Europe.
The land of wine, schnitzel, paella, vodka, British people (not anymore apparently), socialists, and peace-loving hipsters. Many would think the fifty or so countries of Europe have enjoyed their current borders for a while, but this is not the case. No, all those people who look at us and say "wow, you Americans have such a big military" and "wow, you guys get into a lot of wars" are the same group that ripped up their foundations and plunged into two globe-spanning wars, and a colder one to finish it all off. It took a lot of conflict for the powers that be in Europe to settle in harmony, with a good deal of Soviet and American help/coercion/bribery/funding/invasion along the way.
Let us explore today four maps of Europe. One will be from 1914, on the eve of the First World War. The second will be around 1921, just after the redrawing of Europe post-WWI. The third will be in 1945, right after the end of WWII, and the fourth and final map will be of today's beloved modern communal peaceful Schengen paradise. In each map I will discuss any interesting borders or countries that you might not be familiar with, and in the later three maps I will go over all or most of the changes from the last map.
1914
For starters, this map portrays Persia differently from all the other countries. It's shaded half for Russia and half for the British Empire to represent the spheres of influence. Over the two World Wars, Persia/Iran was frequently used to transfer troops and supplies from Asia and British India to Europe, the British Mid-East, and Russia.
Let's start with Britain and Ireland for an easy one. Ireland didn't gain her independence until after WWI, and for much of the green island's history in "modern" (post-1000 AD) Europe the Normans and succeeding dynasties asserted control over her and her people with varying success until its eventual annexation. Ireland would even experience a series of revolts during the war.
What you'll notice in the next map a lot better is that the French-German border doesn't have that French pointy thing on the Rhine sticking into Germany. This region is called Alsace-Lorraine in French and Elsass-Lothringen in German. During the Franco-Prussian War of 1870-71, the Prussian North German Federation led German states against a French attack by Emperor Napoleon III (who was probably goaded by Chancellor Bismarck) with amazing success, utterly obliterating her army at Sedan after some hard fights at places like Mars-la-Tour and Gravelotte. The German Empire, the first unified German state, would be declared in Versailles at the end of the war. This region includes Germans and French people, and so both countries contested it fiercely. French soldiers fighting in the First World War grew up learning in school about the "lost provinces" and the need to recover them from the Germans.
Italy owns Libya! The Kingdom of Italy only became a country in 1861, and was a young lil' state just like the German Empire. And like Germany, she sought to participate with the major powers of the day in the game of empire-building. Italy tried and failed to conquer Ethiopia in the 1880's, but did seize modern Somalia and Eritrea, and would succeed in Ethiopia under Mussolini in the 1930's. Italy saw an opportunity in the weakening Ottoman Empire, already reeling from losses to the Balkan League at roughly the same time, and invaded their Libyan holdings separated from the rest of their territory by British Egypt. After a short war, the Treaty of Lausanne put Libya in Italian hands.
So what's this thing called Austria-Hungary? Well, that's the Austrian Empire. And also the Kingdom of Hungary. They're actually the same country. But they're two countries, and the Hungarians will not let you forget that. This will all make sense soon.
