The flexibility of the German Reich in its protective obligations became apparent shortly after independence, when Slovakia was invaded by Hungarian troops and subsequently had to cede eastern Slovak territories to Horthy's Hungary.

Through its support of the Third Reich, Slovakia fell into ever greater international isolation and reduced its chances of a possible post-war existence, especially when the Allies adopted the restoration of Czechoslovakia as one of their wartime objectives in 1941.

They gathered intellectuals from the military and politics and helped Czech refugees from the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia (mostly civil servants and resistance fighters) to escape via Slovakia to the Balkans and then to the West.

They agreed to stage an uprising and to form a "Slovak National Council" as the highest body of the illegal resistance, consisting of three communists (Gustáv Husák, Ladislav Novomeský, Karol Šmidke) and three non-communists (Ján Ursíny, Jozef Lettrich, Matej Josko).

It was agreed to fight the Tiso regime and German domination and to re-establish Czechoslovakia as a democratic federation of two nation states in which Czechs and Slovaks would live as equal partners.

[95] By June 1944, Central Slovakia had a full three months' worth of food supplies, all in all 1,3 million litres of petrol in various storage centres and 3,54 billion Slovak crowns in the Bank of Banská Bystrica.

[115][111][116] It was primarily the fact that the Slovak army was involved in the Martin incident, but also the increasing disloyalty of many units to the government in Bratislava, that set in motion a swift and harsh reaction by the German Reich.

[118] Nor had the Czechoslovak government-in-exile in London heard a word from the Soviets about their attitude toward the plans for a Slovak national uprising during more than three weeks that had elapsed since the Šmidke delegation arrived in the USSR.

The Slovak troops forming the core of the armed uprising were given the name "Czechoslovak Army in Slovakia" (Československá armáda na Slovensku, ČSAS for short) and on 30 September were renamed "1.

This first Slovak defensive success had a positive effect on the fighting morale of the insurgents, so that the advance of all German units slowed down considerably and, in some cases, even came to a complete standstill.

Kampfgruppe Schill also operated successfully in the Nitra Valley, taking Baťovany north of the district town of Topoľčany as early as 5 September, before Slovak resistance made further advance impossible.

In the east of the insurgency area, Army Group North Ukraine limited itself to a minimal defence of the front line, as the Kampfgruppen Mathias and Rintelen were urgently needed to repel the Soviet offensive.

In contrast, the weak securing forces of Korück 531 east of Telgárt suffered further setbacks when they once again failed to withstand the onslaught of the insurgents and therefore fell back almost 15 km west of Spišská Nová Ves.

[149] After the fall of the Horthy regime in Budapest and the installation of the Arrow Cross government on 16 October, the Germans were able to smuggle a considerable amount of military material and troops from Hungary into southern Slovakia.

The operational plan encompassed that the German units would attack concentrically from all sides, with the SS 18th Panzer Grenadier Division intervening in the fighting from the neighbouring country as a surprise element.

However, the "Domobrana" had more of a symbolic character, since the army's lack of combat readiness, inadequate training and equipment (more than two-thirds of its men remained unarmed) ruled out from the outset any deployment at the front or in the fight against the partisans, so that it could be called upon primarily only for entrenchment and repair work in the hinterland.

As a result of the Red Army's revised operational planning, the Wehrmacht was forced not only to repel the Soviet-Romanian offensive in Transylvania, but also to resume full-scale defence in the Beskids after a brief period of rest.

Ultimately, the Wehrmacht, as well as its Hungarian ally, still possessed the substance to both put down the uprising in central Slovakia and to repel the Soviet objective of encircling and destroying parts of Army Group A and South.

All members of the German ethnic group from 16 to 50 years of age who were fit for military service were to be registered by the SS-Einsatzkommando Slowakei and initially deployed in closed settlement areas as local armed forces.

At the end of December 1944, a German ‘economic commissioner’ was appointed, according to whom all raw material and food reserves were relocated to and, after the labour force, the industrial plants were also subjected to the full control of the Reich authorities.

[209][213][214][215][201] The Museum of the Slovak National Uprising (Múzeum SNP), in its 2009 publication, estimates that from September 1944 to the end of April 1945, a total of 5,305 people were murdered and interred in 211 mass graves.

The decree, prepared by the Czechoslovak government-in-exile in London and containing the provisions for the prosecution of Nazi and war criminals, was rejected by the Slovak National Council, with the result that Czechoslovakia ultimately proceeded in this sphere according to two different sets of standards.

[224] In September and October 1944, the representatives of the Slovak collaborationist regime labelled the uprising as small, unprepared, meaningless and foreign – This the work of "non-Slovak elements": the so-called Czechoslovaks, Czechs, Jews, Russian paratroopers and domestic traitors.

The Slovak historian Elena Mannová (2011) writes about this: Sociological studies show that for many citizens, no difficulties arise from the idea of incompatible pasts – This some respondents expressed a positive view of both the SNP and the Tiso regime.

Its party leader Marian Kotleba had black flags hoisted at the municipal office as regional president of Banská Bystrica on the anniversary of the Slovak National Uprising on 29 August 2015.

This is because – This according to Schönherr's assessment the uprising, in conjunction with the Red Army attack on the Beskid front that began a few days later, could develop into an eminent threat to the military and political position of the German Reich in south-east Europe.

Firstly, the incomplete files of Army Group North Ukraine and the subordinate units as well as the command authorities in the rear area of operations, which are held by the Bundesarchiv-Militärarchiv (Freiburg), would make more intensive research into this episode of the Second World War more difficult.

The director Paľo Bielik made the family saga Vlčie diery ("Wolf Holes") with great pathos and clearly from the perspective of the victors, but also with vividly drawn characters beyond black-and-white thinking and using documentary footage directly from the uprising.

The premiere was planned for the 4th anniversary of the SNP in August 1948, but some scenes had to be reworked due to ideological reservations: The film commission required an emphasis on "domestic betrayal" and the part played by Soviet liberators.

In the golden era of Slovak film from 1963 to 1970, various moral aspects of this event – This including partisan robbery in Juraj Jakubisko's Zbehovia a pútnici ("Deserters and Pilgrims", 1968) – could already be artistically processed and publicised.