Revolutionary Central Europe: Diary of an American in 1919

Abstract

Nicholas Roosevelt, journalist and diplomat, served during the Paris Peace Conference as a member of the Coolidge mission, which had Vienna as its seat and gathered information about Austria and the other countries in the neighborhood. By accident, Roosevelt was in Budapest when the Hungarian Soviet Republic was proclaimed in March 1919. Based upon his experiences in and out of Vienna, Roosevelt wrote diary entries that have never been published. The language of the diary is interesting, not difficult to read, and often humorous, although sometimes politically incorrect in the twenty-first-century sense, as it contains anti-Semitic opinion and
sentiment of American superiority toward Central and Eastern European peoples. It gives sharp characterizations on leading figures of the era, from Coolidge to Károlyi, and from Dulles to Wilson. The material is important also since it reflects the private opinions of an American captain about the United States’ role in the postwar world and in the process of peace making.