Czechoslovaks declare war on Germany

Under 13 August 1918 the British official chronology of the war, published in 1922, records briefly: “Czecho-Slovaks declare war on Germany”. In its list of declarations of war it adds a footnote that on this day a state of war was declared “on behalf of the Czecho-Slovaks as a nation”, while 28 October 1918, the day independence was proclaimed in Prague, is taken as the official date of Czechoslovakia’s entry into the war as a belligerent state. A nation that as yet had neither a state nor a government, and whose lands lay deep inside Austria-Hungary, had by then been fighting on the side of the Entente for three years. It had three armies, in Russia, France and Italy, and its leaders in exile were working to have the Allies recognise it as a full participant in the war.

What happened on 13 August

We have not been able to find the text of a separate act declaring war on this day. Neither American diplomatic documents nor the memoirs of the movement’s leaders, Tomáš Masaryk and Edvard Beneš, mention one. What is certain, however, is what was announced that day. On 13 August Reuters circulated from London a declaration of the British government, signed on 9 August by the Foreign Secretary Arthur Balfour. In it Britain recognised the Czechoslovaks as an Allied nation and the three Czechoslovak armies as one “Allied and belligerent army waging regular warfare against Austria-Hungary and Germany”. At about the same time the text appeared in Paris, where its publication had been held back until Beneš returned from London on 12 August. For the first time one of the Entente powers officially stated that the Czechoslovaks as a nation were at war not only with the Habsburg monarchy but also with the German Empire. It may be that it was this document that the authors of the chronology treated as the declaration of a state of war.

At war with the Habsburgs since 1915

The Czechs and Slovaks in exile had declared war on Austria-Hungary almost three years earlier. On Sunday 14 November 1915 Masaryk’s Czech Committee Abroad published in Switzerland, France, Russia and the United States a manifesto announcing a life-and-death struggle against the Habsburg monarchy. Beneš later called it the official declaration of war. The manifesto presented Austria-Hungary as a state that had lost its independence and become merely a tool of the German policy of the drive to the east. In February 1916 the Czechoslovak National Council was founded in Paris, with Masaryk as chairman and Beneš as secretary-general. Milan Rastislav Štefánik was also a member. From then on it led the whole movement.

Formally the enemy was Vienna, but Czechoslovak soldiers had long been fighting the Germans as well. The volunteers from Russia who had distinguished themselves at Zborov in July 1917 stood up to the Germans in Ukraine in March 1918. The 1st Division of the Czechoslovak Corps held the railway junction at Bakhmach until the trains carrying the legionaries had got away into Russia. In France, Czechoslovak volunteers had served in the Foreign Legion since 1914, and from the beginning of 1918 in their own regiments, intended for the Western Front, that is, for fighting precisely the German army.

Three armies

In the summer of 1918 the Czechoslovak army was scattered across three fronts. The largest force was the corps in Russia, numbering 40,000 to 50,000 men according to various sources. It was to reach France via Siberia and Vladivostok, but after the revolt in May it was fighting the Bolsheviks and controlled a large part of the Trans-Siberian Railway. A few days earlier, on 7 August, the legionaries together with units of Russian anti-Bolsheviks had taken Kazan. The Allies saw in them the beginnings of a new Eastern Front against Germany, and the British declaration wrote that the Czechoslovaks were trying “in Russia and Siberia to arrest the Germanic invasion”.

In France there was a brigade made up of the 21st and 22nd Rifle Regiments, which had taken its oath at Darney on 30 June. It was joined by volunteers from Russia, prisoners freed from Serbian and Romanian captivity and emigrants, including some from America. In Italy, under the April convention, a division was formed from prisoners of war, numbering about 13,600 men according to Italian figures. Its scouts fought on the Piave in June. To Austria-Hungary all these men were traitors. Austro-Hungarian military courts sentenced captured legionaries to death, and a few days after 13 August the government in Vienna announced that despite their recognition by the Entente it would continue to treat them as guilty of high treason.

Recognition by the Allies

Until the summer of 1918 the Allies had bound themselves to no commitments towards the Czechoslovaks. In the Versailles declaration of 3 June the prime ministers of France, Britain and Italy had merely expressed sympathy for their aspirations, as the United States had done earlier. The breakthrough came in the summer. On 29–30 June France recognised the National Council as the supreme organ of the Czechoslovak movement and supported the aspiration to independence. The British declaration went further, calling the Council “the present trustee of the future Czecho-Slovak Government” and granting it supreme authority over the army.

Further steps followed quickly. On 3 September the United States recognised that a state of war existed between the Czechoslovaks and the German and Austro-Hungarian Empires, and the National Council as a de facto belligerent government. According to Czech studies, Japan recognised the Council on 9 September and Italy on 3 October. On 14 October the Council proclaimed itself a provisional government, and on 18 October in Washington Masaryk issued the declaration of independence.

Significance

For the Czechs and Slovaks the state of war with Germany was above all of legal and political significance. An émigré movement without territory was demonstrating that it was a party to the war, and not merely a group of rebels against its own monarch. Thanks to this, after the fighting ended Czechoslovakia sat at the Paris Peace Conference among the Allied and Associated Powers, and on 28 June 1919 its representatives signed the Treaty of Versailles with Germany. In August 1918 this outcome was not yet settled. The Czech and Slovak lands still belonged to the monarchy, and its government regarded the National Council as a committee of private individuals with no mandate whatsoever.