100 Years ago at Versailles: When the US, Britain & France laid the foundation to the rise of Hitler

The Second World War and the Holocaust didn’t just happen because “the evil misguided Germans” voted Hitler into power. World War II was a product of the outcome of World War l. The peace treaties forced upon Germany, Austria, Hungary, Bulgaria and Turkey by the US, Britain and France after World War I laid the foundation to the rise of totalitarianism in Europe with all its consequences.

On this day 100 years ago, the victorious Entente Powers, led by the US, Britain and France, signed the infamous Treaty of Versailles with Germany. It was the first of a series of so-called “peace treaties“ between the Entente and the Central Powers ending World War l.

In the US, Britain and France the treaties were sold as historic victories for democracy and the principle of self-determination. However, in reality they were dictates with little to no regard to the will of the affected population groups in regional Europe. They laid the foundation to the rise of authoritarian regimes across Europe, among them Hitlers Nazi dictatorship in Germany, eventually leading to the horrors of World War II and subsequently the Cold War and other ongoing conflicts in Europe and the Middle East.

The First World War was not a conflict between democracies and authoritarian dictatorships. The opposing parties were equally imperialist and contained a mixture of democratic, semi-democratic and virtually absolutist regimes. World War I started out as a regional conflict in the Balkans and ended up as a full scale War on territorial and economic supremacy across large parts of the globe.

In 1918, after four years of full scale war, in which both sides butchered millions of soldiers and civilians unnecessarily, people were finally ready to mount the barricades and stop the slaughter. Politicians on both sides continued to spread rumours of an imminent victory while making grandiose demands for territorial gains and war reparations.  The so called “14 points” announced by US President Woodrow Wilson to Congress in early 1918 called for a new democratic world order based on equality, democracy and self determination. Wilson‘s promise was decisive in bringing about a ceasefire.

But the so called “peace conferences“ with Germany in Versailles, Austria in Saint Germain, Hungary in Trianon, Bulgaria in Neuilly-sur-Seine and Turkey in Lausanne turned into a farce. Representatives from the affected countries were not even allowed to join the conference table. They had to wait at isolated locations where they were presented with treaties that went beyond their worst expectations and that showed no regard to the will of the affected regional populations. The representatives of the “losing powers” had no other choice but to sign, otherwise the Entente would have continued or extended their food and coal embargo which had already cost hundreds of thousands of people their lives. Any modern court would declare these treaties invalid as democratically elected representatives were blackmailed into signing something while some of the most basic human rights were ignored.

Germany lost Alsace-Lorraine to France, Poznania and parts of former West-Prussia and Upper Silesia to Poland, the region of Eurpen-Malmédy to Belgium, Northern Schleswig to Denmark, the Memel Territory to Lithuania and the so call Hultschin Region to Czechoslovakia. While there was certainly majority support in Poznania and parts of West Prussia to join Poland and Northern Schleswig voted to join Denmark, it is questionable if there was a majority in favour of joining France in Alsace-Lorraine. On the other hand, it is certain that the majority of the population in all other areas ceded from Germany wanted to remain German.

However, besides these forced and to a large extend undemocratic boundary changes, what hit the country hardest were the shocking reparations of $ 33 Billion Germany was supposed to pay to the victors in installments until the 1980s, an amount inconvincible at the time.

The Hapsburg Empire, a country with great potential to become a first democratic Central European Union at the time, was forcibly dismantled. The newly created purely “German” Austria lost the German speaking parts of Bohemia, Moravia and Austrian (later Czech) Silesia to newly founded Czechoslovakia. German speaking South Tyrol became Italian. Especially the forced detachment of South Tyrol was considered a great injustice as the territory had no connection with Italy whatsoever. It was merely a trophy Italy received for joining the War on the side of the Entente. The territory remains a kind of Italian colony to this day.

Historical Hungary was dismantled and much of it subdivided between her neighbours. Hungary did not only loose non-Hungarian speaking territories to Czechoslovakia, Romania and Yugoslavia, but also areas with Hungarian majorities North of the Danube, in Crisana, the Vojvodina, the Banat and in Transylvania.

The Ottoman Empire was also dismantled. Due to an aggressive military campaign shortly after the War, the successor state, Turkey, kept much of her Kurdish territory against the will of the local population. Other parts of the Ottoman Empire were simply subdivided between the British and the French. New countries without any historic legacy emerged. The mess created by the Entente in 1919/20 sparked a fire that has irreversibly destabilized the Middle East. The emergence of Islamism, Islamic terrorism, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the civil Wars in Lebanon, Syria and Iraq as well as the Iranian Islamic Revolution are a product of the failure of the US, Britain and France to create a democratic rather than a new imperialist and colonialist world order.