Austria goes back over a thousand years. A long time ago, around 996 AD, some old dude wrote down that "Ostarrichi" was part of House Babenberg's lands in Bavaria. Hooray for Ostarrichi, also known as Osterreich (which is German, because Austrians are German), also known as Austria. Well, Osterreich became a duchy (a place that a duke rules), then the Babenbergs died out, and eventually the Habsburgs took control (my ancestors!). Austria was part of the Holy Roman Empire, and the Habsburgs gained immense influence in that empire, eventually changing it from an elective monarchy to a hereditary empire ruled by them. Over time, the Austrian lands in the Empire grew to include a lot of land, the former Kingdom of Hungary included (read up on the Arpad dynasty and the invasion of the Carpathian Basin, the origins of Hungary itself are quite fascinating) included. Ironically, Austria would play a huge role in stopping the Ottoman Empire from advancing into Europe, and now in WWI Austria is on the precipice of fighting in a war alongside that exact same empire (Franz Josef and the Sultan's great great great grand-daddies really hated each other!). In 1806, Napoleon Bonaparte slapped the Holy Roman Empire so hard that its Habsburg emperor decided to shut the whole thing down, and just styled himself the Emperor of Austria, which was a pretty darn considerable realm in its own right at that point. Things went well until 1848, when the Hungarians revolted and might have toppled the empire had the Russians not intervened on the behalf of the Austrians. However, the Hungarians got something out of their rebellion: a dual monarchy in 1867. There would be a Kingdom of Hungary with a government doing things in the Hungarian language alongside an Empire of Austria with a government doing things in the German language. So the Emperor became the Kaiser und Konig of the Kaiserlich und Konigreich, or Emperor and King of the Empire and Kingdom. A common shorthand reference for this is KuK or K.u.K., which can refer to the monarch or country alternatively. It is now 1914, and this empire which includes Germans, Czechs, Hungarians, Slovenes, Croats, Bosniaks, Serbs, Romanians, Slovaks, Ruthenians (Ukrainians), and Poles under one roof all speaking their own languages will surely be highly unified and good at fighting. This can only end well, right?
Well, Austria kinda starts WWI. You've probably heard of Archduke/Erzherzog Franz Ferdinand, the heir to the dual throne who was shot in Sarajevo by Gavrilo Princip of the Young Bosnia faction, with ties to the Black Hand. He was a Bosnian Serb who wanted the Austrian-held Bosnia to be united with the Kingdom of Serbia, and eventually the unification of the Balkan Slavs under a single banner. Ironically, Franz Ferdinand was a federalist who wanted to add Slavs as a third monarchy in order to stabilize the empire, so killing him really didn't help the Slavic cause. He was also the primary counterweight to the military chief of staff Franz Conrad von Hötzendorf, who in his career pre-WWI petitioned no less than thirty times for Emperor Franz Josef to invade Serbia. Shockingly, the assassination of Franz Ferdinand meant that Hotzendorf got his way. While both Ferdinand and Hotzendorf were awful people, Hotzendorf had a lot more to do with the war itself. His primary interests during WWI included long walks on the beaches of Dalmatia and failing at practically every military effort the country attempted. I mean, they lost ground to Italy. To be fair, having such an ethnically and linguistically diverse army with terrible funding (Britain spent 5x more money on a vastly smaller army) and incompetent officers must have been quite hard, and he did try to reform the military. Unfortunately, these reforms were not in touch with the reality of brutal 20th Century warfare and he is in most respects a massive failure. His incompetence got a lot of good young men killed. Hey, that reminds me of the rest of WWI...
That was a lot about Austria, but since we're already on the outbreak of the war, I'll go over that for a bit. Ferdinand is shot, Austria invades Serbia. Serbia petitions Russia for aid, whose Tsar Nicholas II Romanov (Anastasia's daddio) fashions himself the protector of Slavs. Germany tells Austria that they have their back. But Russia is allied with France, something that Bismarck would've never allowed to happen, but Bismarck died and the impetuous Kaiser Wilhelm took charge. Germany's leaders determine that Austria or not, Russia must be defeated before around 1917, when she will be modern enough that technology combined with sheer force of numbers will render Germany inert in the face of an attack. Germany also seeks to knock out France, both as a Russian ally and a dangerous military rival with designs on Elsass-Lothringen. As part of the Schlieffen Plan, Germany seeks to defeat France within forty days and then wheel around to obliterate the Russians - and keep them away from the East Prussian estates of the German general staff! Of course, this optimistic goal is not met as trench warfare on the Western Front is a brutal slugfest for four years. With gas attacks, barbed wire, machine guns, and heavy artillery, mass suffering is made an industry in a grinding war of attrition (roughly 65,000,000 shells are fired at Verdun, accounting for up to 75% of the 700,000 casualties. Yes, that's sixty-five million). Germany swings through Belgium, giving Britain an excuse to join the war on France's side by citing their treaty pledge to protect Belgian sovereignty. Italy backs out of their Triple Alliance with Germany and Austria, since it is rendered technically void in the case of an offensive war. Italy joins the war a while later on the side of the Triple Entente (Allies) and the Ottomans join the Central Powers with Bulgaria. Countries like America and Portugal would also sign on with the Entente.
