The butchering of Ukraine's borders will haunt Europe for generations

Telegraph

2 days ago

Other borders were redrawn, too. Hungary has never forgotten that the 1920 Treaty of Trianon resulted in it losing two-thirds of its pre-war territory. This 'Trianon trauma' remains a potent political issue today. The two newly independent states of Poland and Czechoslovakia immediately went to war over their border in 1919, one of many violent border conflicts that followed the well-intentioned redrawing of national boundaries.
Under Hitler, Germany pursued aggressive territorial revisionism, beginning with the annexation of Austria and the dismemberment of Czechoslovakia through the 1938 Munich Agreement, forcing the smaller state to cede territory to appease a larger aggressor. That agreement emboldened Nazi expansionism, culminating in the Second World War.
After the war, Europe's borders were redrawn again, notably by reducing Germany's size and shifting the Polish state westward. Millions of Germans were expelled from lands in the east that were handed over to Poland and the Soviet Union. The new border remained a point of intense political controversy in both East and West Germany.
This has never led to a reopening of armed conflict because, unlike Ukraine, Germany was the aggressor in the conflict that lost it so much territory. Nonetheless, in West Germany, powerful groups of expellees, known as Vertriebene, were able to lobby politicians to a degree. It was only with Chancellor Willy Brandt's Ostpolitik in the 1970s and the eventual reunification in 1990 that Germany fully accepted the permanence of these post-war borders.
In the East, where I was born, a quarter of the population consisted of displaced Germans from the former eastern territories in the 1950s. My family was a typical example: three of my four grandparents were from East Prussia, Pomerania and the Sudetenland, respectively. The reason they were never resentful about having lost their homes was a powerful mixture of guilt and repression. Given their nation's crimes in Eastern Europe, they felt they didn't have much of a point to complain, and the regime, keen to keep good relations with its direct neighbours and especially the Soviet Union, enforced this narrative. Few expellees in East Germany spoke about their loss for three generations, repressing resentment until it petered out.
This is not a model that would work for Ukraine, nor one that it should be subjected to. Regardless of Russian propaganda, it didn't start this war. By suggesting that Ukraine could cede land to Russia to end it, Trump is proposing the dismantling of a fundamental principle of the European order: that borders cannot be changed by force.
What guarantee do smaller nations, such as the Baltic states, have that their sovereignty will be protected? Unlike Ukraine, they are part of Nato, but with US backing not as rock-solid as it once was, Russia feels emboldened. Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov arrived for Friday's summit with a t-shirt imprinted with the letters CCCP, the Russian acronym for the USSR – hardly a subtle hint of Moscow's ambitions.
Borders matter – not just as lines on a map that divvy up resources and land, but as symbols of sovereignty, identity, and peace. Changing them by force is a path Europe has walked before. History tells us we should tread lightly.