East and East Center Europe from 1918 to Lecture 4

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1 East and East Center Europe from 1918 to 1945 Lecture 4

I am sure that Wilson will win not only in America but in Europe as well.

2 Mihály Károlyi and the Democratic Revolution (October 1918) My foreign policy is based on Wilsonian ideals. We have only one ideology: Wilson, Wilson, and for the third time Wilson. I am sure that Wilson will win not only in America but in Europe as well. The role of America is to remake Europe, extirpating the idea of revenge and creating a peace that will not leave people embittered. (Quoted in Peter Pastor, Hungary between Wilson and Lenin, 90.)

3 Communist Revolution March 1919

Béla Kun & Red Terror To those who say that the dictatorship of the proletariat in Hungary is but sheer gambling on the coming of the world revolution, I have only this to ask: Which is the game of

4 Béla Kun & Red Terror To those who say that the dictatorship of the proletariat in Hungary is but sheer gambling on the coming of the world revolution, I have only this to ask: Which is the game of chance to place ourselves firmly behind the international revolution of the proletariat or to lay the country s fortune on the altar of Wilsonian pacifism? (Kun quoted in Rudolf Tőkés, Béla Kun, 143)

5 Conservative Counter-Revolution of Miklós Horthy (November 1919)

6 Treaty of Trianon (June 1920)

7 Irredentism / Trianon Syndrome

István Bethlen and Consolidation (1921-1931) Foiled Habsburg restoration (1921) Political consolidation under conservative Christian Nationalist values Union of Jewish industry and Hungarian

8 István Bethlen and Consolidation ( ) Foiled Habsburg restoration (1921) Political consolidation under conservative Christian Nationalist values Union of Jewish industry and Hungarian gentry>>>goal: economic recovery Aimed to curtail both Communism and Fascism>>> goal: political stability After 1927 openly revisionist foreign policy Great Depression>>>labor unrest + strikes + scandals>>>bethlen resigns in August 1931 Changing Hungarian orientation from Gyula Gömbös to Ferenc Szálasi

9 Prime Ministers under Horthy

10 Territorial Revisions

Pál Teleki the great tightrope walker Pál Teleki s suicide note to Horthy Excellency, We have become word-breakers out of cowardice and broke our promise of the eternal friendship agreement based on

11 Pál Teleki the great tightrope walker Pál Teleki s suicide note to Horthy Excellency, We have become word-breakers out of cowardice and broke our promise of the eternal friendship agreement based on your Mohács [historically significant town in Hungary] speech. The nation senses that we have cast away its honor. We have sided with the villains because the atrocities they reported, which are a pack of lies. There were none against Hungarians and none even against Germans! We will be robbing a corpse. We will be the most miserable of nations. I did not hold you back. I am guilty. (Quoted in in Balázs Ablonczy, Pál Teleki ( ): The Life of a Controversial Hungarian Politician, )

12 Arrow Cross / Ferenc Szálasi (More about this later)

13 Further Reading

Road to Reunification (1918-1922) Beat the Bolshevik!

14 Road to Reunification ( ) Beat the Bolshevik! (1920) Polish Ukrainian War ( ) Polish Soviet War ( ) Polish Lithuanian War (1920) Silesian Uprisings ( ) Ongoing border conflicts between Poland and Czechoslovakia ( )

15 Politics and National Character Will this [reunification] work? What precisely is the nature of the bond which unites, or could unite, a land so long separated, social classes so alien to each other, dialects so disparate?

16 Who we are? After our struggles with Russia, with Germany, a struggle with Poland awaited us. It is not surprising, therefore, that independence turned out to be more burdensome and humiliating than bondage. As long as we were absorbed with the revolt against a foreign power, questions such as Who we are? What are we to make ourselves? lie dormant, but independence awakened the riddle that was slumbering with us. (Witold Gombrowicz [ ])

17 National Democracy ("Endecja") vs. Polish Socialist Party Roman Dmowski ( ) Józef Piłsudski ( )

18 Piłsudski and the sanacja Sanacja was a Polish political movement that came to power after Józef Piłsudski's May 1926 Coup d'état. Pilsudski denied that he wanted to be a dictator, and said his goal was to bring the country back to health. This was the origin of the name given to his political group.

