The deteriorating political situation in Europe by the latter half of the interwar period eventually led to a renewed focus on armaments.

After World War II, Škoda Works was nationalized and split into several companies by the newly communist government in Czechoslovakia.

By the early 1990s, with the Communist Party no longer in power, the companies that were part of the Škoda group were privatized and eventually sold off to a number of international buyers such as German conglomerate Volkswagen and South Korean Doosan.

In 1859, Count Ernst von Waldstein-Wartenberg of the aristocratic Waldstein and Wartenberg families set up a branch of his foundry and engineering works in Plzeň.

The output of the plant, employing over 100 workers, included machinery and equipment for sugar mills, breweries, mines, steam engines, boilers, iron bridge structures, and railway facilities.

Steel castings and later forgings for larger passenger liners and warships went on to rank alongside the sugar mills as the top export branches of the factory.

In 1899, the ever-expanding business was transformed into a joint-stock company, and before World War I, Škoda Works had become the largest arms manufacturer in Austria-Hungary.

Exports included castings, such as part of the piping for the Niagara Falls power plant and for the Suez Canal sluices as well as machinery for sugar mills in Turkey, breweries throughout Europe, and guns for the Far East and South America.

Following the emergence of the Czechoslovak Republic in 1918, the complex economic conditions of postwar Europe caused the company to be transformed from what was exclusively an arms manufacturer into a multi-sector concern.

They were originally produced for the Czechoslovak Army and were used extensively by the Wehrmacht in the Polish campaign, the Fall of France and the German invasion of the Soviet Union.

It was based in Plzeň and consisted of the companies: První brněnská strojírna (First Machine Works of Brno), ČKD Blansko, ČKD Dukla Praha-Karlín in Prague, Slovenské energetické strojárne S. M. Kirova (Slovak S. M. Kirov Energy Machine Works) in Tlmače, and Výzkumný ústav energetických zařízení (Energy Facilities Research Institute) in Brno.

It began expanding its production activities, acquiring the Tatra and LIAZ vehicle works and constructing a plant to produce aluminum soft drink cans.

Other divisions have been sold, a large part of them to the Russian company OMZ (the price was not published, estimated at 1 billion CZK).

In 2009, Škoda holding announced that the South Korean conglomerate Doosan would acquire its power section for 11,5 billion CZK (US$656 million).