Monday, December 30, 2019

1920-1-10 League of Nations

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Covenant of the League of Nations: The League of Nations was US President Woodrow Wilson's tool for a new and peaceful world after the war of 1914-1918 - and the US should have been their most important member. But the United States never joined and today the League of Nations is often seen as a failure. Was it doomed [by partisanship] from the start?

The League of Nations, abbreviated as LN or LoN, (Société des Nations, abbreviated as "SDN" or "SdN" and meaning "Society of Nations") was the first worldwide intergovernmental organisation whose principal mission was to maintain world peace. It was founded on 10 January 1920 following the Paris Peace Conference that ended the First World War; in 1919 U.S. president Woodrow Wilson won the Nobel Peace Prize for his role as the leading architect of the League.

The organisation's primary goals, as stated in its Covenant, included preventing wars through collective security and disarmament and settling international disputes through negotiation and arbitration. Other issues in this and related treaties included labour conditions, just treatment of native inhabitants, human and drug trafficking, the arms trade, global health, prisoners of war, and protection of minorities in Europe. The Covenant of the League of Nations was signed on 28 June 1919 as Part I of the Treaty of Versailles, and it became effective together with the rest of the Treaty on 10 January 1920. The first meeting of the Council of the League took place on 16 January 1920, and the first meeting of Assembly of the League took place on 15 November 1920.

The diplomatic philosophy behind the League represented a fundamental shift from the preceding hundred years. The League lacked its own armed force and depended on the victorious First World War Allies (France, the United Kingdom, Italy and Japan were the permanent members of the Executive Council) to enforce its resolutions, keep to its economic sanctions, or provide an army when needed. The Great Powers were often reluctant to do so. Sanctions could hurt League members, so they were reluctant to comply with them. During the Second Italo-Abyssinian War, when the League accused Italian soldiers of targeting Red Cross medical tents, Benito Mussolini responded that "the League is very well when sparrows shout, but no good at all when eagles fall out."

At its greatest extent from 28 September 1934 to 23 February 1935, it had 58 members. After some notable successes and some early failures in the 1920s, the League ultimately proved incapable of preventing aggression by the Axis powers in the 1930s. The credibility of the organization was weakened by the fact that the United States never joined the League and the Soviet Union joined late and was soon expelled after invading Finland. Germany withdrew from the League, as did Japan, Italy, Spain and others. The onset of the Second World War showed that the League had failed its primary purpose, which was to prevent any future world war. The League lasted for 26 years; the United Nations (UN) replaced it after the end of the Second World War and inherited several agencies and organisations founded by the League.
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On 12 November 1933 Germany held a national referendum on withdrawing from the League of Nations.

Germany had joined the League of Nations in 1926 as a result of the Locarno Treaties, which aimed to secure post-war peace and normalize relations between Germany and its European neighbours. 

The Locarno Treaties were seven post-World War I agreements negotiated amongst Germany, France, Great Britain, Belgium, Italy, Poland and Czechoslovakia in late 1925. In the main treaty, the five western European nations pledged to guarantee the inviolability of the borders between Germany and France and Germany and Belgium as defined in the Treaty of Versailles. They also promised to observe the demilitarized zone of the German Rhineland and to resolve differences peacefully under the auspices of the League of Nations. In the additional arbitration treaties with Poland and Czechoslovakia, Germany agreed to the peaceful settlement of disputes, but there was notably no guarantee of its eastern border, leaving the path open for Germany to attempt to revise the Versailles Treaty and regain territory it had lost in the east under its terms.

However the harsh conditions of the Treaty of Versailles, imposed on Germany following its defeat in World War I, included significant territorial losses and military restrictions that continued to be symbolised by the League of Nations.

Believing that the League perpetuated the country’s economic, military, and diplomatic weaknesses, on October 14, 1933, Adolf Hitler announced Germany’s formal withdrawal from the League of Nations and the Geneva Disarmament Conference. The Conference for the Reduction and Limitation of Armaments, generally known as the Geneva Conference or World Disarmament Conference, was an international conference of states held in Geneva, Switzerland, between February 1932 and November 1934 to accomplish disarmament in accordance with the Covenant of the League of Nations. It was attended by 61 states, most of which were members of the League of Nations, but the USSR and the United States also attended.

