One of the things that come up in these types of timelines is that the Czech use Poland's defeat as a way to seize all of Cieszyn Silesia. I am wondering in this timeline, does Czechoslovakia with German support seize this area?
"Cieszyn Silesia or the
Duchy of Teschen (
Polish:
Cieszyn and
Czech:
Těšín) was a small area in south-eastern Silesia. The last Austrian census of 1910 (determining nationality according to the main communication language (
German:
Umgangssprache) of the respondents) showed that it was predominantly
Polish-speaking in three districts (
Cieszyn,
Bielsko, and
Fryštát) and mainly
Czech-speaking in the fourth district of
Frýdek.
[2] The city of
Cieszyn itself was mainly
German-speaking.
[3] Part of the population (the
Ślązakowcy) claimed a distinct,
Silesian identity.
[4]
The chief importance of Cieszyn Silesia was the rich
coal basin around
Karviná and the valuable
Košice-Bohumín Railway line which linked the
Czech lands with
Slovakia. Furthermore, in north-western Cieszyn Silesia the railroad junction of
Bohumín served as a crossroad for international transport and communications.
[5][6]"
Edited the last chapter to that effect. It's also been a while since the last update. So here it is.
Chapter V: The Third Balkans War, the Soviet-Finnish War and the Return of the Hohenzollerns, 1931-1934.
On June 20th 1928, Serb deputy Punisa Racic shot at five members of the opposition Croatian Peasant Party in the National Assembly resulting in the death of two deputies on the spot and that of leader Stjepan Radic a few weeks later. On January 6th 1929 King Alexander I suspended the constitution, banned national political parties, assumed executive power and renamed the country Yugoslavia. Alexander attempted to create a centralised Yugoslavia. He decided to abolish Yugoslavia's historic regions, and new internal boundaries were drawn for provinces or banovinas. The banovinas were named after rivers. Many politicians were jailed or kept under police surveillance. Alexander hoped to curb separatist tendencies and mitigate nationalist passions, but he achieved the opposite as his dictatorship further alienated non-Serbs from the idea of unity.
From 1928 onward the Italians began supplying the Ustase, a Croatian fascist revolutionary separatist organization, with weapons, funds and trainers. A guerrilla followed against Serb domination, to which the government responded with military force and martial law. The Croatian insurgency continued to fester and Mussolini did everything he could to fuel it in order to destabilize Yugoslavia. Meanwhile, Bulgaria began violating the Treaty of Nis: this treaty obliged them to suppress the activities of the terrorist Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organization (IMRO), which sought to change state frontiers in Yugoslav and Greek Macedonia. King Zog I of Albania, with backing from his Italian sponsors, began supporting Kosovar resistance. By 1930 only the Serb core of Yugoslavia was under firm government control, while Belgrade’s rule over the rest was tenuous and involved numerous war crimes such as ethnic cleansing and mass rape. The country had turned into a festering sore.
In May 1931, a colonel heading an Italian delegation escorted by Yugoslav soldiers was on an investigation into the treatment of ethnic Italians in Dalmatia in the ongoing ethnic conflicts in Yugoslavia. The Royal Yugoslav Army tried to paint a pretty picture, but their effort was disrupted by a Serb nationalist assassinating the Italian colonel. In a matter of days the fascist propaganda machine, ostensibly at least, increased anti-Yugoslav sentiments to a pro-war fever pitch. Not only was the assassination played up, but propaganda painted a horrible picture of the treatment of ethnic Italians in Yugoslavia (even though in actuality the Yugoslavs had tiptoed around them in order to avoid Rome’s ire). Mussolini cited ongoing oppression of the Italian minority as Italy’s casus belli when he declared war on Yugoslavia on June 8th 1931, quickly followed by declarations of war from his Hungarian and Bulgarian allies. The Third Balkan War had begun.
