Minimalist Masaryk plan and implementation for post-WWI Czechoslovak state

[raharris1973]

What if Masaryk, the father of Czechoslovakia, leads the Czechslovak national movement in a flurry of minimalist realism/conservatism and gets the movement to follow the course below when outlining its goals for an independent state after the dissolution of the Austro-Hungarian empire?

Masaryk determines that a Czechoslovak state should have borders designed to contain an absolute minimum possible German, Hungarian, Polish, and Ruthene populations even if this shrinks the market size, infrastructure, and certain desirable terrain features of the newborn state.

The rationale is a Czech state emerging from under a Germanic dynasty for the first time in 400 years since the Jagiellonian inheritance is pretty remarkable, and aproudly and purely slavic identified Czechoslovak state not vassalized to the German HRE for the first time in the 1,000 years, and harkening back to the old days of Great Moravia is more remarkable still. The neighbors of the Czechoslovak people are Germans, Poles, Ruthenes, and Hungarians, all, or nearly all, more numerous and certainly with longer continuous histories of statehood, and pride in that statehood, who would resent having their nationals governed by a new kid on the block Czechoslovak. Masaryk reasons that this inevitable resentment of the neighbors on all sides, that would come if Czechoslovakia is to claim *all* the territory of the Bohemia Crownlands, Upper Hungary, and Teschen, for example, is a deadly threat to Czechoslovakian national security and even viability. Deadliier, even, than not having mountain ridges on the border, having potential trade barriers imposed on the fringes of Bohemia and Moravia, losing the Teschen rail connection and coal mine, etc.

So having determined that only the continguous Czech and Slovak districts of the Austro-Hungarian empire, and the cities and enclaves within them, are desired, the Czechoslovaks forego historical-geographic claims to all of the historic Bohemian crown land.

It would have the borders shown, inspired by the rump Czecho-Slovak republic after the Munich settlement, but in this ATL they are not the rump territory after Prague is forced to concede territories, rather this is how the state is built from the beginning:

and a close-up:



Czechoslovakia is established in these more conservative boundaries, but otherwise, the postwar treaties are virtually identical to OTL. So at St. Germain, the Austrian Republic simply has all the contiguous majority German-speaking districts of Bohemia and Moravia attached to it. (An Austria extending beyond the old archduchy is not unprecedented - hence, the Austrian republic got Burgenland from Hungary on linguistic grounds) At Trianon, Hungary has the majority Magyar-speaking southern districts of Slovakia, and the Carpatho-Ukraine left with it. Teschen is left to Poland.

Since the Entente is following the rule that no defeated power can *gain* territory, the Sudetenland becomes another one of those odd, League of Nations supervised jurisdictions like the Free City of Danzig, Memelland/Klapeida, and Fiume. This Sudetenland consists of the majority German-speaking districts of western and northern Bohemia and Moravia. Since some of the Moravian districts are not entirely contiguous, the Entente dictates that Germany sacrifice a few districts of Silesia to provide territorial corridor between German Moravia and German Bohemia.

The name for the territory is the "Free District Bohemia-Moravia", or Freier Bezirk Bohmen-Mahren. It may get a nickname in english of Bohemoravia. I also thought of Free County of Bohemia Moravia or Sudetenland, but I don't think they had a Count.

Anyway, other than in this altered Czechoslovakia, there is a butterfly net slapped over the world through the rest of the 1920s and into the 1930s through the Nazi takeover of Germany and the night of the long knives. How do the alliances and diplomacy of the middle and late 1930s play out without the Sudetenland issue?

I imagine Czechoslovakia would seek western (French) guarantees, but could accept or proclaim a neutral status if that fails. I also imagine, that because of its small size, it may offer and promote customs unions with neighbors, above all, Bohemoravia, but possibly also Austria and Hungary, because of their historic role as markets for Czech-Bohemian manufactures. I don't know if any of these neighbors could *get over themselves* and accept the offers however.

See the attached poll question.

 

[heraclius]

This could also be linked up to a more generous post-WW 1 settlement , again centred on ethnic self-determination grounds (and so pushed by President Wilson as aligned to his 'Fourteen Points' declaration for the post-War treaties) for Hungary in 1919-20. Hungary gets the ethnically Magyar area of what in OTL becomes Czechoslovakia around, and including, Bratislava - which under its pre-1918 Hungarian name of Pressburg had been the capital of the non-Ottoman section of Hungary which the Habsburgs held pre-1686 (when the Ottomans held most of Hungary directly or indirectly, from the battle of Mohacs in 1526 onwards) and of all Hungary under their rule after the 1685-7 Christian reconquest. The Hungarians post-1919 thus get to keep the North bank of the Danube and Slovakia is about two-thirds of its OTL size, either as a separate state from the Czech one or else as an even smaller and less important sub-region of the latter which has less weight in the Czechoslovak Parliament as fewer MPs - and thus has more than OTL irredentist aims in the 1930s which push its nationalists to ally with the Nazis for a break-up of Czechoslovakia.

