The New Central Europe

Part One: The Tragedy of Central Europe

The New Europe That Failed

After the First World War, when the peace treaties were written in Paris, the victorious Western democracies were masters of the European continent. Twenty years later, in September 1938, the Western powers capitulated to Adolf Hitler in Munich, and the Paris peace settlement lay in ruins. The Western- made "New Europe" was in shambles.

The crisis began in the moment of victory, and in spite of periodic respites it never really ceased. The war had sharpened the rivalry of the European nations, a morbid rivalry which had been the most significant cause of the war itself; and the peace did nothing to lessen these international hatreds. The treaties, dictated by the victors to the vanquished, transferred war-

generated hatreds to the peace organism. The spirit of reconciliation and internationalism that had permeated plans for the League of Nations during the war was not manifest either during the peace negotiations or after. As a result, the League of Nations became more often than not an instrument of power politics and national egotism, while the peace treaties, in their terms and their spirit, challenged the vanquished to combat the gains of the victors.

Winston Churchill, aware in the twenties of being "deeply under the impression of a future catastrophe," coined the maxim "The redress of the grievances of the vanquished should precede the disarmament of the victors."[1] Of this Churchillian statement a critic remarked: "Where and how this should, or could, have been done, fairly or safely, is not stated"[2] and certainly the redress of grievances was an immensely difficult and complicated task. Had it only been tried, even a failure could have been called pardonable; but it was not tried, honestly and sincerely, in all the time that the Western democracies were masters of the European scene.

In the "twenty years, crisis" between the two world wars, Central Europe figured prominently. The causes of the crisis in the areas of the former Habsburg Monarchy were, however, not of local origin only; indeed they branched out far beyond the lands of the Danube Valley. The roots of this post- war crisis lay in the dissolution of Allied unity. When the United States refused to join the League of Nations, she dealt the first and almost mortal blow to the peace organization. The second blow was Anglo- French rivalry. As a result, post- war Europe was left both without the union with the United States that had won the war for the Western democracies, and without France's union with Britain which, if anything, could have prevented the outbreak of the war itself. Peace in Europe, after the First World War, needed the continuation of both this "Atlantic Community" with the United States and this "Western Union" between the British and French democracies. When the revival of American isolationism frustrated French hopes for trans-Atlantic cooperation, the unity between Britain and France became doubly important. Its lack therefore became doubly disastrous.

The core of the matter between Britain and France was British suspicion that the French were seeking military hegemony over Europe. France's exaggerated search for security, the British believed, so much carried her away as to make her seek domination of the Continent. Antipathy toward French aims not only created a rift with France but also aroused in Britain latent sympathies toward defeated Germany. The British became advocates of the concept expounded in 1919 in John Maynard Keynes, celebrated work The Economic Consequences of the Peace, that Europe cannot prosper unless Germany is economically restored. This was the first manifestation of the much quoted wisdom that economic cooperation is imperative between victors and vanquished. But the redress of grievances could not be accomplished by economic means only. Europe's difficulties were basically political in nature. Therefore, without political reconciliation, economic rapprochement was bound to remain sterile. The loans that Britain and the United States, especially the latter, extended profusely to Germany only in- creased German hatred of the peace settlement. Anglo- American aid, together with subsequent revision of the reparation clauses, was interpreted in Germany as open admission that the Versailles Treaty was not only unenforceable with regard to reparations but also unjust in every respect. The post- war trend, among both allies and former enemies, took the worst possible direction: hatred by the vanquished of the peace settlement increased, mutual understanding between victors and vanquished failed to improve, and relations deteriorated within the innermost circle of the victors.

Italy's deviation helped to weaken the peace front further. Italy did not receive what she had been promised by the secret treaties during the war. Although the peace conference treated Italy's territorial demands generously on the basis of national- ethnic principles, her far- flung ambitions of gaining a foothold in the Balkans and of solving her problem of overpopulation by the familiar mode of colonial expansion in Africa remained unsatisfied. Moreover, with Benito Mussolini's seizure of power in 1922, Italy was not only rebelling against the peace settlement, she was also turning, as the first Great Power inside Europe, against the victors' political system, parliamentary democracy.

