Hlinka’s Slovak People’s Party
흘린카 슬로바키아 인민당
A far-right clerico-fascist Slovak party with a strongly Catholic fundamentalist and authoritarian ideology. Starting in Austria-Hungary as a champion of Slovak rights and later demanding autonomy within Czechoslovakia, it ruled the Slovak Republic, a German client state, from 1939 to 1945.
In depth
Its chairmen were the priests Andrej Hlinka (1913–1938) and Jozef Tiso (1939–1945). Within Czechoslovakia it opposed “Czechoslovakism” and demanded Slovak autonomy, and in the late 1930s, losing faith in democratic procedures, it turned towards fascism. After the Munich Agreement of 1938 it took over the autonomous government and absorbed the other parties, and in March 1939 declared independence under Hitler’s pressure. It had a paramilitary wing, the Hlinka Guard; a pro-Nazi faction dominated policy in 1940–1942 and handed Slovakia’s Jews to Germany for deportation to the death camps. In 1944 it called in German troops to crush the Slovak National Uprising.