AHC: Italo-Czechoslovak alliance, post-WWI

raharris1973

Gone Fishin'
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The challenge is what it says on the tin.

The primary shared objective is preventing Austro-German Anschluss.

Perhaps one way to remove an obstacle is to never have Yugoslavia join the Little Entente. If the Little Entente is just Czechoslovakia and Romania, Italy does not have any direct disputes with the members.
 

FBKampfer

Banned
Prevent Italian fascism, or at the very least keep them from getting tunnel vision on the whole "new Roman empire" thing.

The existing powers have a vested interest in clubbing any upstarts, so this naturally pushed the upstarts together.
 
They may not, but Czechoslovakia was close to Yugoslavia (Little Entente). There's a reason Rome gravitated towards Berlin and Budapest (or as Gyula Gombos phrased it: axis.)
 
Let's handwave and posit a world where Bela Kun's Hungarian Republic of Councils survived and was connected with Soviet Russia by a Soviet Ukraine that included both Carpatho-Ruthenia and the extreme southeast of OTL interwar Poland. In such a world, with Soviet power extending almost to Vienna, Czechoslovakia might be much more anti-Communist than in OTL and the other members of the Little Entente might be even more worried about Communism than they were in OTL. So they would see any disagreements with Italy (concerning, say, the Italo-Yugoslav border) as less important than creating a solid anti-Communist bloc in central Europe including Fascist Italy...
 

raharris1973

Gone Fishin'
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Monthly Donor
They may not, but Czechoslovakia was close to Yugoslavia (Little Entente). There's a reason Rome gravitated towards Berlin and Budapest (or as Gyula Gombos phrased it: axis.)

Did you read what I said about Yugoslavia in the OP ?

Let's handwave and posit a world where Bela Kun's Hungarian Republic of Councils survived and was connected with Soviet Russia by a Soviet Ukraine that included both Carpatho-Ruthenia and the extreme southeast of OTL interwar Poland. In such a world, with Soviet power extending almost to Vienna, Czechoslovakia might be much more anti-Communist than in OTL and the other members of the Little Entente might be even more worried about Communism than they were in OTL. So they would see any disagreements with Italy (concerning, say, the Italo-Yugoslav border) as less important than creating a solid anti-Communist bloc in central Europe including Fascist Italy...

Very creative - I like it, if we line all the steps up just so, Czechoslovakia and Italy may indeed find they have anti-Soviet interests in common. Indeed Czechoslovakia and *Germany* may find they have anticommunist interests in common.
 
The challenge is what it says on the tin.

The primary shared objective is preventing Austro-German Anschluss.

Perhaps one way to remove an obstacle is to never have Yugoslavia join the Little Entente. If the Little Entente is just Czechoslovakia and Romania, Italy does not have any direct disputes with the members.

Still harder. Why would they? Meanwhile, they have a reason to ally with Hungary against Yugoslavia. Czechoslovakia is another panslavic state formed out of the carcass of A-H. Does not work (Czechoslovakia supporting anti Yugoslavia measures).


All they both would be against perhaps is German-Austrian unification. But fascist Rome will work with Hitler in Germany. Democratic Italy required.
 
Have a more successful attempt at the claimed borders of the Republic of German-Austria, which even if frustrated still leads to greater claims for Anschluss and prevents the rise of the anti-Anschluss Christian Social Party; this makes the First Austrian Republic frailer and forces Italy and Czechoslovakia to be closer. That also makes the Czech more wary of Germany on Sudetenland, it isn't unreasonable to think Italy becomes an uneasy patron of the Little Entente or at least signs a separate bilateral pact with Czechoslovakia (as in the other thread, Anschluss Germany also is a likely friend of Yugoslavia).

The wankier alternative is a successful Habsburg restauration in Hungary, which makes them the diplomatic pariah of Europe and again gives the two parties more in common - especially in upholding Versailles. But I think it's at least close to ASB.
 
Let's handwave and posit a world where Bela Kun's Hungarian Republic of Councils survived and was connected with Soviet Russia by a Soviet Ukraine that included both Carpatho-Ruthenia and the extreme southeast of OTL interwar Poland. In such a world, with Soviet power extending almost to Vienna, Czechoslovakia might be much more anti-Communist than in OTL and the other members of the Little Entente might be even more worried about Communism than they were in OTL. So they would see any disagreements with Italy (concerning, say, the Italo-Yugoslav border) as less important than creating a solid anti-Communist bloc in central Europe including Fascist Italy...

I might add that even in OTL, good Soviet-Czechoslovak relations did not come about until well into the 1930's. "At the beginning of the existence of both states, their relationship was bad. There was strong animosity sourcing from the armed conflict between Bolshevik authorities and Czechoslovak Legions and from the following participation of the Legions in the allied intervention against Bolsheviks. Moreover, Karel Kramář, Czechoslovakia's 1st Prime Minister, disliked the Bolshevik regime for personal reasons (his wife came from Russian nobility). Czechoslovakia recognized the Soviet Union (USSR) de jure not until 1934..." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Czechoslovakia–Soviet_Union_relations

Indeed, for Czechoslovakia--as for another multinational state produced by Versailles, Yugoslavia--the Comintern for a while actually advocated the breakup of the state: "The same is true of Czechoslovakia, another multinational state. There the 1929 Party Congress adopted the slogan of 'self-determination even to the point of secession' and denounced Czechoslovakia as an imperialist state, and in 1931 the party called for the 'reunification of German, Hungarian and Polish populations under Soviet power', and a 'Soviet Slovakia'..." https://www.history.ac.uk/reviews/review/423
 
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