fratelloRocco
09-03-2009, 04:09 AM
Vassily MOLODIAKOV
World War II: made in Versailles
source (http://en.fondsk.ru/article.php?id=2422)
Heaps of books have been written about what and who caused the Second World War. But the main thing melted in statements about the “maniacal striving for world domination”, the “short-sighted and criminal appeasement of the aggressors”, “conspiracy of the dictators”, “Bolshevik guile” and other ideologemes. The Second World War broke out on the day when the First World War officially ended, when the Treaty of Versailles was signed on the 28th of June 1919.
When reading oneself into the clauses of that particular treaty and of other “peace treaties”, one can see the scenario for all future European conflicts. If no Versailles Treaty had been signed, or rather, if the winners had imposed a different sort of peace on Germany, the world would have stood by far a slimmer chance of another war in Europe. But the Treaty of Versailles, in the form it was drawn up and presented to the defeated, gave no chance to peaceful development. They say that prior to the signing of the Treaty of Versailles British Prime Minister David Lloyd George told his French counterpart Georges Clemenceau that they were laying the foundation of another war. Well advanced in years, “The Tiger”, Clemenceau’s nickname, ignored the warning. His hate for Germany was virtually boundless and he built his career on the idea of revenge. But then he might have been certain he would not live long enough to see another war. Indeed, Clemenceau did not live to see the bitter fruit that the Treaty of Versailles finally bore. But his team-mate André Tardieu, the chief author of the Treaty’s territory-related articles, had drunk deep of the bitter fruit in question. In 1940, when gravely ill and star-blind, he saw France routed and invaded by the Wehrmacht. Tardieu lived until the liberation of his country but never learnt about it because by then he had not only grown blind, but had also lost memory and gone round the bend.
Of the Big Three members the US President Woodrow Wilson, who had refused reparations, annexations and contributions, was most interested in “moral” problems, including the “eradication of Teutonic militarism”, that is the economic and political weakening of Germany, and “pledging allegiance”, namely collecting the war debts from the allies through reparations from the defeated. Lloyd George was interested in reparations, colonies and the future of the German merchant fleet and did attain his objectives, which threatened Germany with an economic collapse. Now, Clemenceau also wanted to quench a thirst for money, but also to take revenge on “boches” for previous humiliations. Germany should be smaller in area and cordoned off by hostile countries. This gave way to the emergence of what came to be known as “sanitary cordon”, which had, besides, fenced off Soviet Russia from Europe.
“The Tiger” was too old to do some particular work, so he told Tardieu to do it. The book La Paix (the English title The Truth About the Treaty) that Tardieu made public two years later heaps praise on the new “world order” and the “father of victory” Clemenceau, as well as his staunchness in struggling for the Treaty. It is interesting to compare his book with Lloyd George’s The Truth about the Peace Treaties, which came off the press in 1938 when a new war in Europe had become imminent, while the “peace” he had signed was universally called the main cause of that war. The ex-Prime Minister defended himself in all ways possible and sought to shuffle off the responsibility onto others. Actually he had almost not been involved in drawing up the territory carve-up articles of the Treaty and even warned of the potentially dangerous aftermath of placing great numbers of Germans under other countries’ control. Clemenceau flew into a rage and ordered a tough reply. Lloyd George put up with it, approved and signed the Treaty and then ensured that it was ratified.
And now let’s take a look at a geographical map.
France got back Alsace and Lorraine together with Germany’s state property, namely the railways built etc. with no compensation paid. The Reich got these areas as war trophies in 1871 but with 80% of the population approving the re-annexation by Germany (while nobody consulted Alsatians after the Treaty of Versailles). A return of Alsace and Lorraine was the revanchists’ top priority, but Paris had to persuade the allies in London and Washington that France’s demands were justified, so it pressed the point until these were included in President Woodrow Wilson’s Fourteen Points. Prior to the Peace of Westphalia of 1648 both provinces were part of Germany and then changed hands to become part of France but with a predominantly German-speaking population.