In Europe alone, more than 10 million people, many of them constituting regional ethnic majorities, were forced into neighbouring ethnic nation states against their will. This enormous injustice naturally led to mistrust between Germany, Austria and Hungary on the one hand and their neighbours on the other hand. In addition, enormous ethnic conflicts emerged domestically in Poland, Czechoslovakia, Italy, France, Romania and Yugoslavia between the majority and their forcibly created new large German and Hungarian minorities. All six countries added fuel to the flames by adopting Centralist constitutions preventing any form of autonomous self-government in German and Hungarian speaking regions.

The mess created by Britain, France and the US at Versailles, St Germain and Trianon eventually led to the rise of nationalist regimes in almost all European countries. With the economic crisis that hit the World in the 1930s, democratic and semi-democratic nationalist regimes eventually turned into outright dictatorships. Hitler was one of many radicals whose ideas could only flourish under conditions created by the Western Powers a few years earlier.

The legacy of the post-World War I peace treaties can be felt to this day. 50 Million War death, the holocaust, the post-War expulsions, 40 years of Cold War, the Balkan Wars, ongoing border conflicts as well as civil wars in the Middle East can be directly linked to the World War I peace dictates. Today some of the political decision makers in the US and Britain are at it again trying to undermine the much needed European unification process that has been the basis of peace and reconciliation for the last 74 years. If the nationalists in Europe win again, history will repeat itself. And this time it will most likely be the final World War.

Diverse tongues-Ethnic minorities and languages preserve Europe's rich fabric

Diverse tongues-Ethnic minorities and languages preserve Europe's rich fabric

22.08.2007

By Peter Josika

Opponents of the European Union argue that a multi-ethnic European state destroys diversity and endangers smaller ethnic groups. In fact, the opposite is true, if you look at history and the current state of ethnic minorities in Europe.

Take the Czech Republic as an example. Since the formation of Czechoslovakia in 1918, the historically multilingual Bohemia, Moravia and Silesia have turned into one of Europe’s most mono-ethnic nation states. The Polish population has dropped 50 percent; the number of Sudeten Germans, once the largest ethnic minority in Europe, has dropped more than 99 percent.

Mono-ethnic states destroy diversity.

By contrast, Switzerland, Luxembourg and Belgium are Europe’s only remaining officially multi-ethnic states. They have preserved their linguistic plurality better than any other nation in Europe. Even smaller ethnic communities such as the Reto-Romans and German-Belgians are flourishing today. Nowhere else in Europe have so many dialects survived as they have in Switzerland.

To go back to the Czech example, the national revival itself was a product of the conditions of former multi-ethnic Austria.

If Bohemia and Moravia had become a part of “mono-ethnic” Germany in 1871, most Czechs would be proud Germans now. Multi-ethnic states are, in fact, the guarantors of ethnic diversity.

Minorities in Europe’s mono-ethnic nation-states struggle to survive. Stateless languages such as Sorbian, Kashubian, Breton, Alsatian or Scots Gaelic are in danger of extinction, while the number of Hungarians (in Slovakia, Romania and Serbia), Germans (in Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovenia, Slovakia, Hungary), Slovenes (in Italy, Austria) and Poles (in the Czech Republic, Belarus, Ukraine) has decreased markedly in recent decades.

So if we remain a divided Europe of mono-ethnic nation-states we will not only destroy Europe’s position in the world and our economic prospects, but we will also maintain prejudice and ethnic tension. This eventually leads to more conflict of the kind we have experienced in the past.

A Europe of mono-ethnic nation states is also the best recipe to endanger the very existence of Czech identity and nationhood. A united Europe, on the other hand, is the only way to overcome national and ethnic conflict in Central Europe and safeguard the position of all ethnicities, including those of the Czechs.

President Václav Klaus is one of a group of influential politicians who continuously try to torpedo the European unification process. This group openly fights for a return to the Dark Ages of the interwar period.

In addition to Klaus, other politicians from Poland and the Czech Republic have sadly become the driving force of this new Euroskepticism. It is interesting to see how two countries that currently benefit the most from the EU have also become her greatest potential adversaries.

Klaus loves to preach “democracy” if it suits his political strategy. However, when it comes to the EU, as a “true democrat” he should have sided recently with those who are against the Polish government’s push to maintain the status quo (where a Polish vote has twice as much weight as a German vote). Klaus sided with the Poles.

In spite of vocal politicians like Klaus, most Czechs and Poles are not anti-European.

