Hold on to your hats!
Epilogue
Near post-war - Europe
The war was over. The Empire and the rest of the world were once more on the road to lasting peace. But it would not be a peaceful trip. Many pitfalls to world peace existed in the months and years immediately following the Far East Armistice of October 1, 1944, and it seemed as every difficulty resolved by the international community simply created another that needed to be addressed. As the largest player upon the stage of international diplomacy, the British Empire found itself involved in some way with every major crisis, a role that some within the Empire found troublesome but many felt appropriate and befitting the Empire’s stature. These international crises, rightly so, have been categorized into five distinct groups, European affairs, Eurasian affairs, African affairs, Far Eastern affairs and Western Hemisphere affairs.
With the completion of the ceding and annexation of territories as outlined in the Italian Peace of 1941 and the Kuressaare Accords of 1942, Europe found itself a seething diplomatic cauldron of diplomatic intrigue. In response to French attempts to exploit Austria and Hungary in a similar manner to their exploitation of northern Italy in 1941 and had also opening conducted pro-republican and anti-monarchist espionage operations in Italy, republican Paris being very uncomfortable with a Royal Italy, the aforementioned nations sought assistance from the other European nations. Austria petitioned to Berlin and London to join the restored
Kaiserreich of
Kaiser Wilhelm Friedrich I, a move similar to one taken a generation before at the end of the Great War, the governing council of Hungary demanded a multi-national occupation rather than an Anglo-French occupation and Italy officially protested to all the Western powers over the French activities. In response to the rising tensions, which included a mobilisation and deployment of the still reforming German
Kaiserlich Deutsches Heer (Imperial German Army) to the German border with France and Austria, a move that not only surprised most within the European community but showed the extent that the young Kaiser was willing to go in support of his German cousins in Austria, London called for a European conference to be held at the Hague with all the European nations attending. As many of the nations in Eastern Europe were still struggling with their economies, the Empire in a magnanimous gesture offered to transport any delegation in to the Netherlands, an offer taken by many of the nations.
Called into session on January 15, 1945, The Hague Conference of 1945 was attended by every European nation including the neutral Spain and Greece. Despite the Conference being called at the insistence of London, it was the French that initially drove the direction of the conference. Paris, for obvious reasons, was very disturbed by the restoration of the German
Kaiserreich and the impact upon European diplomacy accounted to the new German Emperor. It is therefore understandable that the French opened the conference attempting to equate the restored
Kaiserreich with the rise of National Socialism in the 1930s and making demands that the Kuressaare Accords being dismissed and that a new treaty be drawn up with provisions more similar to those found within the Versailles Treaty, including a complete disarming of Germany in light of the unprovoked mobilisation of the
Kaiserlich Deutsches Heer. They also demanded that as had been provisioned in the Treaty of Saint-Germain-en-Laye in 1919 and followed by the Versailles Treaty, that Austria be prohibited from joining with Germany regardless of the results of the Austrian plebiscites. Moving past the dispute with the Germans the French demanded that the Conference award to France the administration of occupied Hungary for a period of five years without assistance from the British Empire, and that Italy undertake a plebiscite on the status of the Italian monarchy.
Despite French and Anglophobe allegations to the contrary, Imperial diplomats had very little to do with the reaction of the rest of the Conference’s delegations. In fact, with the sad state of Franco-European relations that had began deteriorating at the beginning of the war, it came as a surprise only to Paris that the delegations from the other nations, led by the Scandinavian delegations, quickly and unequivocally refused to endorse the French demands. Instead the Conference, again led by the Scandinavians, prepared a settlement that was very favorable to the four aggrieved nations. A settlement that would prove to sour the already embittered relations between France and the majority of Europe. As more than one commentator commented, the atmosphere of victory at the Hague Conference was far different than the atmosphere of victory at Versailles a quarter century previously.
