Czechoslovakia formed without the Sudetenland

The Czechs wouldn't have stood for remaining part of Austria, and an independent Slovakia wasn't viable in its current borders as a large percentage of its population would be Hungarian or non-Slovakian, and without a Czech state to participate the little entente Hungary will have much more freedom to pursue its irredentist claims.
 

yourworstnightmare

Banned
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It's certainly viable in its current borders right now, though.
Right now they don't have greedy neighbors wanting to invade them. The interwar period was very different from right now, in Central and Eastern Europe especially. Slovakia would probably not have been able to defend themselves alone from Hungarian irrenditism. However with the Czechs in the picture and the Little Entente established Hungary was isolated and surrounded.
 
I could see two alternative courses the Allies could have taken, if they hadn't put so many chips on the Czech nationalists.

1. No Czechoslovakia at all. Slovakia still becomes independent, so Hungary is still screwed. Bohemia, Moravia and Austria Silesia remains part of Austria, which was IOTL really what was left over of "the lands represented in the Imperial Council" once Poland, Italy, and Yugoslavia got their cut.

2. While Slovakia is independent, Austria gets the German speaking parts immediately adjacent to IOTL Austria in the South, plus that German speaking enclave north of Olmutz (sp?), which is a detached enclave of Austria, the same as Luxembourg was attached to the Netherlands for much of the nineteenth century.

Now #2 is closer to IOTL, and results in a smaller Czechoslovakia and a bigger Austria. But in this scenario, Czechosolvakia keeps the Bohemian mountain ranges. The territory they do lose is to Austria, which is not a threat to them, instead of Germany, which is. The German population within Czechoslovakia is reduced enough that Hitler has less of an issue, though that probably won't make s difference. However, he winds up with the parts added to Austria anyway when he absorbs Austria.

However, #1 makes more of a difference and is probably what should have been done. With Bohemia and Moravia incorporated into postwar Austria, Austria is much bigger, economically more viable, and defensible and has more of an independent identity. And the Czechs make up a much better proportion of the Austrian population than they did in Hapsburg Austria and, though they woudn't get their own country, would still have a major say in how the Republic of Austria was run. The nationalists would have to be happy with that. This probably not only prevents the Sudetenland crisis, it probably prevents Hitler's annexation of Austria as well.

You have to remember that Austria lost the war which--from the Allied point of view--it was at least as guilty as Germany of starting. Normally, losers of wars do not get to dictate terms. The Czechs did not want to be part of any German-speaking-majority state, even one in which they would be an influential minority, and they had influential spokesmen like Masaryk and sympathizers like Seton-Watson. I just cannot see the Allies forcing them to be part of Austria against their will. And in any event, if Germany gets to rearm, it will still be much stronger than Austria-Czechia and still in a position to demand an *Anschluss* with it (in order to "unify the German people") unless the Allies are willing to go to war for it--which I don't think is any more likely than for them to go to war over first Austria and then Czechoslovakia in OTL.

Besides, why should there be an independent Slovakia in this scenario? Why allow the German-Austrians to keep many of "their" Slavs but forbid Hungary from keeping many of "theirs"? Indeed, the case for allowing much of historic Hungary to remain united https://groups.google.com/d/msg/soc.history.what-if/KLkoU97zSiQ/0oE1S1tfXlgJ seems at least as strong as that for historic Austria... (In the very unlikely event your proposal was adopted, btw, the Czechs are going to be outraged that the Slovaks--less "advanced" than themselves and with a less developed national movement--have been allowed an independence denied to them.)
 
With my concept, it doesn't really matter if Slovakia becomes independent or not. I was trying and failing to avoid an internet debate over Slovakia. So Slovakia stays part of Hungary.

Quite a few people have argued that dismantling Austria-Hungary as a mistake, and there is a strong case for giving them the Weimer treatment, reduced but not broken up. You could also argue that Germany should have been broken up, though that would have meant rejecting the armistice request and continuing the war for at least another year, for a goal neither the USA and the UK had.