More serious than Italy's inimical attitude was the challenge to democracy from the tyranny of the East. The Bolshevik revolution eliminated Russia from the ranks of the victors and cut her from the fabric of European civilization as well. Soviet Russia objected to the European status quo on many scores. She was against the territorial settlement--though for reasons of political exigency she was willing formally to accept her new boundaries, save that she refused to recognize the incorporation of Bessarabia into Romania. She was antagonistic to the victors, balance- of- power policy, which created the cordon sanitaire between Germany and the Soviet Union. But above all, Communist Russia was a sworn enemy of the bourgeois- democratic society of which Europe formed a part.

Thus among the five Great Powers--the United States, Britain, France, Italy and Russia--which i.l one way or another took part in achieving victory in Europe, only two, France and Britain, maintained a positive and active stand on behalf of the new order, with France taking a rigid, and Britain a somewhat flexible, attitude. Of course, Russia's defection was the less regrettable insofar as her exit from the wartime coalition became a distinct gain at the time of the Paris Peace Conference. The Bolshevik revolution, severing as it did Russia's ties with her Western allies in the last year of the war, considerably simplified the task of the Paris peacemakers, for they were thereby spared the trouble of facing a victorious Russia's demands. Moreover, when Germany was defeated, Eastern Europe found itself in a truly unique historical situation: both Germany and Russia, the two Great Powers flanking the Middle Zone of the smaller nations, lay prostrate. But the peace settlement drawn under these extraordinarily favorable circumstances had two fundamental weaknesses: first, it antagonized Germany and Russia, who were in any case lacking in benevolence toward the small nations, by making the Middle Zone into a "bulwark" against them; second, it failed to create conditions favorable for cooperation among the small nations within the Middle Zone. The principal cause of dispute within the Middle Zone concerned the new boundaries imposed upon the vanquished countries, Hungaryand Bulgaria, by their victorious neighbors, Czechoslovakia, Romania, Yugoslavia and Greece. Then too, territorial issues envenomed relations among the victors, as in the controversy over the Teschen district between Czechoslovakia and Poland, and over Vilna between Poland and Lithuania. (Lithuania, disgruntled over the loss of Vilna, had no diplomatic relations with Poland until 1938!) Conflicts over boundaries also aggravated the problems of national minorities. As a rule, these minorities were irredentist, striving not merely for rights within the states, but for secession from the states they were living in. Moreover, the tensions between the Slavic ethnic groups incorporated under Czech leadership into Czechoslovakia (Czechs, Slovaks and Ruthenes), and under Serbian leadership into Yugoslavia (Serbs, Croats and Slovenes), augmented the instability of the new order.

All these controversies within the Middle Zone were caused primarily by conflicting national aspirations--though of course differences in religion, and in social and economic views, poured oil on the fire of the national rivalries. This was the case, for instance, with the antagonism between the Roman Catholic Croats and the Orthodox Serbs, and with the conflict between the religious Slovaks and the free- thinking Czechs. Another source of conflict was the reactionary spirit of the Hungarian ruling class on the one hand, and the reformist zeal of Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia and Romania on the other, who were carrying out agrarian and other economic and social reforms with varying degrees of success and sincerity. But the bitter enmity between Hungaryand her neighbors--focused as it was on the question of boundaries--was primarily nationalistic; and the reformist zeal of Hungarys neighbors too was strongly colored with nationalist resentment, the dispossession of national rivals often taking precedence over social justice.

During the First World War, exiles from Central and Eastern Europe had assured their Western protectors that the independent nation- states between the Baltic and the Aegean would serve as a solid bastion of peace. But from the beginning these nation- states proved instead to be a source of insecurity; they battled with masses of disloyal citizens, and they were engaged in bitter rivalries among themselves as well as with the Great Powers flanking the Middle Zone. In view of these conditions in the eastern half of Europe, the stabilization of the continent's peace depended all the more upon the unity of the Western nations; yet the obvious weakness of the new order in Central and Eastern Europe did nothing to spur the Western nations to seek unity among themselves and in their policies toward the rest of Europe.