Public opinion polls tell us so. In both countries there is underlying support for greater European political integration and a joint foreign policy, more so than in many West European countries.

However, certain populist politicians continue to scaremonger the public by spreading divisive nationalist slogans and wrong and unsubstantiated fears about the loss of property and identity. They like to call the EU “undemocratic” and “supra-national” to discredit the difficult process of getting the identities and interests of two dozen EU countries all under one umbrella.

As we all know, Europe has gone through an unbelievable transformation over the past few decades. A continent once brainwashed and destroyed by nationalism and communism has started to turn into a united force that stands for democracy, human rights, prosperity, diversity and, most importantly, reconciliation among nations, ethnicities and religious groups.

Since the end of the Cold War, Central and East European countries have been given the opportunity to benefit from and enrich the EU project.

As many of those countries join the EU, they become the fastest-growing economies in the world. Billions of euros in investments and subsidies from countries like Germany, France, Italy, Austria, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom have created this Central and East European economic miracle.

The true key to this success was having the political will to overcome nationalist sentiments after two world wars. Modern Europe was born out of the understanding that nationalism creates division and destruction.

No country has been forced into the EU. All have joined by their free will.

Modern-day Czechs have only to look at history to see their mono-ethnic behavior. Founders in 1918 included Czechs (over-represented), Slovaks and Ruthenians, or Rusyns (under-represented). Germans and Hungarians, who constituted almost 40 percent of the population at the time, were barred completely.

Those same Czechs continue to vigorously defend the equally undemocratic ethnic cleansing of the German-speaking population after World War II.

It is ludicrous of Klaus to lash out at the EU for supposedly being supra-national and undemocratic if these terms fit much better his own views of his own country.

 

— The author, a resident of Biel, Switzerland, is coordinator of the Network of European Bilingual Cities project and a correspondent for Eurolang, the news agency of European minorities (www.eurolang.net).

 

http://www.praguepost.cz/archivescontent/4112-diverse-tongues.html

Villains or Victims?

Villains or Victims?

03.01.2006

By Peter Josika

Two different messages about the Sudeten Germans confront Czechs in their day-to-day lives. They are still taught about the German colonialists who turned Nazi and wanted to destroy the country. And yet one cannot escape reports of postwar death marches, expulsions and mass graves, where Sudeten Germans were victims not perpetrators.

While some politicians prefer to talk about gestures of reconciliation, others stress the irrevocability of the postwar order, and with it, the country's No. 1 taboo issue: the Beneš Decrees.

In a state that wanted to completely eliminate memories of Czech-German coexistence, it has become difficult to form a balanced view about the Sudeten Germans, their history and contribution to the country — and also the importance of the German language and culture to the modern-day Czech Republic. Various myths and prejudices about those people that T.G. Masaryk referred to as "our Germans" persist, while there is very little unbiased and complete information about them.

 

Here some myths versus the facts:

 

Myth: The Sudeten German minority consisted of narrow-minded "Bavarian-style" country people

 

Until their expulsion in 1945, Sudeten Germans formed the majority of the population in west, north and south Bohemia, as well as in parts of north and south Moravia. There were also large German-speaking populations in Prague, Brno and Olomouc. Towns with German majorities included Karlovy Vary (Karlsbad), Český Krumlov (Krumau), Znojmo (Znaim) and Liberec (Reichenberg).

The 3.5 million Sudeten Germans were not a homogenous group — they were intellectuals, scientists, aristocratic landowners, members of the urban middle class, farmers, government officials and laborers.

They were Catholics, Protestants, Jews and even Hussites. They spoke Frankish-Egerlandish in west Bohemia, Saxon in north Bohemia, Silesian German in Silesia and north Moravia as well as Bavarian-Austrian in south Bohemia and Moravia. Many dialects of the German language became extinct as a result of the postwar expulsion.

 

Myth: The Sudeten Germans came to the Czech lands as colonialists

 

Germanic tribes actually lived on modern-day Czech territory well before Slavic tribes arrived around 500 AD. However, neither the Germanic nor the Slavic populations of the fifth century would have qualified as German or Czech in the modern sense. While from the second to the fifth century the population was probably mainly Germanic and Celtic, it is generally acknowledged that Slavic settlers became the majority by the seventh century. Most of the remaining populations assimilated with the newly arrived Slavs, although west and northwest Bohemia remained mostly Germanic due to strong Frankish influence. German and Latin remained the prevalent language of the Royal House and the aristocracy, even among the Přemyslid dynasty.

