Hlinkova garda v siločiarach domácej politiky v zlomovom roku 1943

The year 1943 is generally considered to be a significant milestone in the history of the World War II. Events occurred in 1943 had a worldwide impact. Defeats of the Axis forces at the Eastern Front left a remarkable trail on the pro-Nazi regime in Slovakia as well. The paper analyzes how the Hlinka Guard, an influential political organization and a symbol of deep Nazi collaboration, coped with this new situation. The author sketches its ambitions in the political field which included continuing calls for the Final Solution of the Jewish question, conflicts with the Hlinka´s Slovak People´s Party and also internal disputes of the Hlinka Guard´s representatives about future direction of the organization. As he notices, in 1943, depending on attitudes of the guardsmen towards the political situation in Slovakia and abroad, three informal cliques were formed within the HG. The first group subsuming most of the grass-roots rather withdrew from politics. The rest two led by the head commander Alexander Mach and his rival Otomar Kubala had been fighting for power, trying to attract also the guardsmen who, disappointed and “betrayed”, sooner quit with their involvement in the HG. However, none of them achieved a notable success and thus a deadlock persisted until August 1944 when the Slovak National Uprising broke out and the HG underwent a total transformation.