Jozef Tiso

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Jozef Tiso was a recipient of the Grand Cross of the Order of the German Eagle in Gold with Star.

Jozef Gašpar Tiso (13 October 1887 – 18 April 1947) was a Slovak politician and Roman Catholic priest and theologian who secured the independence of Slovakia as a sovereign state, and served as President of the Slovak Republic. In 1947, after World War II, he was convicted of war crimes by the Czech communist regime, who hanged him in Bratislava.

Life

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Early life

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Tiso was born in Bytča (then Hungarian: Nagybiccse) to Slovak parents, in Trencsén county, in the Kingdom of Hungary, part of the Austria-Hungary. He was raised in a religious family and studied at the local elementary school. Then, as a good student with a flair for languages, he studied at a Hungarian lower grammar school in Žilina. Here he began to use the Hungarian form of his name: Tiszó József. In 1902, he began to study at higher Piarist grammar school in Nitra. The Bishop of Nitra, Imre Bende, offered him a chance to study for the priesthood at the prestigious Pázmáneum in Vienna.[1] Tiso, taught by several elite professors, became familiar with various philosophies and the newest Papal Encyclicals. He also extended his language skills. Already speaking Hungarian, German and Latin, he studied Hebrew, Aramaic dialects and Arabic. The school reports describe him as an "excellent", "exemplary", and "pious" student. Enrolling in the University of Vienna in 1906, he graduated as a Doctor of Theology in 1911.

His early ministry was spent as an assistant priest in three parishes in today's Slovakia. Tiso was interested in public affairs and performed extensive educational and social work. During his fight against poverty and alcoholism, he may also have adopted some stereotypical views on Slovak-Jewish relations. However, such views were not unusual in the contemporary society, including among priests or other people with higher education. He blamed the Jewish tavern owners for the rising alcoholism, and he was also a member of self-help association selling food and clothing cheaper than the local Jewish stores. Tiso became a member of Nép párt (Catholic People's Party) and contributed to its Slovak journal Kresťan (Christian).

During World War I, he served as a field Curate for the 71st infantry regiment of the Austro-Hungarian Army which was recruited mostly from Slovakians. The regiment suffered heavy losses during the Russian assaults against Galicia. After a few months, his regiment was transferred to Slovenia where he met Slovenian politician Anton Korošec, who was also a Roman Catholic priest. Tiso became interested in the Slovenian national movement. Tiso's time in the military was ended by a serious kidney illness, and he was released from the service. He did not return to his parish in Bánovce, but was appointed as the Spiritual Director of the Nitra seminary by Bende's successor, Vilmos Batthyány.[2] Tiso was also active at this time as a school teacher and journalist. He published his experiences during the war as The Diary of the Northern Frontline. In other articles written in a patriotic style, he emphasized the need for good military morale and discipline. He also covered religious and educational topics, emphasizing a need for religious literature in Slovakian.

Collapse of Austria-Hungary

In the autumn of 1918, Tiso realised that Austria-Hungary, exhausted by the war, was collapsing. Regardless of the illegal declaration of independence declared in Prague, who would control the new state and particularly Slovakia was unclear. Also, it was still unclear to which state Nitra would belong after the dissolution of Austria-Hungary. Tiso began to prepare his readers for a new state and political regime. On 8 December 1918, the Hungarian National Council in Nitra delegated him to negotiate with the newly constituted Czechoslovakian Army which announced its presence to "restore and maintain public order". Tiso was named secretary of new Slovak National Council and now embraced politics as a career.

First Czechoslovak republic

In December 1918, Tiso became a member of restored Slovak People's Party (Slovenská ľudová strana, so called "Ľudáks"). The party supported the idea of parliamentary democracy, defended interests of its Slovak Catholic voters and sought Slovak autonomy within Czechoslovakia. Tiso, largely unknown before the coup, gradually strengthened his position in the party hierarchy. His education, intelligence, energy, large working experiences with common people and his ability to speak in common terms made him a popular speaker and journalist of the party.[3] In 1919, he founded a subsidiary of the party in Nitra, and he organized a gymnastic organization, Orol (Eagle), the counterweight of a similar Czech organization, Sokol. Tiso first ran for parliament in the 1920 Czechoslovak parliamentary elections. Although the electoral results from his district were bright spots in what was otherwise a disappointing election for the Ľudáks, the party did not reward him with a legislative seat. Tiso, however, easily claimed one in the 1925 election, which also resulted in a breakthrough victory for the party. Until 1938, he was a fixture in the Czechoslovakian parliament in Prague.

