moment, establish a military dictatorship and lead Slovakia to the Soviet side. Unlike the Slovak National Council, however, he proposed to decide on
18684-596: The insurgent army was emphasised. 29 August is a public holiday in today's Slovakia . On 14 March 1939, under strong pressure from the Third Reich , the Slovak Parliament declared independence from the Czecho-Slovak Republic and proclaimed the Slovak State . Slovakia's political development in the following six years was determined by its status as a "protective state" of the German Reich. In
18857-481: The insurgents lost the indispensable weapons factories. Especially in the eastern part of the insurgency area, the military leadership in Banská Bystrica tried to build up a strong defensive line to prevent relinquishing any ground. This was because it hoped that a planned Red Army offensive on the Beskydy front, which ran only 120 km to the northeast, would be a quick success and thus lead to unification. However,
19030-454: The insurrection area with 3,000 soldiers. After the initial successes, the German general in Slovakia was convinced that the "expiatory action" would only take four days to pacify the country in the sense of the "protecting power". Unaware of the actual situation, Berger believed that the raids and actions against the German forces would be carried out exclusively by partisan groups. However, the attack of Kampfgruppe Ohlen, even before it reached
19203-427: The involvement of the general and officer corps was decisive for the success of the action. The Slovak army had emerged from the ruins of the old Czechoslovak army , in which few Slovaks had risen to officer rank due to Czech dominance. The Slovak officer corps was built up between 1939 and 1942 – after the soldiers of Czech, Hungarian or Carpatho-Ukrainian nationality had been demobilised. The central role in building up
19376-422: The languages surrounding them (Serbo-Croatian, Hungarian, and Romanian). Slovak contains 15 vowel phonemes (11 monophthongs and four diphthongs) and 29 consonants. The phoneme /æ/ is marginal and often merges with /e/; the two are normally only distinguished in higher registers. Vowel length is phonemic in Slovak and both short and long vowels have the same quality. In addition, Slovak, unlike Czech, employs
19549-419: The last consonant is voiceless. For example, otázka is pronounced /ɔtaːska/ and vzchopiť sa is pronounced /fsxɔpitsːa/ . This rule applies also over the word boundary. For example, prísť domov [priːzɟ dɔmɔw] (to come home) and viac jahôd [ʋɪɐdz jaɦʊɔt] (more strawberries). The voiced counterpart of " ch " /x/ is [ɣ] , and the unvoiced counterpart of " h " /ɦ/
19722-461: The later mid-19th century, the modern Slovak alphabet and written standard became codified by Ľudovít Štúr and reformed by Martin Hattala . The Moravian dialects spoken in the western part of the country along the border with the Czech Republic are also sometimes classified as Slovak, although some of their western variants are closer to Czech; they nonetheless form the bridge dialects between
19895-589: The majority of whom were Protestants. However, the relationship between the Slovak agrarians and Beneš was complex, due to the fact that the government-in-exile adhered to the idea of a unified Czechoslovak nation – a position that the agrarians found unacceptable. The Slovak agrarians no longer valued Prague centralism and a unified Czechoslovak nation in their ideas about a renewed Czechoslovakia. The majority of them were in favour of respecting Slovak national autonomy, from which they also derived appropriate changes in Slovakia's status under state law. Before 1943, there
20068-515: The military and politics and helped Czech refugees from the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia (mostly civil servants and resistance fighters) to escape via Slovakia to the Balkans and then to the West. All these groups rejected the idea of an independent Slovakia and advocated the restoration of Czechoslovakia. The most significant among the non-communist resistance groups were the Slovak agrarians ,
20241-789: The military headquarters transformed itself into the "Command of the Czechoslovak Army" ( Veliteľstvo československej armády , VČSA for short). The Slovak troops forming the core of the armed uprising were given the name "Czechoslovak Army in Slovakia" ( Československá armáda na Slovensku , ČSAS for short) and on 30 September were renamed "1. Czechoslovak Army in Slovakia" (1st ČSAS). This army was regular from day one, had its command staff, regiments, battalions and companies, carried weapons, uniforms and adhered to international military law. The 1st Czechoslovak Army initially had 18,000 men; after mobilisation on 5 September 1944, their numbers rose to 47,000 and afterwards to around 60,000. At its head
