Masaryk’s Concept of Central European and Whole-European Democratic Unity

By 1915 in London Thomas G. Masaryk publicly identified and described the origins of WW I as the neuralgic mid-European belt of minor nations between Germany and Russia presenting the geo-political core of the so called Eastern Question. For Masaryk, this Central Europe presented the most exigent and acute impetus for the allied democratic transformation of the political organization of Europe. By 1919 Halford J. Mackinder proclaimed his famous Heartland concept in the same vein. Masaryk’s plan was to gradually establish a United States of Europe out of transatlantic cooperation between a confederation of European old and new democracies and the U.S. Masaryk’s concept of democratic European unity obviously contradicts the core concept of the European Union that aims at a gradual elimination of European democracies