A PEACE TO END ALL PEACE?ISSUES LEFT UNRESOLVED AT VERSAILLES

Poles, “Czechoslovaks”, “Yugoslavs”, Lithuanians, Latvians, & Estonians gained national self-determination, but NOT the Irish, Ukrainians, Kurds, Arabs, Indians, or Africans.

The status of the Soviet regime was determined through the Russian Civil War of 1918-1920.

Poland’s eastern border was determined through the Russo-Polish War of 1920-21.

Italian nationalist volunteers seized Fiume in September 1919; their Free State of Fiume merged with Italy in 1924.

The borders of Turkey were only defined in the Greco-Turkish War of 1919-1922.

Hopes for the spread of democracy were disappointed.

Sir William Orpen, “The Signing of Peace in the Hall of Mirrors,

Versailles, 28 June 1919”

Delegation of French wounded at the signing ceremony for the Treaty of Versailles

European language

groups, 1910

European borders, 1922

“Red Parliament! Vote Social

Democratic” (Budapest, 1919)

Bela Kun led theSoviet Republic of

Hungaryfrom March to August

1919

Hungarian nationalist poster from

1919: The red worker

is horrified because his uprising has

smashed Hungary to

pieces

Admiral Miklos Horthy,

“Regent” of Hungary,

1919-1944

The Russian Civil War, 1918-

1920:France

intervened from Odessa; Britain from Murmansk & Archangel; Japan & the USA from

Vladivostok

“Be Vigilant!”(1920):

The threats include

capitalist minions in

Finnland and the Baltic

Republics and Ukrainian

nationalists

Field Marshal Jozef Pilsudski, Polish chief of state, 1918-

1922; dictator, 1926-1935

Polish peasants with their scythes volunteer tofight in the Russo-Polish War, 1920

The front line in the Soviet-Polish War in June 1920,at the height of Polish success

Gabriele d’Annunzio, the Italian poet and war hero who led volunteers into Fiume in September 1919, the first

“Duce”

Benito Mussolini(1883-1945):

school teacher,revolutionary

Marxist, editor of the main

Italian Socialist newspaper, 1912-15.

Mussolini as a volunteer in the

Italian army, 1917.He founded an interventionist

newspaper in 1915 and then served

bravely at the front for nine months.

A modern reenactment of a procession of lictors,who carried before the ancient consuls of Rome the

fasces that symbolized their authority.

In Italian fascio can refer to a bundle of sticks or a band of men.

Fascist Black Shirts March on Rome, October 1922

Mussolini served as Prime

Minister of Italy, 1922-43, and suppressed all other parties in

1924/25.He advocated

rule by the “aristocracy of the trenches.”

LORD KITCHENER SEEKS A NEW “KHALIF” AMONG THE HASHEMITES OF MECCA

Hussein bin Ali, Emir of Mecca since 1908, self-proclaimed King of the Hejaz, 1917-24

Faisal bin al Hussein, elected King of Syria in 1920; appointed King of Iraq, 1921-33

Abdullah bin al-Hussein, Emir of Transjordania, 1921-46, then King of Jordan, 1946-49

See Israel-Arab Reader, pp. 11-12.

Lt. Col. T.E. Lawrence (1888-1935) and “Emir Faisal’s camel-mounted irregulars” (photos in the British

press, 1917)

The British military commander of Jerusalem, Borton Pasha, on December 11, 1917

Emir Faisal’s delegation to Versailles (with T.E. Lawrence)

Why did Faisal seek agreement with the Zionists?See Israel-Arab Reader, pp. 17-20.

Theodor Herzl at the Sixth Zionist Congress in 1903 and his famous book published in 1896, The Jewish

State

See Israel-Arab Reader, pp. 9-10.

ZIONISTS IN THE BRITISH CABINET?

Arthur James Balfour: PM 1902-

05; Foreign Secretary 1916-19

Balfour’s advisor, Leopold Amery, became Colonial Secretary, 1924-

29: “I was keen on an advance into Palestine on military grounds, and

the idea of establishing in Palestine a prosperous community bound to

Britain by ties of gratitude and interest naturally appealed to me. I

already had doubts as to the permanence of our protectorate in

Egypt.”

See Israel-Arab Reader, p. 16.

THE BALFOUR DECLARATION(from a letter of November 2, 1917, by Foreign

Secretary Balfour to Lord Rothschild and the Zionist Federation)

“His Majesty's Government view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, and will use their best endeavours to facilitate the achievement of this object, it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine, or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country.”

The Sykes-Picot

Agreement of 1916,

which conflicted

with Britain’s promises to

the Hashemite

Arabs in 1915 and the Balfour

Declaration of 1917

Prime Minister Venizelos and “Megali Hellas” (1920):Lloyd George encouraged the Greeks to seize

Constantinople

General Mustapha Kemal

at Gallipoli in 1915,

later known as “Kemal Ataturk”

Turkish cavalry moves toward the front in theGreco-Turkish War of 1919-1922--- 1.5 million Greeks

fled Asia Minor, & 500,000 Muslims fled Greece

The Partition of the Ottoman Empire

Abdulaziz ibn Saud (1876-1953), of the “Wahabi” sect of Islam, meanwhile ignored the British as he gained control of the Arabian peninsula by 1925

THE CRISIS OF DEMOCRACY

1918/19: Lenin imposes one-party state with powerful secret police in the Russian Soviet Federated Socialist Republic (which formed the USSR in 1922).1919: Military dictatorship in Hungary under Horthy.1922: Fascists come to power in Italy and by 1925 suppress all other parties.1923: General Primo de Rivera dissolves Spanish parliament and rules in the name of King Alfonso XIII.1926: Pilsudski imposes strong-man rule in Poland and suppresses parliament in 1929.1929: King Alexander I of Yugoslavia suppresses parliament and imposes royal dictatorship.1931: Military leaders gain power in Japan. 1933: Nazi seizure of power in Germany

King Alexander I ofYugoslavia (r. 1921-34),

who imposed royal dictatorship in 1929

Assassinated by a Croatian separatist in

Marseilles, 1934

Czechoslovakia was the only successful new democracy (the arrival of Thomas Masaryk in Prague, December 21,

1918)

Already by 1922, it was clear that only the green countries supported the Versailles settlement