The Other Treaties

The Treaty of Versailles was the most important treaty of 1919–1920. 

It was the treaty with Germany, decided by the Big Three.  It was the Treaty which set up the League of Nations. 

Also, the Treaty of Versailles set down the principles of how the defeated countries would be treated:

1.    they had to pay reparations,

2.    they had to disarm,

3.    they lost land,

4.    self-determination.

Going Deeper

The following links will help you widen your knowledge:

Self-determination - an extract from a school textbook.

  Simple Essay: The Peace Treaties of 1919–20 made many territorial changes in Central and Eastern Europe.  Describe the changes.

  Simple Essay: What was ‘self-determination’, and how did the principle affect the peace treaties of 1919–1920?

Four Other Treaties [SaiNTS]

FOUR other treaties were made with the four countries which had helped Germany in the war.  They were written by officials who just followed the principles of the Treaty of Versailles. 

They were all named after places in Paris:

New States created by the Treaties

A map of Eastern Europe in 1920.  Self-determination caused three small wars:
1.  Poland went to war with Russia and took more land. 
2.  Czechs and Poles fought over the town of Teschen. 
3.  An army of Italians marched into the Yugoslavian town of Fiume.

Self-determination

The treaties created new nation-states in Eastern Europe (i.e.  the principle of self-determination), including 5 Nation-states [CHAPS] out of the old Austro-Hungarian Empire:

a.  Czechs and Slovaks in Czechoslovakia

b.  Hungarians in Hungary. 

c.  Austrians in Austria. 

d.  Poles in Poland. 

e.  Slavs in Yugoslavia.

The Versailles peacemakers drafted 'Minorities Treaties' for thirteen countries, which had to agree to “protection of life and liberty to all inhabitants” regardless of “birth, nationality, language, race or religion” and to guarantee the free exercise of any “creed, religion or belief”.

Problems faced by the new states

Weak, unstable governments:

•   Many citizens still identified with the old empires, creating internal divisions. 

•   In Hungary, a communist government under Béla Kun briefly took power in 1919, and the former King Charles IV twice tried to seize power in 1921 and 1922. 

•   The rise of paramilitary groups in Austria ended in a Civil War in 1934. 

•   The new states had no democratic traditions.  By 1939: Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Yugoslavia were dictatorships; Poland and Hungary had repressive governments; and Austria had a fascist government.  Only Czechoslovakia was a democracy (and Hitler swallowed it up in March 1939). 

Ethnic tensions:

•   The Ethnographic Map of Europe in 1921 (right) shows how impossible it was to create countries for ethnic groups.  So borders often included minorities. 

•   It did not help that the League of Nations' Minorities Commission was weak and ineffective, and failed to enforce the protections of minorities in the Minorities Treaties.

•   In 1919–1921, Poles in Upper Silesia rebelled against the German government, seeking to join Poland. 

•   Czechoslovakia had Czechs, Slovaks, Poles, Russians and other nationalities, notably a large German minority in the Sudetenland, leading to tensions.  (nb Czechoslovakia split, peacefully, in 1993). 

•   Pro-German Austrians were aggrieved that the Treaty forbade Anschluss. 

•   Hungarians in Romania felt discriminated against, leading to demands for border changes. 

•   There were separatist movements and political assassinations among the many nationalities in Yugoslavia, ending in the murder of King Alexander I in 1934.  (nb in 1991, Yugoslavia fragmented altogether in a bitter war.) 

Border disputes:

•   In 1919 the Italian adventurer Gabriele D'Annunzio set up the Free State of Fiume, to prevent it being given to Yugoslavia. 

•   Poland fought wars with Russia and Lithuania over Vilna (1919-21).  Czechoslovakia attacked Poland over Teschen (1920).  Lithuania seized Memel (1923)

•   The Baltic states (Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania) had to fight wars of independence against both Russian and German forces. 

•   Some states, like Hungary and Bulgaria, sought to regain lost territory, and allied with Nazi Germany in the 1930s. 

An Ethnographic Map of Central Europe in 1921, showing some of the main ethnic minorities, with the Treaties' borders overlaid.
Click on the map to bring it up full size.

Economic weaknesses:

•   The new states inherited agricultural economies and financial systems broken by the war.  Hungary suffered economic collapse and went bankrupt 1920-21, Austria suffered hyperinflation in 1922. 

•   The states which had been part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire’s trading bloc were now small and separate and struggled to trade freely.  This was compounded because the new borders took no account of existing railways or roads, causing traffic chaos. 

Military weakness:

•   Many states had limited military capacities, making them vulnerable to aggression from neighbours. 

•   When Hitler began re-arming Germany in the 1930s, there was no country in central Europe strong enough to resist him. 

•   The USSR occupied eastern Poland in 1939 and the Baltic states in 1940.