Within three days of discussions decisions began to be rendered in the various disputes, decisions that would have great historical impact for many years. The first of these decisions dealt directly with Austria’s petition. Much to the indignant outrage of the French, the prohibitions of the Saint-Germain-en-Laye and Versailles treaties against Austria were lifted by the Conference delegates, a move which led directly to a second
Anschluss in May of 1945. The House of Savoy and the Italian government was also treated agreeably in the settlement determined by the Conference determined and agreed that the make up of the Italian government was an internal matter to be determined by Italy alone. The Conference, far from subtly pointing an accusing finger toward the French, also imposed an immediate ban upon international funding of any political groups within Italy, the violation of said ban resulting it sanctions upon the offending nation. By July 1945 nearly all but the most rabid republican political parties within Italy had faded away and the July 16 referendum found the 74% of Italians supporting the continued reign of King Umberto II, and the continuation of the rule of Italy by the House of Savoy was assured for years to come.
The settlement constructed at the Hague Conference of 1945 also presented Hungary with an important victory. The Hungarian High National Council was, instead of being granted their request of a multi-national occupation rather than an Anglo-French occupation, awarded an occupation by the British Army to last no more than six months from the conclusion of the Conference. The High National Council was also granted the right to dispose of Regent Miklós Horthy and the pre-war government as deemed best by the Hungarians and to determine for itself the structure of Hungary’s government. To the outrage of the French and the disquiet of Hungary’s southern neighbors, the High National Council immediately released Horthy from imprisonment and returned him to his role as Regent. The restored Regent and the High National Coucil, to the surprise of the European community, then elevated forty-four year old Prince Paul of the House of Esterházy (Pál Maria Alois Antal Miklós Victor) to the throne of Hungary as the Apostolic King of Hungary, Paul I. With King Paul’s coronations (the tri-parte process mandated by Hungarian tradition that was a coronation by the Archbishop of Esztergom, followed by a coronation with the Holy Crown of Hungary and finally a coronation in Székesfehérvár) in December 1945 Hungary was no longer a “kingdom without a king” and another monarchy was re-established in Europe.
The last of the nations to be addressed in the settlement of The Hague Conference, Imperial Germany, had demanded nor asked for anything other than an upholding of the Kuressaare Accords. Rapidly recovering following the young
Kaiser’s crowning and the successful trial and execution of Herr Hitler, Berlin proudly announced that the agreed to one billion
Reichsmark reparation payments to the members of the Western Alliance was ahead of schedule for initial payments to begin by September 1945 instead of the Accords’ stipulated date of January 1946. Detractors of the Conference and its outcomes have through the years hinted that the announcement was little more than a subtle bribe delivered by Berlin to the attending delegates, a bribe bankrolled not by the
Kaiserreich’s
Deutsche Reichsbank but by the Empire’s Bank of England. The fact that the Berlin allowed independent audit of the
Deutsche Reichsbank’s accounts in 1946 disproved the rumor has not dispelled the conspiracy theorists efforts to hold the rumor true. One way or another, however, with Austria’s demand being granted and the Kuressaare Accords being officially endorsed by the Conference, Berlin received all that was sought and more. Bluntly put, the actions and pronouncements of the Conference simply reinforced the
de facto relations between Berlin, London and the Scandinavian nations following the coronation of Wilhelm Friedrich I, i.e. that the
Kaiserreich was a valuable and viable member of the European community of nations.
The Conference also clarified for the world some of the uncertainty regarding the other nations of Europe that had been directly impacted by the war. One of the first nations to take the stage at the Conference was Switzerland, who announced that despite being forced into the Western Alliance by the naked aggression of Nazi Germany and the July 1940 invasion of the small nation by Germany, with the conclusion of the war being reached a return to strict neutrality in international affairs. Poland, despite a transfer of territorial borders that shifted the nation to the east, politically was rather unchanged from the pre-war days. The Government of the Republic of Poland in Exile, having had returned to Warsaw upon its liberation by the British Army, led by President Władysław Raczkiewicz and Prime Minister Władysław Sikorski had begun the work of returning Poland to sovereignty, turning over provinces to Imperial Germany and integration of the nation’s new eastern provinces into Poland, and by the time of the Hague Conference had settled into comfortable relationship with both Germany and the majority of the Baltic Republics and the Republic of Ukraine which had been created under the Saaremaa Declaration in 1942.. Diplomatically Poland was in the midst of three tense relationships, two as a result of the Saaremaa Declaration and the third as a result of the determination of the Kuressaare Accords. As was to be expected, relations between Poland and Lithuania continued to be problematic over the question of the Suwałki Region and the lands around Vilnius (Wilno to the Poles) and would continue to do so for many years to come. It was, however, the tense relations caused by the Saaremaa Declaration that were the most troubling. Just as it was expected that relations between Poland and Lithuania would be problematic, tension between the Russian Provisional Government and Poland was expected given Poland’s assistance in the creation of the Republic of Ukraine and Warsaw’s continued call for the ceding for ethnically Ukrainians lands further to the east from Russia to the new Ukraine. The other nation Poland had less than firm relations with was the British Empire, a direct result of the Empire’s lack of support of Poland’s call for the creation of Ukraine during the treaty conference in Kuressaare.
