Ferdinand Ďurčanský

Doctor Ferdinand Ďurčanský (December 18 1906 - March 15 1974) was a Slovak nationalist leader who for a time served with the collaborationist government of Jozef Tiso.

Born in Rajec, he was educated at the Institute des Hautes Études Internationales in Paris, the University of Bratislava and Hague Academy of International Law, receiving his law doctorate and working as a professor of law in Bratislava. [Philip Rees, "Biographical Dictionary of the Extreme Right Since 1890", p. 107]

Ďurčanský gained a grounding in nationalism in the universities. With Rodobrana declining in influence during the mid 1930s, the focus of Slovak extreme nationalist discontent shifted onto the journal "Nástup" (editing also today [http://www.slovenskamladez.eu] , which had a university student and graduate readership and which was edited by Ďurčanský. [ Yeshayahu Jelinek, 'Storm-Troopers in Slovakia: The Rodobrana and the Hlinka Guard', "Journal of Contemporary History", Vol. 6, No. 3. (1971), p. 102] Unlike some of his contemporaries, who advocated autonomy, Ďurčanský was a supporter of a fully independent Slovakia and when he and Jozef Tiso visited Adolf Hitler in 1938 it was only Ďurčanský who pressed the Nazi leader on the issue. [Vojtech Mastny, "The Czechs under Nazi Rule: The Failure of National Resistance 1939-1942", New York: Columbia University Press, 1971]

His followers, who came to be known as the 'Young Generation', held a number of posts in the Slovak People's Party administration of Vojtech Tuka, with Ďurčanský himself serving as Minister for Home and Foreign Affairs. [Jelinek, op cit, p. 108] This was not to last long, however, as the Germans felt that he had too many Jewish associates and, despite his efforts to save his position by ordering shops to display anti-Jewish signs, he was dismissed. [Christopher R. Browning, "The Origins of the Final Solution: The Evolution of Nazi Jewish Policy", University of Nebraska Press, pp. 207-208]

Tiso attempted to recall him in 1944 but the Nazis refused. Nonetheless, he remained a strong supporter of Tiso and collaboration, attempting to organise resistance to the Soviet Union until early 1945 when he fled to Austria. Ultimately, in 1947, he moved to Argentina, before settling in Munich in 1952 [Rees, op cit]

The United Nations War Crimes Commission accepted Czechoslovak charges that he had been paid by the Nazi secret service and had been complicit in the deaths of Jews. Condemned to death "in absentia", he nevertheless escaped to the west in 1945 and became a stern critic of the communist regime. He spoke to various Slovak groups in the United States in 1959 with the United States Department of State claiming that he was granted a visa as 'membership in or affiliation with the defunct Nazi Party in itself no longer constitutes a ground of ineligibility.' [Ralph Blumenthal, [http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9B0DE1D7133DF935A15751C1A961948260&sec=&spon=&pagewanted=print 'In the War Crimes Archives: Rifts on Prosecutions'] ] His work against the Czechoslovak communist regime included spells as President of both the Slovak Committee for Action Abroad and the Anti-Bolshevik Bloc of Nations. [Ress, op cit] He also wrote extensively for rightist journals such as "Nation Europa", "Zeitschrift für Geopolitik" and "Politische Studien". [Rees, op cit]

Ďurčanský died of natural causes in Munich.

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