But France wouldn’t take this as an extent of change. Claims were laid to Saarland and the Rhine region, which France’s revolutionary armies occupied briefly in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, while at other times their belonging to Germany is unquestionable. During the war Paris did not demand their “return”, so Tardieu admitted it had been difficult to establish claims to these “initial lands”. France was interested in the coalmines of Saarland, which was annexed from Germany and placed in the League of Nations’ management (actually under French control). It took 15 years to determine the fate of Saarland by a plebiscite, with over 90% of the population casting their ballots on the 13th of January 1935 for going back to the Reich. Paris failed to unconditionally lay its hands on the Rhine region, although Tardieu did try to make Rhine Germany’s western border. The region was demilitarized and occupied by the troops of the very same France, with Lloyd George and Wilson having no objection. In March 1936 the Wehrmacht (Nazi Germany’s armed forces) occupied the Rhine region without firing a gunshot, since the last French Army unit was pulled out on the 30th of June 1930. Ironically, it was Tardieu, who ordered the withdrawal.
Now that we’re almost through with a review of Germany’s new western border we could add that Germany’s railway in Luxembourg changed hands to become French property. Tardieu sustained Belgium’s territorial claims to Holland (province of Limburg), but in the long run Belgium got a piece of German territory with the cities of Eupen and Malmedy and a German population of 55,000. Berlin recognized these borders as final by signing the Treaty of Locarno in 1925. As to the Reich’s eastern border, no Weimar Chancellor or Foreign Minister, including most “democratically-minded” ones had ever seen those as such.
The Polish State within the Versailles Treaty-determined borders came into existence at the expense of territories that belonged to the Hohenzollerns and Romanovs. The Polish nationalists saw the clash between the two as a historical chance and offered help now to Russia, now to Germany so the winner would, after the war, allow them to set up their independent state at the expense of the loser. The appearance of a new country on the map of Europe had thus been predetermined. What remained to be agreed was the issue of that country’s borders. The Poles played their territorial and political game in Paris impeccably and proved inferior in terms of effectiveness to the Czechs only.
In the West, Poland got a “corridor” to the Baltic Sea on failure to incorporate East Prussia with Königsberg as its centre. The “map-makers” seemed to care little for the fact that Germany turned out to be literally cut in two. Danzig, a German city from the outset, became a “free town” under the League of Nations’ control, although, according to original plans, it should have been given to Poland. Lloyd George told Clemenceau that they would have another war to fight because of Danzig, but Foreign Secretary Austen Chamberlain said in a matter of years: “No British Government ever will or ever can risk the bones of a British grenadier” for the defense of the Polish Corridor. Quotations to that end are so numerous, they could make an anthology.
Poland laid claims to Germany’s Upper Silesia (20% of German coal, 57% of lead, 72% of zinc) and other lands, of which the future was to be determined by a plebiscite. When following two years of foot-dragging Silesia voted for Germany on the 21st of March 1921, Poland mounted, with the connivance of the Entente, an invasion of the area by “irregular forces”, armed with French weapons. The government in Berlin chose not to react for fear of an armed intervention in the West, but German volunteers put hand to the plough and defeated the Poles. As a result of another carve-up (Germans were told to forget about the plebiscite returns) Germany got two thirds of Upper Silesia, while Poland, the remaining third (with 95% of Silesian coal in it).
In the northeast, Germany was deprived of Memel (Klaipeda), which went to Lithuania. Poland annexed Vilno (Vilnius) from Lithuania. In 1939 Germany delivered an ultimatum to Lithuania and got Memel back, while the USSR, in the wake of the “break-up of the Polish State” by the end of that year, handed over “Gediminas Vilnius” to Lithuania. In the first post-war years Warsaw was Europe’s most active capital to engage in expansion. The only boner was that it lost the small Tieszin region, where the National Polish Council said back on the 30th of October 1918 it was joining Poland. But the region went to another country, Czechoslovakia. Yet Poland seized it following the Munich conspiracy in autumn 1938.
In 1927 the British media tycoon Lord Rothermere released the article in Europe’s Powder Magazine to predict that the next war would break out because of Czechoslovakia. He proved wrong on just one point, namely the country which would demand that Prague should return that country’s land and citizens. Not Germany, as one would say today. No! It was Hungary, which the winners had treated almost just as roughly as they did Germany.
