ABSTRACT
When the Great War ended in Western Europe in November 1918, many violent conflicts continued and new conflicts were about to start in Central and Eastern Europe. In this region national wars, ethnic conflicts, civil war constellations and ideological confrontations overlapped, time and again. Against this background, the chapter focuses on different experiences in the post-imperial ‘shatterzone’ of Europe. It offers an analysis of how states and societies in Central and Eastern Europe were confronted with multiple challenges soon after the Paris Peace Conference, from state-building and conflicts over the exact definition of borders to integrating large ethnic minorities or revisionist nationalism. As the examples of Poland, Hungary and Czechoslovakia demonstrate, the early hopes to apply American President Woodrow Wilson’s concept of national self-determination to establish new nation-states and stabilise the postwar order, soon gave way to widespread disillusion.