Western disunity was an encouragement to "revisionism," as the movements of discontented nations to change the European status quo came to be known after the First World War. The discontented considered their paramount task to be the raising of doubts about the permanency of the existing order. Meanwhile the contented nations incessantly sought a magic formula for security. To hope that time would heal the wounds of the discontented nations was self- delusion. On the other hand, any rational discussion of the revision of the peace treaties was doomed in advance, due to the agitation of the revisionists and the unwillingness of the status quo defenders to admit even the advisability of any general critical review of the peace settlement. Article Nineteen of the Covenant of the League, which provided the legal basis for "peaceful revision," was invoked from time to time by the vanquished, but its application was persistently rejected by the victors. The intensive propaganda for and against the peace settlements gave vent to much demagogy, which obscured the real conditions of peace. Both defenders and opponents of the status quo exaggerated the significance of the boundary problems--for, important as were the boundary revisions, in certain cases, for smoothing out international frictions, true peace depended much more upon the internal political, economic and spiritual development of the nations dwelling behind the boundaries.

France was the foremost defender of the new Continental order, although in reality she was not entirely happy with it. Victory over Germany did not endow her with a sense of security. As a result of the refusal of the United States to join the League of Nations, the mutual assistance pact (a form of "Atlantic Community") among the United States, Britain and France, which had been stipulated at the peace conference, fell through. Britain proposed to substitute for the three- power agreement a two- power agreement (a kind of British- French "Western Union"); but France, led by Raymond Poincare, rejected the offer because it did not include a military convention. In 1923, a draft treaty of mutual assistance was proposed, according to which the members of the League were to be under an automatic obligation to render military assistance against an aggressor. The draft treaty was rejected, this time by Britain. In 1924, the so- called Geneva Protocol was signed, which banned aggressive war and defined the aggressor. Britain, how- ever, failed to ratify it. France's reprisals against Germany, such as her insistence on reparation payments and the Ruhr occupation in 1923, were contrary to the Anglo- American point of view advocating European economic reconstruction. And France's so- called cordon sanitaire between Germany and Soviet Russia (a system of alliances between France and the countries of Central and Eastern Europe) made Britain jealous and suspicious of France's ambition to establish military hegemony over the Continent.

France would have felt alone and abandoned, had not the victorious smaller states of Central and Eastern Europe--Poland, Czechoslovakia, Romania and Yugoslavia--shared her obsessive quest for security. But alliances with these four countries, situated in the dangerous Middle Zone between Germany and Russia, were no substitute for the treaties France had hoped to obtain from the United States and Great Britain. France, frustrated and nervous, was not qualified to pursue an enlightened and constructive policy among the smaller nations in Central and Eastern Europe. The boundary changes advocated by the revisionists filled her with rage. Revision for her was tantamount to more insecurity. Had France been given the security she expected from her British and American wartime allies, she might not have become the blind defender of the "follies of the victors" in Central Europe. As it was, French policy, aligned with the defense of the status quo, succeeded only in aggravating the rivalry of nationalistic forces.

Rivalry among the former Habsburg peoples in drawing the new, national boundaries produced a center of European instability in the Danube Valley. Three defeated countries, Austria, Hungaryand Bulgaria, were there pitted against three victors, Czechoslovakia, Romania and Yugoslavia. Austria did not raise boundary problems in the usual sense of the term; her feelings were hurt mainly by the ban imposed by the peace treaty on "Anschluss"--that is, union with Germany. A second victim of the peace treaties, Bulgaria, had only minor boundary quarrels, though they were enough to provide an obstacle to peaceful cooperation with her neighbors. The most important single factor contributing to Danubian instability was the hostility between Hungary dismembered by the Trianon Treaty, and her neighbors who benefitted from the dismemberment to such an extent that almost one- third of all the Hungarians living in the Danube Valley were incorporated into Czechoslovakia, Romania and Yugoslavia. These three countries, allied in the so- called Little Entente, stood guard against any revision of the frontiers forced on Hungary

The pilot- treaty of the Little Entente, signed on August 14, 1920, between Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia, expressed the firm resolve"to maintain the peace . . . as well as the situation created by the Treaty concluded at Trianon." By the Czechoslovak- Romanian treaty of April 23, 1921, and the Romanian- Yugoslav treaty of June 7, 1921, the encirclement of Hungarywas completed; the last of these treaties put Bulgaria, the common enemy of Romania and Yugoslavia, in the same category with Hungary In addition, the treaties of the Little Entente obligated Hungarys three neighbors to oppose any attempt to bring back the Habsburgs, a clause which lost its opportuneness when ex- King Charles, shortly after two unsuccessful attempts in 1921 to return to his Hungarian throne, died in exile.

