ANTROPOWEBZIN 3–4/2015: ESEJE 137

The Flying Squads of Hlinka Guard: Coming to Terms with the Slovak Wartime Past

Peter Sokolovič Department of Historical Sciences and Central-European Studies, Faculty of Arts, University of Ss. Cyril and Methodius in Trnava [email protected]

he era of the First Slovak Repub- broke out in August 1944, the HG had its T lic, from 1939 to 1945, is one of the “moment of glory”, especially when the Fly- most controversial periods in Slovak his- ing Squads of the HG, or the POHG (Poho- tory. Nazi Germany’s rise to power, fol- tovostné oddiely Hlinkových gárd), entered lowed by the outbreak of WW2 and all the stage. The POHG were established be- the consequences that came with it, have cause the Germans did not trust the al- strongly influenced the assessment of the ready disintegrating Slovak Army, which era. Slovakia’s hope of achieving state- they blamed for their participation in the hood is another current that intermingled uprising. The HG seemed to be the best or- in the disjointed WW2 period, which again ganization for fulfilling auxiliary and secu- has made an assessment of the era more rity tasks (later on, HG’s Field Units were ambiguous. Roughly the same could be established to be engaged in direct com- said about the personalities and organiza- bat). tions of the regime, particularly the Hlinka Guard (Hlinkova garda), 1938–1945 (for There are not many organizations that more information see Sokolovič 2009), or stir up such negative emotions as the HG, a party militia of the Slovak People’s POHG, whose members were perceived as Party (Hlinkova slovenská ľudová strana, murderers who actively helped Germans HSĽS) named after Andrej Hlinka (1864– slaughter innocent Slovaks. Their mem- 1938), a Slovak Catholic priest and politi- bers were the targets of immediate post- cian, and the leader of the Slovak People’s war retribution and of the 1950s communist Party. justice system as well. Their deeds have now become more well-known than the less- When the HG was established, many Slo- publicized killings committed by antifascist vaks perceived it as a symbol of the struggle partisans during the Slovak National Up- for national emancipation, but it gradually rising. It could be that the newly restored experienced stagnation and a loss of mem- Czechoslovakia of 1945 needed to settle its bership because active members of the HG accounts with the past regime, and there- vehemently participated in the persecution fore welcomed targeting the POHG more of Jews and the expropriation of their as- than commemorating the raging partisans sets. When the Slovak National Uprising the regime wanted to celebrate. 138 ANTROPOWEBZIN 3–4/2015: ESEJE

A black-and-white approach to pre- and, the movement seemed to initially represent unfortunately, post-89 history prevails, in or wanted to help the failing regime sur- which the members of the HG and POHG vive. It is clear that these types of “Guards- are automatically considered “murderers” men” were less willing to risk their lives and “fascists”, while the inner motives of for distant ideas. However, others were each member could have been quite differ- lured by benefits that were offered to those ent. who joined the Flying Squads, and many Slovaks were able to solve their everyday Hlinka Guard and the Uprising livelihood difficulties (Sokolovič 2009, 396– 398.) Some actively participated in perse- cutions, but the majority of them served When the Slovak National Uprising broke as watchmen, and many of them immedi- out in August 1944, it brought new life ately ran away from home at the first possi- blood into the veins of the HG. The mem- ble opportunity. It is estimated that 5% of bers were able to resuscitate the old slogans the Guardsmen participated in executions, about their own significance and their na- and it is known that they were physically tional role in Slovakia’s proclamation of in- present at one mass execution where 282 dependence in March 1939. When the army people died (Hruboň 2010). “failed”, the POHG were the only ones who were able to restore order with the help Facing the postwar justice of their “German friends”. They were es- sentially established to help resurrect the crumbling regime. After the end of WW2, the newly estab- Entering the squads was voluntary in the lished regime sought to settle its accounts beginning. Although there were thousands with the past regime and its exponents al- of HG members, the willingness of Slovaks most immediately. Based on the Slovak Na- to enter its armed units was not as great as tional Council (Slovenská národná rada), the commanders expected. Therefore the or SNR, decree No. 33, issued on 15th May High Command of the Hlinka Guards be- 1945, the members of the HG were branded gan to issue draft cards, also sending them as “domestic traitors”. HG leaders and to non-members of