20414-429: The most common examples being krásne /ˈkraːsnɛ/ (beautiful) versus krásne /ˈkraːsɲɛ/ (beautifully). The main features of Slovak syntax are as follows: Some examples include the following: Word order in Slovak is relatively free, since strong inflection enables the identification of grammatical roles (subject, object, predicate, etc.) regardless of word placement. This relatively free word order allows
20587-474: The much larger and better equipped Czechoslovak Army had chosen to fight. The Czechoslovak army had built 2,000 small concrete emplacements along the border wherever there was no major river obstacle. In mid-1938, his ministry armed the Rongyos Gárda ("Ragged Guard"), which began to infiltrate into southern Slovakia and Carpatho-Ukraine . The situation was now verging on open war. From the German and
20760-476: The nascent Slovak Air Force. The tactical situation was most critical in eastern Slovakia, at the airport of Spišská Nová Ves . The two fighter squadrons at that airport only had nine pilots, and there were only three officers at the airport headquarters. Also, the situation was becoming more and more critical as Hungarian attacks were increasing. Many pilots flying together were then from different parts of Slovakia and had no time to train together, which put them at
20933-443: The necessary preparations for an armed uprising in the months of May, June and July 1944. It was necessary to fill the leading command posts and staffs with reliable officers and to issue general guidelines for the troop units in the event of an uprising. It was decided to concentrate strong troop units in the central Slovak triangle of Banská Bystrica- Brezno - Zvolen . It was an area that they thought they could hold in any case, but it
21106-443: The new Slovakia, but many of them decided to remain with their former units in Slovakia after the Hungarian attack. In the north, opposite Stakčín, Major Matějka assembled an infantry battalion and two artillery batteries. In the south, around Michalovce , Štefan Haššík , a reserve officer and a local Slovak People's Party secretary, gathered a group of about four infantry battalions and several artillery batteries. Further west, in
21279-600: The next morning by the mutinous government troops on Welitschko's orders. It was primarily the fact that the Slovak army was involved in the Martin incident, but also the increasing disloyalty of many units to the government in Bratislava , that set in motion a swift and harsh reaction by the German Reich . The German Reich Foreign Minister, Joachim von Ribbentrop , asked the German envoy, Ludin, to immediately persuade
21452-468: The night of 27 August in the central Slovak town of Martin , which led to the escalation of the tense situation and triggered the German intervention. Romania's defection from the German to the Soviet side, successfully carried out by Romanian King Michael I on August 23, caused consternation in Berlin and fear that Romania's example would be imitated in the other German satellite states of East Central Europe. In Slovakia, Romania's change of front made
21625-533: The noun in situations where definiteness must be made explicit. Slovak nouns are inflected for case and number . There are six cases: nominative, genitive, dative, accusative, locative, and instrumental. The vocative is purely optional and most of the time unmarked. It is used mainly in spoken language and in some fixed expressions: mama mum (nominative) vs. mami mum! (vocative), tato , oco dad (N) vs. tati , oci dad! (V), pán Mr., sir vs. pane sir (when addressing someone e.g. in
21798-412: The official language in official communication shall be laid down by law. Constitution of Slovakia , Article 6. Beside that, national minorities and ethnic groups also have explicit permission to use their distinct languages. Slovakia is a country with established Language policy concerning its official language . Standard Slovak ( spisovná slovenčina ) is defined by an Act of Parliament on
21971-527: The one-sided orientation towards Hitler's Germany and the exaggerated nationalism. Later, the Slovak regime's policy towards the Jews also met with widespread social disapproval. After the Salzburg Conference in 1940, the strengthened radical party wing of Prime Minister Tuka's Ludaks pushed through a rapid radicalisation of the so-called "solution to the Jewish question". The Jewish Code issued by
22144-408: The operational initiative from the very beginning. As a result of the surprise effect, the German combat groups succeeded in almost completely disarming the hardly resisting Slovak units stationed in eastern, and western Slovakia. The greatest initial success for the Germans was the rapid disarming of the Slovak soldiers of the Eastern Slovak Army, who were probably the best equipped and best trained. In
22317-416: The operational objective of Martin, came to a halt due to stubborn Slovak resistance and unfavourable terrain conditions near Žilina . This first Slovak defensive success had a positive effect on the fighting morale of the insurgents, so that the advance of all German units slowed down considerably and, in some cases, even came to a complete standstill. While the advances of Kampfgruppe Ohlen got bogged down in