Once Karl goes into exile, the two parts of Austria-Hungary are automatically separated, and they can be reduced by accommodating the territorial demands of Italy, Rumania, and Serbia, all actual Allied powers and not just nationalist movements, as well creating Poland. And that "punishes" Austria-Hungary enough, as if the blockade was not enough punishment. There is no need to go further and create more petty states in the area. You want an Austrian successor state strong enough to have its own identity and counter Germany. Really they screwed over Hungary too much too, though this is very much a side issue, not only did Hungary wind up joining the Axis (actually for understandable reasons), but so did Rumania and Slovakia. Really the IOTL settlement didn't work out very well.

The more I think about it, the mistake was in creating Czechoslovakia in the first place. I don't think a smaller, weaker Czechoslovakia really resolves this.
 
One thing to keep in mind is that German claims on the Sudetenland only really became significant during the Nazi period.

By and large, Germany largely acquiesced to the Versailles border changes with the big exception of Poland. There was little interest in retaining Alsace-Lorraine or northern Schleswig. The drive for an Austrian anschluss was mostly an Austrian phenomenon, not a German one, and that too one that was strongest in the immediate aftermath of the war than later. Much of the German-Prussian leadership looked warily on the prospect of annexing the Catholic Austrians. And for that matter, the Austrian Right in the 1920s preferred close ties but not outright annexation. (Full Anschluss was actually favored by the Austrian left, not the right.)

Anyway, as it regards Czechoslovakia, while there was some discontent among the Sudeten Germans right after the war, there was very little interest in Germany in pressing that claim. It was Hitler who made the Sudeten Germans into a major cause. Before him, as noted, the main interwar irredentist claim was Germany's eastern border with Poland. THAT was something most across the spectrum opposed. The German-Czech boundary was not a major issue.
 
One thing to keep in mind is that German claims on the Sudetenland only really became significant during the Nazi period.

By and large, Germany largely acquiesced to the Versailles border changes with the big exception of Poland. There was little interest in retaining Alsace-Lorraine or northern Schleswig. The drive for an Austrian anschluss was mostly an Austrian phenomenon, not a German one, and that too one that was strongest in the immediate aftermath of the war than later. Much of the German-Prussian leadership looked warily on the prospect of annexing the Catholic Austrians. And for that matter, the Austrian Right in the 1920s preferred close ties but not outright annexation. (Full Anschluss was actually favored by the Austrian left, not the right.)

Anyway, as it regards Czechoslovakia, while there was some discontent among the Sudeten Germans right after the war, there was very little interest in Germany in pressing that claim. It was Hitler who made the Sudeten Germans into a major cause. Before him, as noted, the main interwar irredentist claim was Germany's eastern border with Poland. THAT was something most across the spectrum opposed. The German-Czech boundary was not a major issue.

Important to note that it was only in the Nazi period when Germany was in a position to claim anything. No point in angering the nation who's occupying your industrial heartland. Same applies to Austria and the Czechs (the former banned from joining and the latter having direct French support). North Schleswig was a rare phenomenon because even the Nazis didn't really care for it.
 

raharris1973

Gone Fishin'
Donor
Monthly Donor
Here is what I was envisioning in terms of the map of Europe, where the Versailles & St. Germain settlements create a Czechoslovakia, a Sudeten free state (composed of the German portions of Bohemia-Moravia closer to Germany than Austria, plus just enough land from Silesian salients from Germany to link it into one strip) and an Austrian republic that extends northward a bit to encompass the German speakers in southern Bohemia and Moravia (An Austria extending beyond the old archduchy is not unprecedented - hence, the Austrian republic got Burgenland from Hungary on linguistic grounds.




Europe-interwar-period-1918-1939-  smaller Czech-cropped.gif
 

raharris1973

Gone Fishin'
Donor
Monthly Donor
Of course, the opposite tack for Benes and the Entente to take could be to deliberately construct "Bohemia" as a binational Czech-German state, with joint history as the glue, and possibly cantonization and Swiss style constitution.

