A few years after the Nazis came to power in Germany, an alliance of states and nationalistic movements formed, revolving around the German axis. That alliance, the states involved, and the interplay ...between their territorial aims and those of Germany during the interwar period and World War II are at the core of this volume. This "territorial revisionism" came to include all manner of politics and military measures that attempted to change existing borders. Taking into account not just interethnic relations but also the motivations of states and nationalizing ethnocratic ruling elites, this volume reconceptualizes the history of East Central Europe during World War II. In so doing, it presents a clearer understanding of some of the central topics in the history of the War itself and offers an alternative to standard German accounts of the period 1933-1945 and East European nation-states' histories.
Die in der Geschichtsschreibung zum Ersten Weltkrieg häufig vernachlässigte Rolle Italiens beim Zusammenbruch des habsburgischen Reiches steht im Zentrum dieser Abhandlung. Erörtert werden auch die ...Alternativen zum Weltkriegsende, die in den Monaten September 1917 bis Januar 1918 bestanden hatten. Erst nach der Entscheidung der Entente, auf das Selbstbestimmungsrecht der Nationalitäten im Habsburgerreich zu setzen, waren diese Alternativen nicht mehr praktikabel. Nach ihnen zu fragen hilft, der Vergangenheit ihre Zukunft zurückzugeben. Wie ernsthaft solche Alternativen erwogen wurden, macht das britische Kriegskabinett deutlich, das im Spätsommer 1917, als die Zukunft Russlands völlig ungewiss schien, befand, der Krieg könnte unmöglich mit einem vollen Sieg der Entente enden. Deshalb wurden die Sondierungen mit Österreich um einen Separatfrieden intensiviert. Die Lage der Entente verschlechterte sich noch nach der italienischen Niederlage im Oktober 1917 und durch die Friedensverhandlungen zwischen den russischen Bolschewiki und den Mittelmächten. In dieser brisanten Lage lancierten italienische Politiker, Journalisten und Intellektuelle die Losung „Selbstbestimmungsrecht für die ‚unterdrückten Nationalitäten‘“. Dies zielte auf die Auflösung Österreich-Ungarns. Sie wurde Anfang April 1918 in Rom von der Entente in Anwesenheit von Vertretern der „unterdrückten Nationalitäten“ feierlich angekündigt. Italien spielte zweimal eine bedeutende Rolle im Krieg: Als es nach dem Ausscheiden Russlands und Rumäniens weiter Österreich-Ungarns Truppen an der italienischen Front band, die somit nicht für die entscheidende deutsche Offensive an der Westfront zur Verfügung standen, und als es mit Erfolg die Auflösung der Habsburgermonarchie betrieb.
This article deals with the European minorities in the period between the two world wars and with their final expulsion from nation-states at the end of World War II. First, the tensions which arose ...between the organised minorities and the successor states of the Habsburg Monarchy are accounted for primarily by the argument that the various minorities located within the successor states had already undergone a comprehensive processes of nationalisation within the Habsburg Empire. Therefore they were able to resist assimilation by the political elites of the new titular nations (Czechs, Poles, Rumanians, Serbs). A second topic is that of the use made of the minorities issue by Adolf Hitler to help achieve his expansionist aims. The minorities issue was central to the international destabilisation of interwar Europe. Finally, the mass expulsion of minorities (above all, Germans) after the end of the war is explained by strategic considerations on the part of the Allied powers as well as involving the nation-state regimes. It is argued, against a commonly held view, that German atrocities during the period of occupation had little to do with the decision to expel most ethnic Germans from their territories of settlement in Poland, Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia. The article shows that it is necessary to treat national minorities in the first half of the twentieth century as a single phenomenon which shares similar features across the various nation-states of East-Central Europe. Reprinted by permission of Blackwell Publishers
This article deals with the changes to Italy’s eastern border between 1918 and 1954 and attempts to explain the reasons for its instability. In accounting for Italy’s failure to keep possession of ...the border territories, the following three factors are examined: 1) Italy’s position in the sphere of international relations, fatally weakened after the First World War by President Woodrow Wilson’s opposition to Italian claims to Dalmatia and his unwillingness to acknowledge her status as a great power; unlike after the Second World War, when Italy, though defeated, was able to recover Trieste back because of the Cold War and the introduction of a communist system in Yugoslavia, 2) the widespread processes of Nationalisation, which in the Habsburg era had involved the Italians, Slovenes and Croats living in the area, and 3) the structural weakness of the Italian state, which despite Fascist «statolatry» meant that Italy was incapable of maintaining control over the territories and which explains the disastrous military failures in the Second World War. The relationship between the centre (Rome) and the eastern periphery also helps to explain the rise to power of the Fascist movement and the failure of two attempts at a diplomatic détente with Yugoslavia, made by Fascist Italy in 1925 and 1937.
This article deals with the European minorities in the period between the two world wars and with their final expulsion from nation‐states at the end of World War II. First, the tensions which arose ...between the organised minorities and the successor states of the Habsburg Monarchy are accounted for primarily by the argument that the various minorities located within the successor states had already undergone a comprehensive processes of nationalisation within the Habsburg Empire. Therefore they were able to resist assimilation by the political elites of the new titular nations (Czechs, Poles, Rumanians, Serbs). A second topic is that of the use made of the minorities issue by Adolf Hitler to help achieve his expansionist aims. The minorities issue was central to the international destabilisation of interwar Europe. Finally, the mass expulsion of minorities (above all, Germans) after the end of the war is explained by strategic considerations on the part of the Allied powers as well as involving the nation‐state regimes. It is argued, against a commonly held view, that German atrocities during the period of occupation had little to do with the decision to expel most ethnic Germans from their territories of settlement in Poland, Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia. The article shows that it is necessary to treat national minorities in the first half of the twentieth century as a single phenomenon which shares similar features across the various nation‐states of East‐Central Europe.
The essays included in this volume explore the everyday relevance of the apocalyptic in contemporary society, culture, and politics, side by side with the various histories of apocalyptic ideas and ...movements. In particular, they seek to better understand the ways in which perceptions of the apocalyptic diverge in the American, European, and Arab worlds. Including leading experts of the field like David Cook, Michael Gillespie, Moshe Idel, Richard Landes, or Charles Strozier, our authors re-evaluate some of the traditional views on apocalypticism and the apocalyptic in light of recent political and cultural events, and, additionally, go beyond empirical facts to reconsider the potential of the apocalyptic. It is this last point—the apocalyptic in its very capability of transfiguration—that is posited as the focal point of our book.
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