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.

We need global rules on how self determination is exercised

From Scotland to Catalonia, from Crimea to Kurdistan: We need global rules on how self determination is exercised 

Most countries in the world claim to have derived through some form of national self determination. However, the reality looks very different. The overwhelming majority of nation states and their boundaries emerged as a result of wars, conquests and colonization between the 17th and 20th century. This is why the call for self determination in large parts of Europe and the Middle East cannot simply be ignored by the UN and the EU.

A history of war, occupation & suppressed self determination

Regions like Scotland, Catalonia, Crimea, Kurdistan, South Tyrol and the Szeklerland, to mention just a few, were all conquered by force in the last few centuries and then incorporated into the increasingly centralist political structures of their invader states against the will of the local majority population. 

As our world globalize and societies become increasingly egalitarian, democratic and focused on personal self determination, collective self determination is emerging as another important aspect of modern human aspiration. The rise of separatist movements across the globe, most particularly in Europe and the Middle East, hast to be understood in this context. We will see more rather than less of it in the future.

Self Determination versus Territorial Integrity 

Although self determination is recognized as a basic human right in international law, it is rarely exercised. In fact, there are two international laws that seemingly contradict themselves- the right to self determination and a nation state’s right to territorial integrity.

Whenever a region wants to break up from a nation state, different powers tend to cherry pick which of the two they prioritize depending on their strategic needs. When the Kosovo declared her independence, the US and the majority of EU countries supported the break up of the region from Serbia while Russia was against it. In the case of Crimea, Donezk and Luhansk it was the opposite.

Most nation states emphasize the indivisibility of their territory. They draw on the theory that any break-away-attempt by regions and communes represent a breach of the principle of territorial integrity. This is is also the current approach by Spain.

However, territorial integrity is only supposed to protect the boundaries of an independent state from outside agression. It is certainly not meant to prevent the local or regional population within a state from exercising self determination themselves. It contradicts the modern concept of grass root democracy and subsidiarity that political decisions should always be made as close as possible to the people affected on the regional or even local level.

We need global rules on how self determination is exercised

Any attempt by nation states to prevent their regions and communes from exercising self determination is therefore unquestionably a clear breach of international and European laws, among them the Treaty of Lisbon and the UN Charta on Human Rights. For that reason it is the responsibility of the UN, the EU an the European member states to act.

In the light of current developments, the UN and the EU should set clear rules on how regions and communes can separate from nation states to either become independent or join other states. Any plebiscite would need to be organized and conducted by an independent UN body, incorporate the entire population of the affected area and provide the remain- and separation camps with funds and access to the entire population to communicate their cases.

While on a global basis self determination could only be exercised within a connected and self contained area, the EU could go a step further and enable each commune to vote on its regional and national status. As the Schengen area has no controlled boundaries, enclaves would not matter and democratic self determination could be exercised on the most local level possible.

In the case of Catalonia, for example, this would be a very useful measure as there are enormous regional differences in the level of support for separation from Spain. Why should a commune in which 90% of the population wants to remain in the Spanish state be forced to separate if Catalonia as a whole supports separation and vice versa? The situation in other potential break away regions in Europe is similar. 

A great chance for more democracy and cooperation in a more United Europe

The EU has the unique opportunity to create measures that allow for self determination to be exercised in its purest form. Those nationalist forces in Europe that argue the EU has no legitimacy to get involved in separatist conflicts are wrong.

Those who fear the EU or the European unification process would weaken as a result of local and regional self determination and the possible appearance of more states on the continent are also wrong.

Smaller entities that are closer to the people will make Europe more democratic, resolve ongoing  minority problems, but also increase the need for more cooperation. In fact, they should help create the “United Europe of Regions” that the founders of the European project envisioned after the horrors of two World Wars. Maintaining the inflexible nationalist status quo will do the opposite. 

Peter Josika is a Swiss based historian, political scientist and freelance journalist dealing with topics related to federalism, centralism, human rights and minorities with particular attention to Central Europe. In 2014 he published a book on the concept of a Europe of Regions.

Europe: No democracy without self determination

© Peter Jósika

European society is changing dramatically. Most of our ancestors were born into predetermined social and economic structures and had little scope to alter their lives considerably. Europeans today have substantially more control over their destiny. The underlying concept behind this development is the principle of self determination. 

Personal self determination includes the freedom to choose our educational and professional path, the people we associate with, the language we prefer to speak, the place we want to live in, but also our religious, sexual or political orientation. All these freedoms are recognised as fundamental rights in Western societies, although they were restricted in the past and remain contested in some parts of the world today.

An important part of personal self determination is the concept of collective self determination. We all belong to a variety of collectives, be it a nation, a region, a commune, a religious group, a family or the company we work for. While in the past most collectives were governed by predefined hierarchies, often based on class, gender, age or race, there is growing pressure to increase democratic participation. This is to ensure that all members of a collective have a voice and can attain at least a certain degree of self fulfillment within the collective.

This trend has also reached public life and politics. Half a century ago democracy meant little more than the right to vote for a political party that represented ones social class or a general political view. The modern notion of democracy is substantially more participatory. People want to be directly involved in the decision making process. They expect for politicians to maintain constant two way contact with their constituencies and for important matters to be put directly to the people.

To a limited extend politics has adapted to the need for more grass root democracy by strengthening direct democracy and community involvement in certain areas of the decision making process. However, our overall political structures remain stuck in the early 1900s. They are marked by Europe's ongoing division into ethnic nation states with centralist political systems that are far removed from the people and the needs of an increasingly individualised and multicultural society longing for more self determination. The calls for secession or more autonomy in many regions across Europe are only the tip of the iceberg, but they highlight how out of step the nation states are with the needs of our time.

Therefore, it is not only the often critizised EU that needs to be reformed, but much rather the centralist nation states themselves. While many parts of Europe would benefit from a leaner but also stronger EU in certain fields, it is equally important that we strengthen communes and regions as they are not only closer to the people, but also much closer to most issues that affect them.

Competencies across all levels of government should generally be divided on the basis of the principle of subsidiarity as already defined in the Treaty of Lisbon. In other words: We need to bring the decision making process to the people by giving local and regional government substantially more power. This should translate into more grass root democracy, less nationalism as well as a more flexible and need-based approach in economic and fiscal matters. 

In turn this will enable for Europe as a whole to become stronger and more effective, and for Europe's regions and communes to become more responsible, self sufficient and competetive. Such a EU-wide decentralization process is not only long overdue, but of critical importance to Europe's future.

Peter Jósika is a Swiss based author. He can be reached via his website www.europaderregionen.com. 

Between Federation and Disintegration: Can Europe re-define itself?

The EU is at a crossroads, and the question Europe as a whole needs to ask itself is how it should cope with the growing demand for more democracy as well as more local and regional power within an increasingly globalised world. In this exclusive article for OneEurope, Peter Josika asks whether the current political structures meet the needs of our time and the foreseeable future.

Read my full article:
http://one-europe.info/europe-between-federation-and-disintegration