The Treaty-of-Versailles-shaped Czechoslovakia was an unusual state, with almost every single neighbour of Prague’s laying territorial claims to it. Czechoslovakia had over one million Hungarians, 80,000 Poles and three million odd Sudeten Germans. Prior to the war Bohemia, which was just as German-populated as it was Slav-populated (suffice it to recall a story by Arthur Conan-Doyle A Scandal in Bohemia, - about a German Prince who had come to see Sherlock Holmes); Slovakia; Sudetenland and Ruthenia formed part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. The dual monarchy could have turned into a Triune Austro-Hungarian-Bohemia, but for the Serb terrorist Gavrilo Princip, who killed the Austrian Crown Prince Franz Ferdinand, who was married to a Czech Princess and was the Slavs’ main defender at the court of his decrepit uncle Franz-Josef. The murder is known to have triggered the First World War.
Former Professor of Vienna University, a Panslavist Czech Tomas Masarik came up with the idea of forming a kingdom of Bohemia and Moravia with a Great Russian Prince on the throne. Russia was not interested, but Wilson, who, although he confused Slovaks with Slovenes, did support the idea. Czech and Slovak émigré officials met in Cleveland, Ohio, on the 27th of May 1915 to sign a treaty of community, so Czech-Slovak committees began to crop up in the Allied capitals. On the 30th of May 1918 they signed, also in the United States, what came to be known as the Pittsburg Treaty paving the way for setting up the Republic of Czechoslovakia, and elected Masarik as President.
The elderly Masarik (who turned 68 by the end of the war) was their ideologist, banner and symbol. But they needed a practical person, so they found Edvard Benes, who had lived in Paris since 1915 and had wide connections in political, business and media circles. He was made the new government’s Foreign Minister and led a delegation to the peace conference. It was Benes and Tardieu who re-carved Europe with the other participants observing the process. Here’s a piece of evidence from a British diplomat Harold Nicolson: “Afternoon, final revision of the Austrian borders… The fate of the Austro-Hungarian Empire would be decided in this room. Hungary would be cut up by the five distinguished gentlemen with indolence and irresponsibility… Transylvania is redrawn, while those with knowledge anxiously observe; Balfour dozes off, Lansing (US State Secretary.-V.M.) doodles, while Pichon (French Foreign Minister. – V.M.) lounges in his large arm-chair, winking like an owl, … After Tardieu and Lansing trade insults like tennis balls, Hungary is dismembered by noon. They go on to Czechoslovakia. And while two or three flies leave by the window and then return to the hall, Hungary has lost its North and East”. The same way they “sorted out” the heritage of the Ottoman Empire where Italy had claims to Greece and Yugoslavia, or rather, the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes. Tardieu resolutely sided with that new state whose name was a euphemism for “Greater Serbia” where the Serbian Karadjordjevic dynasty sat on the throne. Benes suggested cutting a “corridor” across Hungary to link Czechoslovakia with Yugoslavia, but even Tardieu wouldn’t have taken a risk like that.
Pater Hlinka, the leader of Slovak nationalists who would not hear of living “under the Czechs”, had not been invited to attend, but he turned up illegally anyway and tried to get in touch with Wilson, reminding him of “the right of nations to self-determination”. Benes energetically opposed a discussion of Slovakia’s independence and gained support from Tardieu, who urged… not to multiply new tiny states that are miles away from European culture and whose faculty of self-determination is questionable.
Lord Rothermere, who had a hand in creating the Czechoslovak state, wrote in his article The Prisoners of Czecho-Slovakia on the 12th of February 1937: “Most blunders in life have to be paid for. The blunder of creating that synthetic and spurious State called Czecho-Slovakia may well cost Europe another war. Of all the reckless things done by the 'peace-makers' in Paris this was the worst. Yet the biggest ramp in diplomatic history passed all but unnoticed at the time. The Czech and pro-Czech intriguers who bamboozled the peace delegates had an easy game. Those overworked and weary statesman were under strong pressure to finish quickly their recasting of the map of Europe and get back to the urgent problems awaiting them at home”.
