Making the World Safe for Democracy

A Century of Wilsonianism and Its Totalitarian Challengers

Amos Perlmutter

• Publisher: The University of North Carolina Press
• Year: 2000
• Print ISBN: 9780807857113, 9780807823651
• eBook ISBN: 9780807863848
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Democracy
• Index: Politics & International Relations

In this interpretive study, Amos Perlmutter offers a comparative analysis of the twentieth century’s three most significant world orders: Wilsonianism, Soviet Communism, and Nazism. Anchored in three hegemonical states — the United States, the Soviet Union, and Nazi Germany — these systems, he argues, shared certain characteristics that distinguished them from other attempts to restructure the international political scene. While Communism and Nazism were committed to imperial ideologies, Wilsonianism was inspired by an exceptionalist, peaceful, democratic, and free market world order. But all three were able to mobilize industrial, technological, and military resources in pursuing their goals. In the process of examining the democratic, Communist, and Nazi systems, Perlmutter also provides a framework for understanding U.S. foreign policy over the course of the century, particularly during the Cold War. He underscores the importance of ideology in establishing an international order, arguing that in the wake of the Soviet Union’s demise, no system — not even Wilsonianism — can lay claim to the title of new world order.

Originally published in 1997.

A UNC Press Enduring Edition — UNC Press Enduring Editions use the latest in digital technology to make available again books from our distinguished backlist that were previously out of print. These editions are published unaltered from the original, and are presented in affordable paperback formats, bringing readers both historical and cultural value.

Chapter 1
Radicalization, Mobilization, and the Post-1919 International Chaos

The three world orders that dominated the twentieth century—democracy, communism, and fascism—emerged between 1919 and 1939 in a chaotic international environment. This environment included the devastating effects of World War I (the most destructive war to interrupt the long history of nineteenth-century peace); the growth of state power, accompanied and challenged by radical nationalism, ethnicity, and ideology; the emergence of organized and disciplined single-party totalitarian movements; the radicalization of the working classes; and the rise of mass movements. These occurrences were aided by the destruction of the Ottoman, Russian, and Austro-Hungarian empires; the Balkanization and fragmentation of much of Central and Eastern Europe; the decline of constitutionalism and democracy; and the emergence of chaotic social and economic conditions in the immediate aftermath of the war, which produced serious social crises that led to extreme solutions.¹

The most remarkable aspect of the international developments between 1919 and 1939 was the complete abdication of responsibility by the Great Powers. Britain, for example, became enmeshed in neoisolationism, concentrating on the empire and dominions, defining itself as an Atlantic rather than a European power. France, the largest continental power with the largest army, so feared a resurrected Germany that it became the vindictive enforcer of the punitive and territorial measures of the Versailles Treaty. Instead of coming to terms with Germany, the French concocted alliances with all the small powers (e.g., the Little Entente with Romania, Czechoslovakia, and Yugoslavia), which were exercises in futility because none of these powers contributed to France’s security.

The ease with which Germany and later Russia would gain control over East-Central European territories was not only a result of the failure of the Great Powers to intervene but of the internecine and fratricidal national and ethnic struggles within the East-Central European and Balkan cocoon. As Joseph Rothschild states:

Given this constellation of predatory, indifferent, and ineffective Great Powers, a constellation that it could neither prevent nor even control, East Central Europe might nevertheless have achieved at least minimal power-credibility if it had been able to achieve internal regional solidarity and some system of mutual assistance. But this alternative, too, was negated by the multiple divisions and rivalries that were born of competing territorial claims, ethnic-minority tensions, socioeconomic poverty, mutually irritating national psychologies, and sheer political myopia. These factors transformed the area’s internal relations into a cockpit and facilitated Hitler’s program of conquest. It is scarcely an exaggeration to suggest that as a general rule in interwar East Central Europe, common borders entailed hostile relations. Thus, the “blame” for the demise of the region’s independence must be charged to its own fundamental weaknesses, the instability of its institutions, and its irresponsible governments, as well as to the active and passive faults of the Great Powers.²

It was obvious that “the main component of the several revisionist-irredentist territorial disputes in interwar East Central Europe was the ethnic one.”³ The various ethnic, nationality, and religious divisions searched for some definition of nationhood. According to Rothschild, “Standing politically midway between state-nations and ethnic minorities were those peoples who were officially defined as belonging to the former but felt themselves not only culturally distinct from, but also politically and economically exploited by, the dominant part of that same statenation.”⁴ Economically, “East Central Europe was less productive, less literate, and less healthy than West Central and Western Europe.”⁵