the HG,1 who were sim- members who supported the interests of ply afraid of risking their lives in military Nazi Germany, contributed to the “destruc- action and for whom the idea of being tion of the republic”, and openly promoted a Guardsman was distant. However, dur- “the activities or ideas of fascists occupiers ing states of military emergency, the refusal and local traitors”, were to receive capital to accept a draft card could lead to capi- punishment. tal punishment.2 So it comes as no sur- Postwar settlements with the Guards- prise that many of the HG draftees, who men were complicated because many of the were persecuted for their membership in HG’s high functionaries managed to escape the Flying Squads in the postwar period, Slovakia.4 Had they returned home, they really had no sympathy for the HG’s ideas. would have risked being stripped of their The deeply rooted stereotypes of HG civil rights, incarcerated, having their for- members and military squads as radical tunes confiscated, or executed. The HG’s killers of Jews is no longer acceptable. military commander during the Uprising, When the HG movement was established in Otomar Kubala, did not escape this fate 1938, some people joined just because their and was shot in August 1946.5 favorite club or association, for which they While the new regime was keen on pun- could seek conditional renewals only after ishing almost all forms of activism during joining,3 had been abolished, while oth- the Slovak state (1939–1945), it was almost ers genuinely believed in the national ideas impossible to do so while the HG, at the PETER SOKOLOVIČ: THE FLYING SQUADS OF HLINKA GUARD. . . 139 peak of its power, had more than 100,000 particularly those from the First Slovak members, of which the radicals and chau- Republic, became apt targets and conve- vinists were a minority. As with the HG nient victims of propaganda and staged tri- generally, each case had to be individually als (Sokolovič 2010, 58–78). considered. Some of the former Guards- In order to mold public opinion, it was men were completely passive when inside necessary to choose exponents of the for- the HG, and therefore could not be proven mer regime to which the atrocities could be guilty, or the evidence was missing. attributed, influencing public sympathies Based on the decree, many of the in favor of a “just punishment”. The in- Guardsmen were often punished after being cidents of mass murder committed by the denounced by universal, false “witnesses”, Nazis in the villages of Nemecká, Krem- who participated in numerous charges only nička, Krupina and others during the retal- for the purpose of convicting the cho- iation that followed the defeat of the Slovak sen Guardsmen. False denunciations, po- Uprising were chosen as a reminder of the litically driven sentences or score settle- time, and of the perversity of Nazi racial ments are present in every radical regime ideology.6 change. Some people were thus sentenced The fact that members of HG’s Flying unjustly, while others escaped merited pun- Squads objectively assisted with these mass ishment and could watch satisfactorily from killings played into the hands of the state the sidelines as their former, less lucky power. They were able to create the illusion “colleagues”, whose guilt might have been that the perpetrators’ punishments were lesser, were punished. Many of the former just by mixing together objective “proof” Guardsmen were acquitted and could in- of the murders they committed, unsubstan- corporate themselves into the new society. tiated “evidence”, and artificial construc- Many of them joined the Slovak Commu- tions, supported by forced confessions; they nist Party after, and sometimes even be- then used this for the purposes of propa- fore, the 1948 communist coup d’état, and ganda. It was impossible to confirm or some of them took important state office or disprove their accusations with certainty positions. They were later targeted by the then, and even now. However, it is prob- Secret Police in the 1950s, in its aim to dis- able that many of them did at least assist close Slovakia’s “nationalist underground”. with killings, and some may have been the shooters themselves. HG is back in the 1950s One characteristic feature of political processes in the 1950s was a frequent bend- When the postwar retribution trials ended, ing of the law in order to discredit de- one might have thought that the days of fendants and pass these “just” judgments, settling the score with Slovakia’s HG past which were really prepared in advance, in were over. However, the reverse was true. line with the instructions of the Commu- In the late 1950s, the Czechoslovak socialist nist Party and state power. Individual de- regime, influenced by the events in Poland fendants tried in 1958 had already previ- and the 1956 uprising in Hungary, was ously