On Hitler’s insistence the Slovak state was established on the 14 March 1939 (named the Slovak Republic after July of 1939); its army organisation was subsequently formed on the basis of the Czechoslovak Army located in Slovakia. The Officer Corps was formed mainly from drafted reserve officers, especially teachers, which contributed to the fact that the armed forces had not become the backbone of the regime. During their deployment on the Eastern Front in the years 1941 - 1943, Slovak soldiers first individually, and then in whole groups defected to the Allied side of the front where they primarily enlisted with the Czecho-Slovak foreign army fighting on the side of the Allies. The gradually growing anti-Hitler mood among the officers led to the preparation of the armed anti-fascist rising of the Slovak Army in the Slovak National Uprising. The armed resistance began on 29 August 1944 when German troops tried to seize control of the territory of the Slovak Republic. The Slovak rebel army managed to fight for two months in the open, yet it did not surrender even after that time. Some units endured in guerrilla fighting until the arrival of the front at the turn of 1944 - 1945, some until liberation in April - May of 1945. The armed uprising of the Slovak soldiers and partisans of 29 August 1944 was one of the largest and longest analogous military risings against Nazi Germany in Europe. Many anti-fascist-minded Slovaks in World War II also took part in the Allied struggle to defeat Nazi Germany as part of the foreign Czecho-Slovak resistance. Thousands of Slovaks fought together with Czechs in battles of the Western Front: in the Battle of Britain, in the Middle East, as well as in the fighting on the Eastern Front in the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. The Czechoslovak Republic was restored at the end of the war as an achievement of their struggles. The new armed forces were built primarily on the basis of foreign troops, particularly the 1st Czechoslovak Army Corps in the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. After the communist coup in 1948, the armed forces became an instrument of power of the communist regime, and since 1955, one of the Warsaw Pact armies. The development of the Army, the education and training of its members met the principles and requirements of Soviet political and military doctrines. The end of the Cold War at the turn of 1989 - 1990 also meant a call for the transformation of the armed forces to the conditions of a democratic polity in a new security environment. This was reflected not only in the creation of new military-strategic principles of the development and employment of the armed forces, but also in promoting the gradual democratic changes in the management of the army and also the process of humanising military service. These important historical events and milestones, especially those related to the fight of Slovaks for national freedom against national oppression, for the European ideals of humanism, egalitarianism and equality, against fascism and war, and also the fight for peace and democracy form the basis of military and martial traditions of Slovakia. Forming the Army of the Independent Slovak Republic On 1 January 1993, a peaceful split of the Czech and Slovak Federal Republic into two independent states took place in parallel with the division of the federal army and the formation of OF THE SLOVAK REPUBLIC 15