After Versailles, the territories between the former Habsburg and Ottoman Empire were called, “intermediate Europe” (Zwischeneuropa). After World War I, new national states emerged here. It is here that after Word War II, the Soviet and the American zone of influence confronted one another. On the Balkans, and only for a short post-war moment, an uncertain equilibrium of both empires produced a vacuum of power at their outer frontiers. The Yugoslav Partisan leader Josip Broz Tito seized the opportunity to build up new federations, not only the Federative Communist Republic of Yugoslavia.
