Mitteleuropa - Endloser Krieg (The Timeline)

Kaiser Wilhelm addressed the crowd victoriously, his resplendent medals glimmering in the sunlight. The glow of the honours reflected his confidence and pride, and no doubt the glory which his nation would bask in forever more. Deutschland would march ever forward. In three years of war, the Reichsheer thrashed the French and occupied Paris, swept the Russians from Poland and the Baltic, had fought off the British on the Pas de Calais and made short work of Belgium. With the Gemeinsame Armee of Austria-Hungary, they had annihilated the Serbian and Montenegrin armies.

They had expected a quicker war. It was not supposed to last three years, but the French had fought stubbornly even after the fall of Paris. 1914 had not been 1870. The French had powerful allies propping them up. But the British seemed not to have had the political will to send significant forces to France's aid. Russia had been reversed repeatedly, and collapsed in on itself. Their Provisional Government was fighting radical socialist forces that the Kaiser himself had clandestinely aided. The conservative German elites had no fondness for the Marxists, but by establishing control over the Baltic states, Poland and Ukraine, Germany had enough strategic depth. And it would be years before Russia recovered from its turmoils and posed a threat, Bolshevik or not.

The Kaiser wasn't totally happy, though. He had often dreamt of a German Mittelafrika, stretching from the Atlantic, across the dark jungles of the Congo basin to the Indian Ocean. But it was not to be. German forces had given Entente forces the runaround in Ost-Afrika, but Togo and Cameroon had been captured quickly. When the war was at an end, the South Africans hadn't made much headway into Sudwestafrika, largely due to the Afrikaner rebels who now resided in the German colony.

The Kaiser's fanciful dreams of colonial glory may have been dashed, but Germany was the great power in Central Europe. Not since the times of Napoleon had Europe seen such a hegemon. Belgium had been split into two states, Flanders (home to the Flemings, who spoke a dialect of Dutch, and which included French Flanders) and Wallonia (home of the French-speaking Walloons). Luxembourg had been annexed to the German Empire. But in the West, Germany's greatest new ally was the Grand Duchy of Burgundy (Grand-Duché de Bourgogne/Großherzogtum von Burgund), carved out by Germany in the East of France, consisting of the French regions of Bourgogne, Champagne-Ardenne, Franche-Comte and parts of Lorraine. Burgundy became somewhat of a march for the Germans, and it was therefore becoming highly militarised. Economically, the Grand Duchy relied on agriculture as it's prime source of income along with a well-established vinicultural sector, but with an injection of capital from German businesses, manufacturing and coal-mining operations were expanding.

In the East, the German Polish border regions and East Prussia gained some territory further inland, but the majority of what had been Russian Poland was turned into the "Reichsprotecktorat Polen", in effect an Austro-German condiminium. It was occupied by both German and Austrian troops. The Teutons were fairly exploitative with their new possession, and the only real development was in infrastructure going further East, to the Baltic or the Ukraine. In Estonia and Latvia, an entity was set up by the Baltic German elite, known as the United Baltic Duchy, in personal union with the Hohenzollern Imperial Seat. Kaiser Wilhelm was consequently Duke of the United Baltic Duchy (sometimes shortened to Duke of Livonia or Duke of Baltica), in addition to his myriad of other titles.
The Ukraine came under the aegis of the pro-German, ultra-conservative 'Hetmanate of the Ukraine', led by Hetman (Strongman) Pavlo Skoropadskyi, who maintained a somewhat uneasy alliance with Germany. He was considered a bit too much of a Russophile, but if the Bolsheviks won in Russia, there wouldn't be any betrayal in favour of St. Petersburg.

In the Balkans, Austria-Hungary had annexed Serbia and Montenegro (Serbia into Transleithania, Montenegro and Sandjak into Cisleithania), and was attempting to pressure the Albanians into providing naval basing rights to the port of Vlore. Albania was developing into an increasingly tense contest between Italy and Austria-Hungary. Greece too had interests in Southern Albania, but the threats of both Austria-Hungary and the Ottomans to the East had pushed the Greeks towards the British camp. The Bulgarians were attempting to tread a middle path, but still watching for Greek or Austro-Hungarian weakness.