The remaining Baltic Republics, Latvia and Estonia, had found their footing following the return of self-rule and found their economies growing through health trade with not only Finland, Sweden and Poland but also Germany, Denmark and Great Britain.
The Kingdom of Romania attended the Conference as firm British ally since the Anglo-Romanian Treaty of 1941, a fact that has no doubt helped by the familial relations between Michael I and George VI and the close working relationship that had developed between the Romanian Prime Minister, General Constantin Sănătescu and the Empire’s Prime Minister, Sir Winston Churchill. In light of the assistance provided by the Romanian Army against the Red Army of the Communist Russia, the provisions of the Anglo-Romanian Treaty were ratified by the rest of the Western Alliance, with the French refusing to cast a vote in the matter, a fact that would cool Franco-Romanian relations for several years. Romanian’s southern neighbor, the Kingdom of Bulgaria, under the leadership of the Regent’s Council for Tsar Simeon II, led by the young Tsar’s uncle
Knyaz (Prince) Kyril and Prime Minister Georgi Ivanov, despite very cordial relations with the British Empire, had following the war drifted once more into the neutrality advocated by Simeon II’s Communist assassinated father, Tsar Boris III. At The Hague Conference, while the Bulgarians remained officially neutral by refusing to join the Western Alliance, several regional agreements were made between the Tsar’s diplomats that would in years later provide the ground work for greater interaction between Romania and the West.
The last three Kingdoms of Europe, the Hellenic Monarchy of Greece, the Albanian Kingdom and the Kingdom of Yugoslavia, all arrived to the Hague Conference of 1945 in varying states and each left the conference in better position than in the months prior. Of the three, George II’s Hellenic Monarchy of Greece, the most unscathed by the war in Europe due to having maintained strict neutrality throughout the war against Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia, only attended the Conference as a matter of maintaining a continuing a presence in diplomatic circles of Europe. However, due to Greece’s unique geo-political position astride East and West, by the end of the Conference, the Hellenic Monarchy found itself as the undisputed focal point of diplomatic relations between the West, the Balkans and the Turks. The Albanian Kingdom, forcibly annexed by Italy in March 1939, and liberated from Italian occupation following the Imperial invasion of southern Italy in May 1941, had seethed in internal discord following the return of King Zog 1 to the capital in 1942. After months of squashing the clans that had risen up against his own Mati tribe during the interregnum between the withdrawal of Italian troops and his own return to the country, Zog had successfully re-established his control over the nation and by 1943 had in addition to the close relations enjoyed by the Empire, added ties to Greece and Yugoslavia. By the start of the Conference tentative relations had once more been established with Italy, and the Albanian delegation arrived to The Hague to obtain not concessions from Italy, as many expected, but investment agreements with the West.
Yugoslavia, or more properly the Kingdom of Yugoslavia and the French puppet state of northern Yugoslavia, the Federal Republic of Croat-Slovenia, was one of two European nations that were, at the time of the Conference, undergoing struggles determining their futures. In April of 1941 the office of French Foreign Minister Georges-Étienne Bonnet informed the British Foreign Secretary that the Slovenian and Croatian area of northern Yugoslavia was being annexed by France until such time that Paris could ensure that a valid national plebiscite could be undertake to determine if King Peter II and Prince Paul Karađorđević as Regent would be returned to power in Belgrade or if the monarchy would be replaced by a democratic government. In September 15, 1941 the French released the aforementioned territories to the newly created state called the Federal Republic of Croat-Slovenia. The former Yugoslavia, by this time containing troops from the Empire, France, Germany, Hungary and Romania as well as Yugoslav partisans, was rife with strife, however, it was only after the only troops left within the country were from France an the armed partisans did events descend into near anarchy. With the French openly supporting the Yugoslav Partisans operating in the north, royalist
Chetniks operating in the south, clandestinely supported by the Empire as well as the Bulgarians and Romanians, and radical communist groups operating throughout the region, the Balkans were in greater turmoil than in the years immediately following the end of the Great War.
