GREAT BRITAIN, THE LITTLE ENTENTE AND SECURITY IN DANUBIAN EUROPE, 1919-1936 Dragan Bakić Submitted in accordance with the requirements for the degree of Ph.D The University of Leeds School of History December 2010 The candidate confirms that the work submitted is his own and that appropriate credit has been given where reference has been made to the works of others. This copy has been supplied on the understanding that it is copyright material and that no quotation from the thesis may be published without proper acknowledgement. The right of Dragan Bakić to be indentified as Author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Acts 1988. 2010 The University of Leeds Dragan Bakić Acknowledgements The debts I have incurred over the last few years researching and writing my thesis are numerous. None of it would have been possible without the scholarship I received from the Overseas Research Student Award Scheme which was supplemented by School of History’s maintenance grant. My greatest gratitude thus goes to the financial benefactors. In terms of academic help and guidance I am immensely thankful to my mentors. Professor John Gooch supervised me almost until the end of my work but he could not see me through the very last stage due to his retirement. My research under his supervision was a singularly fortunate experience on account of his endless historical knowledge, the stimulating and broad-minded manner in which he discussed different aspect of my work and invariably induced me to take the wider perspective of an academic dilemma at hand. Dr Geoffrey Waddington had a somewhat unenviable task to take over the supervision of a student who was fast-approaching the completion of his thesis and was in dire need of comments on the remaining draft chapters and of many answers to tedious technical and other more substantial questions about the preparation of the final version of a dissertation. Nevertheless, he has read the whole of the thesis with meticulous care and provided me with invaluable emendations and suggestions, particularly as to matters of language style and syntax, which are always an issue for anyone writing in a foreign tongue. His help is appreciated more than I can express. During the course of my research I have encountered and drawn upon the professional expertise and kindness of so many members of staff in the archives and libraries where I had a pleasure to work. I am grateful to the archivists in the National Archives, the School of Slavonic and East European Studies in the UCL, the Churchill Archives Centre and the Bodleian Library, as well as to the staff in the Archives of Yugoslavia, the Military Archives and the Archives of Serbian Academy of Arts and Sciences in Belgrade. Last, but not least, I am indebted to all the people in the Brotherton Library for their kind assistance. In order to cope successfully with the trials and tribulations of doctoral candidates’ day-to-day life one must enjoy and rely on the support of his family and friends. In this respect I have been truly blessed. My sister Sladjana, my brother-in-law Dragan and my nephew Miloš Indjin have given me the warmest and most enjoyable family surrounding while my mother Stana rooted for my endeavours from afar, back home in Serbia. It is also my great satisfaction to recall and cherish the moments spent with my inimitable group of friends - Rachael Johnson, Jack Millard, David Newton, Diane McClurg, Jason Crosby and Keven Watts - whose welcome distractions and camaraderie have made my years in Leeds such a unique time. To further stress my gratitude and debt to those who facilitated my work and helped improve what is written in the following pages I want to state in advance that all the deficiencies are mine alone. Abstract This thesis examines British foreign policy towards Danubian Europe from the end of World War One to the Rhineland crisis of 1936 with special reference to security issues. The Foreign Office’s attitude towards the alliance known as the Little Entente, which was comprised of Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia and Romania, is the primary focus of the study, and, by implication, the British outlook on the countries with which the Little Entente was mainly concerned, namely Hungary and, to a lesser extent, Austria and Bulgaria, also features heavily. Danubian Europe presented constant and serious security risks for European peace and stability and, for that reason, contrary to conventional wisdom, it commanded the attention of British diplomacy with a view to appeasing local conflicts. This study looks at the manner in which the Foreign Office perceived and treated the antagonism between the Little Entente and Hungary, on the one hand, and the impact that the former had in connexion