Conclusion

The Conclusion sums up the major arguments of the book and gives an outlook on the decade following the postwar struggles. Polish nationalism had not managed to incite the masses in 1918. Until 1921, the state frontiers in Central Europe were fixed, but they ran through ethnically mixed borderlands. All Central European nation states had ethnic minorities living within and co-nationals living beyond their respective borders. As a result of the enmities brought by the Central European Civil War, a collective postwar security system failed to materialize. Internal and external conflicts were simmering on. Even the fight of the Polish Second Republic for its survival did not unite the nation. Following the border struggles, the political elites were more estranged than ever. Their feud resulted in the assassination of the Prime Minister by a right-wing extremist in 1922 and a left-dominated coup d’état in 1926, which established an authoritarian regime.