The White International: anatomy of a transnational radical revisionist plot in Central Europe after World War I.

Abstract

The denial of defeat, the harsh Versailles Treaty and unsuccessful attempts by paramilitary units to recover losses in the Baltic produced in post-war Germany an anti-Bolshevik, anti-Entente, radical right-wing cabal of officers with General Ludendorff and Colonel Bauer at its core. Mistakenly citing a lack of breadth as one of the reason for the failure of their amateurishly executed Hohenzollern restoration and Kapp Putsch schemes, Bauer and co-conspirator Ignatius Trebitsch-Lincoln devised the highly ambitious White International plot. It sought to form a transnational league of Bavaria, Austria and Hungary to force the annulment of the Paris Treaties by the coordinated use of paramilitary units from the war vanquished nations. It set as its goals the destruction of Bolshevism in all its guises throughout Europe, the restoration of the monarchy in Russia, the systematic elimination of all Entente-sponsored Successor States and the declaration of war on the Entente. Archival documents, memoirs and other sources expose the underlying flaw in the plot: individual national priorities would always override transnational cooperation. Bavaria and Hungary were already seeking treaty revision through a rapprochement with the Entente; White Russian forces had turned from German support in favour of the French; and finally¿as pointed out by their own leaders¿the member states¿ paramilitary units were either untested or wholly ineffective, and thus would be no match for the national armies of the Successor States and the Entente.