with Franco-Italian rivalry in Central/South-Eastern Europe, on the other. With Hitler’s accession to power the Little Entente was viewed in Whitehall in relation to its place in the prospective policy for preserving Austrian independence and containing German aggression in the region. It is suggested here that the British approach to security problems in Danubian Europe had certain permanent features which stemmed from the general British outlook on the new successor states – the members of the Little Entente - founded on the ruins of the Habsburg monarchy. It was the lack of confidence in their stability and permanence, as well as the misperceptions about the motives and intentions of the policies pursued by other Powers towards Central/South-Eastern Europe, which accounted for the apparent sluggishness and ineffectiveness of the Foreign Office’s dealings with security challenges. Table of contents List of Abbreviations Maps Introduction………………………………………………………………………… 1 1. A New Europe or a ‘Balkanised Europe’? the British Dilemma, 1919-1921…… 11 Introduction………………………............................................................................ 11 1.1. The Shaping of the New Europe ……………………………………………....13 1.2. Habsburg Restoration…………………………………………………………..36 1.3. The Formation of the Little Entente……………………………..…………...... 40 1.4. Two Abortive Karlist Putsches………………………………………………....46 Conclusion…………………………………………………………………………..50 2. The Attitudes and Calculations Determining British Policy towards Danubian Europe, 1921-1925………………………………52 Introduction……………………………………………………………………….... 52 2.1. The Little Entente Countries: the British Perspective…………………………. 53 2.2. Which Hungarian Government Makes for Stability?…………………………..68 2.3. Security and Money Diplomacy………………………………………………. 78 2.4. The Little Entente and France: a View from Whitehall………………………. 91 2.5. The Franco-Czechoslovak Treaty……………………………………………... 105 Conclusion…………………………………………………………………………..114 3. Managing Perpetual Crisis, 1925-1927…………………………………………..117 Introduction………………………………………………………………………… 117 3.1. The Locarno Remedy………………………………………………………...... 118 3.1.1. A Central European Locarno………………………………………... 120 3.1.2. A Balkan Locarno…………………………………………………… 127 3.2. The Albanian Crisis…………………………………………………………….138 3.3. The Tripartite Agreement……………………………………………………....144 3.4. The Struggle over Romania…………………………………………………….147 3.5. The Franco-Yugoslav Treaty………………………………………………….. 150 Conclusion…………………………………………………………………………..159 4. The Transitional Years, 1928-1932………………………………………………162 Introduction………………………………………………………………………… 162 4.1. Old Adam’s Ways……………………………………………………………...163 4.2. Yugoslavia and Italy………………………………………………………….. 177 4.3. Uncertain Quantity: a View of the Little Entente…………………………….. 184 4.4 Austria, Anschluss and Economic Alleviation………………………………….189 Conclusion…………………………………………………………………………..194 5. The Quest for an Elusive Danubian Security, 1933-1935………………………..197 Introduction……………………………………………………………………….... 197 5.1. New Organisation and New Challenges………………………………………. 198 5.2. Austrian Independence and Danubian Pact…………………………………… 203 5.3. The Balkan Entente……………………………………………………………. 224 5.4. Czechoslovakia: Internal and External German Problem……………………... 231 5.5. The Little Entente and the Soviet Union ……………………………………... 237 5.6. Yugoslavia and Italy…………………………………………………………... 245 5.7. The Rhineland Crisis and Danubian Europe…………………………………... 253 Conclusion…………………………………………………………………………. 257 Conclusion…………………………………………………………………………. 262 Bibliography……………………………………………………………………….. 276 List of Abbreviations AJ Archives of Yugoslavia A SANU Archives of the Serbian Academy of Arts and Sciences BDFA British Documents on Foreign Affairs DBFP Documents on British Foreign Policy FO Foreign Office IMRO Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organisation VA Military Archives PID Political Intelligence Department SSEES School of Slavonic and East European Studies TNA The National Archives INTRODUCTION British policy towards Danubian Europe during the interwar period remains a strangely understudied area. The region, and Czechoslovakia in particular, is, of course, regularly mentioned in the rich literature about the ‘appeasement policy’ and its culmination at the Munich conference, but its treatment is invariably reduced to the role of a passive object in the Great Powers’ diplomatic trial of strength. Although such a view is not without its justification in the actual course of events, it unfortunately tends to marginalise the need to examine the British attitude towards the region itself, which is without doubt an inseparable part of the entire European jigsaw. There are only a few works which directly address the question of British policy towards Central Europe. Gábor Bátonyi’s work