Despite the efforts made to meet the enormous problems caused by World War I and the subsequent controversies, any achievements were largely negated by the recurrent crises of the 1930s in both domestic and foreign relations. The internal politics of all of the Balkan states were deeply affected by the repercussions of the Great Depression and the rise in influence of the European dictatorships. In foreign relations the adoption by the Soviet Union of an active policy in European affairs and the establishment of the National Socialist regime in Germany, with its militant revisionist program, forced the Balkan governments to adjust their attitudes to the changed relationships of the great powers. By 1939 the international situation had so deteriorated that each state had to face the probability that Europe would again be engulfed by war, scarcely two decades after the conclusion of the previous catastrophe.

the rise of soviet and german influence

The predominant French and Italian role in East European diplomacy in the 1920s had to a large extent been a result of the abnormal situation created by the revolution in Russia and the defeat of Germany. With recovery from these shocks, and with the dissolution of the Habsburg Empire, these two states, because of their large populations and their strategic locations, were in a position to exert a strong influence on the thirteen small countries that stretched from the Baltic to the Mediterranean – Esthonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Austria, Hungary, Romania, Yugoslavia, Bulgaria, Greece, Albania, and Turkey.