East Asia was about as far away from the Kaiser's mind as could be. Although German trading companies continued to operate in Tsingtao, German trade there was steady, experiencing neither significant growth nor significant loss. The Central Pacific Islands that had been under Germany's control had been sold to Japan at the onset of the war, and Samoa and Kaiser Wilhelm's Land had been ceded to Britain in the peace treaties (given to the Dominions of New Zealand and Australia, respectively).

Altogether, despite some setbacks to the Kaiser's Weltpolitik, the German Empire and the German Volk had left the war better off than they had entered. Sure, they had taken hardships at times, and Germany had entered a risky two-front war, but the Kaiser's faith in his people and his leadership had been proven correct, and he felt like a proud father as he watched over the people in Berlin, their flags waving, the tunes of the 'Deutschlandlied', 'Heil dir im Siegerkranz' and 'Die Wacht am Rhein' filling the air. The crowds cheered in patriotic euphoria when he had presented himself on the balcony to end the glorious victory parade. He spoke briefly, but inspiringly of Germany's golden age, of the invincibility of its Imperial union, of the bravery of its soldiers and the strength of its arms. Of its science, of it's power, of its industry, and of its favour in the eyes of God.

And as much as it had been to entertain and inspire the masses, he believed in it himself. He was content that his legacy would be the greatest of all Kaisers onward, that he'd go down in the annals of history alongside Barbarossa, Friedrich the Great, and the hero Siegfried, for a mere dragon was nothing compared to the armies of France, Britain and Russia. He would be remembered, remembered far more gloriously than that uppity old man Bismarck. Yes, he was very happy indeed.

Little did he know that the two decades following the end of what would be known by Western historians as "the Great War" would prove to be very trying times, and Germany would have to struggle, with all its herculean might, to hold onto the glory it won in 3 long years of bloodshed.
 
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The years immediately after the Great War were years of contrast, particularly economically. Whilst France and Russia were in economic and political turmoil, German capital was flooding into the countries Central and Eastern Europe, and in the Ottoman Empire, the foundations were laid for the Turkish economic resurgence.

In 1912, German interests in Ottoman Mesopotamia (the same interests responsible for the construction of the Berlin-Baghdad Railway) merged with the British 'African and Eastern Concession Ltd' company to create the Turkish Petroleum Company. Before long, the Company was divided up between Deutsche Bank, the National Bank of Turkey (British-owned), the Anglo-Saxon Oil Company (a subsidiary of Royal Dutch Shell, which itself was Anglo-Dutch), the Armenian entrepeneur Calouste Gulbenkian and the Anglo-Persian Oil Company. Gulbenkian had been the impetus behind the project, and in order to produce more overall revenue he had architected the union of several important players in Mesopotamian oil. Gulbenkian's business doctrine had always been along the lines of "better a small piece of a large pie than a large piece of a small pie". Whilst Gulbenkian had managed to extract a promise of oil concessions from the Ottoman government, the outbreak of the Great War led to the nationalisation of the Turkish Petroleum Company, with only the German investments left intact. After the war, the various interests, with the exception of Mr. Gulbenkian, had been compensated. The combination of reparations and, more importantly, the reluctance of the Ottomans to allow British investment and their practice of favouring Mitteleuropaisch investment frustrated efforts by the British to extract oil out of Mesopotamia, forcing Great Britain to rely more and more on Iranian oil supplies. The capital provided by this oil production was utilised by the Ottomans, with German encouragement, into the extraction of rare minerals in Anatolia, such as chromium, which was in increasing demand in the Germany, Austria-Hungary and rapidly industrialising Burgundy.

