Interwar and Contemporary Poland. A Comparison of the Protection of Minority Rights in the Second and in the Third Polish Republics

This paper is devoted to the problem of the protection of minority rights in Poland in the interwar period in comparison with the contemporary situation. On the one hand, before the Second World War Poland was a very heterogeneous country, inhabited for generations by multiple and internally diverse religious, national, ethnic, or linguistic minorities. On the other hand, contemporary Poland is a country in which national and ethnic minorities constitute only a few percent of the population, and the proportion of such minorities in Poland compared to other European countries is one of the lowest in Europe. The duties of the Polish authorities towards national minorities were determined by internal legal acts: decrees of the Chief of State, and above all the March Constitution and national law, as well as many international legal acts, for instance such as the so-called Little Treaty of Versailles. The second part of the paper discusses the contemporary situation of the minorities in Poland, for instance the situation of the national and ethnic minorities and the situation of sexual minorities.

The Prussian Paradigm?

The very first Napolas which were founded at Potsdam, Plön, and Köslin, as well as those which were subsequently founded at Naumburg, Oranienstein, Bensberg, Berlin-Spandau, and Wahlstatt, were deliberately established on the premises of the former Prussian cadet schools, which had been refashioned as civilian ‘State Boarding Schools’ (Staatliche Bildungsanstalten/Stabilas) after World War I, in accordance with the Treaty of Versailles. To an extent, the NPEA authorities deliberately wanted to resurrect the tradition of the Royal Prussian Cadet Corps at the Napolas, but in a new, Nazified guise. This chapter explores the extent to which the former cadet-school Napolas retained or regained their militaristic Prussian spirit, and examines continuities between the Prussian cadet schools, the Stabilas, and the NPEA. It begins by chronicling the demise of the cadet schools and their resurrection as civilian state schools, more or less dedicated to upholding the Weimar Republic, during the aftermath of World War I. It then goes on to chart the rise of revanchist sentiment and the formation of illegal Hitler Youth cells at the Stabilas during the early 1930s, before analysing the process of Napolisation which took place in 1933–4 in greater detail. In conclusion, the chapter sites the Napolas’ Janus-faced attitude towards the cadet-school tradition within existing debates regarding the affinities (or otherwise) between Prussianism and National Socialism, and the degree of continuity which existed between the Weimar Republic and the Third Reich.

Arms intervention: Weimar Germany, post-imperial influence and weapons trafficking in warlord China

The Treaty of Versailles aimed to strip Germany of both its colonial empire and the global reach of its arms industry. Yet the conflicts in warlord-era China led to the reestablishment of German influence on the other side of the world via the arms trade. Weimar Germany had declared a policy of neutrality and refused to take sides in the Chinese civil war in an effort to demonstrate that as a post-colonial power, it could now act as an honest broker. From below, however, traffickers based in Germany and German merchants in China worked to evade Versailles restrictions and an international arms embargo to supply warlords with weapons of war. Although the German state officially aimed to remain neutral, criminal elements, rogue diplomats, black marketeers and eventually military adventurers re-established German influence in the region by becoming key advisors and suppliers to the victorious Guomindang. Illicit actors in Germany and China proved to be crucial in linking the two countries and in eventually overturning the arms control regimes that were imposed in the wake of World War I.

The Reichswehr and Armament Policies

The Reichswehr had a specific place in the history of the Weimar Republic, as it was pivotal for every attempt to rebuilt full national sovereignty vis-à-vis the stipulations of the Treaty of Versailles. At the same time, state-sponsored armed forces were a crucial prerequisite for attempts to crack down on the localized civil war waged by the radical left in 1919/20, and to defend the German border in the East. The chapter analyses the Reichswehr as an attempt to create a modern, professional army that aimed to accommodate the insights gained by the introduction of machine warfare since 1916. Yet the armament policies of the Reichswehr also relied on the self-mobilization of society for defence, whether through the Home Guards in 1919/20 or through the clandestine build-up of the ‘black’ Reichswehr.

3. Diplomatic origins of the Great War and Versailles

‘Diplomatic origins of the Great War and Versailles’ looks at the diplomatic origins of the Great War and its aftermath Versailles, which carried away five empires and an entire generation of young men. Based on Europe’s rival alliances and age-old ambitions, the Great Powers found themselves engulfed in war that began with the assassination of the Archduke Francis Ferdinand, heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne, in Sarajevo, 28 June 1914. A case can be made that the Treaty of Versailles, with its emphasis on German war guilt and reparations, achieved the exact opposite of what the diplomats set out to do, inexorably, tragically, laying the groundwork for the next, more horrible world war.

Ekonomske odredbe Versajskog mirovnog ugovora: preispitivanje nakon jednog veka

Contrary to widespread belief, reparations imposed on Germany by the economic provisions of the Treaty of Versailles did not undermine the German economy, nor push it into a vicious cycle of crises and backwardness, from which emerged National Socialism and Adolf Hitler’s power takeover. In the first decade after the conclusion of the Treaty of Versailles, Germany’s economy prospered, with high growth rates. In the same decade, German National Socialists managed to win over only a negligible segment of the constituency, and Franco-German relations even improved. The turn took place with the Great Depression, which was, however, not related to the Treaty of Versailles whatsoever. Thus, it is a myth that the Treaty, predominantly through its economic provisions, led to the Second World War. The shortcomings of the Treaty of Versailles, with regard to providing sustainable peace in Europe, should be sought in the framework of the outcome of the First World War, which ended in an armistice, not German surrender. It was only after the Second World War that German unconditional surrender, full occupation of the country and dismemberment of German militarism created the grounds for political stability and sustainable peace in Europe.

The Early Interwar Period

This chapter examines Franco-German and U.S.-Japanese relations in the early interwar period (1919-30). The chapter begins by drawing on the primary and secondary historical record to evaluate how key French and German decision makers thought about each other’s intentions, focusing on these episodes: the negotiation, signature, and aftermath of the Treaty of Versailles; the onset, development, and resolution of the Ruhr Crisis; and the Locarno era. Were they confident that their counterparts had benign intentions—that is, did they trust each other—as asserted by intentions optimists? Or were they uncertain about each other’s intentions, which is to say that they mistrusted each other, as suggested by intentions pessimism? Having shown that Paris and Berlin were far from confident that the other side had benign intentions throughout the early interwar period, the chapter then describes the shape of the resulting Franco-German security competition. The second half of the chapter repeats the analysis performed in the first half, this time with respect to the United States and Japan, focusing on the following episodes: the aftermath of World War I; the creation and operation of the Washington Treaty system; and the three years between the Geneva and London Naval conferences.

John Bates Clark's view on the Treaty of Versailles as the origin of both World War II and the idea of a European Union

The aim of this paper is to highlight the position of John Bates Clark about the Treaty of Versailles and the U.S. approach to Foreign Policy in the aftermath of World War I. To achieve this goal, we analyze some unpublished manuscripts from the Rare Book & Manuscript Library of Columbia University and four pub-lished articles written by Clark between 1918 and 1919 about the consequences of the Treaty and, more generally, the future of Europe. The main ideas emerging from this material are that Clark supported the Trea-ty because he thought that given the threat of a resurgent Germany, only a League of Nations including the U.S. could be able to maintain world peace. On the other hand, he also criticized it because he shared with Keynes the view that the very harsh provisions imposed on Germany would generate another World War in the near future. Finally, Clark saw the union among European countries as a tool for preventing another war.