Kaiser Wilhelm's pledge that "[you soldiers] will be home before the leaves have fallen from the trees" will die in the face of a new era of fighting.
Let's move on. There's no Poland here! It's mostly in Russia, but Germany owns some of it too. A long time ago in Europe there was something called Poland-Lithuania, a union of the monarchies of Poland and Lithuania which owned vast tracts of land, countless citizens, and possessed a mighty army of knights and hussars. It would be Polish-Lithuanian winged hussars to break the back of the Ottoman army besieging Vienna, capital of Austria and the Holy Roman Empire in 1683. Unfortunately for the Commonwealth (Poland-Lithuania), the assembly of nobles which empowered the monarch to rule were divisive and incompetent, and general misrule resulted in the might kingdom's destruction in three Partitions between Prussia (the violent Germans), Russia, and Austria.
Oh, and Russia owns the Duchy of Finland. They took it from Sweden in 1803. Now, going to the Balkans, we see an interesting scene. Austria owns Bosnia, recently conquered, and we have these little Balkan states of Greece, Bulgaria, Albania, Montenegro, and Serbia. Romania is there too, but they ain't Balkan. Serbia, Montenegro, Greece, and Bulgaria formed the Balkan League and attacked the Ottomans in the First Balkan War in 1912-13, seizing the last of their European lands (except for Eastern Thrace, which Turkey continues to own as a primarily Turkish ethnic region). Albania has had about a trillion revolts at this point, and their last one in 1912 is timed perfectly, forcing the Ottomans to give in and make them independent. Bulgaria isn't happy with her share of the spoils from the war, so five minutes later they launch the Second Balkan War against Serbia and Greece. Romania, Montenegro, and even the Ottomans join in, and the war lasts less than two months before Bulgaria gives up with its capital Sofia under threat and 71,000 casualties out of her 500,000-man army.
Now all that's left is Romania, the Ottomans, and Russia. Goodness this is getting long. We'll start with Romania.
Romania on this map looks like a boomerang, or a claw, or a weird banana or maybe a badly-crushed cardboard box. It's a union of Moldova and Wallachia, two separate principalities of (mostly) Romanians that were from the 15th Century Ottoman vassals and from the 18th Century under Russian protection while being Ottoman vassals. In the 19th Century they elected the same man to rule, creating the United Principalities. Not too long after, a political coalition sacked him and replaced him with the German Charles of House Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen in order to court the powerful German Empire for support in the future. The Russo-Turkish War starts in 1877 and ends in 1878 with the two Treaties of San Stefano and Berlin, assuring Romanian independence. In 1881, the parliament says "hey we're a kingdom because we're cool now" and Carol (Charles, but with Romanian spelling. He was grateful as any man would be that some dudes said "hey be the double prince of us ok?") became King Carol. Romania would join the Entente in the middle of the war, invade Austria, and fail absolutely. It's the thought that counts.
On to the Ottomans! I think it's amazing that the Ottoman Empire still existed the last time the Cubs won the World Series (1908). It's the same Ottoman Empire founded in 1299 by Oghuz Turkmen under Osman I of the Osman/Osmanli dynasty, the same Ottoman Empire that would only end in 1922 after a world war with Mehmed VI, the 36th Sultan and 28th Caliph in an unbroken chain of Osman men all the way back to medieval times. The same Ottomans who in 1453 would finally seize Constantinople, the last holding (except for a guard post in Greece, whose garrison ran to Venice) and capital of the Byzantine Empire, also known as the East Roman Empire, or just the Roman Empire / Basileía Rhōmaíōn, which was created in 330 AD (or 395 AD depending on who you ask) when the Roman Empire split, a while after its founding in 27 BC after Rome started being a thing in the 8th Century BC. Is that not absolutely incredible heritage? Between Austria descending from the Holy Roman Empire (which was only a spiritual continuation, just a bunch of Germans who thought Rome was cool back in the 9th Century) and the Ottomans in some respects styling themselves the new Rome (Ottoman Rum is a common term from that era), WWI makes me think a lot about the descent from antiquity of Roman ideas, and just how much of an impact those Latin conquerors have on our modern conscience.
