The party's program addressed several other problems of Slovak society including emigration, usury, corruption and forced magyarization.

[26] Other personalities, among them the Catholic priest Andrej Hlinka, joined the organisation in early 1906, before the Slovak National Party (SĽS) was officially formed on 18 March 1906 by Skyčák, Milan Hodža and A. Ráth.

However, their programmes were nearly identical; the SĽS called for strong democratization and included liberal reforms such as freedom of speech and universal suffrage.

The Hungarian government immediately reacted by implementing increasingly repressive measures to suppress the national and political consciousness and awareness of Slovaks.

[27] In 1912, the SĽS refused to support the strong Czechoslovakist orientation of the SNS prevailing at that time, and made a similar declaration as in 1905, again without formal effects.

In 1918, Hlinka and Juriga staunchly supported the idea of a common Czechoslovak state and signed the Martin Declaration which rejected Hungarian jurisdiction and rule over Slovakia.

[28] All of its programs had religious, national, social and constitutional values, its ideology was based on papal encyclicals Rerum novarum and Quadragesimo anno, and was oriented mostly towards its Catholic electorate.

Rodobrana was inspired by Italian fascism, and became a magnet for young dissatisfied radicals, the core of the future fascist wing of the HSĽS.

[29] On 15 January 1927, the HSĽS became a member of the Czechoslovak government coalition after Jozef Tiso started negotiations during a foreign trip by Hlinka.

[29] In order to contest the 1935 elections, the HSĽS joined with the SNS to create the "Autonomous Block", which received 30.12% of the vote in the Slovak region of Czechoslovakia.

The HSĽS considered itself to be the only political party that vigorously defended Slovak national interests, but its inability to achieve autonomy decreased the prestige of its moderate wing and strengthened its radical members.

The conservative wing led by Tiso preserved its majority in the presidium of the party, but the radicals in turn gained influence and held important positions in new organizations like the Hlinka Guard (Hlinkova Garda) and the Slovak National Committees (Slovenské Národné Výbory).

The Social Democrats and Communists were shut out because the HSĽS-SSNJ government refused to publish new election procedures until it was too late for these parties to select their candidates.

[29] In a last-ditch attempt to save the country, the Prague government deposed Tiso as Slovak premier, replacing him with Karel Sidor.

During the meeting, Joachim von Ribbentrop passed on a bogus report stating that Hungarian troops were approaching Slovak borders.

[17] The HSĽS-SSNJ was the dominant force in the country, to the point that the parliamentary elections scheduled for 1943 did not take place, and it claimed to represent the nation and the social interests of all Slovak citizens.

The conservative wing led by the Catholic priest Jozef Tiso, the president of Slovakia and chairman of the party, wanted to create a separate authoritarian and religious state modelled on fundamentalist Christian principles.

The conservative wing had no doubts about the need to build a totalitarian state, but wished to do so gradually, preserving legal and political continuity with the previous regime.

[18] In the spring of 1940, the conservative wing was close to victory over the radicals, especially when Tiso pacified the Hlinka Guard through organizational changes and bound it closer to the party's leadership.

Tiso undermined the already weak authority of the Slovak Parliament, and strongly rejected a proposal to replace four conservative ministers with radical Nazis.

[16] On the other hand, Tiso allowed the radicals to take the initiative on the solution of the "Jewish Question", wrongly assuming that he can redirect all responsibility for the Holocaust to them, and later on he publicly advocated the deportations of Jews into concentration camps in Nazi Germany.

Due to pragmatic reasons, HSLS adopted the Führerprinzip, with a completely different purpose than in Germany, which was the preventive elimination of radicals without angering the German government.