Mitteleuropa in Eclipse

Abstract

At the very time that the mid-European enthusiasm was losing its buoyant optimism and sense of direction in the German world, Mitteleuropa loomed ominously for the West and remained a center of Entente attention to the end of the war. Professor Masaryk’s memoranda advocating an independent Bohemia as the best guarantee against realization of the so-called Berlin-Bagdad dream had filtered through to the highest British policymaking levels, and to President Wilson even while America was still neutral.’ In London the New Europe was beginning its counter-offensive, soon to be seconded by the Monde Slave from Paris. The Daily Review of the Foreign Press,at the British War Office, had established Mitteleuropa as a major intelligence objective and presented a mass of assorted information under that heading.² Similarly the American Committee on Public Information devoted its efforts of 1917–18 to documenting the conviction that Mitteleuropa was the Imperial German war aim. Colonel House praised André Chéradame for writing so ably upon international affairs, and Lloyd George informed Wilson of the tremendous resources organized by the Germans ‘as part of the defense of their new Empire of Mittel-Europa.’ ³