There were rich agricultural areas, but the political system inhibited any serious economic development, whether free capitalism or state intervention in the economy. Neither one was clearly established or successful. East European dictatorships that emerged between 1919 and 1939 were not mass-mobilized modernist dictatorships like the all-inclusive totalitarian systems of communism and Nazism which would develop in the Soviet Union and Germany. They either “failed or refused to elicit mass support.”⁶ Nevertheless, the radical rightist movements were inspired by fascist and Nazi ideologies, even in the absence of successful totalitarian mass-mobilization parties. The radical right parties, from which many authoritarian dictators and intellectuals emerged, were völkisch, and they fought against the “Judaization” of culture. Jews were blamed for instilling radical socialist, if not communist, ideologies at the expense of the peasant folk. The strength of radical right parties was proportional to the number of Jewish minorities in the area, itself an index of contact with the commercial world, and unquestionably the radical right was the foundation from which the pro-Nazi collaborators would later emerge. Not that such political parties and groups did not exist elsewhere, such as in France or pre-Hitlerian Germany, but they were fringe forces whose impact at best, in the case of France, was among the intellectuals (for example, Action Françhise).⁷ There is no question that a convergence took place as soon as the Nazi movement became popular and successful in the late 1920s. Certainly Hitler’s coming to power in 1933 overwhelmed and overshadowed the right-wing radicals, who now sought support from Nazi Germany and looked upon Hitler as the savior of Europe. Curiously enough, Hitler represented to them the quintessence of Europeanism, and these parties and groups supported Hitler’s occupation forces after 1940 with great enthusiasm and hope. These parties on the whole governed the allied states of unoccupied Europe such as Hungary and Croatia during World War II. The Petain-Laval Vichy regime (1942–44), although in occupied territory, also fits into this category. During World War II, the Ustasi in Croatia, the Iron Guard in Romania, and the Arrow Cross in Hungary, all neo-Nazi, neofascist movements, were clients of Hitler, who did not have to occupy these territories for they made serious contributions to the Waffen SS and to German war efforts.

From the point of view of international politics and diplomacy, the most serious development obviously was the rise of the Leninist-Stalinist USSR and Nazi Germany. The two most significant totalitarian movements of modern times would emerge in the Soviet Union and Germany.⁸ The arena for exercising their aggressions and territorial aspirations was Central and Eastern Europe, and for good reasons. Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Poland, Serbia (Yugoslavia), Romania, Bulgaria, Albania, and Greece were all run by authoritarian regimes (with the exception of Czechoslovakia), coalitions of radical nationalists, racists, and anti-Semites. As Rothschild wrote, “Indeed, it appears that the only really potent internationalistic ideology in the area at that time was neither Marxism, on the left hand, nor dynastic loyalism, on the right, but anti-Semitism based on both conviction and expedience. This, in turn, provided an ideological bond and precondition for eventual collaboration with the Nazis, including the administration of wartime genocide.”⁹

Not only were they authoritarian but they also were economically unstable. Their boundaries and territories were mostly artificial, created by the Versailles Treaty, ignoring the existence of ethnic and national groups. Table 1 tells us much about the results of the Paris Peace Treaties of Versailles, St. Germain, Trianon, Neuilly, and Lausanne. This table clearly demonstrates a total lack of stability of governments challenged by minorities who had never lived together in a single nation-state.

Instead of a world safe for democracy, as wrongly prophesied by U.S. president Woodrow Wilson, the world became safe for autocracy and the emergence of the most radical, authoritarian, racist, anti-Semitic, fascist, and Nazi-like protest movements of minorities within the Polish, Czech, Yugoslav, and Hungarian states. The territorial loss for some countries was as serious as the gain of territory was for others. Austria lost territory to Czechoslovakia, Poland, Italy, Romania, and Yugoslavia. Hungary lost territory to Romania, Czechoslovakia, Austria, Yugoslavia, Italy, and Poland. The only ones who gained territory were Czechoslovakia and Poland. And this is not to mention Germany’s loss of territory to France, Belgium, Denmark, Poland, Lithuania, and Czechoslovakia, which of course would become a source of irredenta that would help the rise of Hitler and Nazism. Germans bitterly resented that the Versailles Treaty had incorporated the Sudentenland into Czechoslovakia and considered Czechs and the Slovaks inferior races; they bitterly resented being dominated by those they considered foreigners.¹⁰ Not only were these many unstable states and territories challenged by their own domestic minorities and fascist radical nationalist movements (and later Nazi parties), they also violated each others’ territory by efforts to adjust their own lost territories. This was the case with Poland and its unsuccessful effort to incorporate Russian-Ukrainian territory, as well as the Czech occupation of Teschen Polish territory.