Whilst the Turkish economy seemed to be expanding at a good rate, continued fighting in the Arabian peninsula against forces sponsored by the British had become somewhat of a drain on Turkish funds. Djemal Pasha and especially Fakhri Pasha had pursued a generally successful war against the Kingdom of Hejaz, bringing it more directly into the fold. Technically it wasn't an annexation, as for centuries the Sharifs of Mecca had recognised Ottoman suzerainty, and Hedjaz retained autonomy. More problematic were the Bedouins of the Nejd, particularly the Wahhabis under the Saud family. These primitive, but wily and hardy tribesmen continued fighting an irregular war, supplied and sponsored by the British in Aden. To decrease the costs of the war, in both men and money, the Turks utilised their allies in the Nejd, the emirate of Jabal Shammar, under the House of Rashid, to fight their sworn enemies, the Sauds. Apart from not being on the British payroll, the Rashids weren't members of the extreme Sunni fundamentalist Wahhabi sect, which the Sauds subscribed to. The Sauds were finally defeated in the Battle of al-Uqayb Gorge in 1920, where Ottoman and Shammari forces ambushed the Wahhabis, slaughtering most of the grown males in the Saud family. The rest of the dynasty fled to British Aden, where they were taken care of, but the power of the Sauds in Nejd had been broken entirely. Turkish Arabia had been pacified for the moment, despite occasional Zaydi raids from Yemen.

Unlike the Ottoman Empire, France was in major economic and social turmoil. In the 1917 Treaty of Fulda, the French were forced to agree to pay reparations of 50 billion Reichsmarks, in addition to paying German veterans' funds and paying off all of Germany's national debt. In order to meet Germany's obligation of 50 billion Reichsmarks, the French government was forced to print massive amounts of money (much of France had been victim to German looting during the war), causing high levels of inflation. This inflation wasn't met by an increase in wages, as the French economy had been damaged by the destruction of the Great War and the loss of economically valuable industrial and agricultural land to Flanders and the Grand Duchy of Burgundy. Despite the loss of so many young men in the Great War, unemployment was a problem in post-war France, due to the disruption in the supply chain of raw materials caused by CP annexations. France was humiliated by its defeat, its people were starving, and its men were unemployed and angry. in April 1918, the Third Republic had lost all credibility, and Georges Clemenceau was forced to resign, the Bloc National discredited by the failings of it's leaders. Instead, a new government, under the leadership of the Radical Party and Édouard Herriot, formed the Fourth French Republic. The Radical Party was only able to maintain power due to the vacuum left in right-wing politics, however, and Herriot was frequently criticised for refusing to re-arm. Whilst there were many French that did not want more conflict (these tended to flock to socialist groups further left than the radicals, such as the Gauche Socialiste Française, or French Socialist Left), revanchism was becoming an increasingly popular current in French politics, particularly on the right. In response to the vacuum on the right, several right-wing French groups arose. One, the Orleanais Monarchical Union (UMO), proposed the restoration of a Orleanais monarch. They were a very small group, mostly composed of traditionalists and the descendants of nobility. There was little support for the idea, and the UMO faded into obscurity. In 1919, the Syndicat Patriotique Français (SPF, French Patriotic Workers Union) was founded by Gustave Hervé, who had originally been a militant far-leftist, but who drifted to ultranationalism on the opposite side of the political spectrum. Hervé expoused a radical, militant ideology, where class antagonism was set aside to push the nation to glorious triumph. Hervé was a relatively naive politician, but the Syndicat was soon joined by ideologist Jean Ousset, who synthesised the thought of Charles Maurras with ultra-nationalism and integral Catholicism. According to this "Syndicatist" thought, the French were a people, differing in blood, but who were united by language, culture, and a common Catholic faith. Such a faith united Parisians, Bretons, Normans and Gascons as French, but Jews, Germans and Protestants were not true Frenchmen. Although the anti-Protestant aspect of Syndicatism was often played down by Hervé, Catholicism formed an important undercurrent which was to later affect French society deeply. The Syndicalist movement emerged as the main competitor to Action Française, the foremost French conservative movement, and was further bolstered by its increasingly prestigious membership: Raymond Poincaré joined the party in 1920, as did Marshal Pétain, Xavier Vallat, Marcel Deat, Joseph Darnand, Jacques Corrèze, Eugène Schueller and Eugène Deloncle. The Papacy's disapproval of Action Française also led many devout Catholics and clergymen to support the SPF, which grew to the largest opposition party by 1922. From its founding until its assumption of power in the autumn of 1922, SPF paramilitaries, known as "Les Chevaliers Noirs" (The Black Chevaliers) were frequently involved in street battles against leftist groups, especially communists and anarchists, and were instrumental in the breaking up of the Lyon Commune (Anarchist) and the Breton and Gascone Social Republics (April and August 1920, respectively). To the starving French masses, beset by unemployment and hyperinflation, whose society was crumbling before them, with organised and street crime, substance abuse and suicide at its highest rates ever, the Syndicat Patriotique Français seemed to offer a way, not only out of poverty, but vengeance against those responsible.
 