Polish Foreign Policy (1932-1939) Creating Equilibrium after Expansion Polish-Soviet Non- Aggression Pact

a possible Polish-Hungarian- Romanian (-Yugoslav) alliance to counter further Eastward German expansion after

19 Polish Foreign Policy ( ) Creating Equilibrium after Expansion Polish-Soviet Non- Aggression Pact (January1932 / renewed in 1934) Polish-German Declaration of Non-Aggression (January 1934) Idea of Third Europe: a possible Polish-Hungarian- Romanian (-Yugoslav) alliance to counter further Eastward German expansion after Munich 1938 Józef Beck ( ) VS. Reality of the Nazi-Soviet Non-Aggression Pact of August 1939 (Molotov- Ribbentrop Pact)

20 Further Reading

21 ECE Remapped

22 Little Entente ( )

Island of Democracy [?] Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk (1850-1937) Hrad and pětka vs. Parliament Edvard Beneš (1884-1948) Czechoslovakia: Child of propaganda [?

history, that is that we must take a hand in world politics, and consequently be in lively and friendly contact with other nations.

23 Island of Democracy [?] Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk ( ) Hrad and pětka vs. Parliament Edvard Beneš ( ) Czechoslovakia: Child of propaganda [?] Pittsburg Agreement (May 1918) Masaryk on the idea of humanita: As far as our national program is concerned, remember what I told you with regard to the development of Europe, and to our own history, that is that we must take a hand in world politics, and consequently be in lively and friendly contact with other nations. Our national revival is a child of Enlightenment and of late Romanticism, it sprang from humanitarian ideals of the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries which were broadcast in France, in Germany, everywhere, Humanity that is indeed our national program of Dobrovský, Havlíček, and of Komenský in his day, of our kings George, and Charles, and of St. Venceslas Thomas Masaryk, Masaryk on Thought and Life: Conversations with Karel Čapek, trans. M. & R. Weaterall (London: George Allen & Unwin Ltd, 1938), 212.

24 Nationalist policy vs. Multi-ethnic state

25 Emerging Ethnic Problems Andrej Hlinka ( ) and the Slovak Peoples Party Konrad Henlein ( ) and the Sudeten German Party

Munich Agreement (Munich Betrayal) (September 1938) Adolf Hitler, Benito Mussolini, Édouard Daladier, and Neville Chamberlain How horrible, fantastic, incredible it is that we should be digging

26 Munich Agreement (Munich Betrayal) (September 1938) Adolf Hitler, Benito Mussolini, Édouard Daladier, and Neville Chamberlain How horrible, fantastic, incredible it is that we should be digging trenches and trying on gas-masks here because of a quarrel in a far-away country between people of whom we know nothing. It seems still more impossible that a quarrel that has already been settled in principle should be the subject of war. --Chamberlain

27 Aftermath of Munich 1. Germany occupies the Sudetenland (October 1938). 2. Poland annexes Zaolzie, an area with a Polish plurality, over which the two countries had fought a war in 1919 (October 1938). 3. Hungary occupies border areas (southern third of Slovakia and southern Carpathian Ruthenia) with Hungarian minorities in accordance with the First Vienna Award (November 1938). 4. In March 1939, Hungary annexes Carpathian Ruthenia (which had been autonomous since October 1938). 5. The remaining Czech territories become the German satellite Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia. 6. The remainder of Czechoslovakia becomes Slovakia, another German satellite (GO WIKIPEDIA)

28 Further Reading

30 Second World War and the Holocaust in Eastern Europe Lecture 13

31 Nazi New Order and Eastern Europe Five concepts to keep in mind: Grossraumwirtschaft (greatereconomic space) Lebensraum (living space) Volksgemeinschaft (national community) Vernichtungskrieg (war of annihilation) Endlösung (The Final Solution / Holocaust)