The extension of the victors' alliance system to the entire Middle Zone met with less success than the formation of the Little Entente in the Danube Valley. Relations between Czechoslovakia and Poland got off to a bad start immediately after liberation, when in January 1919 a "seven days war" was waged over the Teschen area. The settlement that followed the armed conflict left Poland disgruntled. Although appeals were made to "Slav solidarity" and to common interests, the rift between Poland and Czechoslovakia was not repaired. Prague's repeated efforts to link Poland with the Little Entente met with failure. Poland, however, on March 3, 1921, entered into a treaty of mutual assistance with her other southern neighbor, Romania, to defend their eastern frontiers against Russia. France concluded a similar treaty of defense with Poland, on February 19, 1921, against Germany.

France subscribed to the aims of the Little Entente by signing a treaty of alliance and friendship with Czechoslovakia on January 25, 1924, in order "to concert their action in all matters of foreign policy which may threaten their security or which may tend to subvert the situation created by the Treaties of Peace." A Franco- Romanian treaty of January 10, 1926, and a Franco- Yugoslav treaty of November 11, 1927, completed this network of alliances which was intended to turn the Middle Zone between Germany and Russia into a safety zone, a cordon sanitaire, according to the principles of balance of power.

The greatest weakness of this treaty system was no doubt the link missing between Poland and Czechoslovakia--the link, that is, that would have tied Poland to the Little Entente in the Danube Valley. However, even if the Polish- Czech link had existed, it is doubtful whether the treaty system of the cordon sanitaire could have become a durable instrument of security either for Poland or for the Danubian countries. Poland's security as an independent country between Germany and Russia--indeed her very "viability," as Jacques Bainville pointed out in his famous book Les consequences politiques de la paix, published in 1920--depended on a strong Danubian organization.[3] And the Little Entente was no such organization. Hailed by its member- states and its Western sympathizers as a pillar of stability, the Little Entente, despite its temporary success, was not a source of strength in the long run. It may well have been regarded as the natural grouping of the post- Habsburg era since it represented the former oppressed nationalities of the Habsburg Empire. Nevertheless, as an instrument of security and peaceful evolution, the Little Entente could hardly fulfill its role. First of all, it was bound to perpetuate a three- way hostility between Hungaryon the one hand, and her neighbors, Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia and Romania, on the other. Furthermore, since the three Little Entente countries had as their neighbors three Great Powers whom they individually regarded as their principal enemies (Czechoslovakia--Germany; Yugoslavia--Italy; Romania--Soviet Russia), the Little Entente's cooperation was anything but smooth when it came to shaping policies toward these Great Powers. In fact, the Little Entente formed a solid bloc only against Hungarys revisionist aspirations.

Hungarywas no less responsible than the Little Entente for the hapless situation in the Danube Valley. For, if the countries of the Little Entente were guilty of imposing on Hungaryunduly harsh conditions of peace, Hungarywas guilty of undisguised hostility toward the liberated peoples of the former Habsburg Monarchy. Hungary under Admiral Horthy's counterrevolutionary regime, was ruled by an oligarchy whose past record and revisionist policy could arouse only suspicion and distrust. The rulers of Hungary arrogant and singularly ignorant of the causes producing revolutionary changes in Central Europe, spoke the insulting language of a feudal past. Their spokesman at the Paris Peace Conference, Count Albert Apponyi, protested against the Trianon Treaty on the ground that it transferred national hegemony to people who stood "on an inferior cultural level." And their propaganda against the treaty was invariably based on the contention of Magyar"cultural superiority." Hungaryhad a good case in denouncing the injustices of the Trianon Treaty, which forcibly separated one- third of the Hungarians from their mother country; but Hungarys rulers applied inept methods in their attacks on the treaty. As a rule they protested against the total losses of the multinational Hungarian kingdom, which amounted to 71 percent of its territory and 60 percent of its population. The rulers of Trianon Hungarydid not even try to conceal their ultimate goal, the restoration of the "thousand- years- old Hungary" of the past, a goal rightfully regarded by Hungarys neighbors as an imperialistic policy directed against their vital interests.

