This video is part of a series of 19 animated maps.
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SubscribeCzechoslovakia: A Multinational State
This map is part of a series of 19 animated maps showing the history of Europe and nations, 1918-1942.
Created from parts of the ex-Austro-Hungarian Empire after the war, the new state of Czechoslovakia was designed to be multinational. It brought two substantial national groups long dominated by the Dual Monarchy into a single entity: the Czechs living in Bohemia and Moravia and the Slovaks in Slovakia.
There were also other minority populations living within the borders of Czechoslovakia:
A German-speaking community, known as Sudeten Germans, settled in parts of Bohemia and Moravia along the borders with Germany and Austria.
A Hungarian population located in southern Slovakia
And Ruthenians in Ruthenia in the eastern region.
Czechoslovakia was a democratic parliamentary republic with relatively solid institutions, compared to other nations created after the war. Nevertheless, the problem of minority populations, particularly the 3 million Germans in Sudetenland, was to become a factor for instability.