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The Other Treaties

The phrase 'self-determination' is simply loaded with dynamite.  It will raise hopes which can never be realized....  What a calamity that the phrase was ever uttered!  What misery it will cause!

Robert Lansing (1919)
US Secretary of State.

 

 

The Treaty of Versailles was the most important treaty of 1919–1920.

It was the treaty with Germany, decided by the Big Three.  It was the Treaty which set up the League of Nations. 

Also, the Treaty of Versailles set down the principles of how the defeated countries would be treated:

1.    they had to pay reparations,

2.    they had to disarm,

3.    they lost land,

4.    self-determination.

  

  

Going Deeper

The following links will help you widen your knowledge:

Self-determination - an extract from a school textbook.

 

  Simple Essay: The Peace Treaties of 1919–20 made many territorial changes in Central and Eastern Europe. Describe the changes.

  Simple Essay: What was ‘self-determination’, and how did the principle affect the peace treaties of 1919–1920?

Four Other Treaties [SaiNTS]

FOUR other treaties were made with the four countries which had helped Germany in the war.  They were written by officials who just followed the principles of the Treaty of Versailles.

They were all named after places in Paris:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Source A

Bulgaria did well compared to Germany, Austria and Hungary... Bulgaria had played a relatively small part in the war and was treated less harshly than its allies.

Ben Walsh, OCR GCSE Modern World History (2009).
Ben Walsh is a senior examiner and a respected writer of History textbooks.

 

 

 

Self-determination

The treaties created new nation-states in Eastern Europe out of the old Austro-Hungarian Empire (i.e. the principle of self-determination):

 

 

5 Nation-states [CHAPS]

The treaties created five new nation-states.

a. Czechs and Slovaks in Czechoslovakia

b. Hungarians in Hungary.

c. Austrians in Austria.

d. Poles in Poland.

e. Slavs in Yugoslavia..

 

5 Problems with self-determination

[CEASE]

a. Conflict: it caused small wars (Source B),

b. It was impossible to create nation states which didn't include Ethnic minorities (see map),

c. It forbade Anschluss (for Germany to unite with Austria),

d. It created many Small and weak countries in Central Europe, which Hitler easily conquered later.

e. Britain and France refused to allow self-determination for the coloniesin their Empires.

 

 

 

 

←  Source B

A map of Eastern Europe in 1920.
Self-determination caused three small wars:
1. Poland went to war with Russia and took more land.
2. Czechs and Poles fought over the town of Teschen.
3. An army of Italians marched into the Yugoslavian town of Fiume.

 

  

Consider:

Write a list of the ways in which the principle of self-determination affected the Peace Treaties of 1919-1920