Wars and Betweenness: Big Powers and Middle Europe, 1918-1945

238 Pages·2020·3.443 MB·English

by  Aliaksandr Piahanau (editor), Bojan Aleksov (editor)

W A R S
a n d
B E T W E E N N E S S
Big Powers in Middle Europe
1918–1945
Edited by
Aliaksandr Piahanau Bojan Aleksov
and
o
Wars and Betweenness

Wars and Betweenness
Big Powers in Middle Europe
1918–1945

Edited by

Aliaksandr Piahanau
and
Bojan Aleksov

Central European University Press
Budapest–New York
Copyright © by Aliaksandr Piahanau and Bojan Aleksov 2020

Published in 2020 by

Central European University Press

Nádor utca 11, H-1051 Budapest, Hungary
Tel: [phone] or 327-3000
E-mail: [email protected]
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224 West 57th Street, New York NY 10019, USA

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced,
stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means,
without the permission of the Publisher.

ISBN 978-963-386-335-0 (hardback)
ISBN 978-963-386-336-7 (ebook)

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Piahanau, Aliaksandr, editor, writer of introduction. | Aleksov,
Bojan, editor, writer of introduction.
Title: Wars and betweenness : big powers in middle Europe, 1918-1945 /
edited by Aliaksandr Piahanau and Bojan Aleksov.
Description: Budapest ; New York : Central European University Press, 2020.
| Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2020022117 (print) | LCCN 2020022118 (ebook) | ISBN
9789633863350 (hardcover) | ISBN 9789633863367 (pdf)
Subjects: LCSH: Europe, Central--History--20th century. | Europe,
Eastern--History--20th century. | Europe, Central--Politics and
government--20th century. | Europe, Eastern--Politics and
government--1918-1945. | Europe, Central--Foreign relations--20th
century. | Europe, Eastern--Foreign relations--1918-1945.
Classification: LCC DAW1049 .W37 2020 (print) | LCC DAW1049 (ebook)
| DDC
327.430409/041--dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020022117
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020022118
Contents

List of Acronyms vii

Introduction 1
Aliaksandr Piahanau and Bojan Aleksov

Cluster One: Balancing (out) of Power 25

1. The Anatomy of an Attempt to Create a Sphere of Influence:
French Policy towards Central and Eastern Europe in the 1920s 27
Gusztáv Kecskés D.

2. Dealing with a “17 Stone Germany”: British Foreign Policy to-
wards Danubian Europe, 1936–1939 41
Dragan Bakić

Cluster Two: Bordering 61

3. France and the Problem of the Borders of Poland, 1919–1923:
The Province of Posen, Danzig, Upper Silesia, and Vilnius 63
Frédéric Dessberg

4. Transylvania and the Soviet Foreign Policy towards Romania
and Hungary, 1941–1945 81
Iskander E. Magadeev

Cluster Three: Putting Out Fire with Gasoline 101

5. Establishing French Control over the Oil Fields of Eastern
Galicia, 1918–1923 103
Sergey Ledenev
vi Contents
6. Diplomacy and Petroleum: Italy’s Fight for Albanian Oilfields,
1920–1925 121
Alessandro Sette

