The Czech Republic, also known as Czechia, and historically known as Bohemia, is a landlocked country in Central Europe. The country is bordered by Austria to the south, Germany to the west, Poland to the northeast, and Slovakia to the southeast.
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The Czech Republic was a part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire until the Empire collapsed at the end of World War I.
Following WWI, the closely related Czechs and Slovaks of the former Austro-Hungarian Empire merged to form Czechoslovakia. This manifestation of Czechoslovakia lasted twenty years.
The German occupation of Czechoslovakia began in 1938 and lasted until 1945. First, the Nazis annexed Czechoslovakia's northern and western border regions, known collectively as the Sudetenland. Hitler alleged that ethnic Germans living in those regions were being mistreated.
After the unopposed annexation of Austria, Hitler set his sights on the rest of Czechoslovakia. The loss of the Sudetenland left the rest of Czechoslovakia essentially powerless.
On March 16, 1939, from Prague Castle, Hitler declared that the Czech provinces (Bohemia and Moravia) were now a German protectorate. The establishment of the protectorate meant the end of Czechoslovakia as an independent state. It also led to the confiscation of Czech gold and currency reserves by Germany as well as discriminatory laws against Jews. And then things got worse.
Approximately 80,000 of the pre-war Czech Jews were killed during the Holocaust. Some estimates go as high as 260,000, but the numbers are slippery. Some Jews were killed by the German authorities while living in Czechoslovakia. Some died of disease in a Czech containment and transit camp called Theresienstadt. Others died in concentration camps located outside of Czechoslovakia - from Theresienstadt many Czech Jews were sent to Auschwitz. The names of 77,297 known victims from Bohemia and Moravia are inscribed on the walls of Pinkas Synagogue in Prague.
On May 5, 1945, in the last moments of the war in Europe, the Prague uprising (Pražské povstání) began. It was an attempt by the Czech resistance to liberate the city of Prague from German occupation. The uprising went on until May 8, 1945, ending in a ceasefire the day before the arrival of the Red Army and one day after Victory in Europe Day.
It is estimated that about 345,000 World War II casualties were from Czechoslovakia, 277,000 of them Jews. As many as 144,000 Soviet troops died during the liberation of Czechoslovakia. Again, numbers are slippery.
After World War II, the Soviets withdrew their forces, but an impotent Czechoslovakia fell within the Soviet sphere of influence regardless – history suggests that this happened as a result of both legitimate democratic and rigged elections.
By 1948 the communist party controlled the assembly and Czechoslovakian laws were re-written. Czechoslovakia became a single party state. Czechoslovakia operated as a socialist/communist state for the next 40 years.
In 1968, an invasion by Warsaw Pact troops ended the efforts of the country's leaders to liberalize communist party rule and create "socialism with a human face." Anti-Soviet demonstrations the following year ushered in a period of harsh repression.
With the collapse of Soviet authority in 1989, Czechoslovakia regained its freedom through a peaceful "Velvet Revolution" – a transition that was non-violent, and as gentle and smooth as velvet.
On January 1, 1993, the country underwent a "velvet divorce" and separated into the Czech Republic and Slovakia.
The Czech Republic joined NATO in 1999 and the European Union in 2004.
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