Let us briefly sum up the activities of the “map-makers”. Germany was deprived of its territory which was handed over to France (Alsace and Lorraine), to Belgium (Eupen and Malmedy), to Denmark (Northern Schleswig), to Poland (Upper Silesia and the “corridor”), to Czechoslovakia (Sudetenland), to Lithuania (Memel) and placed in managed of the League of Nations (Saarland, Danzig). It also lost sovereignty over the Rhine regioin. It was further deprived of colonies, navy and merchant marine. Austria was denied the right to reunify with Germany, something it tried to do as early as 1918. Austria was forced to hand over to Italy part of the states Carniola and Carinthia, Kuestenland and Southern Tyrol. Czechoslovakia was based on two communities of Lower Austria and part of Silesia together with the former states of Bohemia and Moravia. Bukovina went to Romania, but Austria got Burgenland, which had been historically part of Hungary.
On signing the “peace” treaty in Neuilly on the 27th of November 1919 the Bulgarian Prime Minister Alexander Stamboliyski ostentatiously broke his fountain pen. Dobrudja went to Romania, while Frakia to Greece, which left Bulgaria with no access to the Aegean Sea. Part of Bulgaria was now in Yugoslavia. On June 4th, 1920 the Treaty of Trianon was signed with Hungary whereby most Hungarians resided outside their native land. Czechoslovakia got Slovakia and Russia’s Carpathian region, Yugoslavia got Croatia and Slovenia, Rumania obtained Banat and Transylvania. Hungary was thus likewise denied access to sea.
Even some of the winners were unhappy about the re-drawing of the map. Lithuania had claims to Poland (Vilno), Poland to Czechoslovakia (Tieszin), Italy to Yugoslavia (Fiume) and Greece (since both Italy and Greece had been promised the same Turkish areas). Soviet Russia had, owing to its 1920 unsuccessful war against Poland, lost part of territory west of the Curzon Line (Poland’s eastern border under the Treaty of Versailles). Romania occupied Bessarabia by agreement with the Entente.
Now, could this kind of “peace” NOT provoke another war in Europe? __________________________
Vassily MOLODIAKOV – Doctor of political sciences
World War II: made in Versailles
source (http://en.fondsk.ru/article.php?id=2422)
Heaps of books have been written about what and who caused the Second World War. But the main thing melted in statements about the “maniacal striving for world domination”, the “short-sighted and criminal appeasement of the aggressors”, “conspiracy of the dictators”, “Bolshevik guile” and other ideologemes. The Second World War broke out on the day when the First World War officially ended, when the Treaty of Versailles was signed on the 28th of June 1919.
When reading oneself into the clauses of that particular treaty and of other “peace treaties”, one can see the scenario for all future European conflicts. If no Versailles Treaty had been signed, or rather, if the winners had imposed a different sort of peace on Germany, the world would have stood by far a slimmer chance of another war in Europe. But the Treaty of Versailles, in the form it was drawn up and presented to the defeated, gave no chance to peaceful development. They say that prior to the signing of the Treaty of Versailles British Prime Minister David Lloyd George told his French counterpart Georges Clemenceau that they were laying the foundation of another war. Well advanced in years, “The Tiger”, Clemenceau’s nickname, ignored the warning. His hate for Germany was virtually boundless and he built his career on the idea of revenge. But then he might have been certain he would not live long enough to see another war. Indeed, Clemenceau did not live to see the bitter fruit that the Treaty of Versailles finally bore. But his team-mate André Tardieu, the chief author of the Treaty’s territory-related articles, had drunk deep of the bitter fruit in question. In 1940, when gravely ill and star-blind, he saw France routed and invaded by the Wehrmacht. Tardieu lived until the liberation of his country but never learnt about it because by then he had not only grown blind, but had also lost memory and gone round the bend.
Of the Big Three members the US President Woodrow Wilson, who had refused reparations, annexations and contributions, was most interested in “moral” problems, including the “eradication of Teutonic militarism”, that is the economic and political weakening of Germany, and “pledging allegiance”, namely collecting the war debts from the allies through reparations from the defeated. Lloyd George was interested in reparations, colonies and the future of the German merchant fleet and did attain his objectives, which threatened Germany with an economic collapse. Now, Clemenceau also wanted to quench a thirst for money, but also to take revenge on “boches” for previous humiliations. Germany should be smaller in area and cordoned off by hostile countries. This gave way to the emergence of what came to be known as “sanitary cordon”, which had, besides, fenced off Soviet Russia from Europe.
