Minorities were interregional across state borders, defeating the League’s territorial treaties.

Evidence

The embittered nationalities, completely disregarding the League of Nations, soon decided to take matters into their own hands. They banded together in a minority congress which was remarkable in more than one respect. It contradicted the very idea behind the League treaties by calling itself officially the “Congress of Organized National Groups in European States,” thereby nullifying the great labor spent during the peace negotiations to avoid the ominous word “national.” This had the important consequence that all “nationalities,” and not just “minorities,” would join and that the number of the “nation of minorities” grew so considerably that the combined nationalities in the succession states outnumbered the state peoples. … The League treaties had attempted to ignore the interregional character of the minorities by concluding a separate treaty with each country, as though there were no Jewish or German minority beyond the borders of the respective states. The “Congress of National Groups” not only sidestepped the territorial principle of the League; it was naturally dominated by the two nationalities which were represented in all succession states and were therefore in a position, if they wished, to make their weight felt all over Eastern and Southern Europe. These two groups were the Germans and the Jews. — Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 678

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the imagined-community critique of the nation-state: the League’s territorial assumption failed because national minority loyalties were cross-border, which pairs with how later statelessness readings expose the nation-state’s inability to protect non-nationals.