22490-469: The opposition Slovak National Council . This represented a coalition of the civic Democratic Party and the Slovak communists and was linked to the Czechoslovak government-in-exile in London. The uprising was additionally supported by Soviet and Slovak partisan units. At the beginning of the uprising, the insurgents controlled over half of what was then Slovak territory, but quickly lost ground as
22663-486: The original insurrection plans, Golian and the Slovak National Council had assigned the main role to these units. The disarmament of the Eastern Slovak divisions, which had been prepared by the command of Army Group North Ukraine since 27 August, lasted two days and was completed on 31 August 1944. Half of the total of 25,000 Slovak soldiers were disarmed and interned, some escaped and fled to their families or joined
22836-570: The outbreak of the uprising. Most partisan groups, however, limited the support they gave to the army to the absolute minimum and pursued their own actions, following orders from the Ukrainian Partisan Headquarters in Kiev. Since the Slovak communists failed to gain control of the military, headed by non-Marxist officers, they tried to compensate that by forming their own army from the partisan detachments. The conflict between
23009-442: The partisans became more and more popular. Their exact numbers are disputed among historians: Wolfgang Venohr assumes about 2,000 partisans at the beginning of the uprising, whose count then increased to 7,000 due to influxes. Other historians, however, state 12,000 to 18,000 partisans as the assumed maximum number. The relationship between the partisans and the Slovak National Council was far from ideal. Despite repeated warnings from
23182-400: The partisans. Only about 2,000 soldiers reached the insurgents' territory in central Slovakia. Considerable stocks of weapons and military equipment, including artillery, fell into German hands. The Germans won another early victory in western Slovakia, as the strong garrisons of Bratislava and Nitra did not join the uprising. Only the military garrison of Trnava in western Slovakia defected to
23355-476: The poor result. The German attack had almost come to a standstill after two weeks as a result of the stabilising Slovak defensive front. As the scope of the insurgents' territory shrank, warfare by partisans became more important. According to the military's plan, the partisan units were to provide effective support for the insurgents and the army, notably by operating in the enemy's rear. Some Slovak partisan groups had even placed themselves under army command before
23528-457: The present-day standard language. Not all dialects are fully mutually intelligible. It may be difficult for an inhabitant of the western Slovakia to understand a dialect from eastern Slovakia and the other way around. The dialects are fragmented geographically, separated by numerous mountain ranges. The first three groups already existed in the 10th century. All of them are spoken by the Slovaks outside Slovakia, and central and western dialects form
23701-453: The process. Despite initial successes, the balance of the German "cleansing action" was quite meagre in the first ten days. The responsibility for this lay primarily with SS-Obergruppenführer Berger, who had completely misjudged the dimension of the Slovak uprising and had therefore tried to solve the problem with an insufficient deployment of forces. However, the German general's unconceptualised combat leadership in Slovakia also contributed to
23874-434: The question was no longer whether Slovakia would become part of Czechoslovakia again, but only under what conditions. The Ludaks of the ruling Hlinka party had already been the strongest political force in Slovakia since 1925, but within Czechoslovakia they never received more than a third of the Slovak electoral votes. In the autumn of 1938 they took over the autonomous Slovak provincial government and by December 1938 imposed
24047-465: The railway station in Ulič and destroyed some artillery pieces and other material in an attack. The second, also sent to Ulič, successfully destroyed a few Hungarian vehicles and damaged more equipment, but one plane was shot down and its pilot, Ján Svetlík, killed. Another Slovak squadron was sent to the area, this time to support Slovak ground units. It encountered Hungarian machine gun fire, and another B-534
24220-402: The recognition of Slovakia by the Soviet Union on 16 September 1939, the party leadership favoured the restoration of Czechoslovakia, after which it accepted the idea of an independent Slovakia. After 1940, the Slovak communists again made the establishment of a "Slovak Soviet Republic" their party programme. Only when Stalin recognised Edvard Beneš ' Czechoslovak government-in-exile in 1941 did