By 1943 the
Chetniks, officially known as the Yugoslav Army in the Homeland (made up of survivors of the Royal Yugoslav Army), led by Colonel Dragoljub Mihailović, and thanks in part to the support provided by the British, Bulgarian and Romanian Crowns, were able to successfully consolidate control of the country in all areas south of the “border” with Croat-Slovenia (which had boundaries eerily similar to the pre-Great War Kingdom of Croatia-Slavonia), the majority of the communist bands, led by Josip Broz Tito, being eliminated by either
Chetnicks forces or troops belonging to Croat-Slovenia. The arrival of the young charismatic King Peter II, a veteran of combat operations with the Royal Warwickshire Fusilier Regiment in Russia, and his uncle the Regent Prince Paul in Belgrade in late 1943 tipped the scales. Between Peter II’s insistence on being on the front lines with the troops and the equally fierce assertion of the young king and the Regent in a centralized, federalized, non-ethnic dominated Yugoslav (supported by the appointment of Croats, Montenegrin, Serbs and Slovenes, both Christian and Muslim, into King Peter’s cabinet) brought many moderates within Ante Pavelić’s Federal Republic of Croat-Slovenia to the royalist side. In May 1944 the Royal Yugoslav Army’s 1st Army, led by Mihailović and King Peter and advised by several officers from the British Army successfully crushed the last of Croat-Slovenia’s the Croatian Home Guard troops and
Ustaše militia (akin to Nazi Germany’s
SS, but not
Waffen-SS troops) and regained control of the city of Zagreb. The representatives of the House of Karađorđević (the Royal House of Yugoslavia) arrived in The Hague to pronounce the viability of the restored Kingdom of Yugoslavia and confirm the close diplomatic ties between the Yugoslav monarchy and the British Empire. These ties would, in years to come, only grow stronger as King Peter continued to work hard on turning the outlook of his people to one of Yugoslav rather than multi-ethnicity.
The Hague Conference one surprise came with the arrival of the overly large delegation from Czechoslovakia. As was well documented, before the start of hostilities between Nazi Germany and the rest of Europe,
Herr Hitler had carved up portions of Central Europe, one of the victims being the Czechoslovak Republic. In 1938 Hitler demanded control of the Sudetenland and at the Munich Conference, which the British Empire it will be departed in protest due to the Czechs not being invited, France and the Soviet Unions ceded control while ignoring their military alliance with Czechoslovakia . Less than a year later the remainder, the “rump” of Czechoslovakia was invaded by Nazi Germany and divided into the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia and the puppet Slovak State. Much of Slovakia and all of Subcarpathian Ruthenia were annexed by Hungary, Poland occupied Zaolzie, an area with Polish minority, and Czechoslovakia was no more.
During the years of prior to the occupation, the foundations of the Republic, which had been built during the decline of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, began to erode when Slovaks, feeling oppressed due to the Czech dominated political elite generally disallowing political autonomy for minority ethnic groups, were fueled by the increase of Nazi propaganda, especially in the industrialized German speaking Sudetenland and the more agrarian Slovak dominated east. Despite the efforts of the government proclaiming in the official ideology that there are no Czechs and Slovaks, but only one nation of Czechoslovaks, the rise of tensions only failed to burst because of the dismemberment of the Republic in the Munich Agreement. A unified Czechoslovakia was restored following the arrival of the British Army, and within weeks the conflict between the Czechs and the Slovaks surfaced again, with Czechs supporting the return of the Czechoslovak Government-in-Exile led by President Edvard Beneš and Slovaks supporting Jozef Tiso, a Slovak Roman Catholic priest and politician of the Slovak People's Party who had been appointed by Germany to be the head of the Slovak State, the Nazi Germany puppet state. In the weeks immediately following the return of the Government-in-Exile to Prague there were widespread demonstrations in Bratislava and other Slovak towns, which thanks in large part due to Imperial administration of the region, were distinctly lacking a sort of armed aggression between either the Slovaks or the Czechs. Under the auspices of the British Empire’s desire for a peaceful transition, leaders from both the Czech and Slovak movement met to discuss the options available. Despite many members of the Czech elite, President Beneš among them, being firm Czechoslovakists, the assertion that Slovaks and Czechs were not separate ethnicities, it was agreed that between early medieval times, specifically the 10th Century, and 1918, both Czech lands and Slovak lands were joined only under the dominion of Austria-Hungary, and even then the Czech lands were much closer to Austria and the Slovak lands to Hungary than they were to each other, and as such the 1918 birth of the Czechoslovak Republic was not the re-emergence of a national entity but rather a conglomeration of the two regions as a necessity since neither state was seen as strong enough to become independent from Austria-Hungary alone.