In far more turmoil than France was the Russian Empire. Russia's repeated failings in the Great War, on top of the defeat suffered against the Empire of Japan in 1904-5, completely destroyed Russian faith in the ability of the monarchy. The chaos of war had been extremely traumatic for the Russian people, having suffered more casualties than any other nation between 1914 and 1917. In early 1917, Tsar Nikolai II, the Tsar of all Russias, abdicated from his position in favour of his brother Grand Duke Mikhail. Mikhail refused the crown, and the duties of government were taken up by Alexander Kerensky and the Russian Provisional Government (RPG), composed primarily of Kadets, Octobrists and Progressists, but having a smattering of Socialist-Revolutionaries and Mensheviks. Overall, the RPG's views were generally centrist and democratic, but with monarchist factions. The diversity of the Provisional Government turned out to be its greatest weakness. With so many difference views, rarely were actions agreed on. By contrast, the Petrograd Soviet, dominated by the hard-left Bolsheviks, were consolidating power over the railways and factories of the capital. The Bolshevik Party, led by Vladimir Lenin (who had been clandestinely sponsored by Germany) and Leon Trotsky was committed to the seizure of power in Russia and the establishment of an international socialist worker's state. To allow the final seizure of power, they established the Red Guards, a paramilitary militia composed mostly of radical factory workers (who had ironically been armed by Kerensky during the Kornilov Affair), often considered "more Bolshevik than the Bolsheviks". On November 14th, 1917 (Julian Calendar), the Petrograd Soviet seized control in a coup d'etat, occupying railways, factories, post offices and police stations.

The Bolshevik coup sparked a full-blown civil war between the Reds and the 'Whites' (a general term encompassing the wide range of anti-Communist forces). Whilst there were many experienced army officers in the various White armies, they suffered from a lack of a unified command, by disunity (White armies fought each other just as often as the Leninists) and by the alienation of local populations. Many of the White generals looked down upon local Russian peasants or ethnic minorities, and the lack of sympathetic locals led regularly to food shortages or lack of reinforcements. The Red Armies were commanded by Leon Trotsky, a Jewish Bolshevik who proved to be an organisational genius, and a very competent commander, even of irregular forces. As the Civil War went on, the Red Army came to less resemble an insurgent militia, and more like a professional standing army. The Bolsheviks faced more than just domestic opposition, however. The other regimes of Europe had no intention of a militant anti-monarchical, anti-capitalist regime coming to power in Europe's largest state. In the Far North, at Archangelsk and Murmansk, British and French forces landed, intent on supplying White forces, although increasingly they were forced to enter combat with Bolshevik troops. Similarly, Japanese troops and small American volunteer groups moved into Siberia, with the Japanese establishing a puppet government in the Russian Primorye, the Republic of Green Ukraine. By 1921, the White forces had been defeated, and the Bolsheviks had taken control of what was left of Russia. The Central Power-supported governments tended to be more permanent, however. The Ukrainian Hetmanate and the Baltic Duchy both experienced an influx of White refugees, and the Ottoman-sponsored Mountainous Republic of Northern Caucasus (bolstered by Ottoman troops) was able to maintain its de-facto independence. Armenia and Georgia were occupied by the Turks, who also supported the Azerbaijan Democratic Republic at Baku (TPC investment would soon turn Azerbaijan into a virtual fief for Ottoman oil interests). The Cossacks in particular poured into Ukraine, where they formed the nucleus for an emerging militarist reactionary character to the Hetmanate. By 1922, the Japanese had withdrawn from the Primorye, unwilling to provoke a wider conflict on the Asian mainland with Bolshevik Russia.

