Czechs in the context of Migration Period

The Slavs or Slavic people are a major ethnic group in Europe. They speak Slavic languages and preserve Slavic culture. There are 13 Slavic countries in Europe, which include: Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Russia, Belarus, Ukraine, Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Serbia, Montenegro, North Macedonia, and Bulgaria; the Slavs comprise a population of around 300 million people. There are three different Slavic ethnic groups: the West Slavs, the East Slavs, and the South Slavs; the Poles, Silesians, Kashubians, Sorbs, Czechs, and Slovaks are West Slavs; Russians, Belarusians, Ukrainians, and Rusyns are East Slavs; while Slovenes, Resians, Croats, Bosniaks, Serbs, Montenegrins, Torlakians, the Gorani, the Torbeši, Macedonians, and Bulgarians are South Slavs. Slavs are geographically distributed throughout the northern parts of Eurasia; they predominantly inhabit Central Europe, Eastern Europe, Southeastern Europe, and Northern Asia, though there is a large Slavic minority scattered across the Baltic states and Central Asia, and a substantial Slavic diaspora in the Americas, Western Europe, and Northern Europe.

Early Slavs lived during the Migration Period and the Early Middle Ages (approximately from the 5th to the 10th century AD), and came to control large parts of Central, Eastern, and Southeast Europe between the sixth and seventh centuries. Beginning in the 7th century, they were gradually Christianized. By the 12th century, they formed the core population of a number of medieval Christian states: East Slavs in the Kievan Rus', South Slavs in the Bulgarian Empire, the Principality of Serbia, the Duchy of Croatia and the Banate of Bosnia, and West Slavs in the Principality of Nitra, Great Moravia, the Duchy of Bohemia, and the Kingdom of Poland.

In the Czech Republic, 47.8% of the population is irreligious (atheist, agnostic or other irreligious life stances), while 21.3% of the population are believers. The religious identity of the country has changed drastically since the first half of the 20th century, when more than 90% of Czechs were Christians. As of 2021, 11.7% of the population identified with Christianity (9.3% identifying with Catholicism and 2.4% with all other Christian denominations); 10.8% identified with other religious identities or beliefs. According to sociologist Jan Spousta, not all the irreligious people are atheists; indeed, since the late 20th century there has been an increasing distancing from both Christian dogmatism and atheism, and at the same time ideas and non-institutional models similar to those of Eastern religions have become widespread through movements started by various gurus, and hermetic and mystical paths.

The West Slavs are Slavic peoples who speak the West Slavic languages. They separated from the common Slavic group around the 7th century, and established independent polities in Central Europe by the 8th to 9th centuries. The West Slavic languages diversified into their historically attested forms over the 10th to 14th centuries.

Today, groups which speak West Slavic languages include the Poles, Czechs, Slovaks, Silesians, Kashubians, and Sorbs. From the ninth century onwards, most West Slavs converted to Roman Catholicism, thus coming under the cultural influence of the Latin Church, adopting the Latin alphabet, and tending to be more closely integrated into cultural and intellectual developments in western Europe than the East Slavs, who converted to Eastern Orthodox Christianity and adopted the Cyrillic alphabet.

Bratislava (German: Pressburg; Hungarian: Pozsony) is the capital and largest city of the Slovak Republic and the fourth largest of all cities on the river Danube. Officially, the population of the city is about 475,000; however, some sources estimate the daily number of people moving around the city based on mobile phone SIM cards is more than 570,000. Bratislava is in southwestern Slovakia at the foot of the Little Carpathians, occupying both banks of the Danube and the left bank of the River Morava. The city is situated on the border of three countries—Slovakia, Austria, and Hungary—and is the only national capital to have land borders with two other sovereign states. Its geographic position places it exceptionally close to the Austrian capital Vienna, making them the closest pair of capital cities in Europe at just 50 kilometres (31 mi) apart.

