ABSTRACT
“The plebiscite was so fair and excellently administered that the Schleswig question, which caused three wars in the nineteenth century and rent the councils of Europe for some seventy years, has ceased to exist.” 1 The referendum in Schleswig in 1920 was praised as an example of how to solve conflicts through direct democracy. This case was, it seemed, an eminent example of President Woodrow Wilson’s stated aim of “making the world safe for democracy.” But was it? And perhaps more importantly, why were this and similar referendums held? Were they conducted with some sinister motive or for genuinely idealistic reasons?
