Czech language in the context of "Second Czechoslovak Republic"

The Munich Agreement was reached in Munich on 30 September 1938, by Nazi Germany, the United Kingdom, France, and Italy. The agreement provided for the German annexation of part of Czechoslovakia called the Sudetenland, where three million people, mainly ethnic Germans, lived. The pact is known in some areas as the Munich Betrayal (Czech: Mnichovská zrada; Slovak: Mníchovská zrada), because of a previous 1924 alliance agreement and a 1925 military pact between France and the Czechoslovak Republic.

Germany had started a low-intensity undeclared war on Czechoslovakia on 17 September 1938. In reaction, Britain and France on 20 September formally requested Czechoslovakia cede the Sudetenland territory to Germany. This was followed by Polish and Hungarian territorial demands brought on 21 and 22 September, respectively. Meanwhile, German forces conquered parts of the Cheb District and Jeseník District, where battles included use of German artillery, Czechoslovak tanks, and armored vehicles. Lightly armed German infantry briefly overran other border counties before being repelled. Poland grouped its army units near its common border with Czechoslovakia and conducted an unsuccessful probing offensive on 23 September. Hungary moved its troops towards the border with Czechoslovakia, without attacking. The Soviet Union announced its willingness to come to Czechoslovakia's assistance, provided the Red Army would be able to cross Polish and Romanian territory; both countries refused.

The Elbe (Czech: Labe [ˈlabɛ] ; German: [ˈɛlbə] ; Low German: Ilv or Elv; Upper and Lower Sorbian: Łobjo, pronounced [ˈwɔbʲɔ]) is one of the major rivers of Central Europe. It rises in the Giant Mountains of the northern Czech Republic before traversing much of Bohemia (western half of the Czech Republic), then Germany and flowing into the North Sea at Cuxhaven, 110 kilometres (68 miles) northwest of Hamburg. Its total length is 1,094 km (680 mi).

The Elbe's major tributaries include the rivers Vltava, Ohře, Saale, Havel, Mulde, and Schwarze Elster.

Silesians (Silesian: Ślōnzŏki or Ślůnzoki; Silesian German: Schläsinger or Schläsier; German: Schlesier pronounced [ˈʃleːzi̯ɐ] ; Polish: Ślązacy; Czech: Slezané) is both a linguistic as well as a geographical term for the inhabitants of Silesia, a historical region in Central Europe divided by the current national boundaries of Poland, Germany, and Czechia. Historically, the region of Silesia (Lower and Upper) has been inhabited by Polish (West Slavic Lechitic people), Czechs, and Germans. Therefore, the term Silesian can refer to anyone of these ethnic groups. However, in 1945, great demographic changes occurred in the region as a result of the Potsdam Agreement leaving most of the region ethnically Polish and/or Slavic Upper Silesian. The names of Silesia in different languages most likely share their etymology—Polish: Śląsk; German: Schlesien pronounced [ˈʃleːzi̯ən] ; Czech: Slezsko [ˈslɛsko]; Lower Silesian: Schläsing; Silesian: Ślōnsk [ɕlonsk]; Lower Sorbian: Šlazyńska [ˈʃlazɨnʲska]; Upper Sorbian: Šleska [ˈʃlɛska]; Latin, Spanish and English: Silesia; French: Silésie; Dutch: Silezië; Italian: Slesia; Slovak: Sliezsko; Kashubian: Sląsk. The names all relate to the name of a river (now Ślęza) and mountain (Mount Ślęża) in mid-southern Silesia, which served as a place of cult for pagans before Christianization.

Ślęża is listed as one of the numerous Pre-Indo-European topographic names in the region (see old European hydronymy). According to some Polonists, the name Ślęża [ˈɕlɛ̃ʐa] or Ślęż [ɕlɛ̃ʂ] is directly related to the Old Polish words ślęg [ɕlɛŋk] or śląg [ɕlɔŋk], which means dampness, moisture, or humidity. They disagree with the hypothesis of an origin for the name Śląsk [ɕlɔ̃sk] from the name of the Silings tribe, an etymology preferred by some German authors.

Sorbs (Upper Sorbian: Serbja; Lower Sorbian: Serby; German: Sorben pronounced [ˈzɔʁbn̩] ; Czech: Lužičtí Srbové; Polish: Serbołużyczanie; also known as Lusatians, Lusatian Serbs and Wends) are an indigenous West Slavic ethnic group predominantly inhabiting the parts of Lusatia located in the German states of Saxony and Brandenburg. Sorbs traditionally speak the Sorbian languages (also known as "Wendish" and "Lusatian"), which are closely related to Czech and Lechitic languages. Upper Sorbian and Lower Sorbian are officially recognized minority languages in Germany.

In the Early Middle Ages, the Sorbs formed their own principality, which later shortly became part of the early West Slavic Samo's Empire and Great Moravia, as were ultimately conquered by the East Francia (Sorbian March) and Holy Roman Empire (Saxon Eastern March, Margravate of Meissen, March of Lusatia). From the High Middle Ages, they were ruled at various times by the closely related Poles and Czechs, as well as the more distant Germans and Hungarians. Due to a gradual and increasing assimilation between the 17 and 20 centuries, virtually all Sorbs also spoke German by the early 20 century. In the newly created German nation state of the late 19 and early 20 centuries, policies were implemented in an effort to Germanize the Sorbs. These policies reached their climax under the Nazi regime, who denied the existence of the Sorbs as a distinct Slavic people by referring to them as "Sorbian-speaking Germans". The community is divided religiously between Roman Catholicism (the majority) and Lutheranism. The former Minister President of Saxony Stanislaw Tillich is of Sorbian origin.