The Regio Esercito’s equipment had seen some changes since the Great War, but fundamentally the Italian army stayed the same: it was a mass of conscripts with mediocre training, equipment and leadership, except for a number of elite units like the Alpini and Bersaglieri that selected recruits based on physical size, stamina and marksmanship. The Hungarian and Bulgarian armies were good enough for countries of their size, but not comparable to the German army for example. That said, the Royal Yugoslav Army wasn’t a terrific army either. It was formed after the Great War and was largely equipped with weaponry from that era. This equipment was in many cases imported from different sources and as a result various models lacked proper repair and maintenance facilities. Yugoslavia’s tank force consisted of only some Renault FT-17s dating back to the war and motorization in general was limited. The air force was in similar shape with a handful of modern machines and a large number of outdated models. The navy was equipped with one elderly ex-German light cruiser (suitable only for training purposes), six ex-Austrian Navy medium torpedo boats, six mine-layers, four large armoured river monitors and various auxiliary craft. Yugoslavia had managed to assemble 1 million men to ward off the invasion.
The Regio Esercito’s invasion was two-pronged. Wanting it to be not just an Italian but also a Fascist one, the northern and largest prong was commanded by Emilio de Bono, who was a well known Fascist general. He commanded 350.000 men that crossed the border between Italy and Yugoslavia, progressing slowly and methodically in the difficult mountainous terrain. The second prong was launched from Albania. The Royal Albanian Army was inconsequential as it only contributed 15.000 men, mostly infantry, to the war effort. Albania’s main contributions were that it enabled the Regia Marina to close the Adriatic Sea and that it permitted the Regio Esercito’s deployment of troops to open a second front against Yugoslavia. Over 100.000 troops commanded by Field Marshal Pietro Badoglio disembarked in Albanian ports and advanced to the front. Meanwhile, Hungary initiated a thrust directly toward the Danube while Bulgarian forces invaded Vardar Macedonia. Meanwhile De Bono in north was being too methodical and slow for Mussolini’s tastes since he had only captured some key mountain passes and he went into “retirement” in August 1931. Il Duce recalled Ugo Cavallero and promoted him to Colonel General while urging him to be more aggressive.
A loyal fascist, Cavallero tried to carry out Mussolini’s requests the best he could. His predecessor De Bono had captured some passes in the mountains that would prove crucial to Cavallero’s offensive, though De Bono never got any credit for it other than a medal. Even with some key locations under control, however, Italian forces advanced difficultly and slowly despite the deployment of elite Alpini units in Slovenia’s hilly to mountainous landscape. Mussolini’s patience ran thin and he authorized the use of chemical weapons. Therefore, in September 1931, Italian artillery guns fired shells containing chlorine, phosgene and mustard gas and punched big holes in enemy lines, enabling a breakthrough into the Pannonian Plain and a thrust toward Croatia. Yugoslav resistance was crumbling as the country also faced uprisings in Croatia, Hungarian forces crossing the Danube and threatening Belgrade, Bulgarian forces breaking through in Macedonia, and Italian and Albanian forces advancing into Kosovo.
By November 1931 the military situation was hopeless. In the north Italian forces had advanced through Croatia and into Bosnia-Herzegovina, facilitated by the Ustase’s guerrilla against the government, and Italian soldiers were welcomed as liberators. Italian and Hungarian forces were, in fact, converging on the capital of Belgrade. In the south, Italian, Bulgarian and Albanian forces were preparing to launch an offensive to the north into the remainder of Yugoslavia, which at this point was little more than Serbian national redoubt.
On November 9th 1931, Yugoslavia requested an armistice and in the subsequent peace treaty, the Treaty of Ancona, the country was dismembered. Slovenia was directly annexed to Italy and its inhabitants were unfortunately subjected to policies of forced “Italianization.” Italy also annexed Dalmatia, Hungary annexed Baranya and northern Vojvodina (where significant Hungarian minorities resided), Albania annexed Kosovo, and Bulgaria annexed Vardar Macedonia. Croatia, which included most of Bosnia-Herzegovina, was established as a separate country. It under firm Italian control with King Victor Emmanuel III as King of the Croats, tying it in personal union with the Italian crown (Amedeo, 3rd Duke of Aosta, was appointed Viceroy and took care of day-to-day affairs in cooperation with Croatia’s parliament in Zagreb). The Kingdom of Croatia adopted a constitution, civil code and penal code modelled on Italy’s. Montenegro was re-established as an independent kingdom with Crown Prince Danilo becoming King Danilo I after signing a treaty of protection that allowed Italy to station troops there and dominate its economy. It was at the same negotiations that Italy, Bulgaria, Hungary, Croatia, Albania and Montenegro formed the Pact of Ancona, a collective defence treaty (and a tool to increase Italian influence over its allies). Serbs living outside Serbia itself were subjected to violence and were subjected to forced population transfers, which took place under harsh circumstances, into Serbia itself. The Kingdom of Serbia, as it was henceforth to officially call itself as part of the peace terms, was left isolated and dependent on Rome to keep its rivals at bay.