Anyways, the Ottomans had been in decline for a long while as of 1914, but they put up an incredible fight, and the Ottoman Empire itself only technically dissolved in 1922 - though it had lost all its empire in the peace treaties - when Kemal Ataturk spearheaded the reform of the Turks into a secular, national Turkish state (called Turkey!). Had this not occurred, the Ottoman Empire very well could've survived as a rump state for a little while longer.
Lastly, Russia. Not really much to say here. As of 1914, Tsar Nicholas II reigned over a vast and populous yet backwards empire with all the trappings of absolute monarchy. He had secret police, aristocrats and nobles wielding immense power, lots of poor peasants, a ton of disgruntled communists (there had been plenty of revolts before 1914, such as the revolution of 1905 which included the famous Potemkin mutiny), and a government increasingly under pressure to reform, which it attempted to do so multiple times. Russia also owns Poland and Finland, as well as the modern states of Belarus, Ukraine, Kazakhstan... and a lot more.
Next map, thank god.
1921 to 1925-ish
France now has Alsace-Lorraine. It's that little pokey thing again. You can see that Austria-Hungary exploded into a bunch of little states. Austria is Austria, not hard there. It's a republic which Germany annexes in the Anschluss of 1938, and Austria is pretty OK with that at the time. Czechoslovakia is a union of the Czechs and Slovaks into one state, broken down by treaties and eventually annexed by Germany after they eat Austria, leaving Slovakia a tiny puppet state. Germany justifies this by saying there are oppressed German minorities (does this remind you of anyone? Am I Putin an idea in your head?) in the Sudetenland region of Czechoslovakia, which is actually true; the German Austrian Empire spread a lot of Germans around the former territories (such as the Banat Swabians in Transylvania, among other groups). Hungary is a sad little lima bean, and its dictator Admiral Miklos Horthy / Horthy Miklos (ironic that a former Austro-Hungarian admiral would lead a landlocked state) calls Hungary a kingdom waiting for its king to return, but he doesn't let Franz Josef's rightful heir Charles / Karl come home, so it's really an autocratic state under Horthy. The Treaty of Trianon took a lot of land from the Kingdom of Hungary and spread it around to its neighbors who had more of their peoples in those lands. If you look carefully in the first map, you can see that Hungary inside Austria has a lot more land than this depressed bean country. During World War II, Hungary would own Transylvania and bits of Slovakia and Yugoslavia, awarded to her by Hitler for being a good noodle.
Serbia got big and ate Montenegro, Croatia, Bosnia, and Slovenia. Well, Kosovo and Macedonia too, but they already owned it. Now it's the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes ruled by the Serbian Karađorđević dynasty. It quickly gets renamed Yugoslavia. Hooray! It had a pretty big army, I think between 500,000 and 800,000 poorly-armed and trained men (remember Austria's issues with a multi-ethnic polyglot realm) with which it tried to stop a German invasion, but failed. Germany would eat part of it, let Italy eat a little, and make a big Croatia in the middle. This Croatian government, lead by the Ustase, would commit some of the most brutal war crimes of the entire war. Even the SS were disgusted by them. These war crimes were mostly against Serbs, who had ruled the realm up until the German invasion.
Albania exists. Not for long. Italy would eat it in 1939 so Mussolini can say he's a mighty conqueror and use it as a launchpad to invade Greece, and fail. Hitler has to bail him out, and the hard fighting in Greece against the highly motivated Hellenes would delay the invasion of the Soviet Union, perhaps dooming the whole operation and saving the world. At least, that's what the Greeks say. Churchill said that "Greeks don't fight like heroes, heroes fight like Greeks," and he's probably right; Greek troops at one point destroyed an entire elite Italian Alpini division. Not defeated, not pushed back, destroyed. But of course, elite in the Italian context might just mean a division where everyone is equipped with shoes. Italian divisions on average were smaller than their German counterparts and had 10% of the firepower, and even then their industry consistently failed to keep pace with war needs. But that's for another blog post/rant.