24393-489: The request of the High Command of the Wehrmacht , in which the Germans enjoyed free right of passage. It thus followed naturally that mountainous central Slovakia became the glacis of the military conspiracy. Simultaneously, but independent of the efforts of the military headquarters to work out a military insurrection plan, the Slovak defence minister Ferdinand Čatloš also developed a subversion plan of his own. Due to
24566-481: The retreating infantry by firing over their heads, thereby ensuring the reoccupation of everywhere up to the old Úbrež – Vyšné Revištia line, which the Hungarians had not occupied. However, the anti-tank section mistakenly drove past the knocked-out armoured car and ran straight into the Hungarian line, where it was captured. By now, elements of the 41st Infantry Regiment and a battery of 202nd Mountain Artillery Regiment had begun to reach Michalovce, and Kubíček planned
24739-420: The road a little past Závadka whilst the Slovak infantry fanned out and began to deploy on a front of some 4 km (2.5 mi) on either side of them, between the villages of Úbrež and Vyšné Revištia. The infantry first came under Hungarian artillery fire during the occupation of Ubrež, north of the road. At 23:00 a general attack was launched on the main Hungarian line at Nižná Rybnica. The Hungarian response
24912-467: The role of mediator. In fact, for several months after the formation of the Slovak state, the German leadership was still unclear about its continued existence and regarded it as a bargaining chip in negotiations with Hungary and Poland. Since only the German government could give a guarantee of the existence of the independent state, good conduct and compliancy were therefore the order of the day among Slovak politicians, so as not to jeopardise protection by
25085-414: The same stem are written in the same way even if they are pronounced differently. An example of this principle is the assimilation rule (see below). The tertiary principle is the etymological principle, which can be seen in the use of i after certain consonants and of y after other consonants, although both i and y are usually pronounced the same way. Finally, the rarely applied grammatical principle
25258-435: The spring of 1944, Slovakia outwardly presented the image of an "oasis of peace", but internally fundamental changes and a radical change of mood had taken place in all strata of the population. Nevertheless, despite growing anti-German sentiment among the population, it took until mid-1944 for the political conditions in Slovakia to change to such an extent (as a result of the dramatic events in all European theatres of war) that
25431-509: The state language" (i.e. the Czech language) may be used in contact with state offices and bodies by its native speakers, and documents written in it and issued by bodies in the Czech Republic are officially accepted. Regardless of its official status, Czech is used commonly both in Slovak mass media and in daily communication by Czech natives as an equal language. Slovak%E2%80%93Hungarian War The Slovak–Hungarian War , or Little War ( Hungarian : Kis háború , Slovak : Malá vojna ),
25604-414: The street). There are two numbers: singular and plural. Nouns have inherent gender . There are three genders: masculine, feminine, and neuter. Adjectives and pronouns must agree with nouns in case, number, and gender. The numerals 0–10 have unique forms, with numerals 1–4 requiring specific gendered representations. Numerals 11–19 are formed by adding násť to the end of each numeral. The suffix dsať
25777-530: The time, and with a population of 1.7 million, about 64% of Slovakia's total population. On the recommendation of the London government-in-exile, the leadership of the insurgent army issued an order as early as 30 August declaring its units to be an integral part of the Czechoslovak armed forces. On 7 September, the US, the Soviet Union and the United Kingdom officially recognised this status. Thus, on 30 August,
25950-439: The two languages. Slovak language is primarily spoken in Slovakia. The country's constitution declared it the official language of the state (štátny jazyk): (1) Na území Slovenskej republiky je štátnym jazykom slovenský jazyk. (2) Používanie iných jazykov než štátneho jazyka v úradnom styku ustanoví zákon. (1) The Slovak language is the official language on the territory of the Slovak Republic. (2) The use of languages other than
26123-401: The uprising while awaiting the return of the two envoys as well as the arrival of the Soviet army. Under the pretext of "increased participation of the Slovak army in the struggle against the Soviets", it managed to get the Tiso government to issue a decree mobilising more age groups. Under the same pretext, some units of the army were quietly transferred to the strategically important triangle of
