[unkated]

Austria seems to have been swamped under Soviet, Czech, and Italian troops, while there do seem to be surviving Austrian guerrillas.

Hungary, seemingly the weak sister of the Warsaw Pact, expended itself mostly against Romania.

Czechoslovakia... I have the feeling that as long as their is a reasonably strong military government, Czechoslovakia may well stay together - if only at the point of a gun. Czechoslovakia is well-endowed with mineral wealth (metals and coal) to feed its industries. It also has rather defensible borders facing German and Austria.

My understanding (limited as it is) is that some Slovaks were tired of being effectively pulled along according to the desires of the majority - there are twice as many Czechs as Slovaks. But that was in a Democracy where they were allowed to express a choice. The actual breakup did not get a majority of poll; it was particular Slovak leaders that pushed a break-up. A strong military autocracy could hold the nation together, especially while all the nations around it fall into obvious ruin.

On the other hand, I remember be surprised at the time that Czechoslavkia dissolved. I have not found much documentation to tell me why other than "nationalist tensions" and what I mentioned above. But then, most Americans were surprised when Yugoslavia split along lines thought buried by its creation in the aftermath of WW1. Like Yugoslavia, Czechoslovakia was formed from disparate parts that were not together before WW1 - Bohemia, Moravia, and Silesia were part of Austria, and Slovakia was part of the Kingdom of Hungary (although both were ruled together as the Austro-Hungarian Empire); I don't understand it, but they apparently felt different still after 70 years.

Another questions might be what will the Czechs do with this (temporary) advantage? Grabbing their former tail end of Karpathia/Ruthenia, sucked into the Soviet Union just before WW2, is a possibility. There are parts of Hungary that were taken from Czechoslovakia in 1938 they might like back. They can move in to fill the vacuum left by Soviet control in Eastern Austria (depending on what happens to the Soviet units there in 2001+).

To me the big point is that they have and keep (rather than expend) an effective functioning military in 2000, while their neighbors fall toward chaos. That they kept a functioning military when most others have not tells me that they are operating in an intelligent manner; holding what you have (if it is enough) and let other folk fall further apart seems to me to be an intelligent option....

Uncle Ted