That allows the Bohemian-Moravian economic unit to stick together. While boosting the risk of Austrian and German revanchism, at the same time the Czechs jettison their ambitions to control Slovakia and Teschen, leaving them entirely to Hungary and to Poland. The purpose here is to keep both Poland and Hungary non-hostile, and quite possibly allies, even while the German-speaking states are alienated. A Hungary (and a Poland) that suffers now territorial losses to a Bohemian state may be friendly to the Bohemian state, being happier with its existence as a Swiss style buffer compared with the alternative of a direct border with a German or Austrian state. Because of Hungary's proximity/adjacency, it could be a more important ally for the Czechs than its historic "Little Entente" partners Romania and Yugoslavia.

The borders would look like this in that case:

Europe-interwar-period-1918-1939-Bohemia and Hungary-cropped.gif
 
With my concept, it doesn't really matter if Slovakia becomes independent or not. I was trying and failing to avoid an internet debate over Slovakia. So Slovakia stays part of Hungary.

Quite a few people have argued that dismantling Austria-Hungary as a mistake, and there is a strong case for giving them the Weimer treatment, reduced but not broken up. You could also argue that Germany should have been broken up, though that would have meant rejecting the armistice request and continuing the war for at least another year, for a goal neither the USA and the UK had.

Once Karl goes into exile, the two parts of Austria-Hungary are automatically separated, and they can be reduced by accommodating the territorial demands of Italy, Rumania, and Serbia, all actual Allied powers and not just nationalist movements, as well creating Poland. And that "punishes" Austria-Hungary enough, as if the blockade was not enough punishment. There is no need to go further and create more petty states in the area. You want an Austrian successor state strong enough to have its own identity and counter Germany. Really they screwed over Hungary too much too, though this is very much a side issue, not only did Hungary wind up joining the Axis (actually for understandable reasons), but so did Rumania and Slovakia. Really the IOTL settlement didn't work out very well.

The more I think about it, the mistake was in creating Czechoslovakia in the first place. I don't think a smaller, weaker Czechoslovakia really resolves this.

It would be one thing to keep the Austrian Empire (with or without some sort of loose union with Hungary) together completely and transform it into a democratic federation. Before the First World War, this would have been acceptable to the Czechs--maybe even well into the War. Neither the German-speakers nor any other single nationality would have a majority, so no nationality need consider itself oppressed.

But by 1918, this was not possible, and what you are suggesting would be very unsatisfactory to the Czechs because it would leave them the *only* non-German minority in a German-majority state. In effect, it says to the Czechs "The Poles and Ruthenians [1] of Galicia, the Slovenes of Carniola, the Croats of Dalmatia, the Italians of South Tyrol, the Italians, Croats, and Slovenes of the Littoral, the Romanians and Ruthenians of Bukovina--they all get to leave Austria. Only *you*, of the non-German peoples have to remain subject to what will now be a German-majority state." That does not look to me like a recipe for political satisfaction and stability. And since Austro-Czechia is a German-majority state, eventually Germany will demand an Anschluss with it in the name of German unity (and to end the "chaos" caused by Austrian-Czech quarrels). It is still much weaker than Germany (and will have many people desiring to join the Reich anyway) and I doubt that France and Great Britain will be willing to fight for it. Germany very likely would take in one move what she took three separate moves (Austria, the Sudetenland, the occupation of the remainder of the Czech lands) to get in OTL.

[1] True, the Ruthenians of eastern Galicia were left subject to the Poles, and those of Bukovina to the Romanians, but an independent state for them would almost certainly not be viable, and union with Ukraine was impossible except on Soviet Communist terms. Besides, there was not too much knowledge in the West about the Ruthenians whereas Masaryk and others had made the Czech cause well-known.
 
Slovakia doesn't even have its post WW1 borders now. Though I'm not sure what relevance this has to the interwar period.
Indeed. Slovakia was enlarged adter WWII by few Hungarian villages. But still Slovakia is larger as it was after WWI borders.
 
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