faced the retribution courts for their plagued by internal turmoil. Czechoslo- wartime activities. In every democratic le- vakia attempted to prove to the Soviet gal system, a rule is enforced that a man Union that it would not tolerate events like cannot be judged for the same crime twice those in Hungary, and in so doing, it played (ne bis in idem), but the 1958 indictments the old “struggling with nationalism card”, were reformulated to get around this so which was perceived as a possible instru- a new legal process would be legitimated ment that could undermine the republic. in the public eye. New documents were al- The representatives of the former regime, legedly “discovered” that gave the state the 140 ANTROPOWEBZIN 3–4/2015: ESEJE ability to try defendants once again, based state regime (Gryzlov 1958; Sedláková on new, important information initially un- 1958). known to the postwar retribution courts. In light of everything mentioned above, we must consider the 1958 political pro- The process was exploited by the regime cess used to convict the Guardsmen as bru- propaganda machine. A special political tally manipulated; its only aim was to at- committee was established to watch over all tack various (following the vocabulary of “major issues” in the trial preparations, en- the party apparatus) “anti-state groups”. It suring that they manifested the willingness was one of the last, big, staged trials of the of the Czechoslovak people to fight fascism, 1950s, offering us insight into the nature nationalism and the residue of Hlinka’s ide- of not only the Slovak justice system – an ology (ľuďáctvo).7 The terms of sentences obedient servant of the regime – but also were set before the trial, and the processes the era in which it took place. were directed from behind the scenes by politicians who demanded that the judges pronounce 10 capital punishments on pre- Hlinka Guard after 1989 selected defendants (only five were sen- tenced to death, much to the dismay of the In the era of the restored Slovak Repub- 8 Slovak communist leadership). lic, state power attempted to sentence the exponents of the wartime Slovak state. The defendants were subjected to psy- Within the most publicized case, the com- chological and physical terror during the mander of the military group Edelweiss, investigations; many confessions were co- Ladislav Nižnanský, was indicted for com- erced and administrative interrogation pro- mitting numerous crimes during the repres- tocols signed while they were being threat- sion that followed the Slovak National Up- ened with violence. Even the priests, who rising. However, after the 1993 dissolution were the co-defendants in the process, were of Czechoslovakia and the restoration of the tortured. Leonard Sliačan had to memorize Slovak Republic, the attempts to come to his confession word for word, and the in- terms with the legacy of the HG shifted terrogating secret policeman beat him and from a criminal to a moral level, and there tore hairs, along with skin, from his head.9 was a move to assess the HG more objec- Including priests in this process was the tively, examining all the aspects of their ac- regime’s attempt to “settle its scores”, not tivities. only with the HG’s legacy but also with the “rebellious” Catholic Church. The various conceptions of Slovak history during the unsettled period of WW2 have The organizers even managed to include become part of the historiography, and it support for their efforts to centralize Slo- is complicated by the fact that the percep- vak self-governing institutions in the prop- tions of the HG have been influenced by agation process. The media was instructed ideological biases, from both sides, since to focus primarily on exposing in depth the the predominance of so-called Marxist his- “genuine anti-people and anti-national na- toriography. Nowadays the era of the Slo- ture of the clero-fascist ideology, the fascist vak state and its organizations, the HG in- character and politics of the whole so-called cluded, is a space where two conceptions of Slovak state regime, and the brutality and Slovak historiography clash. Some histori- criminal perversity of its representatives”.10 ans see this era as only positive, neglecting The campaign climaxed when two propa- any of the negative, while another group, ganda brochures were issued, depicting the influenced by pre-89 ideology (with the ex- crimes of the Guardsmen and their close ception of the short period of “thaw” in the connection to both the Catholic Church 1960s), forbid any objective historical dis- hierarchy and representatives of the Slovak cussion about the HG, which they perceive PETER SOKOLOVIČ: THE FLYING SQUADS OF HLINKA GUARD. . . 141 as a tool used by the “clero-fascist Slovak subject of political blackmail or a topic state” to suppress democratic processes. used to stir emotions.