Greece exists. They got some land back, if you look back to the early 1800's when they didn't even exist, or in 1910 when they hardly owned half the peninsula. Then Mussolini and Hitler make Greece stop existing along with Yugoslavia in 1941. And one of the biggest airborne attacks of the war occurs in Greece when Hitler attacks Crete in Operation Mercurcy using 20,000 Fallschirmjager. Unfortunately for paratrooper fans, pretty much every airborne attack of notable size in WWII is too costly to be encouraging. That's why we use helicopters now, for the most part.
Romania is looking a lot bigger! They got a ton of land after they were squashed in WWI because hey, we figured they should get credit for trying. A lot of this land came from Trianon, so Hitler had to work hard to get them and the Hungarians to play well during the war. Romania also has a ton of oil, something that Hitler really appreciated. A lot of complicated politics happened before and during WWII which caused Romania to cast their lot with the Axis, primarily to get back Bessarabia from the Soviets (which they had bullied Romania into surrendering to them). In a terrible and shallow summary, a guy named Ion Antonescu was part of the Romanian cabinet but came into conflict with King Carol II. He survived that affair, had his own "legionary" faction allied with the Iron Guard, slithered his way to becoming general head of government, crushed the Iron Guard, shoved out Carol II and let in Mihai, and became pals with Hitler. Then he killed almost half a million innocents a la the Holocaust. Fortunately for Romania, the Soviets were about to bust into the country in 1944, and a coup led by the outrageously handsome Mihai and many of Antonescu's opponents caused Romania to turn to the Allies (or Comintern, really).
In studying history I have developed little crushes and man-crushes on attractive or daring figures. I present Mihai, the man who trumps all.
On to the Soviet Union. Now, Russia actually lost WWI even though "we" won. In 1918, Russia called it quits with the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk / Brzsec-Litewski if you're Polish. Nicholas II was losing ground constantly and the whole country was at its breaking point. During the Russian Revolution in 1917 (which was actually two revolutions), Nicholas II abdicated and the Tsarist government collapsed, as did the subsequent attempt at a provisional republican government in the October Revolution. Germany hardly had an army to fight at this point and the desperate Bolshevik (communist) leaders in 1918 signed the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk / Brzsec-Litewski if you're Polish. This gave up a buttload of land to Germany and Austria (which was anyhow useless and ungovernable given the enormous pounding that Italy, France, the UK, the Balkans, and the USA were giving to the Central Powers). This land included the rest of Poland and the Baltic States (Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia) among others. After WWI ended, the Austrian land (Ukraine) went back to Russia, the Polish lands united and became Poland, Finland became independent, and the Baltic States became independent.
From 1917 to 1923, the Russian Civil War raged. The Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic (Russian SFSR) with a few allied armies (most of which turned on them) as the "Reds" fought the "Whites" or the White Movement, which was a collection of different allied Tsarist-era armies under independent generals who did not work well together, leading to their failure. This was despite intervention from tons of successful or unsuccessful independence movements, the UK, Japan, US and the rest of the Entente (there's a neat photo of US troops marching in Vladivostok, so yes we have invaded Russia) and some German factions like the Landeswehr, the ethnic German nobility of the Baltic States and their troops. The Reds tried and failed to invade Poland to keep her in their new union, but would try again and succeed in the coming decades. Finland would also break free and endure its own civil war between Whites and Reds, with the Whites coming out on top. Lots of little factions on their own or helping either or one side or alternate sides also popped up, and among all these myriad stories (I love studying this era), one tale is a favorite of mine, which we shall digress into for a moment.