26296-478: The uprising with the Soviet advance and therefore decided to send a delegation to the Soviet Union. The delegation, consisting of Karol Šmidke and a Slovak officer, managed to land in Ukraine on 4 August by plane. They carried with them both the insurrection plan of the military headquarters and the overthrow plan of General Čatloš ("Čatloš Memorandum"), who had provided them with the plane and also wanted to contact
26469-406: The uprising. Finally, the military headquarters transported war supplies, food and medicines to the triangle to be defended under the pretext of removing them from areas exposed to Allied bombardment (especially Bratislava). By June 1944, Central Slovakia had a full three months' worth of food supplies, all in all 1,3 million litres of petrol in various storage centres and 3,54 billion Slovak crowns in
26642-705: The use of word order to convey topic and emphasis . Some examples are as follows: The unmarked order is subject–verb–object . Variation in word order is generally possible, but word order is not completely free. In the above example, the noun phrase ten veľký muž cannot be split up, so that the following combinations are not possible: And the following sentence is stylistically infelicitous: The regular variants are as follows: Slovak, like every major Slavic language other than Bulgarian and Macedonian , does not have articles. The demonstrative pronoun in masculine form ten (that one) or tá in feminine and to in neuter respectively, may be used in front of
26815-410: The weeks before, was now put into action. Just 24 hours after the Martin incident, the first improvised units of the Wehrmacht moved into Slovakia. An extremely complicated situation had arisen for Golian and his co-conspirators. They had no news of the outcome of the Šmidke mission and did not know the attitude of the Soviet Union. Nor had the Czechoslovak government-in-exile in London heard a word from
26988-581: The young generation of communists, led by Gustáv Husák , and the young agrarians under Ján Ursíny began to negotiate a common programme. In December 1943, the "Christmas Agreement" was reached between the "socialist block" (communists and social democrats) and the "civic block" (mainly agrarians). They agreed to stage an uprising and to form a "Slovak National Council" as the highest body of the illegal resistance, consisting of three communists (Gustáv Husák, Ladislav Novomeský , Karol Šmidke ) and three non-communists (Ján Ursíny, Jozef Lettrich , Matej Josko ). It
27161-412: Was Lieutenant Colonel Ján Golian as professional commander, who was promoted to colonel in early September and then to brigadier general. Their headquarters were in Banská Bystrica. German troops gradually invaded Slovakia in the late summer of 1944 with nearly 50,000 men, and the "sovereign" and "friendly" state became a theatre of war. The country was divided into two independent military areas: while in
27334-582: Was a war fought from 23 March to 31 March 1939 between the First Slovak Republic and Hungary in eastern Slovakia . After the Munich Pact , which weakened Czech lands to the west, Hungarian forces remained poised threateningly on the Slovak border. They reportedly had artillery ammunition for only 36 hours of operations and were clearly engaged in a bluff but had been encouraged by Germany, which would have had to support it militarily if
27507-422: Was agreed to fight the Tiso regime and German domination and to re-establish Czechoslovakia as a democratic federation of two nation states in which Czechs and Slovaks would live as equal partners. In addition, political rapprochement with the Soviet Union was sought. The opposition representatives were clear that the realisation of any overthrow or uprising was unthinkable without the army. From this point of view,
27680-472: Was also eminently suitable for an unnoticed deployment for military action. In both western and eastern Slovakia, the Slovak formations were under German observation. The German military mission was located in Bratislava, and the so-called German protection zone with its main base in Malacky extended directly northwest of it. Eastern Slovakia, in turn, had been declared an operational area since August 1944 at
27853-588: Was also shot down and the pilot killed. Another had to land because of mechanical problems. From the six-plane formation, only one returned to Spišská Nová Ves. On the same day, 24 March, the Royal Hungarian Air Force also bombed Spišská Nová Ves, which was the base of all Slovak air operations. The 36 bombers were supported by 27 fighters assigned to the mission, but poor organization, faulty navigation, mechanical problems and last-minute changes caused actually only about 10 bombers to take part in
28026-521: Was aware that Slovakia had signed a treaty guaranteeing Slovakia's borders on 18 March and that it would come into force when Germany countersigned it. It, therefore, decided to act immediately to take advantage of the disorganized Slovak army, which had not yet fully consolidated. Thus, Hungarian forces in the western Carpatho-Ukraine began to advance from the River Uzh into eastern Slovakia at dawn on 23 March, some six hours before Ribbentrop countersigned
