Chapter 2. Europe and Statelessness to.325 The ethnic minorities were furthermore sometimes excluded by the states to which they belonged, creating flows of migration throughout Europe.326 Against this background, the mass denationalization of people for political or other reasons during the interwar-period should be considered, such as the case of the Armenians. They were, amongst others, denationalized by Turkey in 1927 by a decree and in some cases by individual administrative decision for political and social reasons.327 Indeed, this is but one example of how “[d]enationalizaton became a powerful weapon of totalitarian politics”.328 Denationalization contributed heavily to the creation of statelessness on a large scale and was employed for instance in the newly established Soviet Union after the revolutionary events in Russia, as well as fascist Italy and Turkey. After Hitler’s rise to power in 1933, Germany started to expatriate and deprive Jews and others that it found to be ‘undesirable’ citizens, because they had allegedly displayed disloyalty for instance, of their nationality.329 According to Marc Vishniak: “At the beginning of World War II the stateless comprised mainly the Armenians who had escaped from Kurdish and Turkish massacres; Russians who had fled from the Soviet Union; the inhabitants of the Saar who had voted for France or for the League of Nations at the time of the Saar plebiscite; the Assyro-Chaldeans and Assyrians who had left Iraq after the massacres in that country; the Jews, democrats and socialists who had fled Nazi Germany; Austrian Jews, monarchists, democrats and socialists; Rumanians who had opposed the dictatorship, and Rumanian Jews; anti-Fascist Italians and Italian Jews; Spanish Republicans, Czechoslovakian democrats, etc.”330 What (legal) instruments or responses were turned to after the Great War to address statelessness? World War I ended in 1918 with Allied victory and resulted in the collapse of empires, such as the Ottoman and Austrian-Hungarian empires, as well as massive territorial changes. It also resulted in a number of legal instruments: the peace treaties that were signed at/after the Paris Peace Conference in 1919, of which the Treaty of Versailles between the victors of the war and Germany is probably known best among the public at large. Another outcome was the establishment of the LoN in 1920. In politics after World War I, the principle of self-determination – the right of self-determination 325 326 327 328 329 330 Miriam Rürup, ‘Lives in Limbo. Statelessness after Two World Wars’ (2011) 49 Bulletin of the German Historical Institute 113, 119. Bülent Kaya, The Changing Face of Europe – Population Flows in the 20th Century (Council of Europe Publishing 2002) 15. Louise W Holborn, ‘The Legal Status of Political Refugees, 1920–1938’ (1938) 32 The American Journal of International Law 680; see also Ayse Kadioglu, ‘Denationalization of Citizenship? The Turkish Experience’ (2007) 11 Citizenship Studies 283. Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism (Harvest Book – Harcourt & Brace Company 1979) 269. Marc Vishniak, ‘The Legal Status of Stateless Persons’ in AG Duker (ed), Pamphlet Series: Jews and the Post-War World (No. 6, American Jewish Committee 1945) 20–33. Ibid, 34. In 1938, the Nansen office reported 600,000 Russians, Armenians, Assyro-Chaldeans, Turks, and Saarlanders as still remaining under LoN protection because of statelessness, see Jane Perry Clark Carey, ‘Some Aspects of Statelessness Since World War I’ (1946) 40 The American Political Science Review 113, 115. Intersentia 63