The reorganization of central Europe

Although the Habsburg Empire had ceased to exist, the peace conference dealt with the new republics of Austria and Hungary as defeated powers and systematically favoured the interests of the successor states that had arisen from the ruins of the empire in the last weeks of the war. It was Wilson’s hope that peace and self-rule might finally bless the troubled regions between Germany and Russia through strict application of the principle of nationality. But east-central Europe comprised a jumble of peoples with conflicting claims based on language, ethnicity, economics, geography, military considerations, and historic ties. What was more, the new states themselves were in no case homogeneous. The name Yugoslavia could not hide the rivalries within that kingdom of Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes. Czechoslovakia was born of an alliance of convenience among Czechs, Slovaks, and Ruthenes. Historic Poland embraced Ukrainians, Germans, Lithuanians, and Yiddish-speaking Jews. Romania, enlarged by the accession of Transylvania and Bessarabia, now numbered millions of Ukrainians, Hungarians, Jews, and other minorities. In short, the Balkanization of central Europe raised as many political disputes as it solved and created many little multinational states in place of a few empires.

Poland was a favourite of the Americans and the French by dint of historic sympathies, the votes of Polish-Americans, and Clemenceau’s hope for a strong Polish ally in Germany’s rear. The Fourteen Points promised Poland an outlet to the sea, but the resulting Polish Corridor and free city of Danzig contained 1,500,000 Kashubians and Germans. In the north, the Baltic states of Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia won their independence from Moscow and were sheltered by the British fleet. But an example of the difficulties in applying national self-determination was the Polish-Lithuanian quarrel over the disposition of Vilnius. That town (according to 1897 Russian statistics) was 40 percent Jewish, 31 percent Polish, 24 percent Russian, and 2 percent Lithuanian. Vilnius Province, however, was 61 percent Russian, 17 percent Lithuanian, 12 percent Jewish, and 8 percent Polish. In December 1919 the Supreme Allied Council provisionally awarded Vilnius to Lithuania. Poland and Czechoslovakia similarly quarreled over the coal-rich Teschen district. Poles predominated in the district, but historic claims lay with Bohemia. In the end the Great Powers merely ratified the de facto partition effected by occupying Polish and Czech troops—a solution that favoured Czechoslovakia and left a bitterness the two states could ill afford and never overcame. Finally, the Polish-German conflict over Upper Silesia, another coal-rich region of mixed nationality, proved that even the League of Nations could not make an objective judgment. The March 1921 plebiscite called for in the Treaty of Versailles (one of the few concessions awarded the German delegation) showed German preponderance in the region as a whole but Polish majorities in the vital mining districts. The British delegation in the League argued that Germany could hardly be expected to pay reparations if it lost yet another rich source of coal, while the French sought to weaken Germany further and bolster the Polish economy. Finally, in October 1922, Poland was granted the greater portion of the mines.

The Treaty of Saint-Germain disposed of the Austrian half of the former Habsburg monarchy. Tomáš Masaryk and Edvard Beneš, sincere Wilsonians, exploited their personal goodwill to win two major concessions that otherwise violated the principle of national self-determination. First, they retained for Czechoslovakia the entire historic province of Bohemia. This afforded the vulnerable new state the military protection from Germany of the Sudeten mountains, but it also brought 3,500,000 Sudeten Germans under the rule of Prague. Second, Czechoslovakia received territory stretching south to Bratislava on the Danube, providing it with a riverine outlet but creating a minority of a million Magyars. The Austrian boundary with Yugoslavia at Klagenfurt was fixed by plebiscite in Austria’s favour in October 1920, as was the division of the Burgenland district between Austria and Hungary in December 1921.

Italy’s boundaries with Austria and Yugoslavia became one of the most volatile issues of the peace conference owing to Italian truculence and Wilsonian sanctimoniousness. Orlando clung to the Allied promises that had enticed Italy into the war in the first place. But Wilson, offended by the secret war-aims treaties, vented his frustration on Italy. He went so far as to plead his case publicly in the French press on April 24, 1919, a violation of diplomatic etiquette that provoked the Italians to bolt the conference. Upon their return, a compromise of sorts was achieved: Italy received Trieste, parts of Istria and Dalmatia, and the Upper Adige as far as the Brenner Pass with its 200,000 German-speaking Austrians. But Wilson refused to budge on Fiume, a province whose hinterland was Yugoslav but whose port city was Italian. On June 19 Orlando’s government fell over the issue. In August Fiume was declared a free city, and in September a band of Italian freebooters led by the nationalist poet Gabriele D’Annunzio declared Fiume a free state. Such passions among Italians over their “mutilated victory” helped prepare the way for the triumph in 1922 of Mussolini’s Fascists.

The Treaty of Trianon, delayed until 1920 by the Communist coup in Hungary, partitioned that ancient kingdom among its neighbours. Transylvania, including its minority of 1,300,000 Magyars, passed to Romania. The Banat of Temesvár (Timişoara) was divided between Romania and Yugoslavia, Sub-Carpathian Ruthenia passed to Czechoslovakia, and Croatia to Yugoslavia. All told, Hungary’s territory shrank from 109,000 to 36,000 square miles. The armies of rump Austria and Hungary were limited to 35,000 men.

The Treaty of Neuilly with Bulgaria marked yet another stage in the old struggles over Macedonia dating back to the Balkan wars and beyond. Bulgaria lost its western territories back to the kingdom of Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes and nearly all of Western Thrace to Greece, cutting the Bulgarians off from the Aegean. Their armed forces were likewise limited to 20,000 men. Austria, Hungary, and Bulgaria also accepted war guilt and reparations obligations, but these were later remitted in light of their economic weakness.

The settlement in east-central Europe was a generally well-meaning attempt to apply the principle of nationality under the worst imaginable circumstances. The new governments all faced aggrieved minorities, not to mention the onerous tasks of state-building—drafting constitutions, supporting currencies, raising armies and police—with no democratic tradition or financial resources beyond what they could borrow from the already strapped British and French. Austria in particular was a head without a body—over a quarter of its population lived in Vienna—yet was forbidden union with Germany. Hungary suffered violations of self-determination to an even greater degree and was bound to become a centre of aggressive revanche. Disputed borders, ethnic tensions, and local ambitions hampered economic and diplomatic cooperation among the successor states and would make them easy prey to a resurgent Germany, or Russia, or both.