Roman von Ungern-Sternberg. He was crazy. Born in Austria, he became a Russian officer and fought in WWI as a cavalry general. During the Russian Civil War, he took his Asiatic Cavalry Division and became one of many warlords, crossing the steppe to invade Mongolia and kick out the Republic of China and their attempts to return Mongolia to their control (China is having a revolution at this time, going from an imperial dynasty to a Republic, which is now Taiwan, and the communists are now in charge of the mainland. Fun stuff). Sternberg is like a weaboo but for Mongolia instead of Japan and really liked Buddhism and kings (remind you of someone you know?), casting his lot not only with the Russian Whites, but with the Bogd Khaan of Mongolia! He wanted to restore the Mongol Empire in the East, and he almost succeeded, except for the quick defeat of his tiny cavalry division at the hands of Red troops. Speaking of Mongolia, in the 1920's Mongolia had a population of two million (so a tiny population with horses can restore an empire against tanks and planes? Yes, Sternberg...), half of which we can assume are male, so one million. Half of these men lived in Buddhist monasteries, which caused many to fear a population crisis. So to think about this context, this leaves 500,000 Mongol women dateless. I mean, not to make this a big deal, but that's the WWI-era equivalent of Seattle Pacific University. Well, if you're a guy down on his luck with the ladies and you get a time machine, you know your first stop.
And... Finland. Finland broke away from Russia in the chaos of the Civil War and defeated the communists in its own civil war. The Soviet Union would pine for lost territories (and seek to push the border away from vulnerable Leningrad) and invade in the Winter War right before WWII, winning only due to sheer force of numbers, seizing the city of Viipuri/Vyborg and some other border areas. Finland only gave up due to lack of material and manpower. The Mannerheim Line, the border fortifications on the Finnish side? They all had less concrete combined than the Sydney Opera House. And with that crappy line, and only 350,000 men at most with thirty tanks and a hundred planes against a million men, up to seven thousand tanks and four thousand planes, the Soviets take 350,000 casualties. Lose three hundred tanks. Lose a thousand planes. Finland? 70,000 casualties. The Winter War is fascinating, and I also recommend you read up on a man named Lauri Allan Torni, who is also the subject of the Sabaton song Soldier of 3 Armies. He was an incredible Finnish leader, and when Finland dropped out of the war, he got bored with not killing communists and joined the SS. Then he escaped Europe and became an Army Ranger in the USA as Larry Allen Thorne, rising in service to the rank of Captain and only dying in Vietnam while fighting communist Vietcong. He really, really did not like communists.
Finland will join Hitler in attacking Russia in 1941 to try and get some land back, and even though they surrender, they really don't face any hard consequences, since the Western Allies suppose they had a good reason. Finland's lack of involvement in the Holocaust also served them well. It's hard to look bad next to Hitler.
As for the Baltics, they became independent. The Soviets annexed them in 1939. Sorry Baltics! Lithuania had a little patrol boat/minesweeper called Prezidentas Smetona that was pressed into service with the Red Navy, so... go Lithuania!
Bulgaria has chilled out since WWI. They fight with the Axis but in a very limited role, just trying to get land out of Yugoslavia. They get bombed a little and get the message.
Italy in WWI famously turned on the Central Powers and fought Austria, using its supply of men to tie up lots of otherwise productive troops in the Alps, which is probably the most you can say for their contribution, unfortunately. Mussolini became head of the government of the Kingdom of Italy in the 1920's, and the king was pretty much OK with this since he was still king, so who cared? Mussolini tried to Make Italy Great Again but failed. Books and sites on Italy's military history in WWII read like comedy scripts. There was one border fort in France with a garrison of nine men, and they reportedly held off 1,000+ Italian troops for several hours or days until running out of ammo. Accounts say that the crews would rotate shifts manning the guns and tossing grenades while others played cards. I am not making this up. Or Operation Oracle, when 15,000 or so British troops captured 100,000+ Italians in Libya due to their badly-suited and indefensible positions which were immobile and could not support each other. I feel embarrassed writing that. With regards to borders, they got Istria and Dalmatia from Austria and kept Libya, consolidating the southern deserty bits in the treaties (I suppose Britain wanted to give Italy a treat). They also got some Aegean islands from Greece in the 20's., and successfully invaded Ethiopia in the 30's.
Ireland is a country. Yay Ireland! So is Turkey. They were both neutral.