“The Tiger” was too old to do some particular work, so he told Tardieu to do it. The book La Paix (the English title The Truth About the Treaty) that Tardieu made public two years later heaps praise on the new “world order” and the “father of victory” Clemenceau, as well as his staunchness in struggling for the Treaty. It is interesting to compare his book with Lloyd George’s The Truth about the Peace Treaties, which came off the press in 1938 when a new war in Europe had become imminent, while the “peace” he had signed was universally called the main cause of that war. The ex-Prime Minister defended himself in all ways possible and sought to shuffle off the responsibility onto others. Actually he had almost not been involved in drawing up the territory carve-up articles of the Treaty and even warned of the potentially dangerous aftermath of placing great numbers of Germans under other countries’ control. Clemenceau flew into a rage and ordered a tough reply. Lloyd George put up with it, approved and signed the Treaty and then ensured that it was ratified.
And now let’s take a look at a geographical map.
France got back Alsace and Lorraine together with Germany’s state property, namely the railways built etc. with no compensation paid. The Reich got these areas as war trophies in 1871 but with 80% of the population approving the re-annexation by Germany (while nobody consulted Alsatians after the Treaty of Versailles). A return of Alsace and Lorraine was the revanchists’ top priority, but Paris had to persuade the allies in London and Washington that France’s demands were justified, so it pressed the point until these were included in President Woodrow Wilson’s Fourteen Points. Prior to the Peace of Westphalia of 1648 both provinces were part of Germany and then changed hands to become part of France but with a predominantly German-speaking population.
But France wouldn’t take this as an extent of change. Claims were laid to Saarland and the Rhine region, which France’s revolutionary armies occupied briefly in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, while at other times their belonging to Germany is unquestionable. During the war Paris did not demand their “return”, so Tardieu admitted it had been difficult to establish claims to these “initial lands”. France was interested in the coalmines of Saarland, which was annexed from Germany and placed in the League of Nations’ management (actually under French control). It took 15 years to determine the fate of Saarland by a plebiscite, with over 90% of the population casting their ballots on the 13th of January 1935 for going back to the Reich. Paris failed to unconditionally lay its hands on the Rhine region, although Tardieu did try to make Rhine Germany’s western border. The region was demilitarized and occupied by the troops of the very same France, with Lloyd George and Wilson having no objection. In March 1936 the Wehrmacht (Nazi Germany’s armed forces) occupied the Rhine region without firing a gunshot, since the last French Army unit was pulled out on the 30th of June 1930. Ironically, it was Tardieu, who ordered the withdrawal.
Now that we’re almost through with a review of Germany’s new western border we could add that Germany’s railway in Luxembourg changed hands to become French property. Tardieu sustained Belgium’s territorial claims to Holland (province of Limburg), but in the long run Belgium got a piece of German territory with the cities of Eupen and Malmedy and a German population of 55,000. Berlin recognized these borders as final by signing the Treaty of Locarno in 1925. As to the Reich’s eastern border, no Weimar Chancellor or Foreign Minister, including most “democratically-minded” ones had ever seen those as such.
The Polish State within the Versailles Treaty-determined borders came into existence at the expense of territories that belonged to the Hohenzollerns and Romanovs. The Polish nationalists saw the clash between the two as a historical chance and offered help now to Russia, now to Germany so the winner would, after the war, allow them to set up their independent state at the expense of the loser. The appearance of a new country on the map of Europe had thus been predetermined. What remained to be agreed was the issue of that country’s borders. The Poles played their territorial and political game in Paris impeccably and proved inferior in terms of effectiveness to the Czechs only.