Lenin and Trotsky turned their attention toward the entrenchment of a Communist regime, and experimentation with Communism as a socio-economic model. The Western powers were somewhat content with Lenin's rise to power, as at least the German satellites in Eastern Europe provided a buffer, and after years of civil war, Bolshevik Russia lacked the strength to attack any vital Western interests.

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Abdi Küçük shivered and cursed this place as he scanned the treeline. He had sold his boots to one of the locals for fur footwraps and a kalpak, but still his toes felt stiff. He hated this place. Its ground was blanketed with snow, the cruel, harsh cold contrasting with the gentle snowfall. Stalactites were forming under his nostrils, and his moustache did little to warm his lips, which had gone blue. At first, being able to see your breath had been somewhat amusing, but now it served as a sadistic reminder of how freezing this hillside was. As he leant with his rifle on the poorly made, rickety fence of the goat pen, he just wished he was back in Bursa, with Sabiha, and Aslan, and little Ali. He was expecting a third child too. Sabiha's morning sickness had been getting worse. He wished he could be there with her. Oh well. She's been through it before, and her mother is always there.

Abdi's train of thought was derailed by the yells of the local scout. He was a Ghalghai (Ingush) from a village nearby. He could speak Russian, unlike most of the locals, and thus our translator, Hamid, had been able to communicate with him. The locals had been nice enough, Abdi supposed, although for Muslims they hadn't been very devout... They were always drinking. Some of the other men in the regiment had been drinking vodka with them. Abdi often argued with them. He was a good Muslim, but they justified it by saying it helps keep them alive, and if they're helping their Muslim brothers, that God wouldn't mind a little drinking. They didn't always get on well with the locals, though. The officers thought them a bit backward, and there'd been a few scuffles with local men over women. A few weeks ago, in one of the villages further back, one of the younger, more brash men had an altercation with a Chechyn about the Chechyn's daughter... the soldier was murdered by the villagers as revenge after he had cut one of their goats' throat. Some of the other soldiers had wanted to torch the place, but their officers kept it under control. It was justice anyway, the officers said. He would've been court-martialed and executed anyway. Abdi was inclined to agree, but he daren't say so to his comrades. Regardless of how the troops felt, command was anxious to keep good relations with the villagers of this region.

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After conversing with the scout, Hamid told us that a cossack group was heading this way. Luckily, it didn't seem to have a larger host behind it. These cossacks had been seen in the area a few days ago, and reinforcements had been dispatched to the village. They had yet to arrive, which worried Abdi. Cossacks had probed the perimeter of the village every few hours, probably looking for weaknesses. They were fierce, but Abdi's unit had yet to fight them in force. Abdi's commanding officers ordered defensive positions. Abdi shouldered his rifle, a Mauser M.1893. 7.65mm, standard issue. Abdi hoped the receiver hadn't stiffened too much in the cold again. Ahead of Abdi's position at the goat pens (the goats had been relocated by the villages after news about the Cossacks in the area spread), the machine gun team set up in the advance trench. Abdi thought it would've made more sense if they'd set the gun up further back towards the village, to put more distance between any attackers and the gun, as well as to give it a better field of fire, but he'd taken enough beatings to know not to question his C.O.

