Josef Tiso

9 min readSep 6, 2021

Jozef Tiso

We can all agree that Adolf Hitler, along with the person who brainwashed millions into thinking avocado is edible, might be the worst humans to ever breathe oxygen on this planet.

But despite his scumbaggery, Hitler made a surprising number of friends.

This is the story of one of those friends. This is also a tale about the perils of peer pressure. This is the story of one Jozef Tiso, a Catholic priest who became the President of Slovakia during the 2nd World War.

As always, let’s start with some context.

Slovakia is a landlocked country in central Europe. For like 900 years, this territory, which comprised numerous ethnic groups, had been under the Hungarian empire (which became the Austro-Hungarian empire when Austria joined the imperial chat group). In 1918, after the Austrians and Hungarians were defeated in World War I, Czechoslovakia was formed, consisting of Germans, Slovaks and Hungarians.

Where Slovakia sits. Is this Western or Eastern Europe?

Czechoslovakia was the most wealthy and politically stable state in Eastern Europe from 1918 through the mid-1930s. However, we all know how difficult it is for various ethnic groups to coexist, especially when they’ve been subjugated for the greater part of a millennium. Czechoslovakia was on the verge of becoming a Nigella Lawson-style pressure cooker.

In the 1930s, the German and Hungarian governments put pressure on Czechoslovakia to redraw its borders to absorb their local people. Finally, a deal was struck — if you can call the threat of invasion by the murderous Fuhrer an agreement — in which the nation would be divided.

Early Life

While most of this was happening, our hero, Jozef Tiso, was coming of age.

Born in 1887 in the Austro-Hungarian Empire, Tiso was raised in a religious family. He would keep up the family tradition as he studied for a Doctor of Theology in 1911, demonstrating a natural flair for the Latin, Hebrew and Aramaic languages.

He would later become a priest in the Catholic church, which is like the most unlikely and yet the most likely place for a dictator to come from.

Tiso performing his priestly duties in his later years. Image from The Slovak Spectator.

His early ministry was spent as an assistant priest in three parishes. He blamed the Jewish tavern owners for the alcoholism in these areas. He was also a member of a self-help association selling food and clothing cheaper than the local Jewish store.

During WW1, Tiso served as a chaplain in the military until his career was ended by a serious kidney illness and he was released from service.

The house where Tiso was raised. Image courtesy of tracesofwar.com

How He Came to Power

With his army career up in smoke and little else to do, Tiso took to politics. He joined and became active in the Slovak People’s Party. The Party was founded by a priest in 1913 and was made up mostly of Slovak Roman Catholics.

Andrej Hlinka was the founder of the Slovak People’s Party, which Tiso would later lead. Image courtesy of Wikipedia.

However, as early as 1918, Tiso had dabbled in governance. He was asked by the Hungarian National Council to convince the Czechoslovak Army not to invade parts of Hungary, the former overlord.

This gave Tiso more exposure than doing the halftime show at the Superbowl and would later help him to strengthen his position in the party hierarchy. Tiso’s elite education and ability to engage with common people made him popular within the Slovak People’s Party.

By the mid-1920s, the Party was the largest party in Czechoslovakia. Its aim was to break away from Czechoslovakia and create a pure Slovak state: Slovakia. In 1930, Tiso even published a manifesto explaining how this could be done.

Tiso styled himself as a Slovak nationalist — a believer in an independent state just for ethnic Slovaks — whose political philosophy had hints of anti-Semitism. However, he temporarily toned down the whole hating Jews thing because it didn’t jive with the “love your neighbours” part of his religion. Especially seeing as a Jewish dude said these words.

He continued to work as a parish priest and also as a deputy in the Czechoslovak parliament. He also served as the Czechoslovak Minister of Health and Sports from 1927 to 1929.

This tiny taste of power must have whet his dictatorial appetite because by the mid 1930s, Tiso’s views leaned heavily toward totalitarian ideas. He repeatedly declared that the People’s Party was the only party representing the Slovaks and the only party which spoke for the Slovak nation. “One nation, one party, one leader”, was the refrain.

Our boy making his voice heard at a demonstration about…something…in 1938. Image from https://senxskutocnost.sng.sk.

Speaking of totalitarianism, Adolf Hitler’s Germany annexed the German part of Czechoslovakia in 1938. Czechoslovak’s president, Edvard Beneš, fled the country. The Slovaks grabbed the opportunity arising from the chaos and declared their autonomy.

Slovak political parties promptly formed their own government, with Tiso being appointed the leader of the People’s Party after its founder, Andrej Hlinka, died. Along with this post, Tiso was declared Prime Minister of the new “nation”.

In January 1939, the new Slovak government banned pretty much all other political parties. It only took 2 months after that for an overthrow of the regime. On 9 March 1939, Tiso was removed from his post as Prime Minister in a soft coup led by Czech troops. Nationalist Karol Sidora was installed in his place.

