Davide Artico, Brunello Mantelli (red.), "From Versailles to Munich. Twenty Years of Forgotten Wars", Dolnośląskie Wydawnictwo Edukacyjne, Wrocław 2010.

The European post-war reconfiguration proved to be in fact a real failure, not only because, in the light of the Wilsonian programme, it was thought to draw boundaries where these, due to the ethnic, cultural and linguistic diversity, were not traceable, but even because, sacrificing the principle of national self-determination on the altar of imperial interests, it came to create those fatal conditions from which Fascism, Nazism and Stalinism would soon establish their respective revisionist strategies.

Dr. Federico Trocini,

Italian-German Historical Institute, Foundation “Bruno Kessler”

Trento, Italy (peer reviewing)

The years following the First World War are generally referred to as the ‘interwar period.’ Such a definition suggests that the period was predominantly peaceful, with no noteworthy military conflicts. The book edited by Davide Artico and Brunello Mantelli shows this appearance to be misleading. Though ‘swallowed’ by the long shadow of the First and the Second World Wars, military confrontation in the Baltic area, in Silesia, and along the border between Italy and Yugoslavia proved at times to be very ferocious. The new European order established after the Versailles Treaty had serious shortcomings, and it was bound to collapse in the late 1930s.

Dr. Thomas Schlemmer,

Institute of Contemporary History, Munich

and University of Tübingen, Germany (peer reviewing)

Contents

Between Ideology and ‘Realpolitik’: For a Reconsideration of the 20th Century in the Light of Inter-War Conflicts – Davide Artico and Brunello Mantelli 5

Great Britain and the Baltic States 1918-22 – Evgenij Jurevič Sergeev 17

National Self-Determination and War: The Lithuanian Case – Česlovas Laurinavičius 37

Nationalisms and Organised Violence in Central-East Silesia 1918-1921 – Davide Artico 55

Border Genealogies: Slovenian Claims to Trieste – Marta Verginella 73

Italian Military and Diplomatic Archival Sources and the Baltic Area between 1919 and 1922 – Irene Guerrini and Marco Pluviano 97

‘Darstellungen aus den Nachkriegskämpfen deutscher Truppen und Freikorps’: The Baltic Clashes in the Official Military History of the Deutsches Reich 1936-1943 – Brunello Mantelli 131

Index 151