Treaty of Saint-Germain-en-Laye
The Treaty of Saint-Germain-en-Laye was signed and made known on September 10, 1919 between the allied powers that won the First World War and Austria. it definitively established the dismemberment of the old Habsburg monarchy, the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and in its place the Republic of Austria was recognized as a "successor state", which was limited to some areas where only German was spoken.
Circumstances: discussions between the Allies and situation of the Austrian delegation
All the great victorious powers in World War I—France, Great Britain, and the United States—with the exception of Italy considered Austria of minor importance in the drafting of peace treaties, and concentrated on the one they wanted to impose on Austria. Germany to ensure that it could never again pose a danger to peace in Europe. This lack of interest meant that the draft treaty presented to the Austrian delegation was almost a carbon copy of the one delivered to the German delegation. The powers paid no attention. to the Austrian treaty until the end of April 1919, when they had already agreed on the wording of the treaty with Germany.
While the Germans were studying the draft handed over to them by the Allies, the Allies invited the Austrian delegation to come to Paris on May 12 to discuss the clauses of their own document.
On the 4th of the same month, the allied prime ministers agreed to include in the German and Austrian treaties a clause that effectively prevented the union of the two nations, since it required the permission of the League of Nations to carry it out and, since the decision required the unanimity of the member countries and was strongly opposed by France, it amounted to a ban.
The Austrian delegation, led by Socialist Chancellor Karl Renner, arrived in Saint-Germain-en-Laye, a town outside Paris on May 14. It was accompanied by members of the other two main Austrian parties (the Christian Social and the pan-German) and a large retinue of experts and representatives from the provinces. After some delay, Georges Clemenceau informed Renner that the draft peace treaty would be presented to him on the 30th. Later, the date was pushed back. to June 2.
The Supreme War Council discussed the war reparations it wished to impose on the nations arising from the breakup of the Austro-Hungarian Empire at its session on 22 May. Despite doubts about the ability to spend large sums of money As a payment for war compensation from the affected States, the Allied leaders maintained the demand for collection —partly due to the pressure of public opinion in their countries— and created a special section of the general commission dedicated to war compensation to calculate the amount that should correspond to each one. On May 26 and at Italian insistence, it was decided that Austria would be treated as an enemy country, as Germany was being, and no talks would be held with the experts of the Austrian delegation. All communication between it and the Allies would be done through notes.
On May 29, the person in charge of reviewing the accreditation of the different delegations, Jules Cambon, told the Austrian delegates that the Allies had decided to accept theirs as representatives of the "Republic of Austria", although the official name of the new country was the Republic of German Austria - a name that the rest of the countries that emerged from the dismemberment of the Austro-Hungarian Empire rejected outright. Austrian hopes of being able to negotiate the conditions of the peace treaty were frustrated and the delegation barely managed to maintain some contacts Official meetings with representatives of the victorious powers. Thanks to these, the Austrians learned that the Italians took the annexation of South Tyrol for granted and that they probably could not carry out the long-awaited union with Germany.
Presentation of the draft and Austrian reaction
At the plenary session on June 2 and as announced, the Austrian delegation received the draft of the treaty with the clauses that were already ready. In Chancellor Renner's speech, he tried to present his country as a new nation that should be treated the same as the rest of those that emerged from the disappeared empire and not as its successor. The harsh conditions contained in the received document did not surprise the Austrians, who rushed to prepare their response. Renner He returned to Austria to deal with his co-religionists Karl Seitz —President of the National Assembly— and Otto Bauer —Minister of Foreign Affairs— and draw up a strategy against the Allies. They decided not to accept the prohibition of the union with Germany —they thought that this The possibility and threat of the communists taking power could allow them to obtain better terms in the final drafting of the treaty—and to try to get Italy to renounce the annexation of the South Tyrol. On the other hand, they accepted the loss of the Bohemian territories with German populations.
Bauer failed in his negotiations with the Italians, who were opposed to ceding one of the few territories they had obtained at the peace conference of all those promised during the war. Due to this serious setback and his poor relations with the allied representatives with whom he believed he could not get along, Bauer resigned on July 25.
On the economic clauses, the delegation decided to focus on those that posed a direct threat to the country's finances and limit itself to making an official protest about the rest. Convinced that Austria could never pay the huge war reparations stipulated in the draft of the treaty - in fact, it never paid anything - and that public opinion in France and Italy would be opposed to making concessions in that area, the delegation concentrated on other more practical aspects.