In the West, Poland got a “corridor” to the Baltic Sea on failure to incorporate East Prussia with Königsberg as its centre. The “map-makers” seemed to care little for the fact that Germany turned out to be literally cut in two. Danzig, a German city from the outset, became a “free town” under the League of Nations’ control, although, according to original plans, it should have been given to Poland. Lloyd George told Clemenceau that they would have another war to fight because of Danzig, but Foreign Secretary Austen Chamberlain said in a matter of years: “No British Government ever will or ever can risk the bones of a British grenadier” for the defense of the Polish Corridor. Quotations to that end are so numerous, they could make an anthology.
Poland laid claims to Germany’s Upper Silesia (20% of German coal, 57% of lead, 72% of zinc) and other lands, of which the future was to be determined by a plebiscite. When following two years of foot-dragging Silesia voted for Germany on the 21st of March 1921, Poland mounted, with the connivance of the Entente, an invasion of the area by “irregular forces”, armed with French weapons. The government in Berlin chose not to react for fear of an armed intervention in the West, but German volunteers put hand to the plough and defeated the Poles. As a result of another carve-up (Germans were told to forget about the plebiscite returns) Germany got two thirds of Upper Silesia, while Poland, the remaining third (with 95% of Silesian coal in it).
In the northeast, Germany was deprived of Memel (Klaipeda), which went to Lithuania. Poland annexed Vilno (Vilnius) from Lithuania. In 1939 Germany delivered an ultimatum to Lithuania and got Memel back, while the USSR, in the wake of the “break-up of the Polish State” by the end of that year, handed over “Gediminas Vilnius” to Lithuania. In the first post-war years Warsaw was Europe’s most active capital to engage in expansion. The only boner was that it lost the small Tieszin region, where the National Polish Council said back on the 30th of October 1918 it was joining Poland. But the region went to another country, Czechoslovakia. Yet Poland seized it following the Munich conspiracy in autumn 1938.
In 1927 the British media tycoon Lord Rothermere released the article in Europe’s Powder Magazine to predict that the next war would break out because of Czechoslovakia. He proved wrong on just one point, namely the country which would demand that Prague should return that country’s land and citizens. Not Germany, as one would say today. No! It was Hungary, which the winners had treated almost just as roughly as they did Germany.
The Treaty-of-Versailles-shaped Czechoslovakia was an unusual state, with almost every single neighbour of Prague’s laying territorial claims to it. Czechoslovakia had over one million Hungarians, 80,000 Poles and three million odd Sudeten Germans. Prior to the war Bohemia, which was just as German-populated as it was Slav-populated (suffice it to recall a story by Arthur Conan-Doyle A Scandal in Bohemia, - about a German Prince who had come to see Sherlock Holmes); Slovakia; Sudetenland and Ruthenia formed part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. The dual monarchy could have turned into a Triune Austro-Hungarian-Bohemia, but for the Serb terrorist Gavrilo Princip, who killed the Austrian Crown Prince Franz Ferdinand, who was married to a Czech Princess and was the Slavs’ main defender at the court of his decrepit uncle Franz-Josef. The murder is known to have triggered the First World War.
Former Professor of Vienna University, a Panslavist Czech Tomas Masarik came up with the idea of forming a kingdom of Bohemia and Moravia with a Great Russian Prince on the throne. Russia was not interested, but Wilson, who, although he confused Slovaks with Slovenes, did support the idea. Czech and Slovak émigré officials met in Cleveland, Ohio, on the 27th of May 1915 to sign a treaty of community, so Czech-Slovak committees began to crop up in the Allied capitals. On the 30th of May 1918 they signed, also in the United States, what came to be known as the Pittsburg Treaty paving the way for setting up the Republic of Czechoslovakia, and elected Masarik as President.