Czechoslovakia, to her credit, showed some willingness, at least once, to reverse her hostile attitude toward Hungaryand pave the way for conciliation. At one time, in March 1921, when the Little Entente had not yet grown into a solid bloc encircling Hungary Edvard Benes, Czechoslovak Foreign Minister, met with Count Paul Teleki, Prime Minister of Hungary and Gustav Gratz, Hungarian Foreign Minister, in the Austrian town Bruck an der Leithe. At this meeting Benes proposed economic cooperation between Hungaryand Czechoslovakia as a preliminary to later discussion of territorial issues. The offer was rejected by the Hungarian representatives, who maintained the necessity of a preliminary agreement on territorial questions to precede economic cooperation. During the negotiations, Benes acknowledged that "the boundaries laid down in the Treaty of Trianon were not the best possible frontiers." He suggested that Hungarywould find it more difficult to reach an agreement with the Romanians and the Yugoslavs than with the Czechs. He offered his help in composing Hungarys differences with her neighbors, provided a Czech- Hungarian agreement should be reached. He also urged Hungaryto adopt a republican form of government--which, he argued, would make it possible fundamentally to change the relationship between Hungaryand the Little Entente countries so as to be able to create a Danubian federation or, as he called it, a "United States of Central Europe."[4]

The rulers of Hungarywere certainly most unwise in refusing Benes's proposals. However, it is doubtful whether any one of the Danubian countries was really ready for a higher form of cooperation, such as was envisaged by Benes. Their post- war record shows a consistent shying away from the idea of national equality, which was prerequisite to true reconciliation. Jealous and suspicious, infected by the spirit of intolerance, the Danubian states lacked the good will and moderation needed for a federation. The post- war era of nationalism aggravated the antagonisms which had long been frustrating peace among the Danubian peoples. The great nationalist revolution of 1918, which destroyed the Habsburg Monarchy, had also destroyed for a long time to come, the prospects of a Danubian federation.

France sought allies in the Middle Zone in order to counterbalance the power of Germany and Russia. A Danubian federation could have provided exactly the power needed. The old truth that the smaller nations between Germany and Russia should federate both in their own interest and in the interest of Europe remained valid. Failure to produce such a federation had brought the Habsburg Monarchy to its ruin. There was every reason to fear that the heirs to the Habsburgs, the Central European nation- states, would meet the same fate unless they drew the proper conclusions from the Habsburg failure.

The disunity of the Danubian nations was widely deplored, but no progress was made, even theoretically, in clarifying the conditions of unity. The Little Entente held the view that with Hungarys renunciation of its revisionist claims, Danubian federation would become a matter of automatic evolution. Hungarians for their part glorified the territorial unity of their thousand- years- old kingdom, believing its restoration to be the only road to Danubian federation. Moreover, the monarchists, mostly Hungarians, wistfully remembering their special privileges under the former Dual Monarchy, considered the restoration of the Habsburg Empireto be the only possible form of any Danubian federal union. They even praised the old Monarchy as having achieved such a federal union, although in reality the dissolution of the Monarchy had been caused by precisely its failure to transform itself into a federation of its member- nations.

Actually, neither the resuscitation of the Habsburg Monarchy nor the restoration of thousand- years- old Hungary nor the preservation of the existing nation- states, could ever offer favorable conditions for Danubian unity. The Habsburg, the Hungarian, the Little Entente versions of "federation," though with variations, all tended to perpetuate inequalities and injustices of one kind or another. Only a joint effort which would both acknowledge the equality of all the Danubian nations and also ensure their freedom under democratic institutions could have opened the road to a real federal solution. Unfortunately neither the Danubian nations themselves nor the Great Powers with influence and interest in the Danube Valley were ready for such a fresh start.

