Czechoslovak Legion in the context of "Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk"

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⭐ Core Definition: Czechoslovak Legion

The Czechoslovak Legion (Czech: Československé legie; Slovak: Československé légie) were volunteer armed forces consisting predominantly of Czechs and Slovaks fighting on the side of the Entente powers during World War I and the White Army during the Russian Civil War until November 1919. Their goal was to win the support of the Allied Powers for the independence of the Lands of the Bohemian Crown from the Austrian Empire, and of Upper Hungary from the Kingdom of Hungary, which were then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. With the help of émigré intellectuals and politicians such as the Czech Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk and the Slovak Milan Rastislav Štefánik, they grew into a force of over 100,000 troops.

In Russia, they took part in several victorious battles of the war, including the Zborov and Bakhmach against the Central Powers, and were heavily involved in the Russian Civil War fighting Bolsheviks, at times controlling the entire Trans-Siberian railway and several major cities in Siberia.

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👉 Czechoslovak Legion in the context of Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk

Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk (7 March 1850 – 14 September 1937) was a Czechoslovak statesman, political activist and philosopher who served as the first president of Czechoslovakia from 1918 to 1935. He is regarded as the founding father of Czechoslovakia.

Born in Hodonín, Moravia (then part of the Austrian Empire), Masaryk obtained a doctorate at the University of Vienna and was a professor of philosophy at the Czech Charles-Ferdinand University. He began his political career as a deputy of the Austrian Reichsrat, serving from 1891 to 1893 and from 1907 to 1914. He was an advocate of restructuring the Austro-Hungarian Empire into a federal state, but by the outbreak of the First World War, he had become a supporter of Czech and Slovak independence. He went into exile, and travelled around Europe to organise and promote the Czechoslovak cause. He played a pivotal role in the establishment of the Czechoslovak Legion, which fought against the Central Powers during the war. In 1918, Masaryk, along with his protégés Edvard Beneš and Milan Rastislav Štefánik, travelled to the United States to obtain support from President Woodrow Wilson and Secretary of State Robert Lansing. Their negotiations resulted in the Washington Declaration, which proclaimed the independence of a Czechoslovak state.

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Czechoslovak Legion in the context of Siberian intervention

The Siberian intervention or Siberian expedition of 1918–1922 was the dispatch of troops of the Entente powers to the Russian Maritime Provinces as part of a larger effort by the western powers, Japan, and China to support White Russian forces and the Czechoslovak Legion against Soviet Russia and its allies during the Russian Civil War. The Imperial Japanese Army continued to occupy Siberia even after other Allied forces withdrew in 1920.

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Czechoslovak Legion in the context of Kerensky offensive

The Kerensky offensive (Russian: Наступление Керенского), also called the summer offensive, the June offensive (Russian: Июньское наступление) in Russia, or the July offensive in Western historiography, took place from 1 July [O.S. 18 June] to 19 July [O.S. 6 July] 1917 and was the last Russian offensive of World War I. After the abdication of Emperor Nicholas II during the February Revolution, the Russian Provisional Government pledged to fulfill Russia's existing commitments to the Triple Entente, which included launching an offensive in the spring of 1917. The operation was directed at capturing Lemberg and the rest of Galicia from Austria-Hungary.

The Southwestern Front of the Russian Army was tasked with the offensive, as it was the least affected by revolutionary agitation and would be mostly fighting Austria-Hungary, which had not fully recovered from the Brusilov offensive. The main attack was launched by the 7th Army and 11th Army, which made a limited advance, though the 11th Army's Czechoslovak Brigade notably captured the town of Zborov from the Austro-Hungarians. Further to the south, General Lavr Kornilov's 8th Army was more successful, pushing back the Austro-Hungarian 3rd Army and creating a breach along the front that was 30 kilometres (19 miles) wide, leading to the capture of the towns of Kalush and Galich. Secondary attacks to assist the main offensive were also launched by the Russian Western, Northern, and Romanian Fronts in other locations, but they were mostly unsuccessful, with the exception of the one in the Romanian theatre.

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Czechoslovak Legion in the context of SS Kronprinzessin Cecilie (1906)

SS Kronprinzessin Cecilie was an ocean liner built in Stettin, Germany in 1906 for Hapag-Lloyd that had the largest steam reciprocating machinery ever fitted in a ship at the time of construction. The last of four ships of the Kaiser class, she was also the last German ship to have been built with four funnels. She was engaged in transatlantic service between her home port of Bremen and New York until the outbreak of World War I.

On 4 August 1914, at sea after leaving New York, she turned around and put into Bar Harbor, Maine, where she later was interned by the neutral United States. After that country entered the war in April 1917, the ship was seized and turned over to the United States Navy, and renamed USS Mount Vernon (ID-4508). While serving as a troop transport, Mount Vernon was torpedoed in September 1918. Though damaged, she was able to make port for repairs and returned to service. In October 1919 Mount Vernon was turned over for operation by the Army Transport Service in its Pacific fleet based at Fort Mason in San Francisco. USAT Mount Vernon was sent to Vladivostok, Russia to transport elements of the Czechoslovak Legion to Trieste, Italy and German prisoners of war to Hamburg, Germany. On return from that voyage, lasting from March through July 1920, the ship was transferred to the United States Shipping Board and laid up at Solomons Island, Maryland until September 1940 when she was scrapped at Boston, Massachusetts.

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Czechoslovak Legion in the context of Jaroslav Hašek

Jaroslav Hašek (Czech: [ˈjaroslaf ˈɦaʃɛk]; 1883–1923) was a Czech writer, humorist, satirist, journalist, bohemian, first anarchist and then communist, and commissar of the Red Army against the Czechoslovak Legion. He is best known for his novel The Fateful Adventures of the Good Soldier Švejk During the World War, an unfinished novel about a soldier in World War I and a satire on the ineptitude of authority figures. The novel has been translated into about 60 languages, making it the most translated novel in Czech literature.

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