National borders in 20th century Europe

Tracing all the national borders that existed in the 20th century on one map gives some idea of the fragmentation of central Europe. One can pick out the shapes of some contemporary states, and small scraps of territory and places of symbolic importance that were the object of tough negotiations or bitter fighting, such as Vilnius, Memel, Königsberg, Danzig, Chernivtsi, Eastern Galicia, Trieste and Istria.

1914

In 1914, on the eve of the first world war, there remained only three of the four empires that had competed in central Europe in the 19th century. The dismantling of the Ottoman Empire had created new small states rather than benefiting the great powers (Russia and Austro-Hungary). The Peace of Versailles (the five treaties signed in 1919 and 1920) marked the end of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, allowing small- and medium-sized nations to exist alongside the great powers. This was the first central European “national fragmentation” of the 20th century. With the formation of the USSR, Russia was pushed back eastwards and lost its influence over a large part of central Europe, from Helsinki to Chisinau.

1923

An entirely reconfigured Europe emerged from the Yalta and Potsdam conferences, at the end of the second world war. No peace treaty was concluded with Germany (the third historic empire to disappear). The “inviolability” of the frontiers of European states was confirmed at the Helsinki Conference in 1975. The USSR once more set out to conquer the West, recovering and annexing much of what it had lost in 1920, and turning the states that had replaced the former empires into satellites. Europe’s eastern border was now known as the Iron Curtain. In 1991 the USSR, the fourth and last empire, imploded. The Soviet republics and Communist countries of eastern Europe regained full independence, and Russia was again pushed back eastwards.

1945