32 Grossraumwirtschaft and the New European Order from 1933 onward Centralized and self sufficient German economy semi-colonial economic relations with South and Eastern Europe future EE labor force dependency in EE When we eat wheat from Canada we don t think about the despoiled Indians -- A. Hitler It is my impression that Germany has certain plans aiming at a lasting European new order along the lines of the planned economy known to Germany, which will certainly contain important advantages compared with the lack of planning hitherto reigning, which has been part of liberal egoism. We had better calmly and willingly collaborate in the adaptation which I have here hinted at. --Danish Prime Minister Thorvald Stauning, 8 March 1941 (quoted in Mazower, Dark Continent, 180) (quoted in Mazower, Dark Continent, 138)

33 Lebensraum (in Hitler s own words) Only an adequately large space on this earth assure a nation of freedom of existence. We National Socialists must hold unflinchingly to our aim in foreign policy, namely, to secure for the German people the land and soil to which they are entitled on this earth. If we speak of soil in Europe today, we can primarily have in mind only Russia and her vassal border states. Everything I undertake is directed against Russia. If the West is too stupid and too blind to comprehend that, I will be forced to come to an understanding with the Russians, to smash the West, and then, after its defeat, to turn against the Soviet Union with my combined forces.

34 Volksgemeinschaft Volksgemeinschaft: Nazi ideal type community people s community that was to unite all Germans in a racially pure community. Mentally/ Physically Handicapped Jew Gypsy Homosexual Asocial

themselves as Teutonic type that is fair,

dolichocephalic as Rosenberg, as tall as

35 Ideal Type? Oooo Our German neighbors have ascribed themselves as Teutonic type that is fair, longheaded, tall and virile. Let us make a composite picture of a typical Teuton from the most prominent exponents of this view. Let him be blond as Hitler, as dolichocephalic as Rosenberg, as tall as Goebbels, as slender as Goering and as manly as Streicher. How much would this resemble the German ideal? (Julian Huxley, 1936)

36 September 1, 1939 When starting and waging a war is not the right that matters, but victory. Close your hearts to pity. Act brutally. Eighty million people must obtain what is rightfully theirs the wholesale destruction of Poland is the military objective. Speed is the main thing. Pursuit until complete annihilation. --A. Hitler to his generals, nine days before Germany attacked Poland.

37 Operation Barbarossa(June 22, 1941) Vernichtungskrieg "The war against Russia cannot be fought in knightly fashion. The struggle is one of ideologies and racial differences and will have to be waged with unprecedented, unmerciful, and unrelenting hardness. All officers will have to get rid of any old fashioned ideas they may have. I realize that the necessity for conducting such warfare is beyond the comprehension of you generals, but I must insist that my orders be followed without complaint. The commissars hold views directly opposite to those of National Socialism. Hence these commissars must be eliminated. Any German soldier who breaks international law will be pardoned. Russia did not take part in the Hague Convention and, therefore, has no rights under it."

38 Holocaust by Bullets SS Einsatzgruppen Babi Yar (September 1941) 33, 771 victims

39 Final Solution Wannsee Conference Nazi Camp System

40 Holocaust in Hungary

41 Further Reading Bartov, Omer. The Holocaust: Origins, Implementation, Aftermath Germany's War and the Holocaust: Disputed Histories Browning, Christopher. The Origins of the Final Solution: The Evolution of Nazi Jewish Policy, September 1939-March Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland Collected Memories: Holocaust History and Post-War Testimony Friedländer, Saul. Nazi Germany and the Jews: Volume 1: The Years of Persecution Nazi Germany and the Jews, : The Years of Extermination.

Unit 3.1 Appeasement and World War II

Unit 3.1 Appeasement and World War II 3.1.1 Pan-Germanism: German nationalist doctrine aiming at the union of all German-speaking peoples under German rule. Pan-Germanists were especially interested in