In November 1942 the National Assembly of the Czechoslovak Republic voted for the dissolution of Republic with territory to be divided along the existing internal borders, assets to be divided in a ratio of 2 to 1 (the approximate ratio between the Czech and Slovak population within Czechoslovakia) and the establishment of a new currency for Slovakia, the Slovak koruna. The time table for the dissolution was scheduled to be completed by June of 1945. Elections for the office of President for the newly separated Republics were then scheduled for November 1944. At The Hague Conference in January 1945, the combined Czech/Slovak delegations announced to the European community that as had been expected, former Prime Minister Rudolf Beran had been elected as President of the Czech Republic, Beneš resigning and refusing to run, and Jozef Tiso was elected as President of the Slovak Republic. The two republics and the results of their two elections were immediately recognized by the attending nations at the Conference and the first non-violent dissolution of a nation became fact.
The only nations that attended The Hague Conference of 1945 in a state of disarray were the Provisional State of Russia and the newly minted Republic of Ukraine. For the Ukraine, under the leadership of President Andriy Melnyk, despite the support of Poland and the somewhat tepid support of the Baltic Republics, Hungary, and Romania, and a rich ethnic history, was still after two years of independence, struggling with becoming a viable country. In addition to economic woes, Melnyk’s Ukraine was finding itself beset with internal strife as factions fought over expanding the Republic to include lands still under Russian control or ceding the republic back into Russia as a semi-autonomous region within Russia or simply dissolving the Republic and allowing the region to be annexed by either Poland or Russia. The Provisional State of Russia, for its own part, was in no condition to actively take part in the strife going on within the Ukraine as Moscow itself was still mired in the debate over the future of the nation.
In the former Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, Moscow was awash in debate, similar in nature to what was experienced in St. Petersburg/Leningrad following the February Revolution of 1917. The Provisional Government of 1942 followed in the footsteps of the 1917 Provisional Government in that the body proclaimed authority for managing the situation at the end of the war with the Western Alliance until a more permanent form of government could be established by a Constituent Assembly. The issue for the Russians was who would make up the Constituent Assembly, for under the Moscow Treaty with the Western Alliance the Communist Party which had ran the nation for a generation was not allowed participation in the new government nor the creation of a new government. While many white émigrés flocked to Russia and were eager to build a new Russia from the corpse of Communist Russia, their years away from the Rodina served to put a layer of disconnect and animosity between themselves and the Russians who had remained in Russia. Only the presence of several allied field armies (two British, one Finn and one Norwegian) prevented the start of another Russian Civil War.
Despite being firmly established and very ably running the day to day activities of the country by the spring of 1943, the Provisional Government led by Admiral Nikolay Gerasimovich Kuznetsov and Maxim Maximovich Litvinov had failed to constitute a Constituent Assembly that was acceptable to the various factions within Moscow and the provisions of the Moscow Treaty. In the spring of 1944 the Provisional Government halted all efforts on creating a Constituent Assembly and instead created a Constitutional Committee that was led by Anastas Ivanovich Mikoyan and the white émigré Prince Alexander Georgievich Romanovsky. The Committee was instructed to prepare for a Russian wide referendum possible constitutions for the populace to choose for the new government of Russia. In an eerie turn of events the Committee disclosed the creation of three possible Constitutions on the twenty-seventh anniversary of the October Revolution. The most liberal of the three constitutions called for the establishment of a democratic parliamentary republic with a socialist agenda, the moderate of the three provisioned for the founding of a true republic based upon the republics of Ancient Greece (i.e. the Athenian Golden Age) and the last proposal called for the restoration of the Tsar in a constitutional monarchy that combined features of Germany’s
Kaiserreich and the British Empire’s parliamentary monarchy.