Things went from bad to worse a few days later when Hungary attacked and grabbed almost 2,000 square kilometres of prime Slovak territory and 70,000 citizens.

Shortly after this, Tiso was summoned to Berlin by Adolf Hitler.

Tiso meets the Fuhrer. Image from ww2gravestone.com

Hitler “persuaded” Tiso to declare the immediate independence of Slovakia, promising that Germany would protect Slovakia. And if Tiso didn’t agree…well, Hitler wouldn’t be able to guarantee that Hungary wouldn’t keep its grubby paws off the remaining Slovak territory.

Faced with this ultimatum, Tiso called up Sidor as well as the president of Czechoslovakia, Emil Hácha. The boys agreed to let the Slovak parliament decide what to do. On March 14, the parliament declared the “independence” of Slovakia and the very next day, Germany invaded the remaining parts of Czechoslovakia.

The Slovak Republic was left untouched by Hitler’s advances, but it essentially became a puppet state of the Nazi regime. And because of the budding bromance between the Fuhrer and Tiso, the latter became the President of Slovakia in October 1939. By 1942, Tiso was cosplaying as the German Fuhrer, styling himself as Vodca (“Leader”)

What He Did

Just like Hitler, Tiso’s policies were characterised by anti-semitism. Where he was once described by his critics as “soft on Jews”, he now took a firmer line — no doubt encouraged by his Nazi collaborators.

But while Nazi influence played a part in Tiso’s stance, its worth noting that Catholic doctrine, didn’t exactly condemn anti-semitism and emerging Christian movements explicitly excluded Jews. As such, Tiso’s views weren’t TOTALLY at odds with his religion. Also, nationalism in was as closely associated with anti-Semitism as a rap album to toxic masculinity. In fact, speaking out against anti-semitism would have been as much political suicide as the workers at a slaughterhouse organising a pro-vegan rally.

Tiso’s critics changed tack and labelled him “a puppet of Berlin”. But it’s not like most people cared. Anti-semitism was fairly popular and many of Tiso’s economic policies benefitted ‘native’ Slovaks.

For example, Jews weren’t allowed to own real estate or work in public jobs. More importantly, Jewish property was expropriated.

Other wacky laws included prohibitions on Jews attending universities, purchasing luxury goods or attending sports and cultural events — which, considering Slovakia’s contribution to the global sporting fraternity, couldn’t have been much of a loss. Jews were also forced to wear the star of David, like some sort of name badge of shame, when they were in public.

With anti-Jew legislation in place, the next step was for Germany to “convince” Tiso’s government to deport Jews to Germany. From 1942, hundreds and thousands of Jews were shipped like cargo to German concentration camps where they were either used as forced labour or simply executed.

The badge that Jews were to wear in public. Image from New World Encyclopedia.

To his credit, Tiso didn’t know about that last part. When he found out that Jews were being exterminated en masse, the deportations ended. Because I mean, using them as slaves was okay but Tiso drew the line at murder. Which is something, I guess.

But haters will say it wasn’t Tiso’s goodness that caused the deportations to stop. They point to the fact that when news that Jews were being sent to their deaths broke, there was public outrage not to be seen until many decades later when a user of instagram.com posted a picture of a meal without gravy. Tiso simply folded under the pressure.

How He Lost Power

Public anger at Tiso continued to fester for other reasons. For one thing, people were tired of German troops being in Slovakia and Tiso collaborating with the Nazis. Also the continued ban on opposition political parties caused a resistance movement to form outside of the country.

On 29 August 1944, there was a mass uprising in an attempt to oust Tiso. Soldiers in the Slovak Army joined the cause and soon the Russian Army and Air Force, who were fighting against Germany and her allies, got involved too, supporting the rebellion.

Germany responded by moving in force to wreck shop, break necks and stomp out that noise. In the process they pretty much took over the whole of Slovakia. By October 1944, Slovakia was nothing more than an appendage to Germany. In fact, the Germans even restarted the deportations: shipping out almost 14,000 and arresting and imprisoning 5,000 Jews.

Fortunately, this crisis lasted about as long as a Kardashian marriage.

Tiso decorates a German soldier who was part of the contingent that came to “rescue” him from the uprising. Image from Wikipedia.

6 months later, in April 1945, the Russians overpowered the German troops and conquered the last parts of western Slovakia. Tiso was removed from power — what semblance of it he still had — and arrested.

For his role in the Holocaust, Tiso was tried and found guilty of crimes against humanity. Sprinkled on top of that were convictions for treason and suppression of freedom.

In 1947 Tiso was hanged.

Tiso’s Legacy

So what can we learn from this priest, Prime Minister, President and puppet?

Well, it seems history does remember Tiso as a stooge of the Nazis. At the same time, he did what he had to do to help his people — and for a while it worked. Given the time, who knows how things would have turned out for Slovakia if he hadn’t made a “deal with the devil.”