One thing I hadn’t realised is that when Hitler annexed Austria as part of his Anschluss, he also pinched a bit of land near to Bratislava which meant that the river in the city was the border between Czechoslovakia and Nazi Germany. Here he is in 1938 standing looking across the Danube at Bratislava Castle, which I visited last week. On 14 March 1939, the Independent Slovak Republic was formed, breaking up Czechoslovakia as Hitler had taken what is now the Czech Republic. This has since created a difficult situation, as at first look it appears that this was when Slovakia was formed, but it was effectively a client state of Nazi Germany, so it’s not looked back on with much excitement.
This is in February 1940, the reality of the new Slovak Government. The Russian Red Army liberated Bratislava on 4 April 1945, although they were then stuck under Soviet rule until the Velvet Revolution in November 1989 and then the Velvet Divorce in 1992 when Slovakia finally became independent.