In 1921 Tiso was appointed Monsignor by the Vatican, although this appointment is said to have lapsed with the later death of Pope Benedict XV.[4] From 1921 to 1923, he served as Secretary to the new Slovak Bishop of Nitra, Karol Kmeťko. During the same period, nationalist political agitation earned Tiso two convictions by the Czechoslovak courts for "incitement", one of which resulted in a short incarceration. Displeased, Kmeťko dropped him as Secretary in 1923, but retained him as a Professor of Theology. In 1924, Tiso left Nitra to become Dean of Bánovce nad Bebravou.[5] He remained the Dean of Bánovce for the rest of his political career, returning there regularly every weekend also as a Czechoslovak Minister, and as later as President of Slovakia.

In the interwar period, Tiso was a moderate politician. He used more radical rhetoric as a journalist, putting aside much of the anti-Jewish rhetoric, common in central and eastern Europe amongst all classes, of his earlier journalistic activities. Tiso sharply criticized the policies of the central government regarding Slovaks and Slovakia. While the party still operated within a democratic framework, Tiso's colleague and political rival Vojtech Tuka formed two internal movements to oppose the state and its Czech-dominated regime - the first collaborating with Hungarian revanchism and the second led by pro-fascist Rodobrana. Tiso did not participate in these.

In the late 1920s, Tiso became one of the party's leaders. When the President of the party Andrej Hlinka traveled in 1926 to the 28th International Eucharistic Congress in Chicago, he delegated Tiso to represent him in the presidium of the party.[6] In his absence, Tiso led complicated negotiations about an entry of Ľudáks into the government. He was successful and thus strengthened his position. In January 1927, he became the Czechoslovakian Minister of Health and Physical Education. Since Ľudáks previously operated as an opposition party and was not able to fulfill all of its promises, the participation in the government became difficult. As a Minister, Tiso successfully achieved several important health service projects in Slovakia.[6] Surprisingly, he refused the government ministry flat, staying in one of Prague monasteries. In October 1929, Ľudáks left the government after the Tuka affair. Tiso was more inclined than Hlinka to find compromises with other parties to form alliances, but for a decade after 1929 his initiatives were not successful. In 1930, he became the official vice-president of the party and seemed destined to succeed Hlinka. He spent the 1930s competing for Hlinka's mantle with party radicals, most notably the rightist Karol Sidor; Tuka was in prison for much of this period for "treason".

In 1930, Tiso published The Ideology of the Hlinka's Slovak People's Party explaining his views on the Czech-Slovak relationship. Notably, he claimed sovereignty of the Slovak nation within the territory of Slovakia and indirectly suggested the right of Slovaks to adopt also different solutions for things than those of the Czechoslovakian government in Prague.[7] He repeated the same idea in his parliamentary speeches.[8]

By the middle 1930s, Tiso's is said to have become more authoritarian given the brick-wall he faced in Prague. He repeatedly declared that the Ľudáks was the only party representing the Slovaks and the only party which spoke for the Slovak nation.

In 1938, the representatives of the Ľudáks raised with the neighboring states their views for the future of Slovakia. When Hlinka died in August 1938, Tiso quickly consolidated control of the Ľudák party.[9] Tiso was an official speaker from the party at Hlinka's funeral where he urged national unity and stiil called for loyalty to the Czechoslovak republic.[10] However, the goal was potential autonomy and a non military solution of the Czechoslovak-German crisis.

Autonomous Slovak Region

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In October 1938, following the Munich Agreement, the Sudetenland, the main German-speaking parts of Czechoslovakia, was detached from Czechoslovakia and ceded to Greater Germany. (Ethnic Germans had constituted 25% of Czechoslovakia's population.)