The Great Powers are not justified in sitting in judgment over the small nations that failed to establish peaceful cooperation among themselves. Nor of course are the small nations any more justified in blaming the Great Powers exclusively for their troubles. Rivalry, hatred, fear, held the entire continent in their clutches. Nevertheless the failure of cooperation among the smaller nations of Central Europe definitely reflected on the incompetence of the Western Powers too, because they did not make use of their influence and prestige to provide guidance in the right direction. They showed little concern for a true pacification of these smaller nations. They expended far greater energy in their different efforts to make the European peace safe from the wrath of the two giant neighbors of the Middle Zone, Germany and Russia. As a matter of fact, had the Western Powers devoted more attention to the problems of the small nations in the Middle Zone, especially by offering guidance to these nations toward democracy and Danubian federalism, they could have improved considerably the chances of peace with Germany and Russia.

France's alliances with Poland and the Little Entente, which set up the cordon sanitaire in Central and Eastern Europe, were intended to encircle Germany and to keep the Soviet Union contained. But while subscribing to this basic purpose of the French alliances in the Middle Zone, Western diplomacy was also inclined to engage Soviet Russia in Germany's encirclement and to enlist Germany in Soviet Russia's containment. This European "balance of power" could have worked beautifully if Germany and Russia had cooperated in a system which encircled and contained them respectively; but--hardly surprisingly--neither Germany nor Russia filled its appointed role.

The cordon sanitaire, directed against Germany and Russia, had the logical effect of bringing these "two outcasts" closer to each other. Hans von Seeckt Chief of the Reichswehr from 1920 to 1926, was the first to draw the logical conclusions from the cordon sanitaire. General Seecktand the chiefs of staff around him, despite their fervent opposition to communism, were quick to realize that with Russian assistance Germany might be able to break up the French encirclement and defeat the Versailles system. Soviet Russia though absorbed in fomenting revolution in Germany--chosen by Lenin as the center of world revolution--was not slow, either, to embrace the cynical rules of old power politics. While hopes of stirring up a Bolshevik revolution in industrial Germany were dwindling, Soviet Russiastood ready for old- fashioned, non- ideological cooperation with the German generals.

Cooperation between reactionary Prussian militarists and Russian Bolshevik revolutionaries started in the early twenties, when, in accordance with secret agreements, Junkers, the great German aircraft builders, began to operate a factory near Moscow. Shells and presumably also guns were manufactured by Krupp in several Russian factories for export to Germany. A tank factory too was established, near Kazan, with training facilities for German officers.[5]

Some of the facts concerning German- Russian cooperation came to the attention of a shocked group of European diplomats gathered at a conference in Genoa in 1922. Britain had been anxious to push the rehabilitation of trade relations, and it was in the spirit of this policy that all European countries, Germany and Russia included, were invited to Genoa. So far as the West was concerned, the conference ended in failure, due mainly to France's uncompromising attitude. Germany and Russia, however, scored a great success when in nearby Rapallo the Soviet People's Commissar for Foreign Affairs, G. V. Chicherin, and the German Minister of Foreign Affairs, Walter Rathenau, signed a separate economic treaty.[6]

The German- Soviet treaty ended the isolation of the "two outcasts" of Europe. It also awakened the West to the unpleasant reality that the cordon sanitaire paved the way to German- Russian rapprochement. Western diplomacy was called upon to find more effective means for keeping Germany and Russia apart. From the point of view of the simple power politics that dominated European diplomacy, the logical course of action lay in taking a more conciliatory attitude toward both Germany and Russia, or one of the two. Western Europe perceived the necessity of reconciliation, but remained indecisive in face of the alternatives. It was a Central European friend of the West, Edvard Benes, who pondered the alternatives and declared his preference for a rapprochement with Russia.

During the Second World War Benes liked to remind Western statesmen that it was he who had urged the diplomatic recognition of the Soviet Union immediately after Rapallo. At that time German- Russian rapprochement had hung like the sword of Damocles over the Middle Zone. There was no doubt in Benes's mind that, in the interest of strengthening the European status quo, the Western Powers would have to cooperate with Russia against Germany.

