Paris 1919 - Margaret Macmillan [95]
Stamboliski turned out to be something of a statesman. Bulgaria accepted its new borders and renounced its old expansionist policies, even in Yugoslavian Macedonia. He went further, mending relations with Yugoslavia and signing an agreement to cooperate against terrorists; he duly cracked down on the Macedonian terrorists who were turning Sofia into their fiefdom. He started to build a Green International of peasant parties to counter the new Communist International founded by the Soviet Russians. Bulgaria became an enthusiastic member of the League of Nations. But Stamboliski’s foreign and domestic policies also made him many enemies: Bulgarian nationalists, army officers, Macedonian terrorists, the middle classes suffering from inflation and high taxes, possibly the king himself. In June 1923, there was a coup; Stamboliski was killed by Macedonian conspirators who first cut off the hand which had signed the antiterrorist agreement with Yugoslavia. “The poor great man,” murmured the king when he heard. 16
The moderate approach to foreign affairs taken by Stamboliski did not long outlast his death. Too many Bulgarians looked back longingly at the great Bulgaria of earlier decades; they resented the Treaty of Neuilly and were infuriated by the treatment of their compatriots by Rumania, Greece and Yugoslavia. The Macedonian terrorists continued to operate from Bulgarian soil with virtual impunity, worsening relations with both Greece and Yugoslavia. Attempts in the early 1930s to get a general Balkan agreement respecting existing boundaries foundered on Bulgaria’s refusal. The result was an agreement among Yugoslavia, Greece, Turkey and Rumania that left Bulgaria isolated. As Europe drifted toward war again, Bulgaria tilted to the German camp. In 1940, under pressure from Germany, Rumania handed back the southern Dobrudja. In the spring of 1941, Bulgarian troops, fighting with the Germans and the Italians, occupied Macedonia and western Thrace. Bulgaria did not enjoy its recovered territories for long; under the settlements of 1947 it kept only the southern Dobrudja. By that time its new communist regime was firmly in place. Boris was long dead—poisoned, many believed, by the Nazis. Foxy Ferdinand, however, died peacefully in Germany in 1948, at the age of eighty-seven. 17
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Midwinter Break
BY THE END of January 1919, the main outlines of the peace settlements were emerging. The Russian question, the League of Nations and the new borders in central Europe had all come up, even if they had not been completely settled. Progress had been made, too, on some of the crucial details of the German treaty by special committees: on war damages and on Germany’s capacity to make reparation; on Germany’s borders, its colonies and its armed forces; on the punishment of German war criminals; even on the fate of German submarine cables. The big question, though—how to punish Germany and how to keep it under control in the future—had barely been touched on by Clemenceau, Lloyd George and Wilson, the only men who could really settle it.
Also emerging was what a Swiss diplomat called the “great surprise at the conference”: a close partnership between the British and the Americans. True, there had been difficulties over the mandates, but at the Supreme Council, on the committees and commissions and in the corridors, British and Americans found that they saw eye to eye on most issues. Wilson, who never wholeheartedly liked Lloyd George, had succumbed a little to his charm, chatting away cheerfully as they went in and out of meetings and even going out to the occasional lunch or dinner. He had also come to recognize that he was better off dealing with a strong Liberal as prime