Challenge: Authoritarian Czechoslovakia

Interwar Czechoslovakia is widely known to be the only country in central Europe that remained democratic. Your challenge, should you choose to accept it, is to make Czechoslavakia (or Czech Republic) adopt authoritarian form of Goverment before the WWII equivalent with a POD no sooner than 1920.
 

Wolfpaw

Banned
The Sudeten Germans and Slovaks could be more active in their secessionist goals (i.e. terrorism, etc.) The Czechs could declare martial law or increase the crackdown on secessionist minority groups (as they did in IOTL against the Sudeten Germans).

Basically you could have the central government seizing more authoritarian power under the auspices of preventing the country from fragmenting/disintegrating.
 
Have Charles actually take power in Hungary. Masaryk orders the army to invade. Czechoslovaks occupy and annex part of Hungary, getting ever-painful thorn in their side. Central government curbs more and more democratic institutions in order to deal with Hungarian guerilla and it goes downhill from here.
 
Czechoslovaks occupy and annex part of Hungary, getting ever-painful thorn in their side.
Why would Czechoslovaks want to annex parts of Hungary? Slovakia already had it's share of Hungarians.

Also as far as I know Balkan and Central European drift towards authoritarian forms of goverment wasn't that much affected by the minority issues. Or was it?
 
Why would Czechoslovaks want to annex parts of Hungary? Slovakia already had it's share of Hungarians.

Also as far as I know Balkan and Central European drift towards authoritarian forms of goverment wasn't that much affected by the minority issues. Or was it?

Czechslovakia wanted to annex parts of Hungary to establish a corridor to Yugoslavia.

What I say would drive Czechoslovakia to dictatorship is a strong fascist movement which does well electoraly, if they appear to be able to take over the country, there might be an coup in order to stop them.
 
I think in the elections leading up to WWII a retired army general (or maybe not retired) was in the running. Jan something or other (or maybe it was his last name, don't remember). That might help, as I seem to recall him advocating massive military build up (though against Poland)
 

Markus

Banned
Interwar Czechoslovakia is widely known to be the only country in central Europe that remained democratic. Your challenge, should you choose to accept it, is to make Czechoslavakia (or Czech Republic) adopt authoritarian form of Goverment before the WWII equivalent with a POD no sooner than 1920.

Easy, you are a Sudetengerman!

In 1918 you are forced into the CSR. You protest peacefully and as a result get shot at by the Czech military. You are not allowed to participate in the drafting of the constitution. The promises for autonomy are thus not fulfilled. A land reform is used to dilute the German majority in the Sudentenland by confiscating land from Germans and giving it to Czechs. You and your German colleagues are kicked out of public service because some Czech says you don´t speak Czech good enough and replaced with Czech officials and policeman. Laws to protect minorities are applied selectively to benefit only the Czech minority in the Sudentenland. You start a business only to fall victim to economic discrimination as the Czech state prefers to order from Czech companies.


Is that authoritarian enough?
 
How big was the Communist Party in interwar Czechoslovakia? I think a more active/more violent Communist Party could push the government towards authoritarianism, especially if the Communists take power in Germany instead of the Nazis and Czechoslovakia finds itself with much larger Communist powers on both sides.
 
Easy, you are a Sudetengerman!

In 1918 you are forced into the CSR. You protest peacefully and as a result get shot at by the Czech military. You are not allowed to participate in the drafting of the constitution. The promises for autonomy are thus not fulfilled. A land reform is used to dilute the German majority in the Sudentenland by confiscating land from Germans and giving it to Czechs. You and your German colleagues are kicked out of public service because some Czech says you don´t speak Czech good enough and replaced with Czech officials and policeman. Laws to protect minorities are applied selectively to benefit only the Czech minority in the Sudentenland. You start a business only to fall victim to economic discrimination as the Czech state prefers to order from Czech companies.


Is that authoritarian enough?

That's not good, but it's not authoritarian in the slightest. Authoritarian has a specific meaning. For a drastic example, the Confederate States of America, with a far worse "minorities policy", was notably without authority, and the Czech state was a democracy in which Germans were able to participate whatever their disadvantages.
 

Markus

Banned
That's not good, but it's not authoritarian in the slightest. and the Czech state was a democracy in which Germans were able to participate whatever their disadvantages.

Hmm, some elements of Theodore M. Vestal´s definition fit the CSR´s treatment of its german minority:

- ... power structures," in which political power is generated and maintained by a "repressive system that excludes potential challengers"

- ... a bureaucracy operated quite independently of rules

-... Political stability maintained by "control over and support of the military to provide security to the system and control of society;

-... No guarantee of civil liberties


The fact the Germans were allowed to participate in the political process is is IMO meaningless as this legal right did not translate into an end of the state supported discrimination.
 
Hmm, some elements of Theodore M. Vestal´s definition fit the CSR´s treatment of its german minority:

- ... power structures," in which political power is generated and maintained by a "repressive system that excludes potential challengers"

- ... a bureaucracy operated quite independently of rules

-... Political stability maintained by "control over and support of the military to provide security to the system and control of society;

-... No guarantee of civil liberties


The fact the Germans were allowed to participate in the political process is is IMO meaningless as this legal right did not translate into an end of the state supported discrimination.

I'm not trying to defend or deny abuses of minorities in Czechoslovakia, I'm merely saying that I don't think this made it "authoritarian". For comparison, as I said, I don't think of the CSA as authoritarian, and large parts of its populations were slaves without legal rights, because the majority lived under a regime conspicously without authority. Even if the Sudeten Germans were enslaved, Czechoslovakia as a democracy in which the majority of people could take part would still not be authoritarian by my definition. Do you consider the CSA authoritarian? If so, what we've got is nothing but an issue of semantics.
 
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