Slovakia before and during World War II

• Slovakia during WWII
• Slovakian warflag during WWII
• President's flag (1939-1945)
• Pre WWII People's Party
• Hlinka Guard flag
• Slovakian Insurgents 1944

• Slovakia
• Czechoslovakia

Slovakia during WWII

Slovakia W-B-R (the state flag has shield in center stripe overlaping the other stripes). The shield had a black border and
black patriarchal cross (I believe that can be a mistake, because is pictured blue montains and red cross in white and in other line say "the shield was white with a red patriarchal cross above three blue mountains")
Source: Flag Bulletin 3.
Jaume Ollé, 20 Apr 2001

The official name was "Slovenský Šťat" (= Slovak State) in 1939 (March to June) and "Slovenská Republika" (= Slovak Republic) in 1939-1945. The national flag had three horizontal stripes (W-B-R), flag ratio 2:3. There were also war flag (charged with a black two-armed cross within a "vacant" shield margined in black).
Jan Zrzavy, 15 Nov 1997

Among flags of Russian Neo-nazi Parties there is flag of Northern Alliance Nr. 2 - a tricolour with "something like shield". This depiction is very simillar to (on FOTW not yet presented) War Flag of Slovakia during WWII. If the cross were plain black and in pale (erect), not in like this (it is:  laying and void), it would be (roughly) the right thing! This is what Mr. Jan Zrzavy in 1997 meant, describing "vacant" shield ad "two - armed" cross. The shade of blue and ratio , chosen by Mr. Paraskan for Northern Alliance is reported also  for WWII Slovakia.
Aleš Křižan, 19 Jun 2001

Slovakian warflag during WWII

I believe that this image of Slovak war flag is correct. (However, I don't know construction details but it is compatible to the few photos I saw.). BTW - My message four years ago was incorrect: the shield should be white, not "vacant" (or "transparent" - I meant that there was only the black border over the tricolor) as I erroneously deduced from old photos and films.
Jan Zrzavy, 18 Jul 2001

President's flag (1939-1945)

Pre WWII People's Party

by Antonio Martins, 8 October 1998

According to 'Flagmaster', #73: 3 (1993), the [Hlinková Slovenska] Ľudová Strana ([Hlinkov's] People's Party [of Slovakia]) was the largest pre-WWII party in Slovakia, of separatist tendency. After Hlinka's death in 1938, it became pro-nazi under Josef Tiso, who founded the Hlinka Guard, later a compulsory organization under the Nazi protectorate. It's flag was blue with a red double armed cross on a white disk. The colors are the usual slovakian (pan-slav) ones and the cross is a stylization of the one in the (again current) slovakian COA.
Antonio Martins, 8 October 1998

Hlinka Guard flag

The flag of the Hlinka Guard (the militia of the Slovak Peoples Party) as a red flag with a blue "double cross" in a white cirle (the arms of the cross reached to the edges of the circle).
Source: David Littlejohn - Forgotten Legions of the Third Reich.
Marcus Wendel, 20 Sep 2000

Here's a FOTWized version, in medium red and very dark blue, separately attached as <sk}hsls.gif>. The interval between both horizontal arms seems to be identical to their height. FWIW, ISTR _Flagmaster_ showing a different design with much shorter armas (not reaching the edge of the disc), which I GIFfed back then.
Antonio Martins, 22 Dec 2000

I´m not sure about the colours of the Hlinka Guard Flag. The guardists used to wear the armband with red double cross on a white circle in blue field. I personnaly saw such a armband in a  Museum in Skalica (Western Slovakia, Trnavsky kraj).  And the Guard emblem  was a golden eagle (like the german Reichsadler on  a cap and like the Wehrmachtadler on a badge on the pocket - there on a red circle of cloth) with head turned heraldicaly left (it was "awaiting the danger of East!"), with a white circle bordered blue on  its breast. In the circle was a red "double - cross" again, but the upper "balcony" was shorter then the lower one. It was the so called "symbol of Hlinka´s National Revival". The eagle held in its claws a red fasces without axe ("rods of Svatopluk").

According to an old legend, the Great - Moravian King  Svatopluk (869-894) told his three sons before he resigned to his throne to be concordant. And then he showed them a bunch of rods, which nobody of them could break without dividing it to singular rods.

It is also interesting, that the Hlinka party - flag  was used as fin-flash of Slovak civil airplanes, althoug it never fully replaced the national flag.
Aleš Križan, 16 Nov 2000

On the Rothschilds homepage one reads:
"The five arrows remain an enduring symbol of the Rothschild name. But why arrows at all? The clue is in the work of Moritz Oppenheim, the "painter of the Rothschilds". A sketch in oils depicts the story told by Plutarch of Scilurus who, on his deathbed, asked his sons - five are depicted by Oppenheim - to break a bundle of darts. When they all failed, he showed them how easily the arrows could be broken individually, cautioning them that their strength as a family lay in their unity."

Seems like King Svatopluk liked reading stories about ancient Greeks...
Santiago Dotor, 16 Nov 2000

Scilurus, or Scylurus was a Scythian king c. 110 BC in the region north of the Crimea; he struck coins at Olbia, at the mouth of the Southern Bug river, and had his capital in Neapolis, on the outskirts of of Simferopol in the Crimea. The cited story is from 'Apophthegms of Kings and Great Commanders', perhaps not written by Plutarchus. His son Palakus was the last Scythian king.
Sources: A history of the Scythians., and a site with classical stories.
Jarig Bakker, 17 Nov 2000

Slovakian Insurgents Roundel 1944

I saw in Cochrane & Lewis' Military Aircraft Insignia of the World (1998) several Slovak roundels and finflashes, among which insignia of the Slovak insurgents, from 1944 on, who flew aircrafts stolen from the Germans, with the pre-1938 Czechoslovak insignia with a Slovak double cross on the blue portion. Did they have a flag too?
Jarig Bakker, 17 Jul 2001

Czechoslovak insignia with Slovak cross seem very dubious to me. The 'Slovak National Insurgency' (1944) began with declaration of restoration of the Czechoslovak Republic, and to my best knowledge only Czechoslovak flags were used. On the other hand, the Slovak national tricolor (= national flag of the pro-Germany 'Slovak Republic' in 1939-1945) has not been banned, was used at least up to 1950's, and its usage slowly declined. (Its revivals happened in 1968-1969 and then in 1989.) The same applies to the double-cross (including in the Czechoslovak COA up to 1960), so I cannot exclude the possibility that it was used by insurgents, but I don't believe it.
Jan Zrzavy, 18 Jul 2001