What if Togo had ended up a colony of Czechoslovakia?

While Germany lost control of Togoland to the British and French in the early weeks of World War I, it wasn’t until the end of the war that Germany was formally stripped of its colonies as part of the Treaty of Versailles. At the same time, Czech nationalists held that the brand-new Czechoslovak state needed colonies to “prove itself” as a European power. A few members of the government toyed with the idea of trying to take over some of Germany’s former colonies – particularly Papua New Guinea and Togo.

Part of the argument by the Czechs to justify this idea was that they had many German-speakers who could “seamlessly” take over the colonial administration, and in Togo’s case, there were Czechoslovak troops returning from fighting in Siberia that could have been diverted to station in Togo.

None of these ideas were taken past the step of nationalist fantasies, and it was never formally articulated by the government or humoured by other countries.

Addendum: I had originally written that the flag above was proposed at the time – I was wrong. No flag had been proposed for Czechoslovak Togo, and the one here is a hypothetical flag made recently by an artist. That’s on me for not checking my sources!