Hitler cited concerns that other countries, particularly France, were unwilling to engage in disarmament on equal terms with Germany while arguing that Germany needed to rearm in order to protect itself and regain its standing as a major power. By leaving the League, Hitler aimed to pursue an independent foreign policy that would allow Germany to rebuild its military and overturn the Treaty of Versailles.

The referendum held on November 12, 1933, was intended to provide a show of public support for the government's decision. Voters were asked whether they approved of the government’s withdrawal from the League of Nations. Official results indicated overwhelming support, with approximately 95% of voters casting ballots in favour of the withdrawal. Having quit the League, Hitler was able to pursue his broader objective of reasserting Germany’s dominance in Europe through military rearmament and expansion.

1920-6-4 Treaty of Trianon

Treaty of Trianon - Most Controversial of the Peace Treaties - 1929 - tgw > .
Final Days of Austria-Hungary - mlh > .
   > Hungary Hx >>



The Treaty of Trianon was the peace agreement signed 4 June 1920 that formally ended WW1 between most of the Allies of World War I and the Kingdom of Hungary, the latter being one of the successor states to Austria-Hungary. The treaty regulated the status of an independent Hungarian state and defined its borders. It left Hungary as a landlocked state that covered only 28% of the 325,411 square kilometres (125,642 sq mi) that had constituted the pre-war Kingdom of Hungary (the Hungarian half of the Austro-Hungarian monarchy). Its population was 7.6 million, only 36% of the pre-war kingdom's population of 20.9 million. The areas that were allocated to neighbouring countries in total (and each of them separately) had a majority of non-Hungarians but 31% of Hungarians (3.3 million) were left outside of post-Trianon Hungary. Five of the pre-war kingdom's ten largest cities were drawn into other countries. The treaty limited Hungary's army to 35,000 officers and men, and the Austro-Hungarian Navy ceased to exist.
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The Hungarian government terminated its union with Austria on 31 October 1918, officially dissolving the Austro-Hungarian state. The de facto temporary borders of independent Hungary were defined by the ceasefire lines in November–December 1918.

..The principal beneficiaries of the territorial division of pre-war Kingdom of Hungary were the Kingdom of Romania, the Czechoslovak Republic, the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes, and the First Austrian Republic. One of the main elements of the treaty was the doctrine of "self-determination of peoples", and it was an attempt to give the non-Hungarians their own national states. In addition, Hungary had to pay war reparations to its neighbours. The treaty was dictated by the Allies rather than negotiated, and the Hungarians had no option but to accept its terms. The Hungarian delegation signed the treaty under protest on 4 June 1920 at the Grand Trianon Palace in Versailles, France. The treaty was registered in League of Nations Treaty Series on 24 August 1921.
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Officially the treaty was intended to be a confirmation of the right of self-determination for nations and of the concept of nation-states replacing the old multinational Austro-Hungarian empire. Although the treaty addressed some nationality issues, it also sparked some new ones.

The minority ethnic groups of the pre-war kingdom were the major beneficiaries. The Allies had explicitly committed themselves to the causes of the minority peoples of Austria-Hungary late in WW1. For all intents and purposes, the death knell of the Austro-Hungarian empire sounded on 14 October 1918, when United States Secretary of State Robert Lansing informed Austro-Hungarian Foreign Minister István Burián that autonomy for the nationalities was no longer enough. Accordingly, the Allies assumed without question that the minority ethnic groups of the pre-war kingdom wanted to leave Hungary. The Romanians joined their ethnic brethren in Romania, while the Slovaks, Serbs and Croats helped establish nation-states of their own (Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia). However, these new or enlarged countries also absorbed large slices of territory with a majority of ethnic Hungarians or Hungarian speaking population. As a result, as many as a third of Hungarian language-speakers found themselves outside the borders of the post-Trianon Hungary...

The territories of the former Hungarian Kingdom that were ceded by the treaty to neighbouring countries in total (and each of them separately) had a majority of non-Hungarian nationals; however, the Hungarian ethnic area was much larger than the newly established territory of Hungary,therefore 30 percent of the ethnic Hungarians were under foreign authority.

After the treaty, the percentage and the absolute number of all Hungarian populations outside of Hungary decreased in the next decades (although, some of these populations also recorded temporary increase of the absolute population number). There are several reasons for this population decrease, some of which were spontaneous assimilation and certain state policies, like Slovakization, Romanianization, Serbianisation. Other important factors were the Hungarian migration from the neighbouring states to Hungary or to some western countries as well as decreased birth rate of Hungarian populations. According to the National Office for Refugees, the number of Hungarians who immigrated to Hungary from neighbouring countries was about 350,000 between 1918 and 1924.
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The modern boundaries of Hungary are the same as those defined by the Treaty of Trianon, with some minor modifications until 1924 and the notable exception of three villages that were transferred to Czechoslovakia in 1947.