The Czechs (Czech: Češi, pronounced [ˈtʃɛʃɪ]; singular Czech, masculine: Čech [ˈtʃɛx], singular feminine: Češka [ˈtʃɛʃka]), or the Czech people (Český lid), are a West Slavic ethnic group and a nation native to the Czech Republic in Central Europe, who share a common ancestry, culture, history, and the Czech language.

Ethnic Czechs were called Bohemians in English until the early 20th century, referring to the former name of their country, Bohemia, which in turn was adapted from the late Iron Age tribe of Celtic Boii. During the Migration Period, West Slavic tribes settled in the area, "assimilated the remaining Celtic and Germanic populations", and formed a principality in the 9th century, which was initially part of Great Moravia, in form of Duchy of Bohemia and later Kingdom of Bohemia, the predecessors of the modern republic.

Great Moravia (Latin: Regnum Marahensium; Greek: Μεγάλη Μοραβία, Meghálī Moravía; Czech: Velká Morava [ˈvɛlkaː ˈmorava]; Slovak: Veľká Morava [ˈvɛʎkaː ˈmɔrava]; Polish: Wielkie Morawy, German: Großmähren), or simply Moravia, was the first major state that was predominantly West Slavic to emerge in the area of Central Europe, possibly including territories which are today part of the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary, Austria, Germany, Poland, Romania, Croatia, Serbia, Ukraine and Slovenia. The formations preceding it in these territories were Samo's tribal union (631–658) and the Pannonian Avar state (567–822).

Centered on the Morava River – which gave the realm its name – the core encompassed today’s Moravia in the eastern Czech Republic and adjacent western Slovakia. The kingdom saw the rise of the first-ever Slavic literary culture in the Old Church Slavonic language as well as the expansion of Christianity, first via missionaries from East Francia, and later after the arrival of Saints Cyril and Methodius in 863 and the creation of the Glagolitic alphabet, the first alphabet dedicated to a Slavic language. Glagolitic was subsequently replaced by the Cyrillic alphabet created in the First Bulgarian Empire.

The Kingdom of Bohemia (Czech: České království), sometimes referenced in English literature as the Czech Kingdom, was a medieval and early modern monarchy in Central Europe. It was the predecessor state of the modern Czech Republic.

The Kingdom of Bohemia was an Imperial State in the Holy Roman Empire. The Bohemian king was a prince-elector of the empire. The kings of Bohemia, besides the region of Bohemia itself, also ruled other lands belonging to the Bohemian Crown, which at various times included Moravia, Silesia, Lusatia, and parts of Saxony, Brandenburg, and Bavaria.

The prince-electors (German: Kurfürst [ˈkuːɐ̯ˌfʏʁst] , pl. Kurfürsten [ˈkuːɐ̯ˌfʏʁstn̩] , Czech: Kurfiřt, Latin: Princeps Elector) were the members of the Electoral College of the Holy Roman Empire, which elected the Holy Roman Emperor. Usually, half of the electors were archbishops.

From the 13th century onwards, a small group of prince-electors gained the privilege of electing the King of the Romans. The king would then later be crowned Emperor by the pope. Charles V (elected in 1519) was the last emperor to be crowned (1530); his successors assumed the title "Elected Emperor of the Romans" (German: erwählter Römischer Kaiser; Latin: electus Romanorum imperator) upon their coronation as kings.

The Czechoslovak Hussite Church (Czech: Církev československá husitská, CČSH or CČH; Slovak: Cirkev československá husitská) is a Christian church that separated from the Catholic Church after World War I in Czechoslovakia.

Both the Czechoslovak Hussite Church and Moravian Church trace their tradition back to the Hussite reformers and acknowledge Jan Hus (John Huss) as their predecessor. It was well-supported by Czechoslovakia's first president, Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk, who himself belonged to the Evangelical Church of Czech Brethren.

The Czech lands (Czech: České země, pronounced [ˈtʃɛskɛː ˈzɛmɲɛ]) is a historical-geographical term which denotes the three historical regions of Bohemia, Moravia, and Czech Silesia out of which Czechoslovakia, and later the Czech Republic and Slovakia, were formed. Together the three have formed the Czech part of Czechoslovakia since 1919, and the Czech Republic since 1 January 1993.

In a historical context, Czech texts use the term to refer to any territory ruled by the Kings of Bohemia, i.e., the lands of the Bohemian Crown (země Koruny české) as established by Emperor Charles IV in the 14th century. This includes territories like the Lusatias (which in 1635 fell to Saxony) and the whole of Silesia, which at the time were all ruled from Prague Castle. Since the conquest of Silesia by the Prussian king Frederick the Great in the First Silesian War in 1742, the remaining lands of the Bohemian Crown—Bohemia, Moravia and Austrian Silesia—have been more or less co-extensive with the territory of the modern-day Czech Republic.