A look into the life of Brendel's Slovak family, who settled in Price County, Wisconsin, around the turn of the century. In examining her grandmother's life, Brendel reflects a Slovak family history symbolic of many of the immigrants who came from Eastern Europe.
As the war continued, emphasis changed to focus on assisting the Slovaks only. Collections of goods and money were taken, and a representative was sent to Canada to help gain the release of Slovaks imprisoned as enemy aliens. Citing the Canadian example, Slovak American leaders urged their compatriots to become American citizens. Last, the war caught the Slovaks in the United States by surprise. Their political program centered on gaining equal rights in Hungary through legal means, but a small group advocated instead a Czecho-Slovak solution. Although the Czecho-Slovak concept gained momentum, many Slovaks feared that they would lose their ethnic identity. Cooperation initially did not occur in the United States. When a Parisian organization of Czechs and Slovaks expressed its willingness to recognize the individuality of the Slovak people, the American Slovaks quickly supported it. An icy reception, however, by American Czechs destroyed any common ground.
The so-called Slovak question asked what place Slovaks held—or should have held—in the former state of Czechoslovakia. Formed in 1918 at the end of World War I from the remains of the Hungarian Empire, and reformed after ceasing to exist during World War II, the country would eventually split into the Czech Republic and Slovakia after the “Velvet Divorce” in 1993. In the meantime, the minority Slovaks often clashed with the majority Czechs over their role in the nation. The Slovak Question examines this debate from a transatlantic perspective. Explored through the relationship between Slovaks, Americans of Slovak heritage, and United States and Czechoslovakian policymakers, it shows how Slovak national activism in America helped the Slovaks establish a sense of independent identity and national political assertion after World War I. It also shows how Slovak American leaders influenced US policy by conceptualizing the United States and Slovakia as natural allies due to their connections through immigration. This process played a critical role in undermining attempts to establish a united Czechoslovakian identity and instead caused a divide between the two groups, which was exploited by Nazi Germany and then by other actors during the Cold War, and proved ultimately to be insurmountable.