Creeping (and creepy) fascism

Andrej Hlinka: creeping fascist?

“Dejiny Slovenska a Slovákov” by Milan S Durica, first published in 1995, is a controversial book on Slovak history. It's written from a heavily pro-Catholic, nationalist and (frankly) pro-fascist standpoint. When published, the book had the official blessing of Slovakia's ministry of education. At the time, Slovakia was governed by Vladimir Meciar's populist HZDS in coalition with the nationalist SNS, which controlled said ministry. The book was later withdrawn, presumably after Meciar's election defeat in 1998.

Durica expresses strong approval of the pro-Nazi Slovak state during World War II, led by the Catholic priest Jozef Tiso. The author denies that Tiso was an anti-Semite responsible for the Holocaust in Slovakia, claims that the Nazis distrusted him and even tried to murder him, etc etc. Yet, the pro-Nazi tendency in the book is obvious, as when Durica accuses the Communist partisans of anti-German atrocities, while refraining from protesting Nazi German attacks on Slovak civilians (the villages destroyed by the Nazis were simply “partisan communities” and hence presumably fair game).

The author's anti-Semitic codes are also obvious, as when he calls Czechoslovak Communist leader Rudolf Slánský “Salzmann”, claims that the Jews supported the Russians (or the Hungarians, or some other enemy of the Slovaks), or opines that the total value of expropriated Jewish property in war time Slovakia was larger than the Slovak state's entire national budget. Bizarrely, he doesn't even mention the trial and execution of Slánský, probably another coded insult. He also claims that Tiso's regime "solved the Jewish Question in the spirit of Christian charity" by sending the Jews to labor camps where the conditions were better than in most Slovak businesses?! Obviously, the Talmudic faithful must have been a bunch of unreliable reds, running away from such splendid segregation!

A few factual errors have also crept in here and there, as when Durica (weirdly) claims that the Catholic KDH came second in the 1990 Slovak elections (actually they won), or calls Gerald Ford “U.S. president” in an installment about 1970. While minor errors of this kind are amusing and probably inevitable in an encyclopedic work of this kind, the political tendency certainly isn't.

I'm not saying the book is uninteresting. It summarizes information not readily found in other popularized books, especially information about Slovak far right nationalists or Catholics. However, due to its (sometimes rather creepy) fascistic slant, I will only give it one star.