“At the Dangerous Crossroads of Europe.” Fascistization of Wartime Slovakia (1939–1945) as Inward Colonialism

Slovakia's history was entangled with imperial and colonial contexts embedded in civilizational discourse, producing racial hierarchies between “civilized” and “cultured” on the one hand and “backward” and “savage” on the other. This racialized civilizational discourse played a critical role in the wartime fascistization of Slovakia as it not only navigated Slovakia's transnational alliances but also launched the reconstruction of Slovak society from within. Yet, despite the significance of civilizational discourse in the formation of interwar and wartime Slovakia, it has never been adequately examined. That said, this paper unpacks the wartime Hlinka Slovak People's Party (HSLS) or the Ludak regime's (1939–1945) efforts to prove its racial worth by constructing a Slovak cultured nation as a pretext for recognition and membership in what Jozef Tiso, Roman-Catholic priest and president of the first Slovak Republic, saw as Christian cultured Europe. Investigating the racialized notion of Slovakia as a cultured nation and its belongingness to New Europe as a part of civilizational discourse not only allows us to examine these neglected aspects of the fascistization of 1930s and 1940s Slovakia but also engage with transnational perspectives by grasping the HSLS' regime's ties to Nazi Germany, New Europe, and a broader colonial context.