Czech-German Relations in the Context of the Rise of Nazism in Czech Fascist Periodicals

This thesis analyzes how the two most important fascist organizations in interwar Czechoslovakia - the National Fascist Community (NOF) and the Vlajka movement - constructed the image of Germans and Germany in their main periodicals (Fašistické listy and Vlajka) between 1931 and 1935. Special attention is given to Adolf Hitler's rise to the position of Reich Chancellor in 1933 and the question of whether and how, in connection with this event, the nature of reporting on Germans (both Reich and Czech) and on Germany as a state changed. The research is conducted qualitatively within the framework of critical discourse analysis using methods of a discursive-historical approach. It focuses in particular on strategies of nomination and prediction, supplemented by argumentative and rhetorical strategies (including identified topoi of anti-German argumentation). Theoretically, the work links the study of far- right discourse with the concept of the politics of fear (R. Wodak) and social identity theory (H. Tajfel) to capture the mechanisms of in-group/out-group formation in a fascist environment. Keywords Fascism, National Fascist Community, Vlajka, Germany, anti-Germanism, nationalism, Nazism, periodicals