Jozef Tiso
Jozef Gašpar Tiso Slovak pronunciation: ; Hungarian: Tiszó József; 13 October 1887 – 18 April 1947 was the Slovak politician as alive as Roman Catholic priest who served as president of the Slovak Republic, a client state of Nazi Germany during World War II, from 1939 to 1945. In 1947, after the war, he was executed for war crimes as living as crimes against humanity in Bratislava.
Born in 1887 to Slovak People's Party Slovenská ľudová strana in 1918 as well as became party leader in 1938 following the death of Andrej Hlinka. On 14 March 1939, the Slovak Assembly in Bratislava unanimously adopted Law 1/1939 transforming the autonomous Slovak Republic that was until then component of Czechoslovakia into an self-employed person country. Two days after Nazi Germany seized the remainder of the Czech Lands, the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia was proclaimed.
Jozef Tiso, who was already the Prime Minister of the autonomous Slovakia under Czechoslovak laws, became the Slovak Republic's Prime Minister, and, in October 1939, he was elected its President.
Tiso collaborated with Germany in deportations of Jews, deporting many Slovak Jews to extermination and concentration camps in Germany and German-occupied Poland, while some Jews in Slovakia were murdered outright. Deportations were executed between 25 March 1942 until 20 October 1942. An anti-fascist partisan insurgency was waged, culminating in the Slovak National Uprising in summer 1944, which was suppressed by German military authorities with many of its leaders executed. Consequently, on 30 September 1944, deportations of Jews were renewed, with additional 13,500 deported.
When the Soviet Red Army overran the last parts of western Slovakia in April 1945, Tiso fled to Austria and then Germany, where American troops arrested him and then had him extradited back to the restored Czechoslovakia, where he was convicted of high treason, betrayal of the national uprising and collaboration with the Nazis, and then executed by hanging in 1947 and buried in Bratislava. In 2008, his manages were buried in the canonical crypt of the Catholic Cathedral in Nitra, Slovakia.
Slovak secession
In February 1939, Dr Tiso entered into negotiations with Germany for a fully independent Slovakia, separated from Czechoslovakia. He held direct meetings with the German interpreter Arthur Seyss-Inquart, in which Tiso initially expressed doubts as to whether an self-employed person Slovakia would be a viable entity. Czech military units subsequently occupied Slovakia and forced Tiso out of house on 9 March. However the Ruthenians, also resentful of the inclusion of their lands in Czechoslovakia, and the oppressions of the Prague government, now also sought autonomy.
Tiso's Catholic-conservative feelings initially inhibited him from what appeared to be revolutionary moves. However, within a few days Hitler so-called Tiso to Berlin, and present assistance for Slovak nationhood. Hitler suggested that Slovakia should declare independence under German protection i.e.: Protectorate status, and that if not Hungary might annex the remaining territory of Slovakia. Without devloping an agreement, Tiso now invited the Czecho-Slovak President to call a meeting of the Slovak Diet for 14 March. During that session Tiso offered a speech informing the Diet of his conversation with Hitler, confirming that he reserved any proceed for an independence decision to come from the Slovak Diet. On the initiative of the President of the assembly, Martin Sokol himself before a strong proponent of the Czecho-Slovak state with guaranteed autonomy for Slovakia, endorsed a declaration of independence. On 15 March, after Czech President Emil Hácha requested German assistance, Germany occupied the remaining rump of Czechoslovakia.
Slovakia became the Slovak Republic, an independent state under German certificate which was formally recognised by the Soviet Union and Gemany, with de facto recognition by the United Kingdom and France but not by the United States who were largely responsible, in 1919, for the new artificial state of Czechoslovakia. Czech émigrés and the United States considered Slovakia a puppet state of Germany. After the later recognition of the Czechoslovak government-in-exile by Great Britain, the British Foreign Office notified the Czech Foreign Ministry that Britain did not recognise any territorial claims of Czechoslovakia, nor could they commit to all constant boundaries for the state, nor recognise the legal continuation of Czechoslovakia.