After 1945, many Slovaks perceived the Poznámky Slovak state and the HG as the opposition to the hated Communist regime, and so 1 Slovak National Archive, Bratislava, 604– they were often spared criticism and even 54–3. glorified. Many former Guardsmen, and 2 Military History Archive, Bratislava, zb. Slo- others who were either justly or unjustly vensko, box 29, 1252. 3 sentenced in the postwar trials, painted an Slovak National Archive, Bratislava, 604– 51–3. image of the Slovak state between 1938 4 Nation’s Memory Institute Archive, Brati- and 1945 which bolstered and uplifted the slava, A 17, box 1, archive number 3. Slovak nation, and thus stood in opposi- 5 Slovak National Archive, Bratislava, National tion to the later period of socialism. This Court, Otomar Kubala. 6 Nation’s Memory Institute Archive Brati- was amplified by the fact that Slovak dis- slava, KS ŠtB Banská Bystrica, 567, box 82, 83, tinctiveness was gradually suppressed af- 84. ter WW2, as the new regime applied cen- 7 Slovak National Archive, Bratislava, ÚV KSS tralistic Czechoslovakian measures, known – preds., box 976. 8 National Archive of the Czech Republic, from the period before 1938 or 1939, re- Prague, KSČ – ÚV 1945–1989, Prague – politické spectively. byro 1954–1962, 172, 233/7. 9 Katolícke noviny /Catholic Paper/, 30. 5. This may be the reason why the ideas 2004, p. 17. promoted by many Guardsmen were ap- 10 Slovak National Archive, Bratislava, ÚV KSS preds., box 976. pealing after the restoration of Czechoslo- vakia and even today, as the HG still finds References its sympathizers. They tend to nostalgi- cally remember the positive part of HG’s legacy, like its support for Slovak pride Gryzlov, Gavril. 1958. Gardistické inferno: O zlo- and statehood, while viewing its partici- činoch príslušníkov POHG – reportáže, proces, dokumenty (The Guard’s Inferno: On criminal pation in persecutions as less important. members of Hlinka Guard’s Flying Squads – sto- After 1945, former Guardsmen who emi- ries, process, documents). Bratislava: Slovenské grated after the war tried to resuscitate the vydavateľstvo politickej literatúry. “lost glory” of the organization, and estab- Hruboň, Anton. 2010. 5. poľná rota Hlinkovej lished both large and small groups in the gardy (Hlinka Guard’s Fifth Field Company). hope they could expose the wicked, newly Ružomberok: Historia nostra. established regime; however, if these for- Sedláková, Mária. 1958. Krycie meno Jozef: mer Guardsmen returned home they would O zločinoch príslušníkov POHG – reportáže, pro- be jailed, so their propensity for any real ces, dokumenty (Code Name George: On Hlinka’s Guard’s Flying Squad members’ crimes – stories, change was limited. Therefore the ma- process, documents). Bratislava: Slovenské vyda- jority of them never returned home, and vateľstvo politickej literatúry. those who decided to only did so after 1989. Sokolovič, Peter. 2009. Hlinkova garda 1938–1945 They encountered completely different sit- (Hlinka’s Guard 1938–1945). Bratislava: Ústav uations, in which the HG-like organization pamäti národa. had lost its raison d’être. The HG has Sokolovič, Peter. 2010. “Trial with members of become a historical fact, and is worthy of emergency units of the Hlinka Guard in 1958.” a historical examination; it should not be a Pamäť národa (Supplement 2010): 58–78.