Between the 11th and the 16th centuries, Germans and Dutch were called into the country by Bohemian kings to establish modern forms of agriculture, develop urban centers and introduce new trades. During this period, German also became the prevalent language in south Bohemia and Moravia, as well as in parts of north Moravia and northeast Bohemia. Major cities such as Prague, Brno, Olomouc, Plzeň and the former Budweis flourished in the late Middle Ages due to trade and arts.

 

Myth: The Sudeten Germans all voted for the Nazi Party

 

Sudeten Germans supposedly all voted for the Nazi puppet Sudeten German Party (SdP) of Konrad Henlein with the sole purpose of destroying Czechoslovakia, Central Europe's last island of freedom and democracy at the time.

These accusations are based on the theory of collective guilt, or, as the Constitutional Court argued in defense of the Beneš Decrees, the principle of collective responsibility. The current state uses historic events like the 1935 election to defend and justify the forced expulsion of one-third of the country's historic population and the resulting disappearance of one of the country's historic languages.

Although much literature contains detailed analyses of these elections, few facts have become public. A close look reveals that a substantial part of the Sudeten Germans did not vote for the SdP, despite the enormous anti-Czech propaganda coming from Nazi Germany. Henlein received around two-thirds of the votes of the four main German parties but a strong communist vote also marked the highly industrialized north Bohemia.

Also, some Sudeten Germans did not vote, while others supported Czech or Hungarian parties. The SdP is likely to have received 50 percent to 55 percent of the Sudeten German vote. Among all the German-speaking population, Henlein received only 35 percent. And those who voted SdP voted for an official party program calling for Sudeten German autonomy within a democratic Czechoslovakia.

 

Myth: When Hitler marched into the Sudetenland, he was greeted with flowers and all Sudeten Germans screamed "Heil Hitler"

 

The pictures of Hitler's triumphal arrival are shown regularly here. However, can pictures of a few thousand people screaming "Heil Hitler" really be considered an indication of collective responsibility by an entire ethnic group?

The Nazis were masters at staging events. Every Hitler speech was accompanied by a folk fest with music, food and giveaways. It wasn't difficult to draw the masses to give the impression of unreserved support. In reality, most Catholic Sudeten Germans surely felt as outcasts in Centralist and Czechophile interwar Czechoslovakia, but were equally critical and suspicious of atheist Prussian-style Nazi Germany.

Films about events staged by the pro-Nazi Czech fascists in the so-called Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia remain mostly hidden away in archives, such as those of the German Wochenschau. Do thousands of Czechs participating in regular political demonstrations of the Czech Fascist Party in Prague prove widespread support for fascism?

 

German guilt is black and white

 

European politicians today agree that we must defend pluralist democracies and prevent the re-emergence of dictatorships in Europe. We must also overcome the simplistic theories that make it easy to whitewash collective responsibility.

The victorious powers of World War I — including the United States, the United Kingdom, France and Italy — carry their distinct share of responsibility for the emergence of Nazism in Europe. The tough and uncompromising peace terms forced upon Weimar Germany created a fertile ground for radical nationalism in Germany. And multi-ethnic interwar Czechoslovakia failed to let Sudeten Germans identify with their new homeland.

All occupied territories collaborated widely with the Nazis. In a landmark speech in 1998, French Prime Minister Jacques Chirac conceded France's joint responsibility for many crimes committed during the war.

One can only hope that issues like the controversy surrounding the Czech-run concentration camp at Lety will help to start a thorough self-reflection in the Czech Republic. Perhaps one day a Czech president will dare to follow Chirac with an apology — though it will undoubtedly not be the current one.

— The author, a resident of Biel, Switzerland, is coordinator of the Network of European Bilingual Cities project and a correspondent for the news agency Eurolang (www.eurolang.net).

Playing the blame game- Collective guilt ignores historical responsibility

Playing the blame game- Collective guilt ignores historical responsibility

06.07.2005

By Peter Josika

The postwar mistreatment and expulsion of German speakers from Czechoslovakia remains a European issue, one of the key factors for future co-existence of the nations of Central Europe. It remains of utmost importance that we never forget the terrors of war and ethnic cleansing that led to indescribable suffering by millions of innocents. It remains equally important that we mourn each innocent death, regardless of whether it is Jewish, Czech, German or any other ethnic origin.

This becomes particularly important in a country where the population has always been extremely intermingled. A look at the list of expelled Germans will uncover as many Czech names as there are German names among Czech politicians today — for example, allow me to mention just a few "dangerously" Germanic names like Klaus, Ransdorf and Kühnl.

If anyone 100 years ago had predicted that 40 million people would be brutally killed, and well over 20 million Europeans expelled from their century-old homelands during a mere 50 years, he would have been considered a lunatic. The 20th century, however, provided all nightmares imaginable, and there remains no doubt that all Europeans must take equal responsibility — and we all must do what we can to prevent a repeat of these most shameful and dreadful events.