The hairs stood up on the back of Abdi's neck as he heard a great war cry emanate from the trees in the distance. Before long, he heard the crackle of rifle fire from somewhere behind him. They must be attacking the left side of the village. But before Abdi could turn his head to look around, his C.O. boomed, "Enemy spotted! Treeline!", and Cossack cavalry came storming out of the treeline. Abdi and the other riflemen took shots at the cavalry, and one of Abdi's bullets struck a horse, causing it to fall and crush it's rider. A few of the Cossacks were shot in the saddle, their horses manically storming in all directions. Others were dismounted, engaging the Ottoman infantry in desperate shootouts. As some of the Cossacks charged closer, the MG08/15 opened fire, tearing horses and men apart in a storm of lead. Despite their defiant war cries, the sabre-rattling Cossacks fell in what seemed like droves. But then it jammed. The machine gun team desperately tried to get the gun operational again, but it was too late. The relentless Cossacks descended on the trench with their sabers, beheading the gunner and skewering the rest of the crew, as well as their supporting riflemen. Abdi's heart dropped.

Now they were outnumbered, and had lost their machinegun. The riflemen by the pens fired relentlessly, barely aiming as they fired on the Cossacks. Some of the cavalrymen fell dead, but their comrades were closing fast. "fix bayonets!" the C.O. bellowed. Despite the cold, Abdi was sweating. He'd been in a few firefights before, but never a melee. And certainly never against an enemy like the Cossacks. They had a reputation amongst the locals as ruthless fighters, without equal in close combat. Their numbers had been thinned, but Abdi's knees still shook as the Cossacks closed the distance. 30 metres. Abdi fixed his bayonet. 25 metres. He dug his feet firmly into the ground. 15 metres. He braced himself. 5 metres. He could see the steely blue eyes of the Cossack before him. And all of a sudden Abdi was on his back. He should've thrust the bayonet into the horse or its rider. Instead, he had froze, and had been pushed aside by the beast. Abdi's comrades frantically attacked the steppe warriors. Whilst there had been an orderly frontline before, the battle degenerated into a tooth and nail struggle. Some of the Cossacks dismounted, and villagers burst out of their tiny dwellings to aid the Turks. Some were just teenage boys, armed with little knives. They were cut down mercilessly by moustachio'd Cossacks. Some of the Cossacks were no more than teenagers too. But they battled with ferocity like Abdi had never seen. It was a bloodbath, Abdi's comrades having their arms, legs chopped off by Cossack sabres. Hamid was decapitated as he tried to flee. Abdi's got to his feet, and shoved his bayonet into the side of a Cossack soldier. He was bigger than Abdi, but as the soldier turned to see his killer, Abdi could tell that the hairless face was just a boy. No older than Aslan.

Trumpets sounded in the air, barely noticed in the brutal fighting. The trumpets announced the arrival of the reinforcements, Chechyns from a village in the next valley. They rode in on ponies, rushing into the melee. The Cossacks were tough, but now they were outnumbered, and the mountain folk were hardy men, sinewy, but strong. The remained Cossacks were routed, as the situation became increasingly hopeless for them. Many were shot in the back as they ran.

After the battle, the Turks had lost 48 men killed, another 63 wounded. Most of the wounded wouldn't make it. Their wounds became gangrenous and the infections killed them. They had to dump them deep into the forest, since the ground was too frozen to dig graves, and the villagers didn't want the wolves anywhere near their goat herds. The Cossacks' dead horses would feed the local dogs for a while. Abdi's unit was supposed to go home soon. But the presence of Cossacks in the area necessitated their stay a bit longer. A Cossack who had been taken prisoner told the C.O. that his band had been forced into this area by the Bolsheviks, who were sweeping south. Most of his host, the Kuban Cossacks, had fled into the Ukraine, but his band tried fleeing into the mountains. Abdi wondered to himself how long he'd be stuck here. It wouldn't have been so bad if he had a woman, but they all had such bad teeth here. And he couldn't stop thinking of Sabiha. And his newest son. He'd be born soon. He would name him Hamid.


