The Center Did Not Hold

 I. Weaknesses in the Interwar System 

• Nation-states vs. minorities
• New states resented minority-protection treaties as interference
• irredentist & revisionist aspirations
• Economic depression
• political instability:     (too) many political parties, i.e. political fragmentation

• League of Nations without enforcement powers

II.    The Appeal of Radicalism (right and left)

Capitalism and democracy seen as discredited

ethnic minorities look to extremes

Czechoslovakia: Sudeten Germans & Slovak People’s Party

Poland: Ukrainians sympathized with communism

            Some Jews everywhere attracted to communism after 1933

Ethnic majority youth attracted to right-wing extremism

            Native elites esp. youth & intellectuals attracted to fascism

III.       Fascist movements 

• Romania: Legion of the Archangel Michael or Iron Guard

Codreanu’s “A Few Words on Democracy” (fascist view of bourgeois democracy)

• Croatia: 'Ustasa' movement
• Hungary: Arrow Cross Party
• Czechoslovakia: 'Sudeten' German Party

IV. Authoritarian Regimes

• Hungary White repression Horthy (1920-1944)

• Bulgaria (1923): radical peasantist Stamboliiski (1919-1923), followed by IMRO (Macedonian exile organization); & 1934 'royal dictatorship'

• Albania (1924): civil war, Ahmed Zogu seizure of power; (from 1928 he ruled as king till the Italian occupation (1939) 

• Poland (1926) - military coup Josef Pilsudski eliminated political parties continued also after Pilsudski's death (1935) to 1939 

• Lithuania (1926): military coup, which allowed to president Antanas Smetona to establish a dictatorship (1926-1939/1940) 

• Yugoslavia (1929): king Alexander I (1921-1934) established 'royal dictatorship' (1929-1941) 

• Estonia (1934): Konstantin Päts dictatorship (1934-1940) 

• Latvia (1934): Karlis Ulmanis established a 'moderate' dictatorship (1934-1940) 

• Greece: in 1935 monarchy restored & 1936 general Metaxas conservative dictatorship till 1941)

• Romania (1938): king Carol II (1930-1940) 'royal dictatorship' (1938-1940), eliminated all parties and repressed Iron Guard

• Czechoslovakia: lasted as a democracy till its demise 1938-1939

 V.  International aggression and appeasement

•  1933  Nazi Germany leaves League of Nations

•  1936   German troops occupy Rhineland

•  1935-36  Italy invades Abyssinia

•  1938    Germany annexes Austria

                    France & Britain "sell out" Czechoslovakia to Hitler at Munich (appeasement)

                    Germans occupy Sudetenland, set up puppet state in Slovakia, & occupy rest of Czechoslovakia                                

                    as "protectorate Bohemia-Moravia"

• 1939    Stalin-Hitler Pact.  Nazis & Soviets partition Poland

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