Czech corridor
The Czech Corridor (Czechoslovak-Yugoslav Corridor) was the plan pursued after the First World War to expand Czechoslovakia south towards the Adriatic Sea and to connect it with the SHS state . This was intended to create another Slavic-speaking corridor through a German-speaking (or Hungarian-speaking) country , similar to the Polish corridor to the Baltic Sea .
Czechoslovak demands
The corridor plan first appeared during the revolution in 1848 , when Ján Kollár called for a connection between the Czechs and the southern Slavs . During the First World War, the idea was revived: between Czechoslovakia and the SHS state (Yugoslavia), mainly Czechoslovak neo-Slav politicians wanted to establish a territorial connection by connecting Burgenland and some western Hungarian areas to Czechoslovakia, as well as some south- western Hungarian ones Territories in Yugoslavia. This was intended to create a Slavic-speaking barrier primarily populated by a Croatian minority, which from then on was to separate Austria from Hungary, but also the German-speaking people in Central Europe from those in Southeastern Europe. In April 1915 Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk submitted a memorandum to the British Foreign Minister Edward Gray . Edvard Beneš presented a memorandum to the Paris Peace Conference in which it was claimed that 25-30% of the region in question was inhabited by Slavic-speaking residents. This was intended to separate German speakers from Magyars , but the corridor could not be defended militarily.
In addition to the connection between the Western and Southern Slavs, Czechoslovakia's access to the sea (via Yugoslavia to the Adriatic) was also to be secured. The Yugoslav side suggested leaving this Slavic corridor to Czechoslovakia, which is why the term Czech or Czechoslovakian corridor later prevailed, while the plan was also referred to as the Burgenland corridor in German-language sources . Around 220,000 South Slavic speakers ( Croats and Slovenes ) between 660,000 Hungarians and 290,000 German speakers lived in the area in question .
This plan did not find a majority at the Paris peace conferences, among other things because of the Italian-Yugoslav rivalry, and it became obsolete with the pro-Hungarian plebiscite in Sopron in 1921 at the latest .
In the Vix Note , further territorial cessions from Hungary to Romania had previously been requested.
See also
Individual evidence
- ^ A b Walter Goldinger , Dieter A. Binder : History of the Republic of Austria. 1918–1938 , Verlag für Geschichte und Politik, Vienna 1992, ISBN 3-7028-0315-7 , p. 63.
- ^ Arnold Suppan : Yugoslavia and Austria 1918–1938. Oldenbourg Wissenschaftsverlag, Munich 1996, ISBN 3-486-56166-9 , p. 563f.
literature
- Janko Bekić: The emergence of the First Czechoslovak Republic and the plans to build a “Slavic Corridor”. Unprinted diploma thesis, Vienna 2006.
