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Hungary and the “Third Europe” in 1938

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 January 2017

Betty Jo Winchester
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Extract

The period of the 1930s has been called the time of the “Diplomatic War.“ During these years Nazi Germany seized the initiative in international affairs and tried to impose its will on the other states of Europe. The reaction of Britain and France to the threat of German expansion was appeasement until March 1939, when, with Hitler’s occupation of Bohemia and Moravia, it became clear that the Führer’s aims were not limited to the German-inhabited areas. Thus the states of East Central Europe found themselves in a highly vulnerable position: in the West they faced increasing political and economic pressure from the Reich; in the East there was the Soviet Union with its very exportable Communist ideology which would have undermined the political and social order of all these states. In this situation the East Central European states all sought some way of being independent from their two powerful neighbors.

Type
Articles
Information
Slavic Review , Volume 32 , Issue 4 , December 1973 , pp. 741 - 756
Copyright
Copyright © Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies. 1973

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References

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33. DIMK, vol. 2, no. 292.

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37. The Duchy of Teschen had been in dispute between Poland and Czechoslovakia since the end of the First World War. The Poles claimed three districts on ethnic grounds, while the Czechs maintained historic claims to the whole area. In 1920, at the height of the Polish-Soviet war, the Conference of Ambassadors divided it between Poland and Czechoslovakia. The Poles were very bitter about this, because they believed the Czechs had taken unfair advantage of them.

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73. Notes on telephone conversation with Italian Ambassador Attolico, Berlin, Nov. 21, 1938, GD, 1319/D499180.

74. Ciano's Diary, Nov. 20, 1938.

75. Ibid.; texts of the German and Italian Notes are in DIMK, vol. 3, nos. 58, 59.