By the end of the war, Italy had seriously expanded its sphere of influence into the Balkans and nobody had done anything to save Yugoslavia from the aggression of its neighbours, one of them a great power bullying a smaller country. Besides that, two losing powers of the Great War had regained their position in the Balkans to a degree while the victors of the war again did nothing against this revisionism. Important also was that military observers from the important European military powers took notes on how to wage a modern war and, more importantly, how not to (German observers noted the Italian army’s manifold failings, such as choosing quantity over quality, lack of rapport between officers and soldiers, cronyism rather than professionalism in promotions, insufficient training, insufficient communication between units, mediocre equipment etc). Worst perhaps was that the League of Nations had proven powerless in defending a country from the aggression of others, specifically a larger country bullying a smaller one into submission. When the League condemned Italian actions as a war of aggression, Mussolini simply announced his country’s withdrawal from that organization.
Another dictator to take that to heart was Soviet leader Joseph Stalin, whose aim was to reunite all the territories of the former Russian Empire (the Japanese would learn the same lesson and invade Manchuria in September 1931). While the Third Balkan War was still ongoing, the Red Army mobilized over 600.000 men after demands for border adjustments and a 25 year lease of the Hanko Peninsula for a Soviet naval base amounted to naught. On Sunday August 9th 1931, the war began with a massive artillery bombardment against the Mannerheim Line with calibres varying from 76.2 mm to 152 mm. At this point only the line’s first phase of construction had been completed, producing only about a hundred small bunkers constructed from non-reinforced concrete. Many of these were pulverized by Soviet artillery shells, followed by a combined concentrated armoured assault under the command of Marshal Mikhail Tukhachevsky, who now had the opportunity to test his embryonic deep operations doctrine. The Mannerheim Line was broken and a secondary offensive came around the northern side of Lake Ladoga to flank the defenders of the line.
In eight weeks time, the Red Army had reached the outskirts of Helsinki but, instead of surrendering, the government fled and became the Finnish government-in-exile in Geneva. In another week, the entire country was occupied and the Soviets took steps to legitimize its planned annexation of Finland. Step one was to force all leftwing political parties and independents to merge into a single left block with the Communist Party of Finland, which altered its named to Finnish United Workers’ Party. In the elections that followed, opposition parties encountered suppression and intimidation and were denied access to printing presses for pamphlets and posters and were also denied access to other useful media such as magazines, newspapers, radio broadcasts, cinema newsreels etc. The communists, however, could freely use these media to broadcast their propaganda unimpeded. That was not enough to ensure success and therefore the Finnish communists and the Soviets resorted to massive electoral fraud, resulting in the Finnish United Workers’ Party getting 80% of the vote in the December 1931 elections. Otto Wille Kuusinen subsequently became the Premier of the short-lived People’s Republic of Finland, which in April 1932 decided to become a member republic of the USSR. The Hanko Peninsula was subsequently directly attached to the RSFSR and became a Soviet naval base, as was the entire Karelian Isthmus and large swaths of land north of Lake Ladoga. The Finnish SSR also had to cede a part of the region of Salla, the Kalastajansaarento Peninsula in the Barents Sea, and four islands in the Gulf of Finland.