Benes had of course always been willing and eager to cooperate with Germany, as with anybody else, on the basis of the status quo. But he was only too well aware that Germany could never become a guarantor of Czechoslovak frontiers. Russia on the other hand was, in his view, despite the Bolshevik revolution, a potential Slav ally in an anti- German European system. Benes's pro- Russian thinking may be explained also by the fact that Czechoslovakia shared no common frontiers with Russia, and hence--unlike Poland and Romania--had no territorial disputes with her, an almost decisive factor in determining international relations in nationalistic Europe. While Benes was hoping for a rapprochement between the West and Russia, he took an active part in drafting the Geneva Protocol of 1924. The Protocol was intended to provide collective action under the aegis of the League of Nations against the violator of the territorial status quo. But beyond such paper guarantees Benes was ahead of everyone else in thinking of the Soviet Union--which was not at that time a member of the League of Nations--as a Great Power, capable of strengthening the real forces of security.

General Seecktwanted to upset the Versailles system with Russia's help. Edvard Benes hoped to stabilize the peace settlement by improving the relations between Russia and the West. Britain and France had no such set views on this subject. Although France was preoccupied with security, she could not renew her First World War alliance against Germany with a Bolshevik Russia. In addition to an ideological horror of communism, Paris refused even diplomatic recognition of Soviet Russiabecause of its repudiation of the debts Tsarist Russia owed France. London's attitude toward the Soviet government was also basically negative. But as one keen observer saw it, British and Soviet politics, for all their ideological conflicts, developed in part along parallel lines. For different reasons, from opposite fringes of Europe, both Britain and Russia sought to counteract the domination of the Continent by a single military power--France.[7] Lloyd George made feeble attempts to improve the relations between Britain and Russia. But when he invited the Russians to the Genoa conference, he was criticized for "coquetting with the Bolsheviks. " The failure of Genoa was satisfying to those who wanted to have nothing to do with Soviet Russia The Russo- German Rapallo Treaty, however, caused concern to everybody, including of course those who were anxious to keep the Russians in quarantine.

The Western Powers were eager to undo Rapallo and neutralize Russo- German cooperation. Strengthening the Middle Zone could have furnished a powerful and logical counter-move to Rapallo, but this could have been achieved only by radically changing the policies inside the Middle Zone. Unfortunately, the nations there were all preoccupied with their petty rivalries. Meanwhile France was busy currying favor with those countries in the Middle Zone that had profited from the peace settlement. And Britain's interest was limited to eyeing with suspicion France's maneuvering in that region.

There was some reason to believe, in 1924, that the relationship between the Soviet Union and the West would follow the course favored by Benes. For one thing, the political trend in the West took a swing to the Left. In 1924, when the Laborite Ramsay MacDonaldbecame Prime Minister, Britain recognized the Soviet government. Official recognition by the French Socialist government under Edouard Herriot, and by several European states, followed. Interestingly enough, Czechoslovakia was not among the countries that established formal diplomatic relations with the Soviet Union. Although European diplomacy was taking exactly the course Benes had so favored, nevertheless the delicacy of Czechoslovakia's position--her anxiety to gain sympathy abroad and to build unity at home--cautioned Benes to go slowly on such a controversial issue as the formal diplomatic recognition of Soviet Russia. However, Czechoslovakia signed two "provisional treaties," with the Russian and Ukrainian Soviet Republics as early as June 1922, shortly after the German- Soviet Rapallo Treaty.

Changes in Soviet policies contributed to easing the tension between East and West. In domestic affairs the Soviet Union returned, with the so- called New Economic Policy (NEP), to a limited form of free enterprise. In foreign policy the Communist International (Comintern) re- drafted its strategy for world revolution following the abortive Communist rising in Germany in October 1923. Thereafter, expectation of the collapse of capitalism was relegated to the background, being re- placed by the slogan of coexistence between communism and capitalism. Despite this easing up in Communist revolutionary zeal, the rapprochement between the Soviet Union and the West was of very short duration. After a short detente, a new crisis developed, in the autumn of 1924, precipitated by a letter ostensibly written by Gregory Zinoviev, president of the Comintern, to the British Communists, inciting them to revolt. (The authenticity of the letter was denied, however, by the Soviet government.) In contrast with the failure to improve Russo- Western relations, there was a change for the better between Germany and the West. In the autumn of 1924 France withdrew her troops from the Ruhr. Following this, Gustav Stresemann, Foreign Minister of Germany, repeated his earlier offer of guarantees for Germany's treaty obligations. Aristide Briand, French Foreign Minister, accepted the German offer. Britain favored the move. The result was the Locarno Pact of 1925, which mutually guaranteed the German- French and German- Belgian frontiers. Britain and Italy served as guarantors of the pact, pledging aid to the attacked country in case of treaty violation.

