Paris Ambassadors Conference

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Member states (in blue) and observers (in red) as of 1919, within the limits of 1921

The Paris Ambassadors Conference (official name: Conference of Ambassadors of the Allied and Associated Governments , also known as the Council of Ambassadors ), as the organization of the victorious powers of the First World War, played a key role in shaping the post-war order. It was founded at the end of the Paris Peace Conference in January 1920 to monitor compliance with the peace treaties negotiated there . After the conclusion of the Locarno Treaties , it became increasingly inactive, and the Ambassadors' Conference was formally dissolved in 1931 or 1935.

composition

The conference consisted of the Paris ambassadors from Great Britain , Italy and Japan and the French Foreign Minister. The US Ambassador only attended the meetings of the panel as an observer , as the United States saw itself only as an associated power of the Entente. The French diplomat René Massigli acted as general secretary, and the French foreign minister always presided (in this office among others Georges Clemenceau , Raymond Poincaré and Aristide Briand ). Before Massigli, another French diplomat, Jules Laroche, held the office of Secretary General - since the Ambassadors' Conference had not yet been institutionalized at that time, however, he is often not mentioned.

As the coordinator of the Entente's policy towards the other former warring parties, the Conference of Ambassadors became the successor to the Allied Supreme War Council . Later it was de facto subordinate to the League of Nations , but continued to operate largely independently.

Activity and decisions

The ambassadors' conference was supposed to monitor and enforce the implementation of the peace treaties and mediate any resulting territorial disputes in Europe. The matters dealt with by her, for which separate commissions were usually formed, included the referendum in Upper Silesia , the Czechoslovak-Polish dispute over the Olsa region , the Polish-Lithuanian dispute over Vilnius , the status of the Memelland and Montenegro , and the occupation Carinthia by the SHS state , the land grabbing of Burgenland and the Albanian-Greek dispute over Corfu and Northern Epirus . The latter case had been assigned to the Conference of Ambassadors by the League of Nations, which then set up a commission under the Italian General Enrico Tellini . When it became apparent that the Commission would vote in favor of a cession to Albania, the Greek government went on a course of confrontation with the victorious powers. On August 27, 1923, Tellini was attacked in Kakavija on the Albanian-Greek border near Ioannina . The Italian government then demanded an apology from Greece , reparations payments of 50 million lire and a state funeral for Tellini. The Greek government rejected the humiliating demand in parts, whereupon Italy bombed and occupied Corfu in August 1923 (→ Corfu incident ). Mussolini refused to cooperate with the League of Nations on the issue, as the competences lay with the conference of ambassadors. The conference of ambassadors finally adopted provisions for the end of the occupations, which in fact met all of Italy's demands. The Italian troops had to leave Corfu in September 1923.

After the Polish-Soviet war , the conference of ambassadors decided on March 15, 1923 a “decision on the eastern borders of Poland”, in which the new Russian-Polish border was recognized and eastern Galicia was fully assigned to the Polish state with “taking into account the requirement of an autonomous administration”. However , the Statute of Autonomy for Eastern Galicia passed by the Sejm in September 1922 was never implemented, and the decision only exacerbated ethnic tensions in Eastern Galicia.

In 1922, the Ambassadors' Conference, citing the Versailles Treaty, called for the Odernheim - Staudernheim railway to be dismantled and the rest of the Glantalbahn to be removed from one track. The German government protested and after seven years a compromise was found.

The division of the battleships of the Austrian Navy among the successor states was also an issue; a decision was made here on April 15, 1920.

literature

  • Jürgen Heideking: Areopagus of the diplomats. The Paris Ambassadors Conference of the Major Allied Powers and the Problems of European Politics 1920–1931 (= Historical Studies; Vol. 436). Verlag Matthiesen, Husum 1979, ISBN 978-3786814368 (plus dissertation, University of Tübingen 1978).

Individual evidence

  1. ^ A b Edmund Jan Osmańczyk: Anthony Mango (ed.): Encyclopedia of the United Nations and International Agreements , 3rd edition, Vol. A – F, Taylor & Francis, 2003, ISBN 978-0-415-93921-8 , p 434.
  2. ^ A b c Robert WD Boyce: French Foreign and Defense Policy, 1918-1940: The Decline and Fall of a Great Power  (= Routledge Studies in Modern European History). Routledge, 1998, ISBN 978-0-203-97922-8 , p. 133.
  3. ^ Gerhard Paul Pink: The Conference of ambassadors (Paris 1920-1931) its history, the theoretical aspect of its work, and its place in international organization . Geneva research center, 1942, p. 18.
  4. ↑ "Greece asked the League for help, but Mussolini ignored the League as he argued it was a Conference of Ambassabors' matter." In: Allan Todd: The Modern World . Oxford University Press, 2001, ISBN 978-0-19-913425-0 , pp. 55 .
  5. ^ Diana Siebert: All gentlemen outposts. Corfu from 1797 to 1944 . Cologne 2016, ISBN 978-3-00-052502-5 , pp. 144-157 .
  6. ↑ Decision taken by the conference of ambassadors regarding the eastern frontiers of Poland. (PDF) Retrieved April 8, 2015 .
  7. ↑ Wolfgang Kessler: Border Fighting and National Minorities in Poland 1919–1921 . In: Hans Lemberg, Peter Heumos (Ed.): The year 1919 in Czechoslovakia and in East Central Europe . Oldenbourg, Munich 1993, ISBN 3-486-55968-0 ( limited preview in the Google book search).