TABLE 1. Extremism and Authoritarianism in Central-Eastern Europe, 1921–1938
State	Minorities (approx. population, 1914)	Type of Regime/ Radical Political Parties
Austria	22% Czechs and Slovaks, 17% Poles, 12% Ruthenians, 7.5% Southern Slavs, 3% Italians, 1% Romanians	Fascist, 1933–36
Hungary	15% Romanians, 10% Germans, 9% Croats, 9% Slovaks, 6% Serbs, 3% Ruthenians	Peak of fascist/ Nazi strength, 1937–38
Czechoslovakia	24% Germans, 16% Slovaks, 8% Magyars, 3.8% Ruthenians	Democratic, but with local fascist movement: Gayda, Slovak Hlinka Party
Romania	9% Magyars, 7% Jews, 4% Germans, 2% Bulgarians, 5% Russians and Ukrainians, 4% Others	Authoritarian monarchy, rise of Nazi-like Iron Guard
Poland	16% Ukrainians, 11% Jews, 5% Russians, 4% Germans	(1) Nationalist dictatorship of Pilsudsky, 1926 (2) Nationalist authoritarian colonels, 1936–39
Serbia (Yugoslavia)	22% Croats, 9% Slovenes, 4% Germans, 4% Magyars, 4% Albanians	Authoritarian monarchy, rise of Croatian Nazi Ustasi, from 1929
Albania	13% Serbs, Greeks, and Turks	Dictatorship of Ahmad Zog, Albanian Nationalist Front

Source: John A. Lukacs, The Great Powers and Eastern Europe (New York: American Book Company, 1953), 32–34.

Central and Eastern European countries were not the only ones where fascist, communist, and radical nationalist and authoritarian parties emerged. They also appeared in Finland, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Greece, and Bulgaria. Thus most of Central Europe from the Baltic to the Black Sea was replete with extremism and authoritarianism between 1921 and 1939. Militarism, coups d’état, radicalism, and racial strife characterized much of the era between 1919 and 1939 in Central and Eastern Europe. And the emergence of the USSR and Nazi Germany would complete the total demise of Versailles and of the grand Wilsonian dreams.

Between Germany and Russia, there developed a most serious vacuum of illusory independent states, which would become the target of both aggressive communism and Nazism. As long as Eastern Europe was unstable, neither Germany (even democratic Germany and certainly Germany under Hitler) nor the regime of Lenin/Stalin felt secure. This vacuum became a corridor through which Soviet and Nazi troops marched and the fate of Eastern Europe was finally sealed with the August 1939 Nazi-Soviet Pact. The totalitarian regimes encircled the weak, unstable authoritarian radical nationalist illusory states.

The period between 1919 and 1939 was also characterized by the “New Diplomacy” or the diplomacy of revolution.¹¹ World War I became an ideological war, setting the stage for revolutionary politics and diplomacy. According to Hoffmann, quoted by John A. Lukacs:

A war which is preeminently revolutionary in character is . . . an ideological war. It is much more than a collision between States motivated by limited purposes which can be only achieved by force. There is in it a challenge to all the world; on one side or both, there is an effort to vindicate or propagate universally an ideological purpose. The rationale of a better world has been revealed, and there is an apocalyptic vision of the world remade and man reborn. A militant party obtains commanding power and acts in the firm conviction that it possesses the truths necessary to the temporal salvation of mankind.¹²

The New Diplomacy would be the brute diplomacy of mass movements, not that of empires and monarchies. The most cataclysmic movements were of course the Russian Revolution and the Nazi rise to power. These events would change the nature of international politics and diplomacy for a century to come. The Russian Revolution would not have been successful without the support of the Germans or without a devastating war.¹³ The Bolsheviks defeated the Cossacks, the Ukrainians, the Baltic States, and the Poles and won wars in Siberia for they understood best that these nationalities’ leaders’ efforts to resurrect the empire were a mistake. The Bolsheviks deceived and duped the nationalities by pretending to give them freedom, which of course was ruthlessly taken away by Lenin and his chief henchman, Stalin. Lenin was the father of what later would become Stalinism: oppression, Gulags, concentration camps, destruction of nationalities, and in the end the Stalinist destruction of his own party and its Bolshevik leadership. Thus there emerged in the ruins of the Russian Empire a ruthless ideological movement, to be rivaled only by Nazism a decade later.

What is significant about the diplomacy, politics, and war after Versailles was the Bolshevik idea that a revolution beginning in Russia could spread into the rest of Europe. The cataclysm of the revolution and the civil war created a vision among the Bolshevik tru...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Making the World Safe for Democracy
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction The Age of Totalitarianism
• Chapter 1 Radicalization, Mobilization, and the Post-1919 International Chaos
• Chapter 2 Wilsonianism in Theory and Practice
• Chapter 3 The Communist World Order
• Chapter 4 Nazism
• Chapter 5 Resurrection of Wilsonianism: FDR
• Chapter 6 Balance of Power, Balance of Terror, and the Cold War
• Chapter 7 The Kremlin’s Cold War after Stalin
• Chapter 8 A “New” New World Order?
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index