Party and the Unified Magyar Party (Representing the Hungarian minority) were prohibited. For all intents and purposes, Slovakia was now effectively a one-party state. First Slovak Republic (1939–45) In a last-ditch attempt to save the country, the Prague government deposed Tiso as Slovak premier, replacing him with Karel Sidor. A few days later, amid massive German provocations, Hitler invited Tiso to Berlin and urged him to proclaim Slovakia's independence. Hitler added that if Tiso didn't do so, he would have no interest in Slovakia's fate. During the meeting, Joachim von Ribbentrop passed on a bogus report stating that Hungarian troops were approaching Slovak borders. Tiso refused to make such a decision himself on the situation. After that, he was allowed by Hitler to organize a meeting of the Slovak parliament which would approve Slovakia's declaration of independence from Czechoslovakia. On 14 March, the Slovak parliament convened and heard Tiso's report on his discussion with Hitler as well as a declaration of independence. Some of the deputies were skeptical of making such a move, but the debate was quickly quashed when Franz Karmasin, leader of the German minority in Slovakia, stated that any delay in declaring independence would result in Slovakia being partitioned between Hungary and Germany. Under these circumstances, the legislative chamber unanimously declared Slovak independence. Jozef Tiso was appointed the first Prime Minister of the Slovak Republic. The next day, Tiso sent a telegram, which had actually been composed the previous day in Berlin, asking the Reich to take over the protection of the newly created state. The request was readily accepted. The HSĽS-SSNJ was the dominant force in the country, to the point that the parliamentary elections scheduled for 1943 did not take place, and it claimed to represent the nation and the social interests of all Slovak citizens. Historians describe the party as a "fascist and clerical nationalist group with ties to Nazism". After 1939, the conflict between two wings of the party continued and reached a new level of severity. The conservative wing led by the Catholic priest Jozef Tiso, the president of Slovakia and chairman of the party, wanted to create a separate authoritarian and religious state modelled on fundamentalist Christian principles. The conservative wing had no doubts about the need to build a totalitarian state, but wished to do so gradually, preserving legal and political continuity with the previous regime. The radicals, who preferred