Treaty of Saint-Germain-en-Laye
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See Treaty of Versailles, Paris Peace Conference.
First and second drafts of the Paris Peace Conferences Austrian treaty were presented on June 2 and July 20, 1919, respectively. It was signed at Saint-Germain-en-Laye on September 10, 1919, and the Treaty of Saint-Germain-en-Laye came into effect on July 16, 1920.
The peacemakers treated Austria not as one of the new states rising out of the ruins of Austria-Hungary but as the rump of that formerly hostile nation. While all the non-German countries of the now defunct Austrian Empire were distributed more or less ethnically, the doctrine of the Fourteen Points with regard to self determination was applied neither in the case of the Sudetenland, which, with 3 and a half million Germans, were incorporated into Czechoslovakia or with South Tirol, which, with its quarter million Germans was incorporated into Italy. The Treaty’s article 88, forbidding any alienation of the new Austrian sovereignty without the Leagues consent, was designed to prevent political union between Germany and Austria. In the case of Carinthia, however, the treaty did allow plebiscites in two zones to decide whether the south of that province should be left to Austria or be transferred to Yugoslavia. When in October, 1920, the first plebiscite went in Austria’s favour, the other was cancelled so as to allow the other zone to remain in Austria. On the other hand, the treaty’s transfer of the westernmost parts of three Hungarian counties to Austria was modified, on Hungary’s demand, by a plebiscite that restored the town of Odenburg to Hungary (December, 1921)
The Treaty of Saint-Germain restricted Austria’s army to a volunteer force of 30,000 men, and the ships of the Austro-Hungarian Navy were shared out among the allies. Austria was also obliged to acknowledge responsibility for loss and damage caused in the war; but after reparations in kind, no financial compensation was taken, and the Treaty’s financial provisions were relaxed in March 1921.