Little Entente

The Little Entente was an alliance formed in 1920 and 1921 by Czechoslovakia, Romania and the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes (Yugoslavia from 1929 on) with the purpose of common defense against Hungarian revisionism and the prospect of a Habsburg restoration in Austria or Hungary. France supported the alliance by signing treaties with each member country. The rapid growth of German power caused its collapse in 1938, and it never went into wartime operation. Hungarian historian Ádám Magda wrote in her study Versailles System and Central Europe (2006): "Today we know that the bane of Central Europe was the Little Entente, military alliance of Czechoslovakia, Romania and Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes (later Yugoslavia), created in 1921 not for Central Europe's cooperation nor to fight German expansion, but in a wrong perceived notion that a completely powerless Hungary must be kept down". The first attempts seeking a mutual defense of the successor states of Austria-Hungary took place during the Paris Peace Conference of 1919. The most remarkable and ardent proponent of the certain alliance binding the successor states was Edvard Beneš, the foreign minister of Czechoslovakia from 1918 to 1935. Beneš played such a crucial role in establishing the Little Entente that he was regarded as its real founder. It also clearly reflected his belief in the necessity to develop democracy in not only Czechoslovakia but also other European states. The obvious aim of his proposed alliance was to prevent the resurgence of Hungarian power and the restoration of the Habsburg monarchy, but its real purpose followed a much broader pattern. The alliance was designed to stop any encroachments on the independence of the member states committed by any European power. Beneš, therefore, intended to gain the respect of Hungary and other powers such as France, Germany and the United Kingdom. In addition, the Little Entente was to strengthen the influence of its member states in international deliberations.

About this result

This page is automatically generated and may contain information that is not correct, complete, up-to-date, or relevant to your search query. The same applies to every other page on this website. Please make sure to verify the information with EPFL's official sources.

Related concepts (10)

Greater Romania

The term Greater Romania (România Mare) usually refers to the borders of the Kingdom of Romania in the interwar period, achieved after the Great Union. It also refers to a pan-nationalist idea. As a concept, its main goal is the creation of a nation-state which would incorporate all Romanian speakers. In 1920, after the incorporation of Transylvania, Bukovina, Bessarabia and parts of Banat, Crișana, and Maramureș, the Romanian state reached its largest peacetime geographical extent ever (295,049 km2).

Collective security

Collective security can be understood as a security arrangement, political, regional, or global, in which each state in the system accepts that the security of one is the concern of all, and therefore commits to a collective response to threats to, and breaches of peace. Collective security is more ambitious than systems of alliance security or collective defense in that it seeks to encompass the totality of states within a region or indeed globally, and to address a wide range of possible threats.

Occupation of Czechoslovakia (1938–1945)

The military occupation of Czechoslovakia by Nazi Germany began with the German annexation of the Sudetenland in 1938, continued with the creation of the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia, and by the end of 1944 extended to all parts of Czechoslovakia. Following the Anschluss of Austria in March 1938 and the Munich Agreement in September of that same year, Adolf Hitler annexed the Sudetenland from Czechoslovakia. The loss of the Sudetenland was detrimental to the defense of Czechoslovakia, as the extensive Czechoslovak border fortifications were also located in the same area.