In the spring of 1924, the Baltic sea coast territory of Klaipėda, formerly a region of East Prussia became an autonomous area administrated by the Republic of Lithuania. Given the mixed nationalities of the population, during the interwar period, Germany and Lithuania both pressured citizens to prefer one or the other nationality, which contributed to gradual radicalization and growing nationalist tendencies. The key outcome was the Kaunas process at the turn of 1934/35. Under the Law for the Protection of the Republic, 87 members of the Klaipėda national-socialist organizations CSA and SOVOG were convicted of conspiracy to annex the territory to Germany. The convictions led to an economic blockade of Lithuania by Germany and a massive pro-German propaganda campaign. The United Kingdom tried to settle the situation by increasing its trade activity with Lithuania, accompanied by diplomatic pressure on Lithuania to ease its stance against Germany. After Lithuania agreed to grant amnesties to those convicted of conspiracy, in 1936/37, German-Lithuanian economic relations were restored. However, in the late 1930s, the Republic of Lithuania became an easily blackmailed and diplomatically isolated state, forced to grant numerous concessions to its German minority population. The Lithuanian government...
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:nusl.cz/oai:invenio.nusl.cz:448304 |
| Date | January 2021 |
| Creators | Homolová, Veronika |
| Contributors | Smetana, Vít, Puchalski, Piotr |
| Source Sets | Czech ETDs |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | info:eu-repo/semantics/masterThesis |
| Rights | info:eu-repo/semantics/restrictedAccess |
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