Cluster Four: Self-Determination? 139

7. Breaking Up the Fortress on the Danube? German Policy
towards Slovakia and Ruthenia, 1919–1933 141
David X. Noack

8. Italy’s Defense of Austrian Independence, 1918–1932 161
Anne-Sophie Nardelli-Malgrand

Cluster Five: Culturing and Perceiving 179

9. Italian Cultural Diplomacy in Central Europe and the Balkans in
1918–1945 181
Stefano Santoro

10. Japanese Perceptions of Germany during the Interwar Period 199
Ian Nish

Bibliography 211

Notes on Contributors 219

Index 221
List of Acronyms

AA Auswärtiges Amt (German Foreign Ministry)
AAN Archiwum Akt Nowych (Archives of the New Acts), Warsaw
ABI Archives of the Bank of Italy
ACS Archivio Centrale dello Stato (Central Archives of the State),
Rome
AD Archives diplomatiques
AFMFA Archives of the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs
AIMFA Archives of the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs
AP Ambasciata italiana a Praga
AP 19–30 Affari politici 1919–1930
AQSH Arkivi Qendror i Shtetit të Shqipërisë (National Archive of
Albania), Tirana
AS Archivio Scuole
ASDA Archivio della Società Dante Alighieri
ASMAE Archivio storico del Ministero degli esteri (Historical Archive
of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs), Rome
AVP RF Arkhiv vneshnei politiki Rossiiskoi Federatsii (Archive of fo-
reign policy of the Russian Federation), Moscow
CAB Cabinet Office
CAIS Central Archives of the Italian State
CEE Central and Eastern Europe
CPC Correspondance politique et commerciale, 1918–1940
DBFP Documents on British Foreign Policy
DDF Documents diplomatiques français
DDI Documenti Diplomatici Italiani
DGP Direzione generale per la propaganda
FND Frontul Naţional Democrat (National Democratic Front),
Romania
FO Foreign Office
FRG Federal Republic of Germany
FRUS Papers Relating to the Foreign Relations of the United States
viii Acknowledgments
GB Gabinetto del ministro
IMRO Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organization
MAE Ministère des Affaires étrangères, France
MCP Ministero della cultura popolare, Italy
NKID Narodnyj komissariat inostrannyh del (The People’s Com-
missariat for Foreign Affairs)
NKVD Narodnyj komissariat vnutrennih del (The People’s Commis-
sariat for Internal Affairs)
PA-AA Politisches Archiv des Auswärtigen Amts (Political Archive of
the Federal Foreign Office), Berlin
POW Prisoner of war
RD Rappresentanze diplomatiche
SHD/DAT Service Historique de la Défense/Département de l’Armée de
Terre (Historical Service of Defense/Land Army Depart-
ment), Vincennes, France
SĽS Slovenská ľudová strana (Slovak People’s Party)
TNA The National Archives, London
TSA Trieste State Archives
UK United Kingdom
US/USA United States of America
USSR Union of Soviet Socialist Republics
Introduction

Aliaksandr Piahanau and Bojan Aleksov

It is often said that rewriting history enables us to reimagine our future.
Every new generation of historians has new things to say and we should
prick up our ears to points they are making. As unknown archival evidence
surfaces and new research trends set in, even our most widely accepted
assumptions are tested anew. Our volume too, as the play on words in its
title suggests, revisits well-studied issues in light of new evidence. It pro-
poses the notion of Middle Europe’s in-betweenness; that is, both between
two world wars but also between Big Powers. Before revisiting the issues
around European symbolic geography as well as chronological boundaries,
we first focus on the Big Powers and their influence following the dissolu-
tion of the four continental empires that had created Middle Europe; an
area deemed unstable throughout its short-lived existence and transformed
into the “bloodlands of Europe,” once again engulfed by war.
The ten contributors, with two of us as editors, seek to build upon
growing awareness and criticism of Big Powers’ role in history and to ques-
tion both long, as well as recently established narratives about the interwar
period and the Middle European space. A recent wave of historiography of
the European continental empires that collapsed during the Great War has
reappraised their complex history and longevity but inevitably contrasted it
with violence and the instability of nation-states that replaced them in the
interwar period.1 In their final stages, nationalizing empires, as one title
aptly put it, affected both titular nations and—whether as part of a backlash
or not—numerous non-titular, smaller nationalities in the center of

1 Jörn Leonhard and Ulrike von Hirschhausen, Empires und Nationalstaaten im 19.
Jahrhundert (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2009); Jörn Leonhard and
Ulrike von Hirschhausen, eds., Comparing Empires (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck &
Ruprecht, 2012); Pieter Judson, The Habsburg Empire: A New History (Cambridge,
MA: Harvard University Press, 2016); Karen Barkey, Empire of Difference: The Ot-
tomans in Comparative Perspective (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2008).