On 3 October 1938, the Czechoslovak government announced that the country would become a federal republic of three states: Bohemia-Moravia, Slovakia (16.5% of the population plus another 5% Hungarians), and Ruthenia (4%), and that the country's official name would become hyphenated to Czecho-Slovakia. The Slovak Assembly now declared its autonomy, and the British Ambassador at Warsaw told Lord Halifax in London that this "was a step in the right direction". Tiso became Prime Minister of the Slovak Autonomous Region.[11]

One of his first tasks was to lead the Czechoslovak delegation during negotiations with Hungary in Komárno preceding the First Vienna Award. Prime Minister Tiso, who had never led a delegation in similar international negotiations, found himself in a difficult position. Tiso opposed the proposals of the Hungarian delegation, but acted as a flexible and patient negotiator. When the Hungarian delegation decided they would terminate the discussion, Tiso sought the diplomatic assistance of Germany.[12] This had already been promised by German Foreign Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop, if necessary. Subsequently, Tiso was shocked by the First Vienna Award, so much so that he initially refused to sign the protocol. In a radio speech to Slovakia, Tiso blamed the Prague government and its "policies of the past twenty years" for the negative results.[13]

The day before the Award, police arrested several Jews creating a disturbance at a demonstration of the Hungarian Youth Organization calling for the cession of Komárno to Hungary. On 4 November 1938 Tiso ordered the deportation of Jews "without property", and later those without citizenship, to the territory now being annexed by Hungary. However, on November 7th, he cancelled the action.

As Prime Minister and Minister of the Interior of the autonomous government, Tiso had extensive powers. In October–December 1938, his government did not share power with any other Slovak public body, because the autonomous parliament was elected only thereafter. During this period, his party forbade activities of all political parties except those that agreed to join the governing coalition "voluntarily" and two parties representing minority populations, the "German Party" and the "Unified Hungarian Party". The Assembly then organized parliamentary elections. Even before the official announcement of the elections, Tiso told the German newspaper Völkischer Beobachter that there would be only one united ballot and Jews could not be elected.[14]

President of the Slovak Republic

However the Czech government continued with their oppressions across a broad scale, and in February 1939, Father Tiso entered into negotiations with Germany asking for their support for a fully independent and sovereign Slovakia, separated altogether from Czecho-Slovakia. He held direct meetings with the German representative Arthur Seyss-Inquart, in which Tiso initially expressed doubts as to whether an independent Slovakia would be a viable entity. Meanwhile the British Consul in Bratislava (Pressburg) reported on 26 February 1939 that the financial position of the Slovak Government was growing rapidly worse as the Czechs were withholding financial support. In Warsaw on March 6th the Polish Vice-Minister for Foreign Affairs, Arciszewski, told the British Ambassador that Poland did not wish to interfere with the Slovak movement for independence but that if Slovakia became independent they would sympathise.

Czech military units subsequently occupied Slovakia, closed down the Assembly, and forced Tiso out of office on 9 March.[15]

Tiso's Catholic-conservative feelings initially inhibited him from what appeared to be revolutionary moves. However, within a few days Hitler invited Tiso to Berlin, and offered assistance for Slovak nationhood.[16] Hitler suggested that Slovakia should declare independence under German protection, and that if not Hungary might annex the remaining territory of Slovakia (as Slovakia had, for centuries, been part of Hungary until 1919). Without making an agreement, Tiso now requested the Czecho-Slovak President to call a meeting of the Slovak Diet for 14 March. During that session Tiso made a speech informing the Diet of his conversation with Hitler, confirming that he reserved any move for an independence decision to come from the Slovak Diet. On the initiative of the President of the assembly, Martin Sokol (himself previously a strong proponent of the Czecho-Slovak state with guaranteed autonomy for Slovakia), endorsed a declaration of independence.[17]

Slovakia now became the Slovak Republic, an independent state (under German protection, much as Egypt was a Kingdom under British protection) which was formally recognised by the Soviet Union, Poland and Germany, with de facto recognition by the United Kingdom and France (but not by the United States who were largely responsible, in 1919, for the new artificial state of Czechoslovakia). Czech émigrés and the United States considered Slovakia a puppet state of Germany which was untrue.

