ABSTRACT
Germany had to give up Bismarck’s conquests – Schleswig to Denmark and Alsace-Lorraine, with its iron ore, to France, as well as Pomerania and a great deal of Upper Silesia, with its coal mines, to Poland. Jugoslavia, or the land of the South Slavs, which was called in the peace treaty ‘the Kingdom of the Serbs, Croats and Slovenes’, was the third large ‘successor state’. In the hope of preventing oppression and reducing friction the principal Allies insisted on Poland and the ‘successor states’ signing Minorities Treaties, and these were placed under the guarantee of the Council of the League of Nations. The Council of the League had to rule the Saar district, where the French operated the mines, and to arrange a plebiscite to decide its future after fifteen years. To ensure that this was done fairly, the League organized the first international peace-keeping force in history to supervise it in 1935.