A larger and more ethnically complete Hungary , though still minus the Hungarian community in NW Romania and the Banat so still likely to ally with Germany for a treaty revision in 1939, is thus less of a potential disrupter of the 1919-20 settlement, and is more likely to ally with Czechoslovakia (or a smaller Czech state with no Slovakian constituent) as they have no quarrel with each other on their frontier and both are wary of Slovakian expansionists/ nationalists and of Romania. The Czechs would also have no 'natural' frontiers in the Carpathians to defend themselves against a resurgent Germany post-1933 and would have a smaller industrial region to manufacture guns , tanks and aircraft, and so need local allies more desperately with a larger Hungary a potential ally if its rearmament is accepted by the 1918 Allies post-1933 as a cheaper way to rein in Hitler in the East. But for this to succeed at all, we need to butterfly away France's outright hostility to a larger Hungary , and to keep French influence in the 1919-20 treaties restricted. Perhaps by a different 'facts on the ground dictate the results of the post-War treaties in the region' scenario - ie less chaos in Hungary in 1919-20 and no civil war or need for the Romanian army to march in and help the conservatives overthrow the Communist Bela Kun regime.

This could be possible if the Count Karoly regime post-Nov 1918 does not collapse, with a resulting Communist coup and the major threat of Bolshevik aid to the latter; a difficult TL, but possible if the conservative and moderate republicans in Hungary work together in 1918-19 to stave off a social revolution -under stronger Allied military guidance and economic help, led by a more interested Britain as a way of shoring up anti-Communist forces in the region to help the White Russians in the Russian civil war. This would need firm UK and US reining in of the French, though, and possibly a less hostile Allied attitude to the Habsburgs as factors for stability in Hungary - easier if there is verifiable documentary proof in Vienna for them that Emperor-King Charles tried to persuade the Germans to open negotiations once the final 1918 German offensive had stalemated (but was ignored) and/or he went ahead and opened his own channel to the Allies in Aug - Sep 1918, with or without help from an equally alarmed Ferdinand of Bulgaria as the Bulgarians faced collapse on the Salonika front. The Emperor is known for having tried to save his state from collapse by getting an armistice in summer - early autumn 1918 and being ignored by Germany, or even threatened by the German High Command or a furious Wilhelm; so he is more popular and less of a scapegoat (but would need to be more forceful than in OTL, possibly pushed by alarmed generals who warn him in summer 1918 of impending catastrophe). Would the Sixtus of Bourbon-Parma plan and/or help from the Papacy serve as a way of AH approaching the Allies earlier - and so making Lloyd George and Wilson more sympathetic to him, if only as a local front-man for fending off Bolshevik meddling with his troops after the War ends?
The French might still insist that Charles had to lose both his thrones as a War belligerent and republican riots in Vienna and anti-Habsburg feeling in Budapest from angry ex-soldiers and the poor make this essential, with Allied press anger at keeping a 'Hun ally' on his throne a threat which UK and US politicians were nervous about so they had to offer Charles up as a scapegoat to the media magnates. But the Allies later get alarmed at the threat of civil war and Bolshevik invasion in Hungary after a chaotic 'famine winter' in 1918-19 and local anger at Hungary losing Transylvania to Allied state Romania, and insist that another Habsburg (eg a senior Archduke - Joseph?), not the unreliable Admiral Horthy, be put in charge of a regency in Budapest in 1919 or 1920 to cement a conservative coalition. A stable Hungarian leadership under an internat-recognised figure, eg a Hasburg, would also help to tempt banks to loan money to keep the govt in Budapest functioning and pay its troops, and keep the Hungarian army from staging a revolt, turning ultra-nationalist, and trying to fight Romania over their frontier. France would be fobbed off with the excuse 'we need this to stabilise the East against a Bolshevik invasion to aid civil unrest in Hungary', and with the new states created in Poland and Yugoslavia and their armies backing it Clemenceau has to settle for a larger role in Germany as compensation.

So would we get a less irredentist Hungary and a still viable if weaker (and less evenly split for governance between the Czech and Slovak parties) Czech state in the 1920s and 1930s out of all this? And no excuse for Hitler to break up the existing Czech state by demands of 'give us the German areas or we take them anyway as our rightful Germanic inheritance' in 1938, just German annexation of any autonomous small Germanic areas on the Czech frontier that were not kept as part of Germany but given League of Nations guarantees in 1919/20? The League is humiliated and shown as toothless and so ae the UK and France for not standing up for it, but there is no serious 'Czech crisis' in 1938 - the crunch comes when Hitler invades the rump Czech state in 1939.