The Russian delegation that arrived in The Hague for the Conference came with a specific request that the national referendum that the Provisional Government scheduled for June 1, 1945, be monitored for legitimacy and security. The ranking members of the delegation, the white émigré Ivan Alexandrovich Ilyin and the former communist Nikolai Alexandrovich Bulganin expressed Moscow’s desire to have the Swiss and the Swedes monitor the referendum while the British, Norwegians and Finns maintained order. The Russian request was readily agreed to by the other Conference attendees, the British, German and Scandinavians all wishing to prevent a repeat of the Bolshevik Revolution while the Swiss simply wanted to ensure that a fair vote was undertaken. The vote took place as scheduled, an attempt by a hardcore Stalinist group to launch a coup being put down by the British Army, with the moderate and royalist constitutions receiving a near equal amount of votes and the socialist constitution losing out. Due to the closeness in the votes between the two chosen constitutions, the Provisional Government called for a second referendum on June 25, the international monitoring of the vote remaining in force. After nearly three weeks of speeches and parades, some of which came close to escalating into violence, the second vote took place and the white émigré supported constitutional monarchy surprisingly was chosen.
The first order of business during the transition of the Provisional Government to the new Crown Government was the calling of a
Zemsky Sobor (roughly meaning “assembly of the land”) with representatives from the returned white émigrés, a Holy
Sobor of the Russian Orthodox Church (a council of bishops and high level laity) and representatives from the middle and working classes in order to elect a new Tsar.
Of the four branches of the Romanov Family (the
Alexandrovichi (descendants of Emperor Alexander II of Russia), the
Konstantinovichi (descendants of Grand Duke Constantine Nicholaevich of Russia), the
Nikolaevichi (descendants of Grand Duke Nicholas Nikolaevich of Russia) and the
Mihailovichi (descendants of Grand Duke Michael Nicolaevich of Russia), Grand Duke Vladimir Cyrillovich of the
Alexandrovichi branch was considered by most to be the Head of the Imperial Family of Russia and logical choice for the Tsar’s crown. However, Vladimir Cyrillovich, along with majority of the other surviving royal princes, were deemed unacceptable to the
Zemsky Sobor because of whisperings of the Romanovs planning a white terror against surviving members of the 1917 Revolution. The Chairman of The Russian All-Military Union (ROVS), General Alexei Petrovich Arkhangelsky, then suggested the possibility of crowning twenty-six year old Bartholomew Nikolayevich Lobiewski. Bartholomew’s father was Grand Duke Nikolay Nikolayevich Romanov, grandson of Nicholas I of Russia through the Tsar’s sixth child and third son, Grand Duke Nicholas Nicolaevich of Russia, and had been considered known as the illegitimate issue of his father and his French mistress Thérèse Lobiewski. The
Zemsky Sobor was swayed to agree with Arkhangelsky’s suggestion when family retainers from within the
Nikolaevichi branch were able to provide sufficient evidence that proved that Bartholomew was in fact the child of the Grand Duke and his wife, Princess Anastasia Petrović-Njegoš of Montenegro.
Nearly fifty years after last such event, the coronation of Bartholomew took place in Moscow on August 10, 1945 with great fanfare. Unlike the May 26, 1896 coronation of Nicholas II, Bartholomew did not crown himself as Tsar of all the Russians but was crowned jointly by Patriarch Alexy I, Admiral Nikolay Kuznetsov as Prime Minister of Imperial Russia and Alexander Ivanovich Konovalov as Chairmen of the State Duma of the Russian Empire, a clear sign that while the Russian monarchy had been restored, the monarchy’s power was not the same as before.
And so resolved the issues within Europe born from the peace of the Great War, were rectified by the peace of The Fourteen Month War of 1939-1941.
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Take a breath... or three. Up next: Eurasia.
