Fr. Jozef Tiso: Father of a Stillborn Slovak State

Fr. Tiso’s career, for all its failings, was a catalyst in the formation of the modern Slovak state. The Slovak people had often enough been dismissed as peasants incapable of national realization. In the historical analysis of this eventual realization, Fr. Tiso is now remembered among nationalists such as Ľudovít Štúr and Jozef Miloslav Hurban as a pioneer of the state that modern Slovaks now inhabit. Kirschbaum concludes, “Whatever view one may have of him, the fact is that it was under Fr. Tiso’s leadership that the Slovak nation, at a time wen most of Europe was at war, saw the process of national development reach its final and natural outcome, the establishment of its own state.”