This blatant act of aggression and gobbling up a sovereign state that posed no threat to the Soviet Union reinvigorated the fear of the Soviets spreading communism by force of arms. This fear increased further when Romania buckled under Soviet ultimatums and ceded Bessarabia to the USSR in 1933. This helped mend fences between Italy on one hand and the Western powers on the other hand, since the latter weren’t too pleased with the partition of Yugoslavia. Germany didn’t really care since this was outside their area of interest and that allowed them to be a neutral arbiter in smoothing over relations between Rome, Paris and London. President Hindenburg used the matter to shake off the last remaining limitations to Germany’s armed forces (like reintroduction of conscription in 1933), but that wasn’t Hindenburg’s most important concern at this point.
Meawhile, to Bucharest, the Soviets constituted a threat to national security much more dangerous than Hungary or Bulgaria. Romania therefore signed bilateral mutual defence treaties with Germany and Czechoslovakia in 1934 and started exporting oil to Germany at beneficial rates. These bilateral treaties between Germany, Czechoslovakia and Romania were formalized into the Treaty of Prague. Germany had thusly formed a military and economic bloc stretching from the North Sea to the Black Sea that formed the first line of defence against the Soviets. After all, all three of its signatories directly bordered the USSR.
Hindenburg also began addressing the issue of his succession because in early 1934 he was diagnosed with metastasized bladder cancer and was informed that he didn’t have much time left. He didn’t have very much faith in either Papen or Schleicher as alternatives for the office of president and had never really believed in the republic to begin with, ruling in an authoritarian style and trying to sideline the Reichstag as much as possible through overuse of article 48 of the Weimar constitution, ruling the country through emergency laws. He ideally wanted a restoration of the monarchy, but with the last German Emperor Wilhelm II on the throne because he considered him the legitimate monarch. His reputation was completely tarnished by the defeat in the war and his son Crown Prince Wilhelm wasn’t much more popular. The Crown Prince’s oldest son Wilhelm wasn’t available either since he had renounced his succession rights in 1933 in order to marry Dorothea von Salviati since this was the only way to enter this “unequal” marriage with a member of minor nobility.
That left 26 year-old Prince Louis Ferdinand and Hindenburg relented because he had no choice if he wanted a viable monarchy, and because Wilhelm II and his son both proved willing to renounce their rights to the throne in order to see a Hohenzollern back on the throne. While his illness was leaked to the press, generating sympathy for the quite popular president, Hindenburg announced a referendum to decide the political future of the country to take place on May 11th 1934. Would it be monarchy or republic? The monarchist camp got the sympathy vote for the dying Hindenburg and because it argued a restored monarchy could continue to provide the stability that Hindenburg had provided in his nine years in office while the alternative supposedly was a return to the unstable early Weimar years. Beyond that, rightwing parties without exception, ranging from the moderate DNVP to the
völkisch movements and paramilitary organizations like the Stahlhelm, threw their lot in with the monarchist camp.
These days, many historians consider the monarchist argument to be false for a number of reasons: 1) the communists remained stuck at 15% of the vote at most, 2) the main threat from the right, the Nazi Party, began to decline after the September 1930 elections, 3) the military by and large accepted the republic by 1934, 4) Germany had been accepted back into the international community as early as the mid 1920s, and 5) by the mid 30s Germany had weathered the worst of the Great Depression. It remains a bone of contention. More conservatively aligned historians tend to favour the view of the monarchy as a stabilizing factor with Hindenburg’s presidency during the interregnum as a stewardship that wised people up as to the need for a monarchical restoration.
The KPD and the SPD found themselves on the same side, both arguing in favour of the republic, and the two reluctantly cooperated. Nonetheless, a slight majority of 53% voted in favour of restoring the monarchy with Prince Louis Ferdinand as Emperor Louis I, ending a sixteen year interregnum. For the first time in sixteen years former Emperor Wilhelm II was able to set foot on German soil after his grandson the new Emperor had granted him the title Prince of Prussia. He would live out most of the remainder of his life at Potsdam, sometimes visiting Berlin and badgering his grandson with unwanted advice and proving rather meddlesome (though Louis proved capable of managing his overbearing grandfather). In the end, Wilhelm II lived long enough to witness Germany becoming one of the victors of the Second World War and Europe’s leading power. In the meantime, as a result of the end of the republic, Hindenburg was the last President of Germany.