1920-8-10 Treaty of Sèvres


Greco-Turkish War - Treaty of Sèvres - August 1920 - tgw > .
23-9-23 How Erdoğan's Turkey is Rebuilding the Ottoman Empire - Real > .
Long Shadow & Impossible Peace → Global Conflicts - BePr >> .


The Treaty of Sèvres, signed on 10 August 1920, was one of a series of treaties that the Central Powers signed with the Allied Powers after their defeat in WW1. Hostilities had already ended with the Armistice of Mudros.

The Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic was not a party to the treaty because it had negotiated the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk with the Ottoman Empire in 1918. In that treaty, at the insistence of Grand Vizier Talaat Pasha, the Ottoman Empire regained the lands the Russian Empire had captured in the Russo-Turkish War (1877–78), specifically Ardahan, Kars, and Batumi.

The Treaty of Versailles was signed with the German Empire before the Sèvres treaty, and it annulled German concessions in the Ottoman sphere, including economic rights and enterprises.

France, Great Britain and Italy signed a secret "Tripartite Agreement" in September 1936. The Tripartite Agreement confirmed Britain's oil and commercial concessions, and turned the former German enterprises in the Ottoman Empire over to a Tripartite corporation.

The United States, having refused in the Senate to assume a League of Nations mandate over Armenia, decided not to participate in the partitioning of the Ottoman Empire. The U.S. wanted a permanent peace as quickly as possible, with financial compensation for its military expenditure. However, after the American Senate rejected the Armenian mandate, its only hope was its inclusion in the treaty by the influential Greek prime minister, Eleftherios Venizelos.
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The Sèvres treaty marked the beginning of the partitioning of the Ottoman Empire, and its dismemberment. The terms it stipulated included the renunciation of all non-Turkish territory and its cession to the Allied administration. Notably, the ceding of Eastern Mediterranean lands allowed the creation of new forms of government, including the British Mandate for Palestine and the French Mandate for Syria and the Lebanon.

The terms of the treaty stirred hostility and nationalist feeling amongst Turks. The signatories of the treaty were stripped of their citizenship by the Grand National Assembly led by Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, and this ignited the Turkish War of Independence. In that war, Atatürk led the Turkish nationalists to defeat the combined armies of the signatories of the Treaty of Sèvres, including the remnants of the Ottoman Empire. In a new treaty, that of Lausanne in 1923, Turkish sovereignty was preserved through the establishment of the Republic of Turkey


1922-4-16 Treaty of Rapallo

16th April 1922: WW1 enemies Germany and Russia sign Treaty of Rapallo - HiPo > .

On 16 April 1922 former First World War enemies Germany and Russia signed the Treaty of Rapallo.

When Germany drew up the harsh Treaty of Brest-Litovsk in 1918, Russia had been forced to sign away large swathes of land. The Treaty of Rapallo meant the two countries ended all territorial and financial arguments stemming from Brest-Litovsk and agreed to ‘co-operate in a spirit of mutual goodwill in meeting the economic needs of both countries’.

Both Germany and Russia had been excluded from the League of Nations, and this acted as a catalyst for the pact. The Treaty of Rapallo was therefore particularly important for Russia as it was the first international recognition of the Bolsheviks as the official government. However, it was the secret military clauses that were most valuable to both sides. German factories that produced military goods were able to move to Russia and were able to bypass the Treaty of Versailles’ limits on German weaponry. Furthermore the two armies conducted joint training exercises deep inside Russia. These enabled the German army to continue to use technology banned by Versailles such as tanks and warplanes.

The Russians benefitted from this agreement as well. They were able to see Western European military technology, and work with German engineers who shared expertise that was to be the bedrock of Stalin’s Five Year Plans.

The Rapallo Treaty alarmed the Western Powers, but the danger was short-lived. By the middle of the 1920s Germany under Stresemann had begun to improve relations as a result of the Locarno Treaties. This meant that the close relationship with Russia was less vital.