Meanwhile, discussions continued between the allied representatives about the financial aspects of the treaty, which had not yet been fixed: the payment of the debt of the defunct empire and that of war compensation. For the first, it was decided that each country that had obtained imperial territory would take over a part of the debt that dated from before the hostilities, proportional to the income that said territorial portion contributed to the imperial finances before the war. The debt accumulated during the war was distributed differently: the bulk was attributed to Hungary and Austria. The Austrians requested that, in exchange for the Allies and the rest of the splinter states being granted most-favored-nation status as required, Austria would also do so. It was for these countries. They also asked that the properties of companies based in Vienna that were in the territories of the disappeared empire not be confiscated. their last request was granted.
On August 6, the period established for the Austrian allegations ended and the Allies returned to resume the drafting of the peace treaty.
Characteristics of the treaty
This treaty recognized the complete independence of the Kingdom of Hungary as an autonomous state and the creation of the new states of Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia, both based on former territories of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Thus, the Republic of Czechoslovakia was formed by the regions of Bohemia, Moravia, and southern Silesia (formerly Austrian possessions), along with Slovakia (formerly dependent on the kingdom of Hungary). On the other hand, Austria lost sovereignty over Slovenia, Bosnia, Herzegovina, and Dalmatia, which passed to the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes, to which the regions of Croatia and Vojvodina (expossessions of the Hungarian kingdom) also joined. The treaty also included the holding of a plebiscite in the southern regions of Carinthia, partly populated by Slovenes.
It was also established that Austria lost sovereignty over Trentino, South Tyrol, Trieste, Istria, various islands and ports in Dalmatia and Friuli, which were integrated into the Kingdom of Italy. The former Austrian province of Galicia passed to Poland. Independent Hungary itself would cede Transylvania, part of the Banat, and the province of Bucovina to Romania, something that was finalized in the Treaty of Trianon, while the Burgenland region passed to Austria.
An important clause of the treaty was to impose a prohibition on revising or revoking the independence of Austria, this in order to prevent any kind of political or economic union with Germany (or Anschluss), without the authorization of the League of Nations, since after the dissolution of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, Austrian public opinion openly debated the possibility of agreeing to a unification agreement with the Weimar Republic, taking advantage of the common language and a similar cultural heritage, as well as the situation of "countries expired". Even in January 1919 various Austrian republican politicians had advocated that the country be called Deutsch-Österreich or "Austria-Germana" to differentiate itself from its Slavic and Magyar neighbors, but France and Great Britain prohibited this plan and demanded that the Republic of Austria remove from its name all words referring to its Germanness.
The Treaty of Trianon, signed later between the allies and Hungary, completes the process of dismemberment of the Austro-Hungarian Empire.
With this treaty, half of the twelve million inhabitants of the Empire who were German-speaking were left out of the new Republic of Austria, as were the ethnic Germans in the Sudetenland region of Czechoslovakia, in the Tyrol region South with capital Bolzano (now subjects of Italy), and some German-speaking communities in Hungary and Romania (especially the Transylvanian Saxons). This permanence of German-speakers outside of Austria caused problems in those countries with ethnic minorities made up of ethnic Germans that were later a pretext for the Third Reich for World War II. Bohemian and Moravian Germans were integrated into Czechoslovakia.
The disintegration of the Austro-Hungarian Empire caused tensions and difficulties among the new nations stemming from the old Empire. Austria itself was reduced to a territory of 80,000 km² (almost 25% of its former size) with a population of about six million, a third of whom lived in Vienna, which became a capital " very big for such a small country" while the Austrian territory proper could not financially support such an extensive capital; Vienna itself lost population and economic power as a result; In addition, the greatest industrial expansion of the Empire was in Bohemia and its food supply depended on the agriculture of Hungary, both territories now being outside Austrian sovereignty, which caused an acute economic depression when the potential sources of wealth for the Republic suddenly disappeared. from Austria. To make matters worse, the active Austrian maritime trade was cut short as all the merchant ports were found under Italian or Yugoslav sovereignty, which would cause doubts until 1925 about the same "economic viability" of Austria, suddenly transformed from a powerful empire to a fragile republic.
Austria was also forced to pay war reparations—in an amount not indicated in the treaty—and to reduce its army to just thirty thousand soldiers, in addition to handing over to the allies the Austrian concession in Tientsin, China. The properties in allied territory were confiscated, but the same did not happen with those that remained in the countries that arose from the distribution of the imperial territory. The allied commission dedicated to war compensation was in charge of stipulating the amount of these and setting terms of payment, and could change both at will. It could also impose economic laws on Austria to ensure payment. In practice, the commission was charged with restoring the Austrian economy, in theory with the aim that the country was able to pay the compensations imposed by the Allies.
Acceptance
The Austrian National Assembly finally approved the peace treaty on September 6, despite lodging a formal protest. It was signed on September 10, in a plenary session of the peace conference.
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