ABSTRACT
Europe experienced, between the wars, an unprecedented upheaval. Boundaries were altered in the most drastic way and numerous new states came into existence. Old-fashioned empires and the last remnants of autocracy had been swept away, to be replaced by constitutional democracies and the principle that each major ethnic group should be given the right to form its own nation. Naturally there was a heady optimism about the future and many shared the belief of H.G. Wells that the struggle between 1914 and 1918 had been the war to end wars. Yet the collapse of the old order was also a precondition for movements that were anti-democratic, and there was no guarantee that the new constitutions or boundaries would be indefinitely preserved.