1945
Quick distinctions to make for the Soviets. There are basically three tiers to the communist regime. First, there is the Russian Soviet Socialist Republic. This is "Russia" in the modern sense. It is one of the Soviet Socialist Republics in the Soviet Union (albeit the dominant one). The second tier are all the other SSR's, such as Ukraine, Belarus, Kazakhstan, the Balts, etc. These are all other Soviet Socialist Republics making up the Soviet Union. The USSR (Soviet Union) should get just one seat on the UN because it is one country with subdivisions. Of course, the USSR kicked a fit and technically got seats of Byelorussia/Belarus and Ukraine, but that's just a technicality. Humorously, the Soviets wanted seats for all fifteen SSR's, and we shot back asking for forty-eight seats for all the states at the time. Next tier are foreign nations that the USSR technically didn't control. They made up the Warsaw Pact of post-WWII communist states more-or-less made puppets after the Red Army swept over Nazi-held territories. These are the USSR, Romania, Poland, East Germany (DDR), Hungary, Czechoslovakia, and Bulgaria (and Albania, but Hoxha kicked a fit and left and built bunkers everywhere. Literally 800,000 bunkers. One for every four people). And sort of in a fourth tier, you have countries like Yugoslavia and Vietnam which are aligned to the Cominter/Warsaw Pact/USSR and communist but not truly beholden to it.
Czechoslovakia lost its tail bits in WWII to Hungary. The Soviets took it for Ukraine. Now it's a country in the Warsaw Pact.
Bulgaria is forced to be chill. It's in the Pact.
Romania doesn't get to keep Bessarabia, but it gets Transylvania back. It's in the Pact.
Poland got eaten by Germans and Russians again, and when its people fought with the Soviets in the counter-invasion of Germany in 44-45, the Soviets betrayed the Poles and let them die in the Warsaw Uprising without support. Then, as they moved in, the Soviets massacred 20,000 Polish officers and partisans, who were the college educated cream of the Polish crop and the future of the nation. They shot them in the forest, in the backs of their heads, when the Poles thought they were working with the Soviets to free Europe. This was the Katyn Massacre. The Soviets also kept the eastern land for Belarus and shoved the Polish border further west, and gave them most of East Prussia while keeping Konigsberg (now Kaliningrad) for themselves. Poland doesn't like Russia.
Germany got split up but now it's one again. It is now ruled by Kaiser Merkel, who is a marked improvement over Wilhelm in that she hasn't invaded anyone.
Denmark got some bits and pieces in Schleswig-Holstein back. Germany kept trying to take it. They have now agreed on which parts should be Danish and which should be German. All in all a good exchange. Denmark also lost Iceland, since they turned it over to the British after the German invasion (and the British sort of invaded Iceland really, but it was less of an invasion and more of a landing where some policeman said "no, stop" to a few hundred Royal Marines and promptly stepped out of the way).
France is whole again. And a republic. They're on version five right now if I recall.
Spain is fascist in 1945 after a civil war in the 30's between the Republicans led by Manuel Azana Diaz and Francisco Franco's Falangists (Phalanx). Franco was buddies with Hitler and even had German troops helping him out (and bombing civilians at Guernica, which Picasso painted), but ironically Spain was one of the few neutrals of the whole war. Read the book on Operation Mincemeat for a fascinating tale of how Spanish sneakery during the war was used by the Allies to trick Hitler in Sicily.
Yugoslavia is Yugoslavia again. It is the only occupied nation of WWII whose partisans freed themselves in their entirety. That's all thanks to Josip Broz Tito, who became the communist unaligned leader of Yugoslavia post-war. It was also a Serbian government. So, more ethnic oppression. Great.
Italy's King Vittorio Emmanuele III in 1943 decided Mussolini was doing a bad job and promptly fired him, joining the Allies. Italy turned on the Germans again and became good guys! Now they're a republic, since the king did technically let Mussolini do his thing for a while. Fun fact, Mussolini took over in the 1920's and was the first fascist in Europe. Hitler copied him and really looked up to him, or at least I presume he did until he realized how painfully incompetent his Italy was. Like, imagine your older brother tells you all about his motorcycle and his hot girlfriend, then you finally visit his house and he drives an Austin Metro and his girlfriend is just a body pillow. That's why Hitler killed himself.
Modern Day
Italy doesn't have Dalmatia, Istria, or the Aegean anymore. But that's OK. And I don't mean to rag on Italians in this post. In WWII, Italian troops fought well and ferociously under good leadership and with good supply, something they rarely had at any point except at times under Rommel in North Africa.