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The years following the Great War was a turbulent time for the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Although the victory of the Gemeinsame Armee bolstered Austrian, and to an extent Hungarian, support of the Hapsburg monarchy, a variety of pressure groups and social movements arose in the 1920s. Austro-Hungarian politics became increasingly polarised between left-wing radicals and right-wing nationalists, all of which were interested in the overthrow of the monarchy. In the cities of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, the increasing urban proletariat, largely composed of Slavs, was becoming more attracted to communist ideology, with it's guarantee of political power for the workers and ethnic equality within the Empire. The communists advocated for the overthrow of the monarchy and the establishment of a communist 'Danubian Socialist Federation'. Whilst the socialist movements in Austria-Hungary were diverse, the most influential communist leader, at least initially, was the journalist-turned-activist Kun Béla, who led the Communist Party of Hungary (Kommunisták Magyarországi Pártja). The KMP was popular in Budapest and Pecs, but given it's focus on the urban proletariat, which in Hungary was very small, combined with it's failure to win over nationalist workers in Croatia, meant that it was soon eclipsed by the Czech labour movement. This movement became far more important due to the socio-economic circumstances affecting the Czech lands in the early 1920s. Due to the free-trade agreement signed in 1920 between Germany and Austria-Hungary, German goods flooded into the Empire. By contrast, only certain Bohemian industries, such as artillery production, flourished. Bohemian goods performed poorly in the German market, with the exception of certain goods having popularity amongst the German upper-class. Overall, the free-trade agreement was a net loss for the Czech workers, and the situation was exacerbated by the continued influx of Slovak and Moravian workers. Whilst this briefly bolstered Bohemian industry, as competition by the lower classes for jobs meant lower wages and therefore the ability of firms to lower prices whilst keeping profit margins intact, increasing product competitiveness, this soon gave way to agitation by workers in Bohemia. They signed up to socialist trade unions en masse. But socialism in Bohemia-Moravia was very different from Hungarian communism. Czech socialism was focused on distributism, which was based on Catholic social teaching, and proposed that property was a right, but which should be distributed as equally as possible. This contrasted with Kun's party, which believed in the abolition of private property. Czech socialism extended this principle to include a form of worker's self-management, where factory workers would have shares in their employing company, which was supposed to provide a higher standard-of-living, more political clout and preventing the creation of a wealth gap. Czech socialists felt that by equalising economic power, they would be able to create unions which promoted class collaboration, rather than creating perpetual conflict by following the doctrine of class struggle. Unlike American distributists, however, Czech distributists favoured the creation of a welfare system.
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The urban radical left was counteracted by the increased assertiveness of the nationalistic right, active amongst the largely agrarian minorities, such as the Romanians, Croats, Slovaks and Serbs. The Croato-Serb Coalition continued to be the most important of these. Ironically, although the Austro-Hungarians annexed Serbia in an attempt to extinguish the biggest threat to the territorial integrity of the Empire, they in fact added a large, radical, sympathetic powerbase to the Yugoslav national movement. Within the movement, there was tension between ultra-nationalist Croatian and Serbian elements, but the vast majority of 'Yugoslavists' were in favour of a political federation between the Serbs, Croats, Montenegrins and Slovenes. Additionally, Yugoslavists called for the reunification of Dalmatia and Croatia. The activities of Yugoslavists were largely limited to Croatia and Bosnia until the late 1920s, due to the military's repression of Pan-Slavism in Serbia and Montenegro. Yugoslavist politics was an unusual synthesis of peasant politics and classical nationalism, influenced by the Illyrianism of the 19th century.

Nationalist politics also became an increasingly large factor in Transylvania, where the Romanian majority desired union with Romania, but the Szekler Hungarian minority, which was more economically powerful, preferred remaining part of the Kingdom of Hungary. The largest, most politically dominant party in Transylvania was the Romanian National Party, which was also the ruling party in Romania. The RNP in Transylvania and Banat worked for greater representation of the Romanian majority, which had few political rights, since voting in the Transylvanian Diet was restricted by wealth, which was only held by Hungarians and a small Romanian elite. These demands would be granted in the 'Danube Spring' of 1929.

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The flag used by Yugoslav pan-nationalists
 
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