Czechoslovakia was one of the few states in Europe between the wars with a
genuine parliamentary democracy. The First Republic, as it became known,
was a multiethnic one: apart from Czechs and Slovaks, nearly a quarter of
its people were ethnic Germans; the Tesin region in the north had a large
Polish minority, while South Slovakia and Ruthenia were home to some
three-quarters of a million Hungarians. Up until the Munich Pact of 1938
and subsequent Nazi occupation, Czechoslovakia was a magnet for refugees
from Hitler's Germany, communist Russia,