War, Uprising, and Authoritarian Rule

On March 14, 1939, under pressure from Nazi Germany, the First Slovak Republic was established with Jozef Tiso as its president. The state was a client of Germany and participated in the Holocaust, deporting around 70,000 of its Jewish citizens to concentration camps.

Resistance to the fascist regime grew, leading to the Slovak National Uprising (SNP) on August 29, 1944. Centered in Banská Bystrica, it was one of the largest armed rebellions in Nazi-occupied Europe. Though eventually suppressed, the SNP remains a powerful symbol of Slovak anti-fascist resistance.

After WWII, Czechoslovakia was restored, but in February 1948, the Communist Party seized power in a coup d'état. The subsequent decades were marked by Soviet-style repression, nationalization of the economy, and the persecution of political and religious opponents.

A period of liberalization known as the Prague Spring began in January 1968, led by the Slovak First Secretary of the Communist Party, Alexander Dubček. His effort to create "socialism with a human face" was brought to a sudden end by the Warsaw Pact invasion in August 1968, which ushered in a period of hard-line "normalization" that lasted until 1989.