ABSTRACT
The defeat of the Central Powers in World War I and the following peace treaties drastically changed the political map of Central and Southeastern Europe, but the peace treaties of Versailles, Saint Germain, Sevres, and Trianon did not succeed in reorganizing the European system of states. It is symptomatic that the unsolved problems and the unstable areas were to be found primarily in those critical regions that needed a new order most urgently. Their “first steps to new sovereignty sometimes had desperately small chances of development and depended for their existence upon the insecurity, relics and atmosphere of the war being replaced by orderly new foundations and an internationally sanctioned consolidation” (Krüger 1985: 6ff.). The critical regions were situated where dangers to the peaceful order of Europe traditionally started and also where as a result of the collapse, the great powers who had previously been dominant, had become extremely unpredictable.