The Treaty of Rapallo was an agreement signed on 16 April 1922 between the German Republic and Soviet Russia under which both renounced all territorial and financial claims against each other and opened friendly diplomatic relations. The treaty was negotiated by Russian Foreign Minister Georgi Chicherin and German Foreign Minister Walther Rathenau. It was a major victory for Russia especially and also Germany, and a major disappointment to France and Great Britain. The term "spirit of Rapallo" was used for an improvement in friendly relations between Germany and Russia. 

The treaty was signed in Rapallo. Ratifications were exchanged in Berlin on 31 January 1923, and registered in League of Nations Treaty Series on 19 September 1923. The treaty did not include any military provisions, but secret military co-operation was already scheduled between Germany and Russia, which was a violation of the Versailles Treaty.

A supplementary agreement, signed in Berlin on 5 November, extended the treaty to cover Germany's relations with the other Soviet republics: of Ukraine, Belarus, Armenia, Georgia, Azerbaijan and the Far Eastern Republic. Ratifications were exchanged in Berlin on 26 October 1923, and the supplementary protocol was registered in League of Nations Treaty Series on 18 July 1924. The agreement was reaffirmed by the Treaty of Berlin, 1926.

Not to be confused with 1920 treaty: The Treaty of Rapallo (1920) was a treaty between the Kingdom of Italy and the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes (renamed Yugoslavia in 1929) that was signed to solve the dispute over some territories in the former Austrian Littoral, which was in the northern Adriatic, as well as in Dalmatia.

The treaty was signed on 12 November 1920 in Rapallo, near Genoa, Italy. The signing was preceded by Italo-Yugoslavian negotiations at Villa Spinola, which were led notably by Ivanoe Bonomi and Francesco Salata.

Sunday, December 29, 2019

1925-10-5_16 Locarno Treaties

.1923-29: Stresemann's Strategy - Weimar & Nazi Germany > .

The Locarno Treaties were seven agreements negotiated at Locarno, Switzerland, during 5 to 16 October 1925 and formally signed in London on 1 December, in which the First World War Western European Allied powers and the new states of Central and Eastern Europe sought to secure the post-war territorial settlement, in return for normalising relations with the defeated German Reich (the Weimar Republic). It also stated that Germany would never go to war with the other countries. Locarno divided borders in Europe into two categories, western, which were guaranteed by Locarno treaties and eastern borders of Germany with Poland, which were open for revision.
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For the British government, the main goals were promoting Franco-German reconciliation, and the expectation that reconciliation would lead to France dissolving its Cordon sanitaire, as the French alliance system in Eastern Europe was known between the wars. If France were to dissolve its alliances in Eastern Europe, Poland would peacefully hand over the territories ceded by Germany in the Versailles Peace Treaty: the Polish Corridor, the Free City of Danzig (modern Gdańsk, Poland) and Upper Silesia.
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The Locarno Treaties marked a dramatic improvement in the political climate of western Europe in 1925–1930. They promoted expectations for continued peaceful settlements, often called the "spirit of Locarno". This spirit was made concrete when Germany joined the League in 1926, and the withdrawal of Allied troops occupying Germany's Rhineland. The Nobel Peace Prize was given to the lead negotiators of the treaty, going to Chamberlain in 1925 and jointly to Aristide Briand and Stresemann in 1926.

Historian Sally Marks says:
Henceforth the spirit of Locarno would reign, substituting conciliation for enforcement as the basis for peace. Yet for some peace remained a desperate hope rather than an actuality. A few men knew that the spirit of Locarno was a fragile foundation on which to build a lasting peace.
Hitler repudiated Locarno by sending troops into the demilitarized Rhineland on 7 March 1936.

In Poland, the public humiliation received by Polish diplomats was one of the contributing factors to the fall of the Grabski cabinet. Locarno contributed to the worsening of the atmosphere between Poland and France, weakening the French-Polish alliance. Józef Beck ridiculed the treaties saying, "Germany was officially asked to attack the east, in return for peace in the west." Józef Piłsudski would say that "every honest Pole spits when he hears this word [Locarno]". Proposals in 1934 for an "eastern Locarno" pact securing Germany's eastern frontiers foundered on German opposition and on Poland's insistence that its eastern borders should be covered by a western guarantee of her borders. The Locarno treaty was heavily undermined by the Franco-Soviet Treaty of Mutual Assistance on 2 May 1935, which the German government claimed was a violation of its "spirit".

sī vīs pācem, parā bellum

igitur quī dēsīderat pācem praeparet bellum    therefore, he who desires peace, let him prepare for war sī vīs pācem, parā bellum if you wan...