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Welcome to a history of Europe, the interwar years.

This is the first part of the Polish-Serviet War of 1919 to 1921, the introduction.

The history of the end of World War I told in Western Europe is that of a clean break on the 11th of November, 1918, when Germany capitulated to the Allied powers.

The armistice was celebrated with great passion in the streets of Paris and London, and soldiers started coming home soon after.

Elsewhere, however, was very different.

The collapse of the Habsburg, German and Ottoman empires

unleashed a series of conflicts between various newly emerging nations,

the Czechs, the Hungarians, the Serbs and many more.

The delegates at the Treaty of Versailles negotiated in 1920 settled Germany's western borders,

but at the same time war still raged in pockets elsewhere on the continent.

Most of the conflicts were relatively closely contained and were in essence basically border disputes. The Russian Civil War,

...