After the first world war Austria-Hungary and Serbia ceased to exist and, along with parts of Russia, became parts of the new countries of Austria, Hungary, Pol

After the first world war Austria-Hungary and Serbia ceased to exist and, along with parts of Russia, became parts of the new countries of Austria, Hungary, Poland, and Czechoslovakia along with an enlarged Romania and a number of other smaller countries. The result of this is that many people became stateless or de facto citizens of a country where they were in the minority. The Minority Treaties attempted to ensure these citizens maintained rights in countries of the League of Nations, but this was ill-enforced at best. During the years leading up to World War II, numerous of these new countries, plus France and Germany, began to de-naturalize people of minority (for that country) descent including Germans, Poles, Balkans, Russian, Spaniards and of course Jews. They began to revoke citizenship of both naturalized and native-born people, and attempted to deport them to various places even though many had never lived there and those countries did not want them.