Abstrakt
The author has used the 100th anniversary of the foundation of Czechoslovakia to review its history and historiography. He confronts traditional (positive) myths with the current, intentionally extreme and historical facts disregarding critiques of "Masaryk's Republic".
To this end, the author puts the Czechoslovak narrative, usually presented in isolation, into Central European contexts and comparisons. For it is only those contexts that, indeed, provide the framework for assessing this democratic experiment.
Therefore, the author sketches the foundation of the Czechoslovak republic within the context of the collapse of the Central European monarchies transformed into military dictatorships during World War I. Further, he portrays the entrenchment of Czechoslovak democracy within the framework of the efforts of the Allied powers to base the post-war peace in Europe upon a system of democratic republics and the principle of collective security.
Nazi Germany's de facto annexation of democratic Czechoslovakia is then depicted as a result of the collapse of this European system once the great Western powers effectively abandoned it and the power of the main European dictatorships grew rapidly.