The Locarno Pact underscored Germany's Western orientation and improved her relationship with her former enemies, France and Britain; but it did not guarantee Germany's eastern frontiers, due to Germany's own opposition, as well as to British and Italian reluctance to undertake obligations in regard to the Middle Zone. France, however, signed treaties of mutual assistance with Germany's eastern neighbors, Poland and Czechoslovakia, to assure them against German aggression. And Germany concluded arbitration treaties with Poland and Czechoslovakia as a further assurance that she would not use force against them. In spite of these assurances, the sharp distinction which the Locarno Pact made between Germany's western and eastern frontiers was a sign of the equivocal attitude the Western Powers--especially Britain, but even France, the patron of the status quo in the Middle Zone--were inclined to take toward the security problems of Eastern Europe. It was also a disturbing indication that a rapprochement between the West and Germany might leave the nations of the Middle Zone more exposed to Germany's traditional eastward expansion, the ill- fated Drang nach Osten. How far Western disengagement could go in regard to the cordon sanitaire was revealed later--in Munich, in 1938, when Germany was appeased at the expense of Czechoslovakia with fatal consequences for the independence of the entire Middle Zone of small nations; and during the Second World War, when Russia was an ally of the Western Powers against Germany, this disengagement of the West from the Middle Zone produced similar results.

France did not succeed in assuaging the fears of her smaller allies over the Locarno Pact. Only Czechoslovakia, France's most devoted satellite, acclaimed the pact as a means of promoting the continent's general peace. But the true sentiments of France's small allies were voiced by her least enthusiastic satellite, Poland, who was openly critical of the new trend in European politics. Worried Poles gloomily predicted an impending "fifth partition" of Poland and tried to persuade the Western democracies that the Locarno policy did not serve their interests either.

Meanwhile the mutual assistance treaties that France signed with Poland and Czechoslovakia reminded Germany that the danger of encirclement was still the order of the day. Germany reminded the West, too, that the Locarno Pact did not alter her own determination to counteract the threat of encirclement. Almost simultaneously with the Locarno Pact, a new German- Soviet trade treaty was signed. Further- more, in 1926, the German and Soviet governments concluded in Berlin a non- aggression treaty, the negotiations for which must have run simultaneously with the Locarno conferences.[8] The German General Staff did not change their attitude toward the Russians either. German military technicians continued, on Russian soil, experiments which under the Versailles Treaty they could not carry out in Germany; in fact they continued "by force of inertia" for some time even after Hitler seized power.[9]

The Locarno Pact was intended to reinforce Russia's containment by luring Germany away from the pro- Soviet course charted in Rapallo. No wonder the Soviet Union did its best to make Locarno unpopular in Germany. "To think that Germany will put up with this state of affairs is to hope for miracles.... Locarno, which ... sanctions the loss by Germany of Silesia, the Corridor and Danzig . . . will share the fate of the old Franco- Prussian treaty, which deprived France of Alsace and Lorraine.... Locarno is fraught with a new European war"--such were Stalin's comments on the pact.[10] Meanwhile the Sixth Comintern Congress, in 1928, decided that the era of imperialistic attacks and of preparation for intervention against the Soviet Union must be anticipated. The Communist parties in the capitalistic countries were alerted. The Social Democratic parties were singled out by the Comintern as the archenemies of communism and were labelled "Social Fascists." Communists in Germany, following instructions from Moscow, concentrated their attacks upon the Social Democrats who were engaged in an ever growing struggle with Hitler's National Socialists. Stalin thus contributed his share to Hitler's victory in Germany; and the Western democracies, through their failure to follow up the Locarno Pact with a vigorous policy of European cooperation, contributed their share.

The New Central Europe