As World War I neared its end and Austria-Hungary disintegrated, Czech and Slovak leaders seized the moment to declare a new republic uniting Czechs and Slovaks under one government. Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk, who had lobbied Allied governments from exile, became the new nation's first president, and the date is still celebrated as Czech Statehood Day.
By late October 1918, the Austro-Hungarian Empire was collapsing under the weight of military defeat, food shortages, and nationalist movements that had been simmering for decades. In Prague, the Czech National Committee, sensing the empire's final unraveling, moved quickly and decisively, issuing a proclamation of independence on October 28 that caught even some of its own leaders slightly off guard with its speed.
The declaration came together almost improvisationally. Word arrived that Vienna had accepted terms suggesting the empire's dissolution, and Czech officials in Prague acted before Austrian authorities could regroup, taking control of key government buildings and food supplies with remarkably little violence. Crowds filled Wenceslas Square, tearing down Habsburg insignia and imperial eagles from public buildings in a spontaneous outpouring that historians describe as almost festive.
Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk, a philosophy professor turned statesman, had spent the war years abroad, tirelessly persuading British, French, and American leaders that an independent Czechoslovak state was both just and strategically useful to the Allied cause. He wasn't even in Prague for the declaration, still in the United States negotiating recognition, but he returned in December to become the new republic's first president. The state he helped found would last, in various forms, until its peaceful split into the Czech Republic and Slovakia in 1993.
Key people: Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk, Edvard Beneš