The city's history has been influenced by people of many nations and religions, including Austrians, Bulgarians, Croats, Czechs, Germans, Hungarians, Jews and Slovaks. It was the coronation site and legislative center and capital of the Kingdom of Hungary from 1536 to 1783; eleven Hungarian kings and eight queens were crowned in St Martin's Cathedral. Most Hungarian parliament assemblies were held here from the 17th century until the Hungarian Reform Era, and the city has been home to many Hungarian, German, and Slovak historical figures.

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.

The Duchy of Bohemia, also later referred to in English as the Czech Duchy, (Old Czech: Češské kniežěstvie) was a monarchy and a principality of the Holy Roman Empire in Central Europe during the Early and High Middle Ages. It was formed around 870 by Czechs as part of the Great Moravian realm. Bohemia separated from disintegrating Great Moravia after Duke Spytihněv swore fealty to the East Frankish king Arnulf in 895.

While the Bohemian dukes of the Přemyslid dynasty, at first ruling at Prague Castle and Levý Hradec, brought further estates under their control, the Christianization initiated by Saints Cyril and Methodius was continued by the Frankish bishops of Regensburg and Passau. In 973, the Diocese of Prague was founded through the joint efforts of Duke Boleslaus II and Emperor Otto I. Later Duke Wenceslaus I of Bohemia, killed by his younger brother Boleslaus in September 935, became the land's patron saint.

The First Czechoslovak Republic, often colloquially referred to as the First Republic, was the first Czechoslovak state that existed from 1918 to 1938, a union of ethnic Czechs and Slovaks. The country was commonly called Czechoslovakia, a compound of Czech and Slovak; which gradually became the most widely used name for its successor states. It was composed of former territories of Austria-Hungary, inheriting different systems of administration from the formerly Austrian (Bohemia, Moravia, a small part of Silesia) and Hungarian territories (mostly Upper Hungary and Carpathian Ruthenia).

After 1933, Czechoslovakia remained the only de facto functioning democracy in Central Europe, organized as a parliamentary republic. Under pressure from its Sudeten German minority, supported by neighbouring Nazi Germany, Czechoslovakia was forced to cede its Sudetenland region to Germany on 1 October 1938 as part of the Munich Agreement. It also ceded southern parts of Slovakia and Carpathian Ruthenia to Hungary and the Trans-Olza region in Silesia to Poland. This, in effect, ended the First Czechoslovak Republic. It was replaced by the Second Czechoslovak Republic, which lasted less than half a year before Germany occupied the rest of Czechoslovakia in March 1939.

Hetman is a political title from Central and Eastern Europe, historically assigned to military commanders (comparable to a field marshal or imperial marshal in the Holy Roman Empire). First used by the Czechs in Bohemia in the 15th century, it was the title of the second-highest military commander after the king in the Crown of the Kingdom of Poland and the Grand Duchy of Lithuania from the 16th to 18th centuries. Hetman was also the title of the head of the Cossack state in Ukraine after the Khmelnytsky Uprising of 1648. Throughout much of the history of Romania and Moldavia, hetmans were the second-highest army rank. In the modern Czech Republic, the title is used for regional governors.

The Second Polish Republic, officially known at the time as the Republic of Poland, was a country in Central and Eastern Europe that existed between 7 October 1918 and 6 October 1939 after being established in the final stage of World War I. The Second Republic was taken over in 1939, after it was invaded by Nazi Germany, the Soviet Union, and the Slovak Republic, marking the beginning of the European theatre of the Second World War. The Polish government-in-exile was established in Paris and later London after the fall of France in 1940.