The elderly Masarik (who turned 68 by the end of the war) was their ideologist, banner and symbol. But they needed a practical person, so they found Edvard Benes, who had lived in Paris since 1915 and had wide connections in political, business and media circles. He was made the new government’s Foreign Minister and led a delegation to the peace conference. It was Benes and Tardieu who re-carved Europe with the other participants observing the process. Here’s a piece of evidence from a British diplomat Harold Nicolson: “Afternoon, final revision of the Austrian borders… The fate of the Austro-Hungarian Empire would be decided in this room. Hungary would be cut up by the five distinguished gentlemen with indolence and irresponsibility… Transylvania is redrawn, while those with knowledge anxiously observe; Balfour dozes off, Lansing (US State Secretary.-V.M.) doodles, while Pichon (French Foreign Minister. – V.M.) lounges in his large arm-chair, winking like an owl, … After Tardieu and Lansing trade insults like tennis balls, Hungary is dismembered by noon. They go on to Czechoslovakia. And while two or three flies leave by the window and then return to the hall, Hungary has lost its North and East”. The same way they “sorted out” the heritage of the Ottoman Empire where Italy had claims to Greece and Yugoslavia, or rather, the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes. Tardieu resolutely sided with that new state whose name was a euphemism for “Greater Serbia” where the Serbian Karadjordjevic dynasty sat on the throne. Benes suggested cutting a “corridor” across Hungary to link Czechoslovakia with Yugoslavia, but even Tardieu wouldn’t have taken a risk like that.
Pater Hlinka, the leader of Slovak nationalists who would not hear of living “under the Czechs”, had not been invited to attend, but he turned up illegally anyway and tried to get in touch with Wilson, reminding him of “the right of nations to self-determination”. Benes energetically opposed a discussion of Slovakia’s independence and gained support from Tardieu, who urged… not to multiply new tiny states that are miles away from European culture and whose faculty of self-determination is questionable.
Lord Rothermere, who had a hand in creating the Czechoslovak state, wrote in his article The Prisoners of Czecho-Slovakia on the 12th of February 1937: “Most blunders in life have to be paid for. The blunder of creating that synthetic and spurious State called Czecho-Slovakia may well cost Europe another war. Of all the reckless things done by the 'peace-makers' in Paris this was the worst. Yet the biggest ramp in diplomatic history passed all but unnoticed at the time. The Czech and pro-Czech intriguers who bamboozled the peace delegates had an easy game. Those overworked and weary statesman were under strong pressure to finish quickly their recasting of the map of Europe and get back to the urgent problems awaiting them at home”.
Let us briefly sum up the activities of the “map-makers”. Germany was deprived of its territory which was handed over to France (Alsace and Lorraine), to Belgium (Eupen and Malmedy), to Denmark (Northern Schleswig), to Poland (Upper Silesia and the “corridor”), to Czechoslovakia (Sudetenland), to Lithuania (Memel) and placed in managed of the League of Nations (Saarland, Danzig). It also lost sovereignty over the Rhine regioin. It was further deprived of colonies, navy and merchant marine. Austria was denied the right to reunify with Germany, something it tried to do as early as 1918. Austria was forced to hand over to Italy part of the states Carniola and Carinthia, Kuestenland and Southern Tyrol. Czechoslovakia was based on two communities of Lower Austria and part of Silesia together with the former states of Bohemia and Moravia. Bukovina went to Romania, but Austria got Burgenland, which had been historically part of Hungary.
On signing the “peace” treaty in Neuilly on the 27th of November 1919 the Bulgarian Prime Minister Alexander Stamboliyski ostentatiously broke his fountain pen. Dobrudja went to Romania, while Frakia to Greece, which left Bulgaria with no access to the Aegean Sea. Part of Bulgaria was now in Yugoslavia. On June 4th, 1920 the Treaty of Trianon was signed with Hungary whereby most Hungarians resided outside their native land. Czechoslovakia got Slovakia and Russia’s Carpathian region, Yugoslavia got Croatia and Slovenia, Rumania obtained Banat and Transylvania. Hungary was thus likewise denied access to sea.
Even some of the winners were unhappy about the re-drawing of the map. Lithuania had claims to Poland (Vilno), Poland to Czechoslovakia (Tieszin), Italy to Yugoslavia (Fiume) and Greece (since both Italy and Greece had been promised the same Turkish areas). Soviet Russia had, owing to its 1920 unsuccessful war against Poland, lost part of territory west of the Curzon Line (Poland’s eastern border under the Treaty of Versailles). Romania occupied Bessarabia by agreement with the Entente.
Now, could this kind of “peace” NOT provoke another war in Europe? __________________________
Vassily MOLODIAKOV – Doctor of political sciences