MAPS OF HISTORY · HISTORY OF · Czech Republic

ONE LAND · 8 ATLASES

Czech Republic, on the map of history

What was Czech Republic before it was Czech Republic? Below, every era of this land in the Maps of History collection — who ruled it, what it was called, and when control changed — each line linked to the dated map that shows it. Modern borders stand in as an honest approximation; every atlas says so on the map itself.

Boiohaemum (mod. Czechia) · The Rise and Fall of Rome, 264 BC – AD 476

OPEN ROME ON THE LIVING MAP →

Bohemia (mod. Czechia) · The Crusades, 1095–1291

OPEN THE CRUSADES ON THE LIVING MAP →

Kingdom of Bohemia · The Mongol Empire, 1206–1294

OPEN THE MONGOL EMPIRE ON THE LIVING MAP →

Bohemia (mod. Czechia) · The Age of Revolutions, 1775–1848

OPEN THE AGE OF REVOLUTIONS ON THE LIVING MAP →

Austria-Hungary (mod. Czechia) · The Russian Revolution, 1905–1924

The Czech lands of Austria-Hungary sent this story its strangest army: tens of thousands of Czech and Slovak prisoners of war who volunteered to fight for the Allies — and for a country that did not yet exist. Stranded on the Trans-Siberian in 1918, their Legion accidentally lit the civil war; Masaryk parlayed its fame into Allied recognition, and Czechoslovakia was declared in October 1918 while its soldiers still held Siberian railway stations 7,000 km from Prague.

OPEN THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION ON THE LIVING MAP →

Czech lands (Austria-Hungary) · The Great War, 1914–1918

The Czech lands fought this war mostly in other people’s uniforms — and in the Czechoslovak Legion, POWs and deserters who fought for the Entente from France to Siberia, where they briefly held the Trans-Siberian railway in 1918. Their exploits bought Masaryk’s exile campaign its credibility: Czechoslovakia was proclaimed in October 1918, the settlement’s most democratic creation.

OPEN WWI ON THE LIVING MAP →

Czech Republic · The War Room — WW2, 1936–1945

Betrayed at Munich (1938), occupied outright (1939) — the only government-in-exile whose country Germany held from first day to last. The price of “peace for our time” was paid twice over: the Škoda and Brno arms works equipped the Wehrmacht for its early campaigns, and the Protectorate was ruled by escalating terror — after Resistance parachutists killed SS chief Heydrich in May 1942, the village of Lidice was erased and its destruction broadcast as a warning to Europe. Liberation in 1945 brought the expulsion of some three million Sudeten Germans — Munich’s last consequence — and, within three years, a communist coup.

OPEN WW2 ON THE LIVING MAP →

Czech lands · The Cold War, 1945–1991

Betrayed at Munich, couped in 1948 (the event that hardened the West’s resolve, Ch. 2), and host of the era’s great heresy: 1968’s “socialism with a human face,” crushed by half a million fraternal troops. Charter 77 kept the receipts; the Velvet Revolution cashed them in eleven days, and put its imprisoned playwright in the castle.

OPEN THE COLD WAR ON THE LIVING MAP →