Any attempt to blame "the Germans" or "the Russians" collectively for all evil, as is still commonly done in the Czech Republic, represents an act of self-denial. Czechoslovakia after World War I, though often glorified as democratic, still had many deficiencies, including its inability to come to terms with its minorities.

In contrast to Switzerland, a country that created a strong multinational identity through a federalist system with a large degree of autonomy for its regions, Czechoslovakia took the opposite course and centralized its political structure. Because of that, the large minorities — Germans, Hungarians and Poles —increasingly felt like outcasts without an identity.

A Constitutional Assembly legislated the Czechoslovak constitution without including any Germans, Hungarians or Poles. No wonder most of the non-Czechoslovaks could barely relate to the identity of this state when it emerged from the ashes of Austria-Hungary in 1918.

The name Czechoslovakia ("land of the Czechs and Slovaks" — hence, others do not belong to the new state's identity) had already been badly chosen for a country in which Germans, Hungarians, Poles and Ruthenians made up 40 percent of the population. Instead of an all-inclusive state for everyone — similar to Belgium or Switzerland — a monolingual state similar to France, Germany and Russia began to take shape.

The most divisive piece of post-World War I legislation, however, was undoubtedly the introduction of "Czechoslovak" as the nation's official language. Historians often take little note of it, but this seriously damaged inter-ethnic relations. It led to the introduction of Czech signage and topographic names across the ethnically German, Hungarian and Polish regions of the country, seriously provoking anti-Czech sentiment among many people.

More importantly, however, the law also cost thousands of German, Hungarian and Polish officials their jobs (mainly in the postal and railway services), as they did not speak the new "national language." Many had been too old to learn a new language overnight, one still virtually unknown in many parts of the country. To make matters worse, thousands of Czechs arrived to fill their former positions.

Add to this a number of other devastating factors: a worldwide recession, which hit German-speaking northern Bohemia the worst; a land-reform policy disadvantageous to Germans and Hungarians; infrastructure developments channeled preferentially to Czech-speaking areas; and Czech schools opening in German-speaking areas for only a handful of students, while larger German and Hungarian schools suffered closures if the German or Hungarian population in town fell below 20 percent. In such an explosive atmosphere, Germans then became bombarded by Nazi propaganda. It is a sad fact that it wasn't until a few weeks before the Munich Pact that Radio Prague even introduced a German radio station for 3 million of its nation's citizens — too little, too late.

These remain historic facts, known well but often downplayed to defend simplistic views on "good vs. evil." The coexistence of Germans and Czechs before 1945 had been much more complex and multifaceted than usually portrayed.

Regardless, if we envision a politically united Europe, or even only the loose economic union supported by Václav Klaus, we must focus on creating a Europe for everyone, one that addresses the identities not only of Germans and Czechs in their respective countries but also of Sudeten Germans, Czech Poles, Serbs, Slovak Hungarians, South Tyroleans, Basques, Bretons and so on.

The treatment of minorities in the Czech Republic, just as in most other European countries, has never been exemplary. The Polish minority in Czech Silesia has decreased by more than 70 percent since 1930 — without an expulsion. The German language, estimated to have been spoken by almost half the population in the mid-18th century, has virtually disappeared. Of the 3.1 million Czech Germans counted in 1931, only 30,000 remain, a decrease of just over 99 percent.

Will this issue go away by ignoring it, as some Czech politicians seem to believe? How can we deal with this issue? Not through half-hearted apologies, like the Czech-German declaration that bypassed the suffering and injustice felt by millions of Czechs, Germans and Jews.

Every psychiatrist knows that we can only cope with emotional pain if we deal with it. Every sociologist knows that disagreements can only be solved through openness, discussion and an appreciation of the suffering of others.

It seems that Czech politicians, however, remain scared to finally, officially reach out their hands to Sudeten Germans, though such an important move would be met with enormous appreciation by many.

Any attempt to heal the wounds may or may not touch controversial issues such as the Beneš Decrees. But Czech politicians can actively recognize the part-German and part-Polish heritage of the country through a number of different gestures: bilingual signage in formerly German- and Polish-speaking areas, for example, or through a greater support of German and Polish minorities by establishing bilingual schools across their traditional settlement regions.

This may be met with more appreciation among Sudeten Germans and Poles than the return of a rusty hut in western Bohemia or a few hundred euros of symbolic compensation for their suffering.

 

— The author resides in Bern, Switzerland.

 

https://archive.today/AAufY#selection-637.0-769.43