On March 15th, Germany occupied the remaining rump of Czechoslovakia (i.e: minus the Sudetenland and Slovakia).

After Czecho-Slovakian government-in-exile arrived in Great Britain, the British Foreign Office notified the Czech Foreign Minister that Britain did not recognise any territorial claims of Czechoslovakia, nor could they commit to any fixed boundaries for the state, nor recognise the legal continuation of Czechoslovakia.

Tiso was initially Prime Minister from 14 March 1939 until 26 October 1939. He not only supported Germany's invasion of Poland in September 1939 but contributed Slovak troops, which the Germans rewarded by allowing Slovakia to annex 300 square miles of Polish territory.[18] On 1 October 1939, Dr Tiso became President of the Slovak People's Party. On October 26th, he became President of the Slovak Republic, and appointed Tuka as Prime Minister. After 1942, President Tiso was also styled Vodca ("Leader").[19]

Tiso on October 29, 1945 in Bratislava after his capture by communist forces

WWII

Tiso was obliged to collaborate with Germany in the deportations of Slovak Jews to concentration camps in Germany and Poland. An anti-fascist partisan insurgency was waged, culminating in the so-called Slovak National Uprising in summer 1944, which was suppressed by the German military authorities with many of its leaders executed.

When the Soviet Red Army conquered the last parts of western Slovakia in April 1945, Tiso fled first to Austria, then to a Capuchin monastery in Altötting, Bavaria. In June 1945, he was arrested by the Americans and extradited to the communist reconstituted Czechoslovakia to stand trial in October.[20] In this show trial the court concluded that Tiso's government in Slovakia had been responsible for the break-up of Czechoslovakia, despite the democratic vote to secede; despite the previous award of the Sudetenland to Greater Germany; and the activities of the Ruthenians as well as the Hungarians in Carpatho-Ruthenia.

Death

On 15 April 1947, the communist Czechoslovak National Court (Národný súd) in a scandalous show-trial, found him guilty of many of the allegations against him, and sentenced him to death for "state treason, betrayal of the 1944 Uprising and collaboration with Germany".

Wearing his clerical clothes, Tiso was hanged in Bratislava on 18 April 1947. The Czechoslovak government buried him secretly to avoid having his grave become a shrine.

Gallery

See also

Further reading

  • Colonna, Bertram de, Czecho-Slovakia Within, Thornton Butterworth Ltd., London, 1938.
  • Ward, James Mace, Priest, Politician, Collaborator: Jozef Tiso and the Making of Fascist Slovakia, Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 2013, ISBN: 978-0-8014-4988-8.

References

  1. ↑ Ward (2013) p. 21,
  2. ↑ Ward (2013) pp. 29-32.
  3. ↑ Kamenec 2013, p. 42.
  4. ↑ Ward (2013) p. 74.
  5. ↑ Ward (2013) pp. 80-4.
  6. ↑ 6.0 6.1 Kamenec 2013, p. 59.
  7. ↑ Rychlík 2015, p. 131.
  8. ↑ Fabricius & Suško 2002, p. 384.
  9. ↑ Ward (2013) pp. 150-5.
  10. ↑ Kamenec 2013, p. 74.
  11. ↑ Ward (2013) pp. 156-8
  12. ↑ Kamenec 2013, p. 82.
  13. ↑ Fabricius & Hradská 2007, p. 25.
  14. ↑ Nižňanský 2010, p. 75.
  15. ↑ Ward (2013) pp. 178-9.
  16. ↑ Ian Kershaw; Hitler a Biography; 2008 Edn; W.W. Norton & Co; London; p. 476
  17. ↑ Ward (2013) pp. 181-2.
  18. ↑ Weinberg, Gerhard L. (2005). A World at Arms: A Global History of World War II (2 ed.). Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press. p. 52. ISBN 0-521-85316-8. OCLC 986290507
  19. ↑ Evans (2009) p. 395
  20. ↑ Ward (2013) pp. 258-9.
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