When, after several regional conflicts, most importantly the victorious Polish-Soviet war, the borders of the state were finalized in 1922, Poland's neighbours were Czechoslovakia, Germany, the Free City of Danzig, Lithuania, Latvia, Romania, and the Soviet Union. It had access to the Baltic Sea via a short strip of coastline known as the Polish Corridor on either side of the city of Gdynia. Between March and August 1939, Poland also shared a border with the then-Hungarian governorate of Subcarpathia. In 1938, the Second Republic was the sixth largest country in Europe. According to the 1921 census, the number of inhabitants was 25.7 million. By 1939, just before the outbreak of World War II, this had grown to an estimated 35.1 million. Almost a third of the population came from minority groups: 13.9% Ukrainians; 10% Ashkenazi Jews; 3.1% Belarusians; 2.3% Germans and 3.4% Czechs and Lithuanians. At the same time, a significant number of ethnic Poles lived outside the country's borders.

Lebensraum (German pronunciation: [ˈleːbənsˌʁaʊm] , lit. 'living space') is a German concept of expansionism and Völkisch nationalism, the philosophy and policies of which were common to German politics from the 1890s to the 1940s. First popularized around 1901, Lebensraum became a geopolitical goal of the German Empire in World War I (1914–1918), as the core element of the Septemberprogramm of territorial expansion. The most extreme form of this ideology was promoted and initiated by the Nazi Party, that had ruled Nazi Germany, whose ultimate goal of which was to establish a Greater German Reich. Lebensraum was a leading motivation of Nazi Germany to initiate World War II, and it would continue this policy until the end of the conflict.

Following Adolf Hitler's rise to power, Lebensraum became an ideological principle of Nazism and provided justification for the German territorial expansion into Central and Eastern Europe. The Nazi policy Generalplan Ost (lit. 'Master Plan for the East') was based on its tenets. It stipulated that Germany required a Lebensraum necessary for its survival and that most of the populations of Central and Eastern Europe would have to be removed permanently (either through mass deportation to Siberia, extermination, or enslavement), including Polish, Ukrainian, Russian, Belarusian, Czech, and other Slavic nations considered non-Aryan. The Nazi government aimed at repopulating these lands with Germanic colonists in the name of Lebensraum during and following World War II. Entire populations were ravaged by starvation; any agricultural surplus was used to feed Germany. The Jewish population was to be exterminated outright.

Czech culture has been shaped by the nation's geographical position in the middle of Europe, the Slavic ethnicity of Czechs, influences from its neighbors, political and social changes, wars and times of peace.

There are 16 Czech locations listed among the World Heritage Sites by UNESCO, six Czechs have been awarded a Nobel Prize and 173 have been nominated.

Jan Hus (/hʊs/; Czech: [ˈjan ˈɦus] ; c. 1369 – 6 July 1415), sometimes anglicized as John Goose or John Huss, and referred to in historical texts as Iohannes Hvs or Johannes Huss, was a Czech theologian and philosopher who became a Church reformer and the inspiration of Hussitism, a key predecessor to Protestantism, and a seminal figure in the Bohemian Reformation. Hus is considered to be the first Church reformer, even though some designate the theorist John Wycliffe. His teachings had a strong influence, most immediately in the approval of a reformed Bohemian religious denomination and, over a century later, on Martin Luther.

After being ordained as a Catholic priest, Hus began to preach in Prague. He opposed many aspects of the Catholic Church in Bohemia, such as its views on ecclesiology, simony, the Eucharist, and other theological topics. Hus was a master, dean, and rector at the Charles University in Prague between 1409 and 1410.

The First Czechoslovak Republic emerged from the collapse of the Austro-Hungarian Empire in October 1918. The new state consisted mostly of territories inhabited by Czechs and Slovaks, but also included areas containing majority populations of other nationalities, particularly Germans (22.95 %), who accounted for more citizens than the state's second state nation of the Slovaks, Hungarians (5.47 %) and Ruthenians (3.39 %). The new state comprised the total of Bohemia whose borders did not coincide with the language border between German and Czech. Despite initially developing effective representative institutions alongside a successful economy, the deteriorating international economic situation in the 1930s gave rise to growing ethnic tensions. The dispute between the Czech and German populations, fanned by the rise of Nazism in neighbouring Germany, resulted in the loss of territory under the terms of the Munich Agreement and subsequent events in the autumn of 1938, bringing about the end of the First Republic.