28199-501: Was characterised by successful defensive battles by the resistance units, Gottlob Berger's units made little progress in the period from 8 to 19 September. In the east of the insurgency area, Army Group North Ukraine limited itself to a minimal defence of the front line, as the Kampfgruppen Mathias and Rintelen were urgently needed to repel the Soviet offensive. Only in the southwest did Kampfgruppe Schill succeed in pushing
28372-467: Was effectively divided into three in April 1944. In western Slovakia, in Bratislava and the surrounding area, there were the remnants of the Ministry of Defence under General Čatloš: the Bratislava garrison with about 8,000 soldiers and other units with a strength of about 8,000 men, half of which were "military labour corps". In Central Slovakia, in Banská Bystrica and the surrounding area, replacement and training units of about 14,000 men, plus 4,000 men from
28545-513: Was fierce and effective. The Slovaks had advanced across open ground to within a kilometre of the Akna River when they began taking fire by Hungarian field and antitank artillery. One armoured car was hit in the engine and had to be withdrawn, and a second was knocked out in the middle of the road by a 37mm anti-tank cannon. The raw infantry, unfamiliar with their new officers, first went to ground and then began to retreat, which soon turned into
28718-487: Was invited to Berlin by Hitler on March 14, 1939. He was forced to until 1:30 AM of the next day, after which he was presented with two options. A union with Germany as a protectorate with nominal autonomy or war. Hácha first refused, but after the Nazis threatened to bomb Prague at 4 AM he suffered a heart attack. With medical staff next to him Hácha signed the document uniting what remained of Czechoslovakia with Germany forming
28891-523: Was less powerful than that of the Slovak-operated Avia and so Hungarian pilots tried to fight at horizontal levels, while the Slovaks tried to take the combat into the vertical plane. The Fiats could be handled better, especially if the Avias were flying with bombs under their wings, making them more clumsy. The Fiat CR.32 had better machine guns. On 15 March, the Royal Hungarian Air Force did
29064-496: Was no planned cooperation between the resistance groups due to different objectives, lack of coordination and a lack of acceptance among the population. It was only due to the rapprochement between the Czechoslovak government-in-exile and the Soviet Union, as well as the course of the war, which increased the influence of the Soviet Union in East-Central Europe, that a change also began in the Slovak resistance. In 1943,
29237-437: Was not fully successful, as the airfield continued to operate until the end of the conflict. On 27 March, 13 victims of the bombing, some of them civilians, were buried, arousing intense anti-Hungarian sentiment . The sole Hungarian Air Force loss of the entire conflict was a Fiat fighter, accidentally shot down by Hungarian artillery. After the bombing of Spišská Nová Ves, Major Ján Ambruš arrived there on 25 March to organize
29410-580: Was particularly important to determine the timing of the outbreak of the uprising. By the end of July 1944, the Soviet army had advanced in a narrow wedge to the Vistula River near Warsaw, thereby hastening the outbreak of the Warsaw Uprising on 1 August. However, the Soviets did not advance further into Poland at that time, thus enabling the Germans to prevent the Warsaw Uprising from succeeding. The Slovak National Council wanted to coordinate
29583-463: Was shot down. The pilot managed to land but died a few minutes later. The plane was then destroyed by Slovak soldiers. Two other B-534s attacked Hungarian troops and, heavily damaged and out of ammunition, returned to Spišská Nová Ves. The last Slovak mission of March 23 consisted of one Š-328, which destroyed an unknown number of Hungarian tanks and vehicles near Sobrance. Its pilot was injured and had to land near Sekčovice. Slovak pilots did not encounter
29756-497: Was the 3rd Air Regiment of Milan Rastislav Štefánik, which came under the control of the Slovak Ministry of Defence. However, the officers, experienced pilots and aviation experts were mostly Czechs. Before 14 March, the Slovak Air Force (Slovenské vzdušné zbrane) had about 1,400 members. After the division, Slovakia had only 824 left. Returning crews from occupied Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia only slowly reinforced
29929-443: Was tied down, as the Hungarian annexations the previous autumn had transferred the only railway line to Michalovce and Humenné to Hungary, thereby delaying all Slovak reinforcements. Hungarian troops advanced quickly into eastern Slovakia, which surprised both Slovakia and Germany. Despite the confusion caused by the hurried mobilization and the acute shortage of officers, the Slovak force in Michalovce had coalesced enough to attempt
#105894