Author: Charles River Editors
Narrator: Colin Fluxman
Unabridged: 2 hr 28 min
Format: Digital Audiobook
Publisher: Findaway Voices
Published: 05/12/2019
On New Year’s Day 1993, Czechoslovakia broke into two separate countries, the Czech Republic and Slovakia. Thus ended one of the creations brought about by the Treaty of Versailles after World War I, and as a country that had existed for just under 75 years, Czechoslovakia spent most of its time under the tyranny of fascism or communism.
Of course, the country’s origins go back far longer than the 1910s, and they were complex and convoluted. The very geography of central Europe meant this territory had been conquered and occupied many times over the course of history, and for much of the modern era, the area belonged to much larger empires, including the Holy Roman Empire, the Austrian Habsburg Empire, and finally the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Nevertheless, two distinct ethnicities had come to make up the bulk of the territory’s inhabitants: the Czechs, predominantly in the areas of Bohemia and Moravia, and the Slovaks, in Slovakia. Both peoples had their own Slavic-based languages, but the languages were similar enough to be mutually intelligible.
Despite any ethnic similarities, the country that formed in 1918 among the ashes of the Austro-Hungarian Empire was by no means a “nation-state” as most people understand that term. In fact, much of the territory which bordered Germany was inhabited by ethnic German speakers, including one of Prague’s most famous sons, the writer Franz Kafka. One of the 20th century’s most celebrated authors spoke German as his first language. As such, the lands that became Czechoslovakia had usually existed in some kind of supranational system where identity was allowed to be relatively fluid.
Czechoslovakia would also play a crucial role in bringing about World War II, a sign that the area’s nationalism, which ultimately split Czechoslovakia apart in 1993, had long spelled danger in a place where so many groups competed for power. The presence of German speakers would serve as a pretext for Hitler’s acquisition of the Sudetenland, creating a crisis ahead of history’s deadliest war and serving as a harbinger of things to come.
The Dissolution of Czechoslovakia: The History of the Central European Nation from Its Founding to Its Breakup examines how the multicultural nation was founded, the inherent tensions there, and how it eventually came apart.
The Wright Brothers initially underestimated the difficulties involved in flying, and they were apparently surprised by the fact that so many others were working on solving the “problem of human flight” already. Decades before their own...
Aircraft appeared in the skies over the battlefields of World War I, but they did not represent a complete novelty in warfare either, at least not during the early months of World War I. While airplanes had never before appeared above the field of ...
Columbia professor and winner of the Nobel Prize in Economics Joseph E. Stiglitz talks to Anya Schiffrin, editor of Global Muckraking: 100 Years of Investigative Journalism From Around the World, about a wide range of global issues from economics to...
“Let's say there were 7,000 or 8,000 people who had to die to win the war against subversion... We couldn't execute them by firing squad. Neither could we take them to court... For that reason, so as not to provoke protests inside and outside ...
In the predawn sky of northern Canada on the morning of January 24th, 1978, a long streak of blue fire suddenly rushed across the starry vista northeast of the remote town of Yellowknife. Those out on the bitterly cold night, with a temperature man...
April 7 is World Health Organization Day, in honor of the day that the World Health Organization held the first World Health Assembly in 1948. International health conferences had been held nearly a century before this date, and international healt...
The Beatles shed some light and personal insights in these fantastic- previously unreleased- interviews from 1964/65, at the height of Beatlemania. Featuring John Lennon, Paul McCartney, Ringo Starr, and George Harrison.A One Media iP production.
Father Charles Coughlin was a controversial Canadian-American Catholic priest based in Michigan. Calling for monetary reforms, the nationalization of major industries and railroads, and protection of the rights of labor, Coughlin used weekly ra...
For more than a century, radio has been a part of people’s lives. No one alive today remembers a time when it hadn't always been there as a familiar, reliable source of information and entertainment. Today, it seems a bit mundane, overtaken b...