Poland is Poland.
The Balts, Ukraine, Belarus, Kazakhstan, etc are independent from Russia since the fall of the USSR. Moldova is a former SSR now independent out of parts of Bessarabia. The southern bits of Bessarabia are now in Ukraine, like the tail bits of Slovakia.
Czechoslovakia went through the Velvet Divorce in the late 80's, when they jointly decided that the kids would be happier if they just split up.
Hungary isn't communist anymore but it's still an angry lima bean. Beautiful country though!
Yugoslavia exploded in the 90's in the Balkan Wars. Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia & Herzegovina (two in one!), Macedonia (actually FYROM, Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia. Greece doesn't approve of Slavs using majestic superior Greek words because cultural appropriation triggers them even though Slavs have lived there for centuries), Kosovo sort of, and Montenegro. Now Serbia is alone. Serbia and Montenegro only split in 2006!
Croatia revolted first with the flag of the Croatian national government of the 40's (and still uses it), which I imagine is like shoving a swastika in someone's face. Hard to blame them after living under a Serbian Yugoslavia for so long. I think. Balkan stuff is real touchy and easy to get wrong.
Bulgaria is still chill. Great job Bulgaria.
Moldova has a lot of rich soil which makes it of supreme strategic interest...
But so does Transnistria! Too small to even get on the map. I did a report on Transnistria's economy for Mr. Wallis and that was easy as hell because its economy is one steel plant, one power plant, and a lot of corruption. It has around 100,000 people and its capital is Tiraspol. I don't remember the grade I got. He didn't think it was a real country and he thought I made the Wikipedia article. Just a little mention to one of my favorite lil' buggers of a country.
Finland didn't get its stuff back, including the North Sea port of Petsamo or Viipuri. Oh well.
Germany is small.
The UK lost its empire and now Europe lost the UK which means the UK might lose Scotland and/or Northern Ireland which means England might lose the UK.
Georgia is a country. So is Abkhazia, which isn't show due to lack of recognition. That was the issue of the 2008 Georgian War. Armenia and Azerbaijan used to be SSR's, and they don't like each other. Russia is pro-Armenia, Turkey is pro-Azerbaijan. And we're pro-Azerbaijan because they have lots of oil and our government doesn't recognize the Armenian Genocide.
The Soviet Union collapsed starting in the late 80's with the breakup of the Warsaw Pact. The Union dissolved officially on December 16th, 1991. The Russian SSR approved the breakup treaty on the 12th, though. Who's the mystery leftover? Kazakhstan. They only ratified the breakup on the 16th, so for four days they were the entire Soviet Union and thus one of the most powerful countries in the world. Now they are famous for Borat. Putin wants Crimea, boo hoo.
Belarus is an autocratic sort of Soviet state run by a guy named Lukashenko, who is a mean dictator man.
Ukraine doesn't know what it wants to be but it knows it doesn't like Russia. Not anymore, at least.
Romania had a revolution and got rid of Nicolae Ceausescu, the most gopnik looking human of all time. Mihai isn't king but they invited him back. The Romanian Revolution is fascinating, and it wasn't that bad all things considered. The army was sick of him too, which helped.
suprem gopnik all tiem worship heem
OK that's it. Thanks for reading.
I've read lots of books on this subject, many of which I can't remember at the moment. But if you have any interest in WWI or WWII, I strongly recommend these two YouTube channels,
- The Great War - An excellent informative series following the First World War week by week (one video per week) plus lots of extra bits on periphery history at the time. How did von Lettow-Vorbeck lead a bunch of Germans and African Askari through the bush for four years without supply? Is the Battlefield 1 trailer accurate? How did Emden's crew sail a schooner 'round the
Horn of MexicoIndian Ocean? Indy Neidell has got it.
- Military History Visualized - This Austrian dude does great examinations of fascinating aspects of military history primarily in the WWII era, often using original source documents. He shines with anything relating to the Germans, as he is able to read and digest rare and often untranslated source documents from the era with technical specifications, observations, and more. Flying boats? Italians? Arado Ar-234 jet bomber engine specifications? Do it, he got it.
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